And so, most learned Germans, he writes, most beloved sons in Christ of Our Mediocrity, as you desire with wisdom and after great counsel and with your whole minds to join yourselves with us to what is the most holy Church of Christ, we, speaking like parents who love their children, gladly receive your charity and humanity into the bosom of our Mediocrity, if you are willing to follow with us the apostolic and synodical traditions and to subject yourselves to them. Then at last truly and sincerely one house will be built with us ... and so out of two Churches Gods benevolence will make as it were one, and together we shall live until we are transferred to the heavenly fatherland. His reply reached Germany in the summer of 1576. The German divines detected in it a certain lack of enthusiasm. Crusius arranged a meeting with the theologian Lucius Osiander; and together they composed an answer in which the points to which the Patriarch seemed to object were elucidated and justified. They confined themselves to doctrines mentioned in the Confession of Augsburg and therefore did not touch on matters such as leavened bread, the Liturgy or even monasticism. They attempted to show that their view on justification by faith was not really so very different from the Patriarchs; and they repeated at some length the Lutheran view that, though Christs flesh and blood were present at the Lords Supper, there was no material change in the elements. They made it clear that they believed in only two Sacraments and that they could not admit the propriety of invoking the saints. Their letter was written in June 1577, but it probably only reached Constantinople in the course of the following year. Once again Jeremias tried to avoid sending an answer, but Gerlach was still in Constantinople, pressing for one. Gerlach left to return to Germany in the spring of 1579. In May, Jeremias sent off at last a further statement of his views. His tone was now a little less conciliatory. He pointed out clearly and at greater length the doctrines which the Orthodox Church could not accept. It could not admit the Dual Procession of the Holy Ghost. In spite of what the Lutherans claimed, their views on free will and on justification by faith were not Orthodox and were in the Patriarchs opinion too crude. While admitting that the Sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist ranked above the others, the Patriarch insisted that there were sacraments. He repeated that it was correct to invoke the saints and added that respect should be paid to holy images and relics. A committee of Lutheran divines, including Crusius, Andreae, Osiander and Gerlach, met at Wurttemberg to compose a further reply, which was dispatched in June 1580. Its tone was very conciliatory. When not yielding on any points, it tried to suggest that the doctrinal differences between the Churches on justification by faith, on free will and on the change in the elements at the Lords Supper were only matters of terminology, and that other differences could perhaps be treated as differences in ritual and usage. The Germans had to wait for an answer. Jeremias had been deposed in November 1579, and did not return to office till September 1580. Some months elapsed before he could settle down to compose an answer. It was eventually sent in the summer of 1581. He briefly recapitulated the points of disagreement, then begged for the correspondence to cease. Go your own way, he wrote, and do not send us further letters on doctrine but only letters written for the sake of friendship. In spite of this, the Lutheran committee sent one more letter, almost identical with their last. The Patriarch did not reply to it.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 22:54:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015