What do Eastern Orthodox believe? A Confessional Protestant Analysis and Response to Ten Beliefs of the EOC

Note: In CRBC's midweek meetings we are currently doing a series on "World Religions" and at present are looking at Christian denominations. Last Wednesday (4.10.24) our topic was Eastern Orthodoxy. Here are my notes:

Introduction:

The Eastern Orthodox Church (EOC), also called the Orthodox Catholic Church (OCC), was distinguished from the Western Church by the Great Schism of AD 1054.

Though we may speak of them as one “church,” they are, in fact, a collection of various national churches (Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, etc.)  united by similar doctrines and practices.

The EOC was greatly affected by the rise of Islam, and especially by the fall of Constantinople in Ad 1453.

In Russia and Eastern Europe, they were also greatly affected by the rise of communism (especially in Russia from 1917-1990).

There has been a major resurgence of the EOC in Russia and Eastern Europe since the collapse of communism.

It is estimated that there are now c. 230 million baptized members of the various EO churches.

It is often pointed out that the EOC never experienced anything like the Protestant Reformation which took place in the West, and some have suggested it has been less affected by modern Enlightenment values than has the Western Church (both RCC and Protestant).

The EOC in the US has been a relatively small presence up to the twentieth century, attributable primarily to migration of persons from EO countries (e.g. Russians, Greeks, Egyptian Copts, etc.). EO are estimated to be less than 0.5% of the population in the US.

There is, however, anecdotal evidence of conversion growth of the EOC in recent years, especially among younger men who are attracted to the traditional beliefs and practices of the EOC. There have also been a number of former Protestants and evangelicals who have gone over to Constantinople.

They include:

Yale historian Jaroslav Pelikan (a Slovak Lutheran) converted in 1988.

Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer, converted in 1990 and wrote about his conversion in Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion (1994).

Rod Dreher, a conservative political journalist and Editor-at-large for the American Conservative, raised a Methodist, converted to RCC in 1993 and the EOC in 2006. He is the author of The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (2017).

Hank Hanegraaffe, A Dutch Reformed evangelical, the “Bible Answer Man” and head of the apologetic ministry Christian Research Institute (CRI) converted in 2017.

There are also now a growing number of online advocates for the EOC known as “Ortho-bros.”

On the other hand, some have made this move later to regret it.

An example can be found in Joshua Schooping’s book Disillusioned: Why I Left the Eastern Orthodox Priesthood (2022). Read my review here.

Ten Beliefs of the EOC and a Protestant Response and prooftexts:

1.     The EOC denies the concept of the invisible church. The church only exists as a visible institution. Since there is “no salvation outside the church,” those who are outside the EOC cannot claim to be Christians.

Response: Not only is the church found in visible local churches, but there is also an invisible church composed of all genuine believers. Salvation does not come by baptism or by church membership but by faith in Christ.

Prooftexts: 1 Corinthians 12:12-20, 27; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 2:8-10.

2.     The EOC claims that it alone exists as a church which embodies universal unity in its beliefs and practices.

Response: The EOC does not, in fact, possess outward unity, given that several of its national church organizations are not in agreement with one another (e.g., the conflict between the bishop of Constantinople and the bishop of Moscow). True unity does not come about by institutional unity but by a common faith in Christ. Absolute unity will only come at the end of the ages when Christ returns in glory, and the saints enter the glorified state.

Prooftexts: Mark 9:38-41; John 10:16; 17:20-23;1 Corinthians 11:19; Revelation 7:9-10.

3.     Like the RCC the EOC looks to its bishops and to tradition as its chief authority over Scripture. It holds that the church chose the Scriptures.

Response: Christ alone is the Head of the church. The highest authority for doctrine and life is Scripture (Sola Scriptura). The church did not choose Scripture, but only recognized its nature and authority (i.e., Scripture chose the church.).

Prooftexts: Colossians 1:18; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:19-21; 3:15-16.

4.     Though the EOC affirms the first seven ecumenical church councils, it has not produced its own confessions of faith which might clarify and articulate its doctrines and practices. Rather than reasonably articulated doctrine, the EOC tends to focus on mysticism.

Response: We must be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within us. Our experiences must be regulated by Scripture.

Prooftexts: Luke 16:31; John 10:35; 1 Peter 3:15.

5.     The EOC places great emphasis upon the spiritual uses of icons and religious objects. It refers to the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Second Council of Nicaea) (AD 787) as “the triumph of orthodoxy.”

Response: God alone is the only lawful object of our worship and devotion. Religious images and objects are not sanctioned by Scripture and misdirect our focus and attention.

Proofexts: Exodus 20:3-6; John 3:30; Acts 17:22-25; Colossians 2:23; 3:16.

6.     Like the RCC the EOC places great emphasis on devotion to Mary.

Response: Mary was an important early disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, but she was an ordinary sinner saved by grace. Devotion should be given to no one other than God himself.

Prooftexts: Exodus 20:3; Matthew 12:46-50; John 3:30; Acts 4:12; Romans 3:23; 1 Timothy 2:5.

7.     As with the RCC, the EOC also accepts OT books which are outside the Jewish/Protestant OT canon. Unlike the RCC (Trent) and Protestant churches (WCF) it has no authoritative declaration of the canon of Scripture.

Response: The Apocrypha are a collection of uninspired writings and are not received as Scripture.

Prooftexts: Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Romans 3:1-2; Revelation 22:18-19.

8.     The EOC accepts the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the OT) rather than the Hebrew text of the OT as authoritative.

Response: God’s Word was immediately inspired and written in the OT in Hebrew not Greek. It has been preserved by God. Translations are useful to the degree that they reflect the originals.

Prooftexts: Nehemiah 8:4-8; Matthew 5:17-18.

9.     The EOC ecclesiological structure based on national churches tends to place emphasis on ethnicity/nationality rather than faith in Christ as the standard for inclusion in the church (i.e., phyletism or ethnophyletism).

Response: Inclusion in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ comes about by grace through faith, not according to one’s familial, national, ethnic, social, or gender status.

Prooftexts: Galatians 3:27-29; Colossians 3:9-11.

10.                        The EOC practices not only infant baptism but also infant communion.

Response: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordinances that are established for believers alone who are part of local churches. Since infants are not mature enough to articulate faith or to be recognized as regenerate members of the church they cannot be baptized or receive the Lord’s Supper.

Prooftexts: Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 8:37; 1 Corinthians 11:23-33.

JTR

Book Review: Joshua Schooping, Disillusioned: Why I Left the Eastern Orthodox Priesthood and Church

 

 

You can find a pdf of the review here on my academia.edu page.

JTR

WM 181: Review: K. P. Yohannan: Never Give Up

 

WM 181: Review: K. P. Yohannan, Never Give Up is posted. Listen above. Here are my notes:

There was an old Monty Python gag line, “And now for something completely different” that I might employ today. In recent days we’ve been covering a lot of things related to text criticism, but one of the bread and butter content elements of this blog has been book reviews. So, in WM 181 I am going to be offering a review of K. P. Johannan’s book Never Give Up: The Story of a Broken Man Impacting a Generation (Gospel for Asia, 2020).

I picked up and read K. P. Yohannan’s Revolution in World Missions decades ago. The book was first published in 1985 by Gospel for Asia, Yohannan’s parachurch mission organization. There are millions of copies in print. I have used anecdotes and illustrations from the book over the years.

Two things stood out about this book:

First, and most importantly, Yohannan critiqued the whole Western missionary enterprise and its sending of Western missionaries into the third world and suggested instead support for indigenous Christian workers.

Second, he critiqued the whole idea that doing “good works” (or social work) is equal to preaching. A typical statement: “Substituting a bowl of rice for the Holy Spirit and the Word of God will never save a soul and will rarely change the attitude of a man’s heart” (112, thirtieth printing, 2004). I knew Yohannan did not share my Calvinism but saw him, nevertheless, as an earnest evangelical and resonated (especially as a former missionary) with many of his critiques of Western missions and the substitution of the social gospel for the preaching of Christ crucified.

I had lost track of Yohannan until recent days when I saw this video of his conversation with Hank Hanegraaff and Francis Chan. It was obvious that some major changes had taken place in Yohannan’s life and ministry both by his personal appearance (long hair and beard, large cross around his neck) and his new title “Metropolitan” and even new name (Moran Mor Athanasius Yohan). Had he become Eastern Orthodox, as has Hanegraaff? I followed up by listening to Hanegraaff’s interview with Yohannan on his Unplugged podcast.

Mention was made in the podcast interview of Yohannan’s memoir Never Give Up: The Story of a Broken Man Impacting a Generation (GFA, 2020). I ordered a used copy and read it.

This is quite a different book than Revolution in World Missions. Yohannan begins by describing and responding to charges of financial corruption and mismanagement that had been lodged against Gospel for Asia.

See this 2019 online article from the Time of India. If you want to dig a little deeper read various blog posts on Yohannan and the GFA scandal posted by Warren Throckmorton.

Yohannan begins by describing his despair in dealing with this scandal and even confesses that he suffered suicidal thoughts during this time. He is, on one hand, seemingly open, but on the other, rather vague, not only about the whole financial scandal but also about the momentous spiritual changes that have taken place in his life.

The man who wrote Revolution in World Missions was a Protestant evangelical. It is clear that the man who wrote Never Give Up has gone through some profound changes in his convictions. Let’s consider two: (1) his transition from evangelical Protestantism to what might be called Evangelical “Orthodoxy” [“Orthodoxy” is in quotes because Yohannan’s church does not appear to be part of mainstream Eastern Orthodoxy—see below] ; and (2) his embrace of social ministry apart from gospel preaching.

The move to Evangelical “Orthodoxy”:

For more biographical information, I turned to Yohannan’s Wikipedia page. It notes that Yohannan (b. 1950 in Kerala, India) had worked with the parachurch ministry Operation Mobilization in India for eight years (from age 16) and came to the US in 1974 to study at (what was then) the Criswell Bible Institute in Dallas, TX, upon the personal invitation of W. A. Criswell. After a short stint as pastor of an ethnically  Native American SBC church, he and his German-born wife started Gospel for Asia.

I also noted that according to the Wikipedia article states that Yohannan had grown up in the Mar Thoma Syrian church in Kerala India, an offshoot of the St. Thomas Christians. The Mar Thoma church is an apparent example of an Eastern (Oriental) Protestant church, which emerged in the nineteenth century. This church, under the influence of Anglicanism, attempts to meld Protestant theology with Orthodox liturgy.

This helped me understand his pilgrimage and how his itinerant church planting ministry, under Gospel for Asia, has now issued in the establishment of the Believers Eastern Church, over which Yohannan is now Metropolitan (leading bishop).

There are references to this transition in Never Give Up, but the details are sometimes vague. There is no “linear” narrative of how exactly he made this transition from American-style evangelical para-church Protestantism to this new episcopal, Eastern-influenced liturgical denomination came about.

Here are a few of the interesting statements made about Yoahannan’s new theological conviction in Never Give Up:

The headwaters analogy (136-137): KPY uses the analogy of needing to return to the “headwaters” of a stream to find water that is “still clear and clean and pure.” He adds, “We can’t simply go back 500 years to the Reformation and think we’re at the beginning. We need to return to the real beginning, the early centuries” (137).

On theosis: KPY affirms the Eastern Orthodox concept of theosis (deification) over against the Protestant concept of sanctification/glorification (142-143).

On the acceptance of the Nicene Creed and its recital in Sunday liturgy in the Believers Eastern Church (160-167): He writes, “It is our plumb line of faith” (160).

On ecclesiology: He writes, “The true church is not just individuals worshipping God on their own” (161).

On problems of “individual interpretation” of the Bible: After affirming that the Bible “is God’s primary way of speaking to us” he adds, “At the same time, we must keep in mind that the Scripture is not meant for individual interpretation, for each of us to just read it and do what is right in our own eyes” (163). He continues with an argument common with Roman Catholic and Orthodox apologists, arguing that when Christians began to interpret the Scriptures individually the result was “42,000 denominations” each claiming “to be the one true church” (164). He closes, “Almost all cults started as Bible study gatherings…” (164).

On Western Protestant intellectualizing of the faith: “Years ago, in my journey, I found my heart and my head were in two completely different worlds” (165).

On the centrality of the Eucharist: “If you are seeking for the truth, I think you will eventually arrive at the reality that Holy Communion (the Eucharist) is an important, unexplainable mystery” (169).

The embracing of social ministry apart from gospel preaching:

KPY confesses, “There was a time when I was a radical, calling only for preaching the Gospel and forgetting about any kind of social work. I’ve since had to repent and change my ways from saying social work cannot be mission work” (173).

He does nuance this by saying that the Great Commission cannot be fulfilled through social ministry alone but now lauds this type of ministry (174).

He later shares that he even added a new chapter to the latest editions of Revolution in World Missions to reflect his repentance in this area (202).

How it Ends:

Never Give Up ends with a Biblical quote from the NLT of 1 Corinthians 4:4-5 that seems more than a little ambiguous: “My conscience is clear, but that doesn’t prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide” (224). Does he have a clear conscience even if not proven right (guiltless) with respect to charges of financial mismanagement?

Final Thoughts:

Let me return to the two big transitions in Yohannan’s life and thought:

First, what do we make of his transition to Evangelical “Orthodoxy”? On one hand, we might say at KPY has simply come full circle in returning to his childhood roots after a long detour through American Protestant evangelicalism. So, his story could be seen as a personal journey.

It can also be examined for its wider implications. Yes, there are many glaring weaknesses in evangelicalism: ecclesiologically, theologically, and liturgically. Yes, the Western, Enlightenment influenced approach to the faith too often addresses the head and not the heart. These things finally caught up with KPY. Along these kinds of lines, one might compare my previous review of Thomas Howard’s Evangelical Is Not Enough.

Yes, broad and vacuous evangelicalism too often results in spiritual anemia in those hungry for substance, which sends them to Rome or Constantinople or Canterbury looking for substantial nourishment. Former Christianity Today editor Mark Galli’s conversion to Roman Catholicism in September 2020 is but the latest high profile example of this (see this article).

In KPY’s case, however, it seems he has not gone over to Orthodoxy but to something like an “Orthodoxy” by way of Canterbury. By founding a new church could he not be charged with just adding to the supposed 42,000 plus denominations?

It is also interesting that despite his critique of the failures of evangelicalism, Never Give Up has a forward written by George Verwer, founder of Operation Mobilization and the back cover has an endorsement blurb from Calvary Chapel pastor Skip Heitzig (as well as Hannegraaff, now Orthodox).

As a confessional Reformed Protestant, I also take exception to his statement, “We can’t simply go back 500 years to the Reformation and think we’re at the beginning. We need to return to the real beginning, the early centuries.” By going back to the classical Reformed confessions, however, are we not attempting to go back to the apostles and also back to the classic creedal statements of the early church related to the doctrine of God and Christ (as affirmed in the WCF and her daughter confessions)?

Rather than move to Rome, or Constantinople, or Canterbury, can one find perhaps a more serious and meaningful expression of the faith by going to Geneva (or London)?

Second, what are we to make of his embrace of “social ministry”? Though Christ certainly taught that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves and Paul taught in Galatians 6:10 that we are to do good to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of faith, I still think that the “old” Yohannan was right strongly to challenge the idea of social ministry apart from the preaching of the gospel.

JTR

Thoughts on the St. Michael Golden-Domed Monastery

Image: Views of the St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery complex, Kiev, Ukraine, August 2017.

This summer I visited the St. Michael Golden-Domed Monastery in Kiev, Ukraine. The vivid sky-blue facades and the glistening domes are a distinctive landmark on the slopes of the Dnieper River. To our surprise, however, we discovered that though the current impressive structures do indeed stand on a traditional Orthodox monastic site that dates back to 989 AD (and before the advent of Christianity, it had been a site of pagan worship), the current main building, reconstructed in the thirteenth century Ukranian Baroque style, was only completed in December 1999. It is, in fact, a nearly brand new building (albeit on ancient foundations) made to look old!

While there I picked a guidebook which I partly read as we toured the grounds and only fully read last week. The guidebook was originally written in Ukrainian and later translated into readable but slightly imperfect English.

The book explains the “period of decline and destruction” that happened under communism (pp. 34-35).

This story began with Bolshevik bombing of Kiev’s landmark churches January 17-26, 1918. “Seven heavy shells hit St. Michael’s Cathedral,” which “smashed one of the central arches, which kept the dome.”

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1919 “the monastery buildings were transferred to other ‘owners.’” The guidebook author notes that the nationalization of the monastery was, in fact, “folly embezzlement of property” and that there was a veritable “scramble for it among the various Soviet institutions.”

He adds:

In 1922 all residential buildings of the monastery were turned into dormitories for students at Kyiv high schools. After removing domes and the cross of the Refectory Church, and whitening the paintings [I assume this means painting over the church’s artwork and icons], a dining room was placed here. In the monastery was the Institute of Red professors, editors of several newspapers, and magazines, and various research institutions.

This was not the end, however, of the communist effort to erase the Ukranian and Orthodox Christian heritage represented by the monastic complex:

In 1934-1935 they quietly dismantled St. Basil (Three consecrators) church, and when it came to the Monastery, the public began to sound the alarm. The Cathedral was offered to eliminate on the grounds that it had no special historical or aesthetic value, as it had been in the Baroque style.

It continues:

During 1934-1936 a bell-tower, most of the wall to the economic gate, the Bishop’s house, all commercial buildings of the court were dismantled. In the Spring of 1935 the Bolsheviks began to strip the church: the golden leaves of copper from the domes was removed, a silver sanctum of St. Barbara was given for melting, the baroque iconostasis was destroyed. The Cathedral was destroyed on August 14, 1937 at 9 pm.

Take note of that last line. The building had to be torn down in darkness for fear of the people’s reaction. One is reminded of Orwell’s depiction in 1984 of a socialist state, bent on secretly erasing history for the “good” of the people.

The account ends with Psalm 137-esque codicil:

History teaches that abuse of the Holy Temple of God does not pass with impunity, but the eyes of the destroyers were blinded. Most of the party functionaries, who had decided the fate of the cathedral –P. Postyshev, V. Balytskiy, V. Zatonsky, J. Pysmenny, G. Bordon—were shot by their accomplices in 1937-1938. The Head of People’s Commissars of Ukraine committed suicide. S. Kosoir was shot, the same fate befell the the head of Kyiv City Council R. Petrushansky.

The apostle Paul’s citation of the Scriptures in Romans 12:19: “for as it is written, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord'” comes to mind.

I was struck by this account not because of any perceived inherent spiritual importance in St. Michael’s physical structures per se. Though I can appreciate the aesthetics of the buildings, as a good Particular Baptist I stand by our confession’s statement that “Neither prayer nor any other part of religious worship, is now under the gospel, tied unto, or made more acceptable by any place in which it is performed, or toward which it is directed; but God is to be worshiped everywhere in spirit and in truth….” (Chapter 22 “Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day,” paragraph 6). I was struck, rather, by what it says about the conflict between the socialist state and symbols of religion, history, and nation. Even when suppressed, at least in Ukraine, they seem to have come back.

JTR

Eastern Orthodoxy, the Enlightenment, and the Text of Scripture

Image: Depiction of St. Matthew, in the great lavra (monastic cell), Mt. Athos, Greece

I finally finished reading Robert Letham’s Through Western Eyes, his study of Eastern Orthodoxy from a Reformed perspective. One of the points Letham makes in his analysis concerns the different cultural and historical context in which Orthodoxy developed, as compared to the Western church. He notes, “the East had no Middle Ages, no Reformation, no Enlightenment” (p. 137).

Among other things, this has had a significant impact on the intellectual approach to the Bible and to “critical theological study” in Orthodoxy. So Letham observes:

Firstly, much Western theology and Biblical study in the past three hundred years has come out of the worldview and methodology of the Enlightenment, with its inbuilt aversion to authority, including the authority of God. The Eastern church, in contrast, has not had to contend with the Enlightenment. Flowing from this, secondly, Western critical Biblical study has been pursued mainly in an academic environment detached from the church, with the Bible considered as simply another book. The Eastern church, however, places theology (correctly, in my judgment) in the context of the church, the believing community, since the Bible was given to the church in the first place (p. 179).

He later adds, “in the West, since the Enlightenment the theological enterprise has generally been hived off to academic institutions with no connection to the church” (p. 276).

Though Letham does not address the divide between East and West on the text of the Bible, this contextual distinction likely explains why in Eastern Orthodoxy the modern-critical text  of the NT has made little headway. Rather than the academic, “Enlightenment” text, the Eastern churches have preferred the TR (NB: and not even the Majority Text!) [BTW, the OT is another story altogether, as the East follows the LXX rather the traditional Hebrew text, though this too reflects immunity to Enlightenment influences].

Can Reformed evangelicals get outside our circumstances to perceive the Enlightenment influence on the text of Scripture?

JTR

Orthodoxy, Icons, Eusebius, and Visual Art in Early Christianity

I’m reading Robert Letham’s Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective (Mentor, 2007). In an interesting chapter on icons, Letham notes, “The Orthodox claim that the first icons date from the lifetime of Jesus” (p. 145). He adds that to support their use of icons the Orthodox appeal to intriguing references in Eusbeius’s Ecclesiastical History to visual representations of Jesus and the apostles which existed in his day and which Eusebius claims went back to the earliest days of Christianity.

In EH 7.18 Eusebius claims that in Caesarea Philippi the woman with the issue of blood who had been healed by Jesus erected a stone memorial to this event in front of her home. It included “a brazen figure in relief of a woman, bending on her knee and stretching forth her hands like a suppliant.” Opposite to this was “an upright figure of a man, clothed in comely fashion in a double cloak and stretching out his hand to the woman.” He adds, “This statue, they said, bore the likeness of Jesus. And it was in existence even to our own day, so that we saw it with our own eyes when we stayed in the city.” Eusebius observes that one should not be surprised that grateful pagans “should have made these objects, since we saw the likenesses of his apostles also, of Paul and Peter, and indeed of Christ himself, preserved in pictures painted in colours.”

What do we make of this description? Does it justify the use of icons? No. More likely it shows how quickly corruption had entered into “Christian” practice. It does not reflect Christianity of the first century but the fourth century. In EH 7.19 Eusebius adds that “the throne of James” was also preserved and revered by men of his day. We see already the rise of relics and religious objects, usurping the simplicity of Biblical spirituality. Already, we see movement away from the written word and the mind to the visual and emotional. Letham notes, “there is no evidence in the Bible that pictures of saints were expected to be located in the place where the church worshipped, still less was this required. This is a development additional to Scripture” (p. 157).

JTR

The Orthodox Study Bible on Mark 16:9-20

The Orthodox Study Bible (Thomas Nelson, 1993) presents commentary on the NT and the Psalms, prepared by the Academic Community of St. Athanasius Orthodox Academy of Santa Barbara, California. The text for the NT is from the New King James Version.   The traditional ending of Mark is included as the authoritative, un-bracketed text.  In the commentary notes, there is the following note at Mark 16:9-20:

Some manuscripts do not include this longer ending. Later traditions testify to several endings. The Church, however, has always regarded this ending as canonical and inspired (p. 129).

The Orthodox view on the text of Scripture is rarely considered by liberal and evangelical Protestants who have embraced the modern critical text and translations based upon it.  The Orthodox have not embraced the modern critical text of the NT (the Orthodox view of the OT is another matter). What is more, they hold not just to the Majority Text, as evident with the ending of Mark, but to the Textus Receptus.

JTR

Cyril Lukaris: The Calvinist Patriarch of Eastern Orthodoxy

Since my oldest daughter is serving now in the Peace Corps in a nation that is predominantly Eastern Orthodox, I have been trying to do some reading and studying on this branch of the Christian tradition (which I am sure they would see as the root!).

To this end, I’ve been reading John Anthony McGuckin’s The Orthodox Church:  An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), which my daughter gave me as a Christmas present, BTW.

With my parallel interest in the text of Scripture, among the first sections I turned to in the book were those on Scripture and tradition.   I have not found McGuckin extremely helpful here, but in his discussion of “symbolical books” (collections of authoritative doctrinal and liturgical sources) he says some interesting things about the Reformation and an apparently Calvinistic patriarch named Cyril Lukaris (1572-1638).  Here is McGuckin:

[The symbolical books] were predominantly put together in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the effects of the Protestant Reformation were being dimly felt to impinge on life in the Eastern churches….  One of the central texts in the list was the result of the explicit impact of the Reformation.  One of the seventeenth century patriarchs of Constantinople, Cyril Lukaris, had issued a statement of faith which many at the time believed had moved towards being an implicit endorsement of Calvinism.  It caused considerable alarm among the Orthodox (pp. 111-112).

He proceeds to describe how this resulted in the synod of Jerusalem in 1672 defining the Orthodox response to Protestantism.

A quick look at that intrepid source, Wikipedia, notes how Cyril Lukaris’ Calvinism was opposed, and he was eventually, yet apparently unrelatedly, assassinated by strangulation on the orders of the Ottoman Sultan and later came to be venerated in modern Orthodoxy as a Hieromartyr (priest or bishop-martyr).

Lukaris’ legacy as a “Calvinist Patriarch” is apparently disputed by the Orthodox.  See this article, “The Myth of the ‘Calvinist Patriarch,’” in response to an article in Credenda Agenda on Lukaris, and also this article “The ‘Calvinist Patriarch’ Cyril Lucaris and His Bible Translations” by Antony J. Khokhar.

One wonders what might have been if Reformed theology had gained a foothold in Orthodoxy or if there are any pockets of it still….

JTR