Translator's Note on the Confession of Dositheus

Synod of Jerusalem · later Orthodox writers

Translator's Note on the Confession of Dositheus

Translator's Note on the Confession of Dositheus A fresh English translation by T. R. Holliday. Source and method. The base text is the Greek, cross-checked line by line against the accompanying seventeenth-century Latin version whenever the Greek was ambiguous, textually corrupt (this scan has a number of OCR-level letter errors, e.g. τατέρα for πατέρα, παρδίας for καρδίας), or simply obscure. Where Greek and Latin diverge in emphasis, I have followed the Greek, since it is the original, and noted the more significant divergences below. No published English translation was consulted or reproduced; this rendering is made fresh from the two source languages. "Decree" for Ὅρος / Decretum. Ὅρος literally means "boundary" or "definition" — the word used for the doctrinal formulas of the ecumenical councils (e.g., the "Horos of Chalcedon"). "Decree" (matching the Latin Decretum) is the conventional English rendering in conciliar contexts and preserves the sense that each article is being formally defined, not merely stated. Hypostasis / essence, not "person" / "substance." In Decree I and elsewhere I have kept the transliterated technical term hypostasis rather than softening it to "person," and "essence" rather than "substance," because the document is doing precise Trinitarian and Christological work in the vocabulary inherited from the Cappadocian Fathers and Chalcedon. A college-level reader gains more from meeting the term directly than from a paraphrase that would blur it with later Western usage of "person."

No filioque. Decree I states that the Spirit proceeds "from the Father" (ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον) — full stop. Both Greek and Latin versions preserve this single procession, even though the Latin, unlike the Greek, still calls the Spirit "consubstantial with the Father and the Son." I have translated both readings literally rather than harmonizing them, since the distinction between shared substance and single procession is exactly the point at issue between East and West on this question. Mystery, not sacrament. Throughout Decrees XV–XVII I have translated μυστήριον as "mystery" rather than "sacrament," even though the Latin uses sacramentum throughout. This is a deliberate choice to preserve the Eastern theological register, in which the term carries a stronger sense of hidden divine reality made present, rather than the more juridical Western category of "sacrament." Where the Latin's word choice itself is telling (e.g., the polemic against "impanation" in Decree XVII, a term coined in Western eucharistic debate), I note it in the text. Transubstantiation. Decree XVII is the confession's most technical passage, and it is doing something unusual: it adopts the Latin scholastic term μετουσίωσις (from transsubstantiatio) to describe the change in the eucharistic elements, explicitly to rule out the Lutheran and Calvinist alternatives named in the text ("impanation," a merely spiritual presence, a bare "presence of the divinity"), while simultaneously insisting — in the sentence beginning "we believe that the word transubstantiation is not meant to declare the manner…" — that the term describes only that a real change occurs, not how.

I have kept "transubstantiation," "transubstantiated," and "converted" as parallel renderings of the cluster μεταβάλλεσθαι / μετουσιοῦσθαι / μεταποιεῖσθαι / μεταῤῥυθμίζεσθαι, which the Greek deliberately piles up for emphasis. Mediator vs. intercessor. Decree VIII carefully distinguishes Christ as the sole mediator (μεσίτης, one who reconciles God and man) from the saints as intercessors (πρεσβευτής, literally "ambassador," one who pleads a case). English "mediator" and "intercessor" preserve this distinction, which is theologically load-bearing: the text is answering the Reformed charge that invoking saints compromises Christ's unique mediatorship. Worship, veneration, hyperdulia, dulia, adoration. Question IV works with a three-tier vocabulary going back to John of Damascus: λατρεία (worship due to God alone — I translate this "worship of adoration" or simply "adoration" to keep it visibly distinct), δουλεία ("dulia," rendered "veneration" or left transliterated), and ὑπερδουλεία ("hyperdulia," the heightened veneration given only to the Mother of God). Collapsing all three into the single English word "worship" would erase the very distinction the whole chapter exists to draw, so I have kept the technical terms visible, with a plain-English gloss at first use. "Bishop" for ἀρχιερεύς, "priest" for ἱερεύς. Decree X turns on a polemical distinction between ἐπίσκοπος/ἀρχιερεύς ("bishop," literally "high priest" or "chief priest") and ἱερεύς ("priest," a presbyter) that is central to its anti-Presbyterian argument. I have used the standard English ecclesiastical terms rather than literal ones ("high priest") to keep the argument legible, since "high priest" in English would evoke the Jewish or Christ's own high priesthood rather than the diocesan bishop.

Hades, not purgatory. Decree XVIII deliberately avoids any word corresponding to the Latin purgatorium. It uses ᾄδης ("Hades," the shared abode of the dead), and stops short of describing any mechanism of purifying fire, confining itself to the claims that souls of the imperfectly repentant are conscious, suffer, can be aided by the prayers and alms of the living and by the offering of the liturgy, and will be released before the general judgment at a time known only to God. I have kept "Hades" rather than substituting "purgatory," since the Eastern confession is consciously declining to adopt the Latin doctrine even while affirming a related practice (prayer for the dead). "Cyril" and "the so-called Cyril." The confession's polemical target throughout is Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople (d. 1638), whose 1629 Calvinist-leaning Confession Dositheus's synod was convened to condemn. Where the Greek adds a sneering "so-called" (ὁ λεγόμενος) before his name, I have kept it, since it is part of the synod's argument that the Confession of Cyril is not authentically his or not authentically Orthodox. Retained proper names and titles. "Damascenus" (John of Damascus), "the Areopagite" (Pseudo-Dionysius), "Photius," and the Synod of Laodicea are left as the text presents them; a modern critical apparatus would flag some of these attributions (the "fifty-sixth question" ascribed to "Justin," for instance, is now generally regarded as pseudonymous), but flagging authorship disputes is outside the scope of a translation of the confessional text itself.

Register. The prose keeps the long, cumulative periodic sentences of the original where they still work in English, but breaks the longest chains (some Greek sentences in Decrees III, X, and XVII run to well over a hundred words) at natural clause boundaries for readability, without altering the sequence of clauses or adding material not present in the source.