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We
believe that 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
the whole history of salvation. And as such they express the
word of God in human language. We know, receive, and
interpret Scripture through the Church and in the Church.
Our approach to the Bible is one of obedience.
We may distinguish four key
qualities that mark an Orthodox reading of Scripture, namely
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our reading should be obedient,
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it should be ecclesial, within the Church,
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it should be Christ-centered,
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it should be personal.
Reading the Bible with Obedience
First of all,
when reading Scripture, we are to listen in a spirit of
obedience. The Orthodox Church believes in divine
inspiration of the Bible. Scripture is a “letter” from
God, where Christ Himself is speaking. The Scriptures are
God’s authoritative witness of Himself. They express the
Word of God in our human language. Since God Himself is
speaking to us in the Bible, our response is rightly one of
obedience, of receptivity, and listening. As we read, we
wait on the Spirit.
But, while divinely inspired, the Bible is also humanly
expressed. It is a whole library of different books
written at varying times by distinct persons. Each book of
the Bible reflects the outlook of the age in which it was
written and the particular viewpoint of the author. For God
does nothing in isolation, divine grace cooperates with
human freedom. God does not abolish our individuality but
enhances it. And so it is in the writing of inspired
Scripture. The authors were not just a passive instrument, a
dictation machine recording a message. Each writer of
Scripture contributes his particular personal gifts.
Alongside the divine aspect, there is also a human element
in Scripture. We are to value both.
Each of the four Gospels, for example, has its own
particular approach. Matthew presents more particularly a
Jewish understanding of Christ, with an emphasis on the
kingdom of heaven. Mark contains specific, picturesque
details of Christ’s ministry not given elsewhere. Luke
expresses the universality of Christ’s love, His
all-embracing compassion that extends equally to Jew and to
Gentile. In John there is a more inward and more mystical
approach to Christ, with an emphasis on divine light and
divine indwelling. We are to enjoy and explore to the full
this life-giving variety within the Bible.
Because Scripture is in this way the word of God expressed
in human language, there is room for honest and exacting
inquiry when studying the Bible. Exploring the human aspect
of the Bible, we are to use to the full our God-given human
reason. The Orthodox Church does not exclude scholarly
research into the origin, dates, and authorship of books of
the Bible.
Alongside this human element, however, we see always the
divine element. These are not simply books written by
individual human writers. We hear in Scripture not just
human words, marked by a greater or lesser skill and
perceptiveness, but the eternal, uncreated Word of God
Himself, the divine Word of salvation. When we come to the
Bible, then, we come not simply out of curiosity, to gain
information. We come to the Bible with a specific question,
a personal question about ourselves: “How can I be
saved?”
As God’s divine word of salvation in human language,
Scripture should evoke in us a sense of wonder. Do you ever
feel, as you read or listen, that it has all become too
familiar? Has the Bible grown rather boring? Continually we
need to cleanse the doors of our perception and to look in
amazement with new eyes at what the Lord sets before us.
We are to feel toward the Bible with a sense of wonder, and
sense of expectation and surprise. There are so many rooms
in Scripture that we have yet to enter. There is so much
depth and majesty for us to discover. If
obedience means wonder, it also means listening.
We are better at talking than listening. We hear the sound
of our own voice, but often we don’t pause to hear the voice
of the other person who is speaking to us. So the first
requirement, as we read Scripture, is to stop talking and to
listen — to listen with obedience.
When we enter an Orthodox Church, decorated in the
traditional manner, and look up toward the sanctuary at the
east end, we see there, in the apse, an icon of the Virgin
Mary with her hands raised to heaven — the ancient
Scriptural manner of praying that many still use today. This
icon symbolizes the attitude we are to assume as we read
Scripture — an attitude of receptivity, of hands
invisibly raised to heaven. Reading the Bible, we are to
model ourselves on the Blessed Virgin Mary, for she is
supremely the one who listens. At the Annunciation she
listens with obedience and responds to the angel, "Be it
unto me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38). She could
not have borne the Word of God in her body if she had not
first, listened to the Word of God in her heart. After the
shepherds have adored the newborn Christ, it is said of her:
"Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her
heart" (Luke 2:19). Again, when Mary finds Jesus in the
temple, we are told: "His mother kept all these things in
her heart" (Luke 2:5l). The same need for listening is
emphasized in the last words attributed to the Mother of God
in Scripture, at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee:
“Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it” (John 2:5), she
says to the servants — and to all of us.
In all this the Blessed Virgin Mary serves as a mirror, as a
living icon of the Biblical Christian. We are to be like her
as we hear the Word of God: pondering, keeping all these
things in our hearts, doing whatever He tells us. We are to
listen in obedience as God speaks.
Understanding the
Bible Through the Church
In the second
place, we should receive and interpret Scripture through the
Church and in the Church. Our approach to the Bible is not
only obedient but ecclesial.
It is the Church that tells us what is Scripture. A
book is not part of Scripture because of any particular
theory about its dating and authorship. Even if it could be
proved, for example, that the Fourth Gospel was not actually
written by John the beloved disciple of Christ, this would
not alter the fact that we Orthodox accept the Fourth Gospel
as Holy Scripture. Why? Because the Gospel of John is
accepted by the Church and in the Church.
It is the Church that tells us what is Scripture, and it is
also the Church that tells us how Scripture is to be
understood. Coming upon the Ethiopian as he read the Old
Testament in his chariot, Philip the Apostle asked him,
“Understandest thou what thou readest?” And the
Ethiopian answered, “How can I, unless some man should
guide me?” (Acts 8:30-31). We are all in the position of
the Ethiopian. The words of Scripture are not always
self-explanatory. God speaks directly to the heart of each
one of us as we read our Bible. Scripture reading is a
personal dialogue between each one of us and Christ — but we
also need guidance. And our guide is the Church. We
make full use of our own personal understanding, assisted by
the Spirit, we make full use of the findings of modern
Biblical research, but always we submit private opinion —
whether our own or that of the scholars — to the total
experience of the Church throughout the ages.
The Orthodox standpoint here is summed up in the question
asked of a convert at the reception service used by the
Russian Church: “Do you acknowledge that the Holy Scripture
must be accepted and interpreted in accordance with the
belief which has been handed down by the Holy Fathers, and
which the Holy Orthodox Church, our Mother, has always held
and still does hold?”
We read the Bible personally, but not as isolated
individuals. We read as the members of a family, the family
of the Orthodox Catholic Church. When reading Scripture, we
say not “I” but “We.” We read in communion with all
the other members of the Body of Christ, in all parts of the
world and in all generations of time. The decisive test and
criterion for our understanding of what the Scripture means
is the mind of the Church. The Bible is the book
of the Church.
To discover this “mind of the Church,” where do we begin?
Our first step is to see how Scripture is used in worship.
How, in particular, are Biblical lessons chosen for reading
at the different feasts? We should also consult the writings
of the Church Fathers, and consider how they interpret the
Bible. Our Orthodox manner of reading Scripture is in this
way both liturgical and patristic. And this, as we all
realize, is far from easy to do in practice, because we have
at our disposal so few Orthodox commentaries on Scripture
available in English, and most of the Western commentaries
do not employ this liturgical and Patristic approach.
As an example of what it means to interpret Scripture in a
liturgical way, guided by the use made of it at Church
feasts, let us look at the Old Testament lessons appointed
for Vespers on the Feast of the Annunciation. They are three
in number: Genesis 28:10-17; Jacob’s dream of a ladder set
up from earth to heaven; Ezekiel 43:27-44:4; the prophet’s
vision of the Jerusalem sanctuary, with the closed gate
through which none but the Prince may pass; Proverbs
9:1-11: one of the great Sophianic passages in the Old
Testament, beginning “Wisdom has built her house.”
These texts in the Old Testament, then, as their selection
for the feast of the Virgin Mary indicates, are all to be
understood as prophecies concerning the Incarnation from the
Virgin. Mary is Jacob’s ladder, supplying the flesh that God
incarnate takes upon entering our human world. Mary is the
closed gate who alone among women bore a child while still
remaining inviolate. Mary provides the house which Christ
the Wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24) takes as his dwelling.
Exploring in this manner the choice of lessons for the
various feasts, we discover layers of Biblical
interpretation that are by no means obvious on a first
reading.
Take as another example Vespers on Holy Saturday, the first
part of the ancient Paschal Vigil. Here we have no less than
fifteen Old Testament lessons. This sequence of lessons sets
before us the whole scheme of sacred history, while at the
same time underlining the deeper meaning of Christ’s
Resurrection. First among the lessons is Genesis 1:1-13, the
account of Creation: Christ’s Resurrection is a new
Creation. The fourth lesson is the book of Jonah in its
entirety, with the prophet’s three days in the belly of the
whale foreshadowing Christ’s Resurrection after three days
in the tomb (cf. Matthew 12:40). The sixth lesson recounts
the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites (Exodus
13:20-15:19), which anticipates the new Passover of Pascha
whereby Christ passes over from death to life (cf. 1
Corinthians 5:7; 10:1-4). The final lesson is the story of
the three Holy Children in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3),
once more a “type” or prophecy of Christ’s rising
from the tomb.
Such is the effect of reading Scripture ecclesially, in the
Church and with the Church. Studying the Old Testament in
this liturgical way and using the Fathers to help us,
everywhere we uncover signposts pointing forward to the
mystery of Christ and of His Mother. Reading the Old
Testament in the light of the New, and the New in the light
of the, Old — as the Church’s calendar encourages us to do —
we discover the unity of Holy Scripture. One of the best
ways of identifying correspondences between the Old and New
Testaments is to use a good Biblical concordance. This can
often tell us more about the meaning of Scripture than any
commentary.
In Bible study groups within our parishes, it is helpful to
give one person the special task of noting whenever a
particular passage in the Old or New Testament is used for a
festival or a saint’s day. We can then discuss together the
reasons why each specific passage has been so chosen. Others
in the group can be assigned to do homework among the
Fathers, using for example the Biblical homilies of Saint
John Chrysostom (which have been translated into English).
Christians need to acquire a patristic mind.
Christ, the Heart
of the Bible
The third
element in our reading of Scripture is that it should be
Christ-centered. The Scriptures constitute a coherent
whole because they all are Christ-centered. Salvation
through the Messiah is their central and unifying topic. He
is as a “thread” that runs through all of Holy Scripture,
from the first sentence to the last. We have already
mentioned the way in which Christ may be seen foreshadowed
on the pages of the Old Testament.
Much modern critical study of Scripture in the West has
adopted an analytical approach, breaking up each book into
different sources. The connecting links are unraveled, and
the Bible is reduced to a series of bare primary units.
There is certainly value in this. But we need to see the
unity as well as the diversity of Scripture, the
all-embracing end as well as the scattered beginnings.
Orthodoxy prefers on the whole a synthetic rather
than an analytical approach, seeing Scripture as an
integrated whole, with Christ everywhere as the bond of
union.
Always we seek for the point of convergence between the Old
Testament and the New, and this we find in Jesus Christ.
Orthodoxy assigns particular significance to the
“typological” method of interpretation, whereby “types”
of Christ, signs and symbols of His work, are discerned
throughout the Old Testament. A notable example of this is
Melchizedek, the priest-king of Salem, who offered bread and
wine to Abraham (Genesis 14:18), and who is seen as a type
of Christ not only by the Fathers but even in the New
Testament itself (Hebrews 5:6; 7:l). Another instance is the
way in which, as we have seen, the Old Passover foreshadows
the New; Israel’s deliverance from Pharaoh at the Red Sea
anticipates our deliverance from sin through the death and
Resurrection of the Savior. This is the method of
interpretation that we are to apply throughout the Bible.
Why, for instance, in the second half of Lent are the Old
Testament readings from Genesis dominated by the figure of
Joseph? Why in Holy Week do we read from the book of Job?
Because Joseph and Job are innocent sufferers, and as such
they are types or foreshadowings of Jesus Christ, whose
innocent suffering upon the Cross the Church is at the point
of celebrating. It all ties up.
A Biblical Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, on
every page of Scripture, finds everywhere Christ.
The Bible as
Personal
In the words
of an early ascetic writer in the Christian East, Saint Mark
the Monk: “He who is humble in his thoughts and engaged in
spiritual work, when he reads the Holy Scriptures, will
apply everything to himself and not to his neighbor.” As
Orthodox Christians we are to look everywhere in Scripture
for a personal application. We are to ask not just
“What does it mean?” but “What does it mean to me?”
Scripture is a personal dialogue between the Savior and
myself — Christ speaking to me, and me answering. That is
the fourth criterion in our Bible reading.
I am to see all the stories in Scripture as part of my own
personal story. Who is Adam? The name Adam means “man,”
“human,” and so the Genesis account of Adam’s fall is also a
story about me. I am Adam. It is to me that God speaks when
He says to Adam, “Where art thou?” (Genesis 3:9). “Where is
God?” we often ask. But the real question is what God asks
the Adam in each of us: “Where art thou?”
When, in the story of Cain and Abel, we read God’s words to
Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” (Genesis 4:9), these
words, too, are addressed to each of us. Who is Cain? It is
myself. And God asks the Cain in each of us, “Where is thy
brother?” The way to God lies through love of other people,
and there is no other way. Disowning my brother, I replace
the image of God with the mark of Cain, and deny my own
vital humanity.
In reading Scripture, we may take three steps. First, what
we have in Scripture is sacred history: the history of the
world from the Creation, the history of the chosen people,
the history of God Incarnate in Palestine, and the “mighty
works” after Pentecost. The Christianity that we find in the
Bible is not an ideology, not a philosophical theory, but a
historical faith.
Then we are to take a second step. The history presented in
the Bible is a personal history. We see God intervening at
specific times and in specific places, as He enters into
dialogue with individual persons. He addresses each one by
name. We see set before us the specific calls issued by God
to Abraham, Moses and David, to Rebekah and Ruth, to Isaiah
and the prophets, and then to Mary and the Apostles. We see
the selectivity of the divine action in history, not as a
scandal but as a blessing. God’s love is universal in scope,
but He chooses to become Incarnate in a particular comer of
the earth, at a particular time and from a particular
Mother. We are in this manner to savor all the uniqueness of
God’s action as recorded in Scripture. The person who loves
the Bible loves details of dating and geography. Orthodoxy
has an intense devotion to the Holy Land, to the exact
places where Christ lived and taught, died and rose again.
An excellent way to enter more deeply into our Scripture
reading is to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and
Galilee. Walk where Christ walked. Go down to the Dead Sea,
sit alone on the rocks, feel how Christ felt during the
forty days of His temptation in the wilderness. Drink from
the well where He spoke with the Samaritan woman. Go at
night to the Garden of Gethsemane, sit in the dark under the
ancient olives and look across the valley to the lights of
the city. Experience to the full the reality of the
historical setting, and take that experience back with you
to your daily Scripture reading.
Then we are to take a third step. Reliving Biblical history
in all its particularity, we are to apply it directly to
ourselves. We are to say to ourselves, “All these places and
events are not just far away and long ago, but are also part
of my own personal encounter with Christ. The stories
include me.”
Betrayal, for example, is part of the personal story of
everyone. Have we not all betrayed others at some time in
our life, and have we not all known what it is to be
betrayed, and does not the memory of these moments leave
continuing scars on our psyche? Reading, then, the account
of Saint Peter’s betrayal of Christ and of his restoration
after the Resurrection, we can see ourselves as actors in
the story. Imagining what both Peter and Jesus must have
experienced at the moment immediately after the betrayal, we
enter into their feelings and make them our own. I am Peter;
in this situation can I also be Christ? Reflecting likewise
on the process of reconciliation — seeing how the Risen
Christ with a love utterly devoid of sentimentality restored
the fallen Peter to fellowship, seeing how Peter on his side
had the courage to accept this restoration — we ask
ourselves: How Christ-like am I to those who have betrayed
me? And, after my own acts of betrayal, am I able to accept
the forgiveness of others — am I able to forgive myself? Or
am I timid, mean, holding myself back, never ready to give
myself fully to anything, either good or bad?
As the Desert
Fathers say, “Better someone who has sinned, if he knows he
has sinned and repents, than a person who has not sinned and
thinks of himself as righteous.”
Have I gained the boldness of Saint Mary Magdalene, her
constancy and loyalty, when she went out to anoint the body
of Christ in the tomb (John 20:l)? Do I hear the Risen
Savior call me by name, as He called her, and do I respond
Rabboni (Teacher) with her simplicity and
completeness (John 20:16)?
Reading Scripture in this way — in obedience, as a member of
the Church, finding Christ everywhere, seeing everything as
a part of my own personal story — we shall sense something
of the variety and depth to be found in the Bible. Yet
always we shall feel that in our Biblical exploration we are
only at the very beginning. We are like someone launching
out in a tiny boat across a limitless ocean.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my
path” (Psalm 118 [119]:105).
Author: Bishop Kallistos Ware
Missionary Leaflet # E11a
Holy Protection Russian Orthodox Church
2049 Argyle Ave. Los Angeles, California 90068
Editor: Bishop Alexander (Mileant) |
