With the exception of the appendix, which contains four questions and answers, the Confession of Faith consists of eighteen articles. The first, about St. He declares that the Holy Trinity. The Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. The second says that St. Scripture is inspired by God and its authority is above the authority of the Church. The third declares that God, before the beginning of the world, predestined the election of some to glory independently of works, while others are rejected, and this has as its final cause the will of God, and the immediate cause the righteousness of God. The fourth article declares that God is the Creator of all things, but not the cause of evil; the fifth, that God's Providence is incomprehensible; the sixth, that original sin extends to all people; the seventh says that Jesus Christ is God and Man, the Rewarder and the future Judge; the eighth, that He is the only Mediator, High Priest, and Head of the Church. The ninth declares that salvation is accomplished only through justification by faith in Christ. The tenth says that the universal church includes all who have died in the faith, as well as living believers, and repeats that Christ is its only Head; the eleventh is that only those who are chosen for eternal life are true members of the church, and others are tares mingled with wheat. The twelfth article declares that the Church may err in accepting the false for the true, but the light of the Holy Spirit is not the same. He will save us through the labors of believing pastors. The thirteenth asserts that man is justified by faith alone; Good works in themselves are not sufficient for salvation, but they should not be neglected, since they testify to faith. The fourteenth article states that free will in a person who has not been regenerated spiritually is dead, and such people cannot do good; but the regenerated one does good with the help of the Holy Spirit. Spirit. In the fifteenth it was said that Christ instituted only two Sacraments and entrusted them to us as a pledge of God's promises; However, they cannot give grace if there is no faith. The sixteenth declares that baptism is necessary for deliverance from both original and committed sins. In the seventeenth, Cyril declares his faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but only when there is faith when it is celebrated; material transubstantiation does not take place, since the Body of Christ is not that which is seen in the Sacrament, but that which faith understands spiritually. The eighteenth article says that after death there are only two states, heaven and hell; a person is judged in the state in which death found him; After the end of this life, he has neither the strength nor the possibility of repentance. Purgatory is a fiction. Those who are justified in this life have no sickness or suffering in the future, but the wicked go straight to eternal punishment.

Additional answers to the questions read, first, that the Holy Scriptures. Scripture must be read by all believers, and great harm is done to Christians when they are deprived of the opportunity to read it or listen to its reading; secondly, St. Scripture is quite readable by all people who are regenerated and enlightened; thirdly, the canonical books are those listed at the Council of Laodicea; fourthly, the worship of images is condemned by the Holy Scriptures. Scripture must be abolished; but since painting is a noble art, images of Christ and the saints may be made, provided that no veneration is given to them.441

It should be noted that in the Confession there is not a single dogma specifically condemned by any Ecumenical Council, with the exception of the answer about images, which is difficult to reconcile with the canons of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Nevertheless, as it is easy to see, it contained decrees that hardly fit into the Orthodox tradition. While most Greeks of the time should have welcomed the appearance of directives that would protect them from the shadows of Rome, the views proclaimed by Cyril must have astonished them.

Many of the articles might not have provoked criticism. The Orthodox could accept without objection the first article, on the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit. Spirit; the fourth, on creation; the fifth, on the incomprehensibility of God's Providence; the sixth, on original sin; the seventh and eighth, that Christ is the Head of the Church and the Saviour; tenth, on the essence of the Church; the twelfth, that it is possible to err without the help of the Holy Spirit. Spirit; the sixteenth, on the necessity of baptism. Of the answers, those that concerned the reading of the Holy Scriptures. Scriptures and lists of canonical books could be accepted unconditionally. Cyril's other views reflected those expressed by theologians of the past and which were never specifically rejected. Until the thirteenth century, two sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist, were generally recognized as essential, while the other five were inferior. 442 But the Orthodox faith has always held that these five sacraments were unconditionally established by the written words of Christ, even if their celebration had no spiritual basis. Indeed, it would be difficult to prove faith in the apostolic succession of the priesthood if ordination were not a sacrament; And such a faith was firmly held by the Orthodox. We do not know what Kirill thought about this. Again, few Orthodox Christians could have liked the decisive rejection of transubstantiation. The Church, it is true, has never defined its faith in this dogma. Thomas Smith, in his survey of the Greek Church, written several decades later, believed that the word ???????????, which exactly means "transubstantiation," was first used by Gabriel Severus in the late sixteenth century in his book on the seven sacraments. This is not entirely accurate. The term was often used before; but Severus seems to have been the first Greek theologian to take dogma for granted. As Smith notes, at the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, the words are pronounced that the bread and wine become "substitutes" for the Body and Blood of Christ. In his response to the Lutherans, Jeremiah II follows an ancient tradition and avoids the use of the word ???????????. The words he uses ???????? and ???????????, as well as the word ???????????????, which are often found in early theologians, do not necessarily imply a material change of the elements. As we have seen, its exposition is deliberately vague. Consequently, the Church preferred to consider the question as a sacrament by which a certain dogma could not be required and could not be created. Cyril's categorical rejection of transubstantiation was thus a challenge to some of his Orthodox brethren, and a temptation to others.443 Nor could his categorical rejection of purgatory be accepted unconditionally. Some Greek theologians, among whom was his cousin Meletius Pigasus, were against this dogma; but the usual Orthodox view was that mortal man could not claim to know what intentions God might have for the souls of the dead, for God did not wish to reveal anything to us on this matter. We cannot say whether purgatory exists or not. Cyril's opinion about the prevailing authority of the Holy Scriptures. Scriptures could be accepted by all Orthodox; but it was strange for them not to find mention of the Ecumenical Councils or the Fathers of the Church. They also, although less authoritative, ensured the relations granted by the Holy Spirit. Spirit. No better was the absence of any mention of the oral tradition of the Church, of which the Church was the guardian, unless it suspected it of being erroneous.444

At the same time, these omissions caused less concern among the Orthodox than the positive statements of the Confession. The answer to the question about images was amazing for almost every Greek. The worship of (???????) images was indeed forbidden by the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. They, however, approved of the reverence (???????) shown to them; for the image is a reflection of the original and partakes of its holiness. Cyril probably did not even approve of veneration; In his opinion, icons could only be allowed as decoration. In this he certainly went against the tradition of the Church. But serious theologians were far more concerned about his unprecedented defense of predestination and justification by faith alone.

Neither doctrine was expressly forbidden by the Church; But none of them was consistent with the accepted tradition. There were two traditional points of view on predestination. Mark Eugenicus asserted that God's foreknowledge is absolute, but predestination is relative; only good works are predestined and known in advance to God, because only they are in accordance with His will. On the whole, the Church preferred another, more definite position of George-Gennadius Scholarius: it, with slight differences in terminology, coincides with the teaching of St. John of Damascus. It says that foreknowledge precedes predestination. The initiative to create good or evil comes from the created will. Predestination is in the power of God, but it itself has no power over God's knowledge and wisdom. This view was briefly presented in the response to the Lutherans of Jeremiah II.

Cyril's view of justification by faith alone without works was equally unacceptable. Here again we can assume that the position of the Orthodox of this time was influenced by what Jeremiah II answered the Lutherans: namely, that faith needs works, and works need faith; one without the other is dead. The Orthodox Church has never approved of Pelagianism and did not like the calculation of merit, which was introduced by the Roman dogmas about indulgences and purgatory. It could go further in the development of the idea of justification by faith than the Catholics; but at the same time it could hardly accept the dogma of justification by faith alone.445

In the eyes of the Orthodox, Cyril's teaching was so revolutionary that to this day there have always been Orthodox Christians who have refused to believe that the Patriarch of Constantinople could have written such a "Confession of Faith." The work was declared a forgery and attributed to his friend Antoine Léger, both by the Geneva theologians who printed it and by some Jesuits, who apparently put Cyril's name in order to undermine his reputation. Why, they asked, did the text appear first in Latin? And why was it printed in Geneva? But Cyril himself announced his authorship in a series of letters and in a stormy audience with the French envoy, the Comte de Marcheville, at the end of 1631.446 He published the book in Geneva, because the printing house in Constantinople had been destroyed; the Latin version was necessary because he wanted to communicate his views to the Churches of the West. His letters confirm the propositions proclaimed in the "Confession" and even go even further. In his correspondence with Léger and his Dutch friends, he does not conceal the admiration which Calvin and his doctrine aroused in him.

Kirill did not consider himself a revolutionary. He must have realized that he was going against the accepted tradition; But since this tradition was oral, who could say exactly what it was? In one letter to his Polish friends, he expresses surprise that he is called a non-Orthodox. By temperament, he was an intellectual, with logical thinking, and did not sympathize with the apophatic trend traditionally followed by Orthodox theologians. Education strengthened his natural tastes. A student who studied under the neo-Aristotelian professors of Padua could not be satisfied with negative theology.

It took some time before a larger number of copies of the Confession reached the East. In 1630, Patriarch Theophan of Jerusalem wrote to the Metropolitan of Kiev assuring him that Cyril was not a heretic. He wrote that Cyril's views were known to him, and he considered them worthy of respect. Cyril's attitude to icons was quite respectful, and his judgment on predestination did not differ from the traditions of the Church. But Theophan had not yet seen the full text of the Confession.449 Anticipating the troubles that the Confession might bring, the Catholics did everything possible to make its contents known in Constantinople. Thomas Smith, who drew information from Edward Pocock, stated that the opposition was artificially organized by the Jesuits and Capuchins. The Dutch envoy wrote that "there is hardly anyone among the metropolitans, many of whom live in Constantinople, who would not risk his property, life and person to protect the said patriarch and his 'Confession'." Mr. van Haag was too optimistic. For several months, a secret conspiracy against the Patriarch was formed, consisting of no less than five metropolitans – Adrianople, Larissa, Chalcedon, Cyzicus and Nafpaktos. As a result, in October 1633, Cyril Kontaris, Metropolitan of Verria (Aleppo), was nominated as a candidate for the patriarchal throne. But to approve his election, Kirill Kontaris promised the Sublime Porte 50,000 thalers, and was unable to raise the money. A few days later he gave up the attempt and was exiled to the island of Tenedos. From there he wrote a letter of penance to Cyril Loukaris, who restored him to the cathedra.450

Six months later, the opposing metropolitans, some of whom had read the Confession and were deeply shaken by it, resumed their offensive. But they understood that the only way to depose the patriarch, who was backed by Protestant embassies, was to resort to the help of Catholic embassies. This meant that they had to present a candidate. Athanasius Pattelar, Metropolitan of Thessalonica, owed his position to Cyril Loukaris, who preferred it to Cyril Contaris; But he turned out to be ungrateful. Offering the Sultan 60,000 thalers and paying them in cash, the greater part of which was paid by the French and Austrian embassies, he obtained an order for the deposition of Cyril and his enthronement. Then the Dutch envoy got involved, who provided the sum of 70,000 thalers, with the help of which he restored Cyril to the throne. Athanasius went to Rome, hoping to receive the cardinal's cap. But the papal authorities assessed him as unreliable and incompetent. They simply gave him money to return to Thessalonica.451

Kirill Kontaris was a more stubborn opponent. The Austrian envoy Schmid-Schwarzenhorn persuaded the Catholics to support him. Schmid-Schwarzenhorn personally did not like him. "The Patriarch of Verria," as he called him in his letters to the emperor, "is a good and magnanimous bishop, kind to sinners and harsh to good, generous when it is not necessary, and miserly when it is necessary to be generous." Contaris was clever enough not to contact Rome openly, but he relied on the opposition caused by the theology of Cyril I. These sentiments grew; As a result, Kontaris was able to persuade the Holy Synod to depose Cyril I in March 1635.

Having paid the Porte 50,000 thalers collected with the help of Schmid-Schwarzenhorn, Kontaris became patriarch for the second time, under the name of Cyril II. but Schmid-Schwarzenhorn, who did not want his embassy to be suspected of encouraging the murder, came up with a better idea. The Grand Vizier agreed to exile Cyril I to the island of Rhodes. Schmid-Schwarzenhorn offered to provide a ship for this purpose and agreed that the ship would instead sail to Italy and take Cyril to Rome, where he would be handed over to the Inquisition. But it cost 800 thalers to hire a ship, and another 500 thalers cost to bribe the crew. When Cyril II was asked to deliver the money, he said that a cheaper vessel should be found. In the meantime the plan had become known to the Dutch envoy. He sent a messenger to warn the governor of Rhodes, and himself bribed the captain of a ship hired by Contaris to take Lukaris to Chios. There the governor of Rhodes was waiting for the former patriarch and himself escorted him to his island, and the ship was sent back to Constantinople in disgrace.

Cyril Lukaris spent fifteen months in Rhodes. In March 1636, Cyril II convened a council in Constantinople, which condemned Cyril I as a heretic. But the Holy Synod was suspicious of Cyril II's ties with Rome. In June 1636 he assembled and deposed him. Now it was his turn to go to Rhodes, and the ship was ordered to return Cyril I. Meanwhile, Neophytos, Metropolitan of Heraclia, was elected patriarch. He was a friend of Cyril I and ascended the throne temporarily to arrange the lifting of the anathema. By March of the following year, Cyril Lukaris was again patriarch.452