The Synod of Jerusalem (1672)

Convened at Bethlehem under Patriarch Dositheos of Jerusalem to answer a Calvinist confession circulated under the name of Patriarch Cyril Loukaris of Constantinople. Its Confession of Dositheos rejects predestination without regard to the will, faith without works, and the reduction of the Mysteries to signs; it affirms the real change of the gifts in the Eucharist, the veneration of icons and saints, and the anagignoskomena as genuine Scripture. It is the nearest thing Orthodoxy has to a formal reply to the Reformation, and it is a local council of high authority rather than an ecumenical one.