Reformacja Marcina Lutra a Kościół prawosławny. Refleksje nad nieurzeczywistnionym dialogiem

Abstract

From the very beginning of his reformation, Luther invoked the witness of the Eastern Church to support the claim that his teaching had preserved the basic continuity with doctrine and practice of the Early Church. It was already the case during the famous dispute with Johann Eck in Leipzig (1519), where he strongly defended the Greek Church against the incriminations of his opponent. Although Luther’s own view of the Eastern Church was, in later period of time, not uncritical, he acknowledged her to be the only heiress of the early Church tradition. He positively valued the decisions of the first four ecumenical councils and the early Christian Creeds. These facts, stressed on in the first part of the article, lead the author, in the second part, to analyze in a detailed way the attitude of the Orthodox Church towards Lutheran reformation. He tries to characterize the early attempts at dialogue between the two Churches (Melanchton’s Greek version of the Confessio Augustana, exchange of letters and writings between the Tübingen theologians and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremiah II, and some initiatives of rapprochement of the Russian Orthodox Church). He wants also to explain the main difficulties of the Orthodox evaluation of Luther’s reform ation, and finally reflects on ways of fulfilling this unfinished task.