Orthodox Christian Approach to the Bible

Author(s): Elena Ene D-Vasilescu

Source: Transformation, Vol. 26, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 40-44
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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 Orthodox Christian Approach to
the Bible
Elena Ene D-Vasilescu
Dr Elena Ene D-Vasilescu is Tutor at the Centre for Byzantine Studies , University of
Oxford

Abstract
The most common understanding of Orthodox Christianity and the attitude
of its members to the Bible is that they do not read it (if they do this at all)
critically. This brief article attempts to address this issue and to show that the
view expressed above is a misunderstanding. In doing so, it will touch on the
role of Tradition in interpreting the Bible and will also discuss the method
used in such an endeavour.

I begin by stressing that Orthodox Christians consider the Old and the New
Testaments to be a unity. John Breck says: 'The two Testaments constitute a unified
witness to the divine Logos or eternal Word, who came into the world to work
out the salvation of "the children of God" (John 1:12-13; 20-31)'. 1 This witness
and the inspiration that underlines it is understood to be integral and complete
insofar as every passage of Scripture reflects the same truth and, therefore, every
passage is capable of clarifying other more obscure passages. Breck also brings up
the essential Christian element into his discussion and underlines the role of the
community in the creative process of reading the Bible:

It is the Church [...] that produces the canonical Scriptures. This means
in the first place the writings of the New Testament. Yet the Hebrew
Scripture are also to be understood and interpreted in relation to Jesus
Christ, who is both their source and their fulfilment. He is the source
because he is the Logos, the eternal Word of God, who serves both as the
agent of creation and as the ultimate content or referent of the prophetic
oracles. And he is the fulfilment of the Hebrew Scripture because at the
deepest level of meaning they point forward to him and to his saving
work. Christ, therefore, provides the true key to the inner meaning of the
Law and the Prophets.2
In Orthodoxy the interpretation of the Bible happens within a closed 'herme-
neutic circle' which implies an interaction between the interpreter who comes to
the biblical texts 'with certain presuppositions and pre-understandings' and the
text itself. The reasons which move people towards the encounter with the sacred
text are ťiumerous. The following quotation may help summarise these:

Put simply, we approach the Bible to acquire or deepen our faith, yet we
do so with a certain level of faith that determines the way we will read
the biblical writings. We seek understanding and faith through reading
God's Word; yet we can only truly understand that Word through eyes of
faith. Faith depends on the Word; yet proper interpretation of the Word
requires faith.3

Of significant importance in this process is the believer-confessor relation-

40 Transformation 26.1 January 2009 Orthodox Christian Approach to the Bible

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ship. The confessors are usually people of high spiritual status. They are in what
Professor John Romanides calls, a 'state of illumination and purification'.4 The
divine grace makes them able to 'hear' and 'see' what the sacred text means for
each believer who may not be able to reach the same state. The message is then
passed to the people who, otherwise, with a limited understanding and many
weaknesses, will not be able to interpret for themselves. In time, the interpreter
grows in understanding and the message becomes available for better use in the
believer's life.
Today, there is an increasing number of Biblical scholars who work in an
Orthodox framework and are involved in the critical study of the Bible. Examples
of the institutions where such scholars are located are: St Vladimir's Orthodox
Theological Seminary in Crestwood, NY, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of
Theology in Brookline, MA, and the Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe Saint-Serge
in Paris. Some scholars of note from these institutions are: John Breck,5 Paul Nazim
Tarazi,6 Theodore G. Stylianopoulos,7 Eugen Pentiuc,8 and Boris Bobrinskoy.9
The means by which the reader is able to move from the literal and historical to
the spiritual sense of the Bible is the allegorical method. While the allegory points
the reader to transcendent realities, the Holy Spirit actually enables him/her to
actually participate in these realities. The way to achieve the contemplation of
intelligible realities is through inner prayer, which 'is a gift, bestowed as an act of
love by the Holy Spirit. Truth, and therefore meaning, is to be found ultimately in
God. Yet our discernment of the truth depends on the work of the Spirit of God
within us, who "intercede for us" (Rom. 8:26)'.10
Thus, the means by which the Orthodox approach the sacred texts are founded
in their belief that the Gospel is inspired by God. What they understand by that
is that in receiving the Scripture, human beings co-operate with the Holy Spirit
which infuses it. St. Paul underlines this in 2 Timothy 3:16: [this] 'is profitable
for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness'. People
of God received the Revelation and committed that in writing as the Gospels.
Because of this synergy (synergeia)11 between God and humans, the sacred text
can be subjected to a hermeneutical enterprise, but this enterprise cannot be
undertaken by an individual alone, but by the community, i.e., the Church. The
sacraments of Baptism and 'Christmation' make this sort of 'collective interpreta-
tion' possible.12 As Kallistos Ware says 'the Bible is a book for the people, but also
the people are for the Bible'.13
Regarding the role of Tradition in understanding the Bible, the Orthodox con-
sider that it provided the Bible's original content, and also the guide in under-
standing it since the Bible is not self-explanatory. Tradition comprises the oral and
written meanings handed down from the beginning by eyewitness testimonies
and early Christian reflections on the mysteries of Jesus Christ. This Tradition
has value similar to the content of the Gospel because it was written not simply
through inspiration, but was also based on the testimonies of Jesus' followers and
passed from the first to the second generation of Christians. Since God is love, the
human 'vehicle' through which the Holy Spirit works is helped in announcing the
'good news'. Tradition aids Orthodox interpreters to 'function within a Christian
framework'. This is because:

Rather than see Scripture as the original and primary medium of revela-
tion, and Tradition as mere human reflection upon its witness, we need to
give full weight to the fact that Scripture as written text is born of Tradition.

Orthodox Christian Approach to the Bible Transformation 26.1 January 2009 41

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 Consequently, Tradition provides the hermeneutical perspective by which
any biblical writing is to be properly interpreted.14

Since Jesus incarnated and it was in Him where the Divine Spirit was fully
manifested:

Christ himself is our 'hermeneutical principle' or principle of interpreta-

tion, in that it is he who reveals the true sense of all inspired Scripture. It
is from this perspective that Orthodox Christianity holds both Old and
New Testaments to be 'books of the Church'. Together they constitute
the Church's 'canon' or 'rule of truth' that alone determines what are and
what are not authentic elements of Holy Tradition.15

According to Breck, the relationship between Scripture and Tradition was

established in Jesus' farewell discourse, as presented in John 14:26; 16:13f.16 John
Romanides considers that:

For the Fathers authority is not only the Bible, but the Bible plus those
glorified... The Bible is not a book in itself either inspired or infallible.
It becomes inspired and infallible within the communion of saints who
have the experience of divine glory described in, but not conveyed by, the
Bible. To those outside of the living tradition of Gewpia the Bible is a Book
which does not unlock its mysteries.17

The Church fathers were real historical persons and some of them were contem-
porary with great philosophers who were struggling in their own way to under-
stand the very foundations of Creation. The early iconographers understood
this since they painted philosophers as Pythagoras and Aristotle on the walls of
Orthodox Churches: e.g. Voronet Monastery in Northern Moldova, Romania.18 But
the fathers chose to follow 'the biblical way of knowing God',19 which can only be
realised when the soul and the mind are united, hence the accent in Orthodoxy
on the 'prayer of the heart' which aims at this unity. Maximus the Confessor, for
example, was very well aware that Christ not only incarnated in history and in
the Cosmos, but also in the Scripture as the eternal Logos, and 'it is Christ who
reveals the deeper, eschatological and symbolic meaning of Scripture.'20 In addi-
tion to the patristic and liturgical criteria to test the 'result of scholarly research',
Ware paraphrases the Venerable Bede who speaks about the charismatic criterion
in accordance with which: 'The best exegetes of Holy Scripture, in the view of the
Christian East, are not university professors but the saints.'21
No document exists of a comparable weight to that of dei verbum, promulgated
by Vatican 11 in November 1965. In Ware's opinion, the best official document to
which the Orthodox should appeal to today is the Moscow Agreed Statement,
issued by the delegates of the Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission
meeting in Moscow during 26 July - 2 August 1976. In addition to endorsing
some decisions on matters of common interest, this document can be taken to
specifically express the Orthodox view, even though it has not been formally
confirmed by all autocephalous churches. This important document affirms the
position of the Bible's status as a unity:

The Scriptures constitute a coherent whole. They are at once divinely

inspired and humanly expressed. They bear authoritative witness to
God's revelation of himself in creation, in the Incarnation of the Word and
in the whole history of salvation, and as such express the word of God

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 in human language. Any disjunction between Scripture and Tradition
such as would treat them as two separate 'sources of revelation' must be
rejected. The two are correlative. We affirm (i) that Scripture is the main
criterion whereby the Church tests traditions to determine whether they
are truly part of Holy Tradition or not; (ii) that Holy Tradition completes
Holy Scripture in the sense that it safeguards the integrity of the biblical
message.22
In Ware's opinion, the unity of Scripture is expressed in three ways: 1. Vertical
unity : in the Scripture there is a divine-human unity, since it is 'at once divine-
ly inspired and humanly expressed.' 2. Horizontal unity (i.e. the unity within or
across the Bible). This is what is meant by 'The Scriptures constitute a coherent
whole.' In Christian Orthodoxy the Scripture is interpreted by Scripture; none of
its parts is to be considered in isolation. 3. Diachronic unity (i. e. the unity between
Scripture and the continuing life of the Church): This is the sense of 'Any disjunc-
tion between Scripture and Tradition such as would treat them as two separate
'sources of revelation' must be rejected. The two are correlative.'23
This unity of the Scripture is based, as shown in the beginning of the paper,
on the fact that Jesus is both 'the content of Scripture and its interpreter'. Breck
emphasises the Orthodox position in stating that 'It is precisely the historically
incarnate and risen Christ who unfolds eschatologically the intelligible content of
scripture, the symbols of his mysteries'.24 'By virtue of lectio divina and its quest
for the sensus iplenior, the biblical texts present themselves in the first instance as
the living and life-giving Word that speak to us today/25 The external richness of
the liturgical rituals can be a cause of misunderstanding among the non-Orthodox
on the role of the Bible within Orthodoxy. The reality is that the Bible as a whole
and its interpretation remain at the heart of Orthodoxy. Indeed, it is this Bible that
underlines the entire Orthodox liturgy and rituals.

Notes
1 John Breck, Scripture in Tradition. The Bible and its Interpretation in the Orthodox
Church, (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir Seminary Press 2001), p. 33; his
emphasis.
2 Ibid., pp. 9-10; his emphasis (and American spelling).
3 Ibid., p. 10.
4 John Romanides, 'Critical Examination of the Applications of Theology', Procès-
Verbaux du deuxième Congrès de Théologie Orthodoxe, ed. Savas Agouridis (Athens:
1978), pp. 413-441.
5 In addition to his above-mentioned book, see also The Power of the Word and Spirit
of Truth: The Origins ofjohannine Pneumatology, both (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's
Seminary Press 1986 respectivelly 1991).
6 The Old Testament: An Introduction, vols. 1-3, and his commentaries on 1
Thessalonians and Galatians (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press 1991-
96, and respectivelly 1982 and 1994).
7 Justin Martyr and the Mosaic Law, Society of Biblical Literature (Missoula: 1975);
The Good News of Christ, and The New Testament: An Orthodox Perspective, vol. 1,
Scripture, Tradition, Hermeneutics, the latest two (Brookline, MA: The Holy Cross
Orthodox Press 1991, respectivelly 1997).
8 Jesus the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible (New York, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press 2006).
9 Boris Bobrinskoy, The Compassion of the Father, trans., Anthony P. Gythiel, Introd.
Maxim Egger (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press 2003).
10 Breck, Scripture in Tradition, p. 81.
11 Stylianopoulos, The New Testament.

Orthodox Christian Approach to the Bible Transformation 26.1 January 2009 43

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 12 Kallistos Ware, The Unity of Scripture and Tradition: An Orthodox Approach, Festschrift
dedicated to Dom Henry Wansborough, O. S. B., in press, p. 6.
13 Ibid.

14 Breck, Scripture in Tradition, p. 10; his emphasis.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., p. 9.
17 Romanides, idem, pp. 413 - 441.
18 Cyril Mango (ed.), The Oxford History of Byzantium (Oxford, Oxford University
Press 2002), p. 100.
19 Stylianopoulos, The New Testament, vol. 1, p. 79.
20 Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 10, tr. Paul Blowers, Exegesis and Spiritual
Pedagogy, p. 103.
21 Ware, The Unity of Scripture and Tradition, typescript, p. 18.
22 The Moscow Agreed Statement, 11, 4; 11, 9.
23 In describing these 'three ways' I have summarized Ware's ideas from 'The Unity
of Scripture and Tradition', pp. 6-7.
24 Breck, Scripture in Tradition, footnote 13, p. 75.
25 Ibid., p. 77; his emphasis.

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44 Transformation 26.1 January 2009 Orthodox Christian Approach to the Bible

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