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Subsection
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Order of Contents
Articles 2
Books 3
History 1
. Protestant Patriarch 8+
Historical Theology 4
Systematic Theology 4
Deification & Theosis 16+
E.O. Critique of West 1
Latin 5
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Articles
1200’s
Aquinas, Thomas – Contra the Errors of the Greeks
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2000’s
URCNA Classis – ‘Report of the Committee Appointed by URCNA Classis SWUS to Study Eastern Orthodoxy’ 64 pp. c. 2016? with a bibliography
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Books
1600’s
Smith, Thomas – An Account of the Greek Church as to its Doctrine and Rites of Worship with Several Historical Remarks… to which is added an account of the state of the Greek church under Cyrillus Lucaris… (London, 1680)
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2000’s
Fairbairn, Donald – Eastern Orthodoxy Through Western Eyes (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002) The publisher is liberal.
Stamenkovic, Ivica – The Holy Scriptures & the Traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church: A Review of the Foundational Teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church Buy (Independently published, 2021) 104 pp.
Stamenkovic is an evangelical, Serbian, Christian who was a baptist pastor for 20 years.
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History: The Protestant Patriarch Cyril Lucaris (1572–1638)
Articles
1600’s
Smith, Thomas – ‘An Account of the State of the Greek Church under the Government of Cyrillus Lucaris, Patriarch of Constantinople, with a Relation of his Sufferings & Death’ in An Account of the Greek Church as to its Doctrine and Rites of Worship with Several Historical Remarks… to which is added an account of the state of the Greek church under Cyrillus Lucaris... (London, 1680), pp. 239-91
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1900’s
Michaelides, George P. – ‘The Greek Orthodox Position on the Confession of Cyril Lucaris’ Church History, vol. 12, no. 2 (Jun., 1943), pp. 118-29
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2000’s
Khokhar, Antony J. – “The ‘Calvinist Patriarch’ Cyril Lucaris & His Bible Translations” Scriptura, 114:1 (2015), pp. 1–15
Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna – ‘The Myth of the Calvinist Patriarch’ at Orthodox Christian Information Center
This article, from an Orthodox standpoint, claims Lucaris was not a Calvinist.
Wikipedia – ‘Cyril Lucaris’
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Books
Hadjiantoniou, George A.
Cyril Lucaris: his Life & Work PhD thesis (University of Edinburgh, 1948) 180 pp.
Protestant Patriarch: the Life of Cyril Lucaris (1572-1638) Patriarch of Constantinople (John Knox Press, 1961) 155 pp. ToC
Germanos (Metropolitan of Thyateira) – Kyrillos Loukaris, 1572-1638: a Struggle for Preponderance between Catholic & Protestant Powers in the Orthodox East Ref (London: S.P.C.K., London, 1951)
Bradow, Charles King – The Career & Confession of Cyril Loukaris: the Greek Orthodox Church & its Relations with Western Christians (1543-1638) PhD thesis (Ohio State University, 1961) 215 pp.
Anagnostopoulos, Stavros – Patriarch Cyril Loukaris: his Life & Works with Special Reference to his Confession thesis Ref (Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, 2004)
Gerdov, Igor – Cyril Lucaris (1572-1638): his Confession & the Official Response of the Eastern Orthodox Church to Protestant Doctrine thesis Ref (Sun Valley, California: Master’s Seminary, 2015)
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Cyril’s Confession
English
ed. Bratcher, Dennis – ‘The Confession of Cyril Lucaris (Eastern Orthodox, 1629)’ (2018) at The Voice
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In Greek & Latin
Hottinger, Johann H. – Appendix to Dissertation 8, Exhibiting the Confession of Cyril, Patriarch of Constantinople Illustrated by the Testimonies of Scripture & the Fathers in Historical-Theological Collections… an Appendix of the Confession of Cryil, the Renowned Patriarch of Constantinople... (Zurich, 1652), pp. 398-567
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History
1800’s
King, Jonas – The Oriental Church & the Latin (NY: Gray, 1865) 134 pp. ToC
King (1792-1869) was an American, Calvinistic congregationalist minister who served much of his life as an evangelist in Greece. A few other works of his in Greek are available online.
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Historical Theology
Secondary Sources
Mastrantonis, George – Augsburg & Constantinople: The Correspondence between the [Lutheran] Tubingen Theologians & Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople on the Augsburg Confession Buy (1982; Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2005) 372 pp.
Mastrantonis was an Eastern Orthodox clergyman. “The correspondence between the Lutheran theologians of Tubingen and Orthodox Patriarch Jeremiah II may be seen as the first substantive ecumenical dialogue of the post-Reformation era.”
eds. Lehner, Muller, Roeber – The Oxford Handbook to Early Modern Theology, 1600-1800 (Oxford, 2016), pt. 3, ‘Theology & the Others’
ch. 32, ‘The Churches of the East & the Enlightenment’, pp. 499-516
ch. 33, ‘Orthodox Influences on Early Modern Western Theologies’, pp. 517-32
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Primary Source
Latin Book
The Acts & Writings of the Wirtemburg Theologians & the Patriarch of Constantinople, D. Hieremia, from 1576-1581 on the Augsburg Confession, sent between themselves, in Greek & Latin, from the same Theologians Published (Wittenburg, 1584) 384 pp. ToC
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On Eastern Orthodox Systematic Theology
The three Early and Medieval Church works below have been said to be the only systematic representation of the theology of the Greek Fathers.
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Early Church
Origen – De principiis
Theodoret of Cyrus – Haereticarum fabularum compendium, bk. 5
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Medieval Church
John of Damascus – On the Orthodox Faith
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1900’s
Niesel, Wilhelm – Pt. 2, ‘The Gospel & the Orthodox Church’ in Reformed Symbolics: a Comparison of Catholicism, Orthodoxy & Protestantism tr. David Lewis (Oliver & Boyd, 1962), pp. 121-168
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On Deification
On 2 Pet. 1:4, ‘that by these you may be partakers of the divine nature…’
1600’s
Spurstowe, William – ch. 4, ‘The Noble Effects of the Promises, & in what Sense by Them we are Made Partakers of the Divine Nature’ in The Wells of Salvation Opened, or, A Treatise Discovering the Nature, Preciousness, Usefulness of Gospel Promises, & Rules for the Right Application of Them Buy (1655), pp. 22-30
Gray, Andrew – pp. 158-63 in Sermon 5 on 2 Pet. 1:4 in The Great & Precious Promises, 5 Sermons in Works (1839), pp. 115-68
* Tuckney, Anthony – Sermon 22, on 2 Pet. 1:4, pt. 1, 2, 3, 4 in Forty Sermons upon Several Occasions… (London, 1676), pp. 223-63
Tuckney (1599-1670) was a non-conformist puritan and Westminster divine. He takes up the ontological issues in-depth in the greater part of the first sermon, contrasting views, etc.
Manton, Thomas – Sermon 4 in Twenty Sermons in Works, vol. 2, pp. 213-21
“Doctrine: That the great end and effect of the promises of the gospel is, to make us partakers of the divine nature.”
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Articles
1900’s
Williams, Rowan – ‘Deification’ in ed. Gordon S. Wakefield, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983)
Bray, Gerald L.- ‘Deification’ in eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson et. al. – New Dictionary of Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1988)
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2000’s
Mosser, Carl – ‘Deification: a Truly Ecumenical Concept’ Perspectives: a Journal of Reformed Thought 30/4 (2015), pp. 8-14
Billings, Todd – ‘Desiring the End(s) of Salvation’ (2015)
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Quotes
William Twisse
A Discovery of Dr. Jackson’s Vanity... (Amsterdam, 1631), ch. 13, p. 475
“As groundless is your following dictate, that, ‘without conformity to his nature, we cannot participate of his holiness, it being the imodiate consequent of his nature.’ And what, I pray, will you make gods of us? or shall our glorification in the kingdom of heaven be a deification? as it must be if it be a participation of the divine happiness. But this is an usual liberty of discourse which you take to yourself. I hope you will not say, that formal glory which God has provided for us, shall be a glory uncreated, though in the way of an efficient cause it shall proceed from the uncreated glory of God, but created rather.
And all created glory, I hope, be it never so great, is no part of God’s happiness, which is, you say, an immediate consequent unto his nature; wherein notwithstanding I doubt much, you speak as Peter sometimes did, when he spake he knew not what; as namely, in distinguishing God’s happiness from his nature, as an immediate consequent thereof.”
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Anthony Burgess
A Treatise of Grace & Assurance (London, 1652), Sermon 34, pp. 202-3
“Secondly, [regeneration,] its not, in another extremity, to have a new physical being, as not to lose the essentials we had of a soul and the faculties thereof: some have confusedly talked of a transubstantiation into the being of God, and tells us of a strange deification, or being made God with God. These men have affected uncouth and obsolete expressions, as the Paracelsians do in physic: No, though born of God, yet not made God, only we have the image of God in us, and that which is by way of substance in Him is only by accident in us. It is true, the Scripture calls it a divine nature, 1 Pet. 1:4, a new creature, 2 Cor. 5:17, the inward man, and this made [Matthew] Illyricus [the Lutheran] with his followers at least in words to err (for some excuse his sense) when he said, The substance of a man is corrupted, and so his substance must be changed. It’s true the Scripture useth such expressions to show how real, intimate, and fixed the work of grace is; It’s not a notion, it’s not a fancy; No more than to be a man, to live, to speak, to eat is. Thus grace where it is, makes a wonderful alteration, though not in the essence, yet in the qualities and operations of a man, so that in a theological sense he is wholly a new man, he is not the same he was: and this is discovered as really and powerfully in him, as when Adam out of nothing was made a man: Take heed then of being in the number of those who account all the change wrought by God’s Spirit in a man, to be only a melancholy fancy, and attribute all to such cloudy imaginations, or else speak of it, as a particular constitution and temperament of the body: No, The Scripture would never call grace by such real powerful names, if it had not also as real and powerful effects: so that regeneration is a real, supernaturall change in a man, as when of dead a man is made alive, of foolish, wise; not a relative change, as when a man is made a husband or magistrate, wherein his principles and heart are not altered.”
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Historical Theology
On the Whole of Church History
ed. Ortiz, Jared – With All the Fullness of God: Deification in Christian Tradition (Fortress Academic, 2021)
Here is a review by Kevin Slusher, a refomed minister.
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On the Medieval Church
Cross, Richard – ‘Deification in Aquinas: Created or Uncreated?’ The Journal of Theological Studies
Abstract: “This paper argues, against A. N. Williams, that Aquinas accepted a doctrine of created grace, in addition to uncreated grace, throughout his career, including in the
Summa theologiae. After offering analyses of Aquinas’s treatment of created and uncreated grace, it further argues, against Luke Davis Townsend, that according to Aquinas created grace is the formal cause not only of a person’s being justified but also of a person’s participating in God and being deified.
To this extent, these latter are mediated: created grace is what explains someone’s participating in God and being deified: ‘explains’ in the sense of an Aristotelian formal cause, much as
(to use one of Aquinas’s examples) something’s whiteness explains that thing’s being white.”
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On the 1700’s
Salladin, James R. – Jonathan Edwards & Deification: Reconciling Theosis & the Reformed Tradition Pre ()
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On Theosis
Articles
1900’s
Christensen, Michael J. – ‘Theosis & Sanctification: John Wesley’s Reformulation of a Patristic Doctrine’ in Wesleyan Theological Journal 31,2 (1996), pp. 71-94 Wesley held to a doctrine of entire sanctification in this life.
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2000’s
Fairbairn, Donald – pp. 79–95 of Eastern Orthodoxy Through Western Eyes (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002) The publisher is liberal.
Horton, Michael S. – ch. 12, ‘The Weight of Glory: Justification & Theosis’ in Covenant & Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), pp. 267-308
Slick, Matt – ‘What is Theosis?’ at CARM
Theopedia – ‘Theosis’ This has a helpful bibliography
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The Eastern Orthodox Critique of the West
Kolbaba, Tia M. – The Byzantine Lists: the Errors of the Latins (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2000) 245 pp. ToC See the lists (AD 1054 – c. 1274) 35 pp.
Ouline of the Objections
Items Found in Virtually All Lists
Fasting on the Sabbath
Eating Unclean Foods [Blood & Suffocated Things, & Other Animals]
Unleavened Bread in the Eucharist
Prohibition of Clerical Marriage
The Addition to the Creed [Filioque]
Improper Lenten Fasting
Items Found in More than Half the Lists
[Rites about] Baptism
Marriage within Forbidden Degrees [Regarding In-Laws]
Monks Eating Lard or Other Meat
Not Chanting the Alleluia During Lent
Bishops & Priests in Battle
Failure to Revere [Relics &] Icons
Bishops Wearing Rings [as Married to the Church]
Insufficient Reverance for the Virgin Mary
Tracing a Cross on the Ground & Then Walking Upon it
Making the Sign of the Cross Incorrectly
Kissing People Instead of Giving Them Communion
Celebrating More than One Eucharist per Day, per Altar, per Church or per Priest
Clean-Shaven Priests
Improper Burial Practices
Insufficient Reverance for the Altar
Improper Clerical Clothing (Liturgical & Everyday)
They Sit when they should Stand During the Liturgy, & they Talk to one Another even at the Holiest Moments
They do Not Respect the Greek Fathers: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian & John Chrysostom
They do Not Fast Weekly on Wednesday, & their Friday Fast is Not Sufficiently Rigorous
They have Added the Phrase ‘with the Holy Spirit’ to the ‘One Holy, One Lord’
They Perform the Entire Mass During Lent
They Perform the Rite of Ordination Only Four Times a Year
They Practice ‘Judaic’ Purificatory Rites
They Say that the Divine Must be Praised in Only these Three Languages: Hebrew, Greek & Roman
Holy Week Dramatic Liturgy
Maundy Thursday
Good Friday
Holy Saturday Vigil
Easter Sunday
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Latin Articles Contra Greek & Eastern Orthodoxy
1600’s
Voet, Gisbert – 8. The Modern Churches Beyond: the Western, Greek, of Moscow, Armenia, Egypt, Iberia, Syria, Jacobite, of Georgia, Ethiopia & the Indies in Syllabus of Theological Problems (Utrecht, 1643), pt. 1, section 2, tract 4 Abbr.
Hoornbeek, Johannes – 11. ‘Of Greeks & Orientals’ in A Sum of Controversies in Religion with Infidels, Heretics & Schismatics (Utrecht, 1653; 1676), p. 833 ff.
Spanheim, Francis – ‘Select Controversies with the Modern Greeks & Orientals: a Historical Dissertation on the State of the Oriental Church & their Dissension from the Latins, or the Pontificate’ ToC in A Historical-Theological Chain of Select Controversies on Religion, even with the Greeks, Orientals, Jews & the Recent Anti-Scripturalists [Rationalists] [Plus Many Other Sects], in which the Fonts of Errors are Opened (Leiden, 1683), pp. 369-472
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1700’s
Vitringa, Sr., Campegius – The Doctrine of the Christian Religion… (d. 1722)
vol. 6, Ch. 24, ‘Of the Sacraments of the New Covenant’, ‘Of the Sacraments of Greeks’, pp. 520-524
vol. 7, Ch. 24, ‘Of Baptism’, ‘Of the Baptism of the Greeks’, pp. 181-204
vol. 8, Ch. 24, ‘Of the Lord’s Supper’, ‘Of the Sacred Supper of the Greeks’, pp. 423-634
Stapfer, Johann – ch. 19, ‘Of the Oriental Church’ in Institutes of Universal Polemical Theology… vol. 5 (Zurich, 1756), pp. 56-123 ToC
Stapfer (1708-1775) was a professor of theology at Bern. He was influenced by the philosophical rationalism of Christian Wolff, though, by him “the orthodox reformed tradition was continued with little overt alteration of the doctrinal loci and their basic definitions.” – Richard Muller
“The sense of several kinds or levels of error manifests itself in Stapfer’s massive Institutiones… Stapfer’s system, as its subtitle indicates, adopts a scientific arrangement by moving from those adversaries who deny the principia of Christianity [God, his providence and Scripture] (the infidels and unbelievers called Atheists, Deists, Epicureans, Pagans and Naturalists), to those who accept either of the principia (Jews, Moslems, Socinians, and Latitudinarians or Indifferentists), to those who accept both principia but attack fundamental articles (Papists, Fanatics, Pelagians, Remonstrants [Arminians], and Anabaptists), to those, finally, who agree on fundamentals but who differ on nonfundamental articles (the Greek Orthodox and the Lutherans)… the latter two groups… are not viewed as heretics but as schismatics from the Reformed faith.
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For Stapfer, the Greeks and the Lutherans represent the problem of errors around and beyond fundamentals; neither is to be classed as a heresy. The Greeks deny the doctrine of the procession of the Spirit from the Son as well as the Father, but they do not deny the doctrine of the Trinity. Stapfer here recognizes the historical problem of the insertion of the filioque [clause] into the [Nicene] creed, but relies on biblical warrants to justify the doctrine [ch. 19, sections 38-45]… Stapfer sees… a danger of weakening the doctrine of the Trinity…” – Muller, PRRD (2003) 1.423-24
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Related Pages
Medieval Church & Renaissance History
History of the Reformation in Eastern Europe, Scandinavia & Russia