Reprint: Reading the Old Testament, the Christian Way

Earlier this week, I read a couple of complaints about the Orthodox, to the effect that we reinterpret Old Testament. This, charge the critics, is very troubling.

I daresay it is. But I do rejoice that they recognize an important fact: we do not interpret the Old Testament the way the ancient Israelites did, or for that matter, the way Jews today do. St. Paul says as much.

Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech-- unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face ... But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. (2 Corinthians 3:12-16)

To explain this further, I'm reprinting a slightly redacted version of a post that originally appeared here in January.


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Old Testament Interpretation (Like Everything Else in Christianity) Begins and Ends With Jesus Christ.

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. (John 5:39

In the Church’s view, the whole of Israelite history, as contained in the Old Testament, is about Jesus Christ. The relationship of the Old Testament to the New is one of promise to fulfillment, and of type to anti-type. Put another way, we interpret the Old Testament neither in the same way the ancient Israelites did, because we are looking at it with hindsight; nor in the way Jews do today, for everything in it takes on new, fuller, and sometimes rather different meaning in the light of Christ.

… the Hebrew Scriptures are also to be understood and interpreted in relation to Jesus Christ, who is both their source and their fulfillment. He is their 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 fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures 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. Accordingly, Christ himself is our “hermeneutic principle” or principle of interpretation, in that it is he who reveals the true sense of all inspired Scripture. (Breck, John, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, New York, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001) pp. 9-10

Every passage of the Old Testament as well as the New bears direct or indirect witness to the person and work of Jesus Christ, who is Truth itself in incarnate form. ”I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” he declares, Jn. 14:6). (ibid., p. 33)

The Fathers insist that the God with whom all the Old Testament figures deal is God the Son. It was God the Son who walked with Adam and Eve, God the Son who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, God the Son who instructed Noah to build his ark.

The Early Church was not particularly interested in the historicity of the Old Testament. The early Fathers didn’t necessarily deny it, but what interested them was always what the Old Testament had to say about Jesus. They looked for Him and found Him throughout.

The Old Testament is to be interpreted according to Christ, and not vice-versa! Christ Himself urged us to do this, saying in a parable, nobody patches an old garment with a new piece of cloth, because the patch will shrink and the rip will be made worse. Old clothes must be patched with old fabric. Similarly, nobody puts new wine into old wineskins, or the wineskin will burst and the wine will be lost; but new wine must be put into new wineskins, to preserve both. (Matthew 9:17, Mark 2:22, Luke 5:37-38) Christ is the New Wine; He transfigures the Old Testament. We must not interpret Him by it, or we shall lose both the wine and the wineskin, the true meaning of the Old and the New Testaments. Rather, we must interpret the Old Testament by Him, “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Christ Himself began the process of showing us better ways to understand the Old Testament, bringing out what was implicit there all along but unclear or hidden. The Fifth Chapter of Matthew contains several examples of this. Perhaps the most startling example of His "re-interpretation" of the Scriptures came when Jesus preached against divorce:

They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?" He said to them, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so...” (Matthew 19:7-8)

In other words, God spoke to ancient Israel with great and gracious condescension, in His decrees making generous allowances for His people’s spiritual weakness and immaturity.  He allowed divorce because of Israel's hard hearts, and someone has pointed out that God didn't even forbid polygamy!  In the Old Testament (even sometimes in the New) things were written in over-simplified words and somewhat crude concepts and imagery to make it understandable to people.  Meat is for adults; infants cannot digest it and need milk instead. The Old Testament is spiritual milk. The meat must await the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Another way Jesus interpreted the Old Testament in a way nobody else would have been able to until then is contained in John 8:56 (one of His claims to divinity): “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw [it], and was glad.”

Jesus also appropriated the title “Son of Man,” giving new meaning to that figure in the book of Daniel, Chapter 7.

After His resurrection, as He was walking with two of His followers on their way to Emmaus, Jesus continued the process of interpreting the Old Testament for them. Here is His response when they spoke to Him (whom they did not yet recognize) of their distress that Jesus had been crucified.

"O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.

St. Paul also found new, Christian meaning in the Old Testament. For example, in I Corinthians 10, he says the Israelites, by passing through the sea, “were baptized unto Moses.” (10:3) Then, speaking about the rock in the desert which Moses struck with his stick and it gushed forth water for the thirsty Israelites, St. Paul says, “That rock was Christ.” (10:4) In verse 6, he adds, “Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.”  They happened, that is, more for our sakes even than for the sakes of the ancient Israelites.  St. Paul is much more concerned with the function of these events as examples today than as history; in fact, the part he mentions in verse 3 about the rock following Israel isn't history at all, but pure legend.  As a practical matter, whether it was history or not wasn't relevant; our edification today was what counted, and still counts.

In Galatians 4:21-31, St. Paul calls the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar an allegory (v. 24), which allegory he expounds.

Most of the Epistle to the Hebrews is devoted to interpreting Old Testament worship in terms of shadows and patterns of “things to come”, especially in chapters 9 and 10. Moreover, it is in the name of spiritual maturity that St. Paul urges his Jewish readers to adopt this typological understanding of the old Testament. (Hebrews 5:12- 6:2)

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.

In fact, what the "noble Bereans" did, to whom St. Paul preached, was exactly this: they searched the Scriptures (the Old Testament) to see whether they could see in the Scriptures the newly-announced meanings St. Paul was preaching. The meanings were different from what these devout people had been used to.

Some Fathers of the church, notably St. Gregory of Nyssa, bid us make heavy use of allegory in interpreting the Old Testament. St. Gregory does just that in his most famous work, The Life of Moses, in which he brings out allegorical and spiritual meaning and application from every incident in Moses’ Life.

Other Fathers agree that Christians ought to value the stories in the Old Testament more for their spiritual than their historical or literal meanings. “Very often many things are said by the Holy Scriptures and in it many names are used not in a literal sense... those who have a mind understand this.” (Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily 83.)

So Christians from the beginning have followed Christ and St. Paul in telling the old story in a new way, in a way that begins and ends with Jesus Christ. They have set aside parts of it (such as ritual laws) as no longer relevant to Christians (Galatians 4:10); they have found new meanings in other parts of it

Even those who criticize the Orthodox for doing this do it themselves, although not in a sufficiently thoroughgoing way. For example, virtually all Christians see Psalm 22 as an astonishingly detailed prophecy of the Crucifixion. But before Jesus was crucified, there was no way to interpret that Psalm in that way. Similarly, in Isaiah 7:14, Christians see a prophecy concerning the birth of Christ: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” But before Christ came, the prophecy only meant that God would destroy King Ahaz’ enemies within the time it would take for a maiden to marry, conceive, give birth to a son, and teach him the difference between right and wrong. Christians have always "reinterpreted" the Old Testament. That is, they have understood things that were always there, but only revealed in the Light of Christ.  Outside of Orthodoxy, however this procedure is the exception, unfortunately.  More often, it's the wrong way around:  the Old Testament is used as the framework within which to understand Christ.

If we fail to allow the revelation in Christ quite frankly to re-work the pre-Christian understanding of the Old Testament, to let Christ be the Light of the World, by Whom and in Whom all else is properly understood, our reading of both Testaments will be very seriously misguided and the correct doctrine of salvation will be in jeopardy.

Now please go and read Fr. Stephen's far better (and shorter!) post for some different points on the same subject.

Why We Should Never Accept Irrational (Self-Contradictory) Theology

First, here are some definitions for clarification, courtesy of Merriam-Webster Online. “Rational” means relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason. Being in accordance with reason. “Rationalism” is reliance on reason as the basis for establishment of religious truth.

Christians are not rationalists. Theology that is authentically Christian is not rationalistic. Christians believe their religion to be revealed, not derived from human reason. As St. Paul puts it,

“my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (I Corinthians 2:4-5)

St. John writes similarly:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life – the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us – that which we have seen and heard we declare to you (I John 1:1-3a)

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

And St. Peter writes:

For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. 17 For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 18 And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. (2 Peter 1:16-18, referring to the Transfiguration, accounts of which event are in Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, and Luke 9:35)

Christians are not rationalists. But they are rational. They base their faith upon what has been heard and seen and touched. Christians are followers of the Word Made Flesh, where “Word” does not mean a sequence letters between spaces and having a certain definition. No, the Greek “Logos”, usually translated “Word,” actually means God’s Reason. “Logos” implies, moreover, not an inarticulate or inchoate Reason, but one capable of being set forth. When the Word (God’s Reason) dwells in human flesh, in the Man Jesus, then it He is even capable of expressing itself Himself in human terms.

God’s Reason is of course high above all human reason – but note carefully: above it, not beneath it! God’s Reason does not fail the elementary tests of rationality. To the contrary, God’s Reason first meets those criteria and then far exceeds them. Where revelation boggles the mind and our poor brains cannot follow, the “problem” is not darkness, but a superabundance of Light, inexhaustible Light.

Put another way, God does not contradict Himself. That’s the first way you know any theology which does is a human invention, not divine. There is no contradiction in God.

Observe, if you please, what happens when people do accept a theology that contradicts itself. I am not speaking here of paradox, which is only a form of irony, nor of an only apparent contradiction, as evidenced by the fact that somebody, somewhere, can explain it away. I’m speaking of a flat-out, genuine contradiction, incapable of being resolved by anybody, a square triangle, a rock too heavy for God to lift.

Well, then, the first thing that happens when you accept a contradiction in theology (or any other field) is that you turn it into meaningless mush. That’s because each side of the contradiction cancels out the other. If we call these two sides of the contradiction A and B, then we can see a couple of examples:

A. This is a square.
B. It is triangular.


A. God is Love.
B. God hates sinners.


A. God chooses whom to save. It’s 100% up to Him and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Ultimately, the ones He chose do end up being saved and only the ones who end up being saved are the ones He chose.
B. God does not choose whom to condemn.

In each of these cases, as in every contradiction, we see A and B cancelling each other out. And when that happens, we are left with nothing. We are left with empty words, bereft of meaning. We are left with incoherence.

But that’s only the first thing that happens. The next thing is that if you accept a contradiction in theology and then say each side of it is supported by Scripture, you knock the bottom out of Sola Scriptura. Because the first principle implied by Sola Scriptura is that anything which contradicts the Word of God must be rejected. Thus, if your interpretation of Scripture makes Scripture to contradict itself, then, according to Sola Scriptura, your interpretation ought to be tossed out. By not tossing it out, by retaining it despite the principle of Sola Scriptura, one flouts that doctrine, defies it, puts his contradictions above it. (Isn’t THAT rationalism?)

It gets still worse, because by accepting a contradiction in theology and asserting that both sides of the contradiction are supported by Holy Scripture, it’s not just the doctrine of Sola Scriptura one knocks the bottom out of (this wouldn’t bother Orthodox Christians anyway) but Scripture itself. This is because to the extent one makes the Bible incoherent, it cannot be used for anything, and especially cannot be used to settle any doctrinal dispute. If any contradiction of Scripture by Scripture is acceptable, why not all? As I've said before, every heretic comes armed with Scripture to contradict Scripture, and the devil, too, when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. By what criterion will we now decide whose contradictions are acceptable?

To the extent the Bible is interpreted as incoherent, to that extent it ceases to be revelatory. Gibberish is no longer revelation nor a record of revelation – but Christianity is all based upon revelation. The damage, then, is not merely to the Bible, but to Christianity itself.

Could it get even worse? Yes, because of course we have, unwittingly, a reverence issue going on here, too. To say, in effect, that the Holy Scriptures contradict themselves is to say, in effect, that the Holy Spirit does.

Just don’t go there. Search out an interpretation of the Holy Bible that allows it to stand as a consistent, coherent, reliable, and revelatory whole, as the Word of God always is, in Whom there is no contradiction.

Mystery and Nonsense (Discussion of Quiz Question)

By nonsense, I am not referring to something with which we disagree and therefore call nonsense. I mean “nonsense” in a narrower way; I mean true non-sense, something incoherent, something that simply has no meaning. A square triangle is nonsense. The question of whether God could create a stone too heavy for Him to lift is meaningless.

What renders these examples and other things meaningless? They are self-contradictory. When you come across a theology that contradicts itself and, worse, makes Holy Scripture contradict itself, this (besides being highly irreverent!), is simply where somebody’s theory has broken down. It isn’t revelation, since what is allegedly revealed is in fact unintelligible. It isn’t Christian teaching, since Christ Himself is God’s intelligible, articulate Reason, the Logos, in the flesh. His religion will never be absurd, never irrational, never meaningless; these are the very antithesis of Who He is. Self-contradiction then, with emphasis on “self”, is the hallmark of nonsense. (It’s perfectly okay if Christian doctrine contradicts secular reasoning. What is NOT okay is if alleged Christian doctrine contradicts *itself*, for Truth does not contradict itself. God is Truth. There is no contradiction in God. God is One.)

There are, as I’ve already noted in a comment, some people who consider it virtuous to accept contradictions of Scripture by Scripture. But in fact, to do so is thoroughly self-defeating. Observe what it does: the moment you begin accepting any, real or apparent, contradiction of Scriptural teaching, even if it is a contradiction of Scripture by Scripture itself, you immediately unravel, indeed repudiate, the Reformation doctrine of Sola Scriptura. You make Sola Scriptura perfectly, 100% meaningless. Far worse (for one who isn’t a Sola Scripturist, as I am not), you also undo Scripture itself as any kind of authority, much less the ultimate one. Why? Because if we suspend the rule that whatever contradicts Scripture is error, then how do you measure error? Scripture then becomes anybody's and everybody's tool. Satan can quote Scripture against Scripture, and does.

Every heretic comes armed to the teeth with Scripture to contradict other Scripture. Sometimes the heretic tells us to accept the contradiction; other times he tells us the contradiction he preaches is only apparent. Whose contradictory interpretation ought we to believe? On what basis shall I accept or reject any given person’s contradiction of Holy Scripture? Why should I even accept my own or my denomination’s contradiction in preference to someone else’s? The basis for the Sola Scripturist’s whole religion is undone!

Mystery, in Christianity, is when something is revealed (not hidden) that goes far beyond anything we can possibly understand conceptually. The Incarnation, for example, is a Mystery. It is not self-contradictory and doesn’t contradict anything else in Christian doctrine, so it is not nonsense. It may seem very strange, highly unlikely, etc., but it is not incoherent. It is Mystery because we can form no idea of how Divine and human natures could be united in one Person, Jesus. We cannot imagine how the Formless One takes form, the Creator of space and time comes and dwells within space and time. We have no clue, and until quite recently no science at all, to help us understand how a virgin can give birth – and to a male child, at that. (Parthenogenesis in frogs produces sterile female offspring.) There is no explanation for how the things what we have heard and seen and known can be. Moreover, the meaning of the event may also be too deep for words fully to express, although our deepest selves (which are also Mystery, by the way) know the meaning.

The Resurrection, likewise, is a Mystery, not because the teaching contradicts itself or anything else in Christian teaching, but because we cannot begin to understand how God has done away with death as we had known it, and has transfigured it into another venue of His own Presence, and a passage into greater Life.

The sacraments are Mysteries, because we do not know how the bread and wine come to be for us the Body and Blood of the Lord, or how the Holy Spirit sanctifies the baptismal waters so that they become for us our second womb, from which we emerge as new persons, grafted into Christ, all our sins, as it were, washed away, the hellfire within us cast out.

Mystery is not darkness, but as someone wrote (Lossky, I think), Mystery is inexhaustible Light. That is, Mystery floods our consciousness with new awareness, but, although our hearts embrace the deep meaning, it is more and deeper meaning than words or thoughts can ever know what to do with. You could write volumes on it and never exhaust its meaning. This, in contrast to nonsense, which by definition cannot give us any meaning, even if the words that couch it sound good on the surface.

("There are some people," I said to one not versed in theology, "who believe that before the world began, God chose who would be saved. He did not, however, choose who would not be saved."

(She thought about that a moment, then wrinkled her nose and asked, "What does that mean?"

("It doesn't; that's the point.")

When neither you nor anyone else can figure out the “how” of things, it’s probably Mystery.

When you know the "what" of something (like who you are or your love for your children), but there aren't words to express it, that, too is probably Mystery.

If you and I don’t understand the “what,” but nevertheless an explanation exists that resolves the matter, that’s only an apparent contradiction, not a real one.

When nobody has ever resolved it (because it is a square triangle), that’s a real contradiction. That's nonsense. Avoid that.

The Sure Path to Disunity

Yesterday, I posted an entry about submitting to one another as the path to unity. A commentator, Mike, wrote to wonder why other Christians don’t do the same thing. Here, I'm only going to write about the case of Protestants, because they, especially, are so notoriously divided.

Well, because – as far as I can see – they cannot. Because the question is, submit to what, or to whom? And, within the context of the Reformation, there doesn’t seem to be any practical answer.

Submit to the Truth, as found in Scripture? Ah, but that’s begging the question, isn’t it, the question being, what is Truth? Contrary to one theory, Scripture does not always interpret itself, although it sometimes does. Nor is Holy Scripture always perfectly clear, as the five hundred years of divisions over it since the Reformation abundantly testify, and Scripture also testifies. (2 Peter 3:16)

It isn’t exactly Sola Scriptura itself that is the source of disunity; it’s another doctrine implicit within it, namely individualism. This is because in practice, Sola Scriptura (no matter which of two or three forms it takes) leaves each private individual as his own final judge and interpreter of both Scripture and church. Thus, in case people disagree on what Scripture means — or even what is really in it – there is no arbiter between the disagreeing parties.

Submit to the consensus of some larger Protestant body, then? It stands to reason that such a hypothetical body, composed of the most respected representatives from many denominations, might be less liable to error than might each individual or each denomination. But before Protestants could submit to this, they would have to have a very high level of confidence that the consensus of the body will be the Truth; otherwise, they would be submitting to tyranny at best, falsehood and tyranny, at worst. Integrity, after all, forbids submitting to falsehood, forbids acting or professing against ones conscience. That’s why they threw off the Pope.

Submit to the teachings of pastors or theologians? They have studied in seminary, haven't they? They seem wise and faithful, don't they? But submit to which ones, since they have different beliefs, even within the same denomination?

Submit to what great saints tell us? But usually, Protestants assume even saints are going by their own opinion only, with the possible exception (depending upon the denomination) of the Apostles. And then, with the Apostles, we’re back to how to interpret the Bible.

Submit to Tradition? They either reject it or, to the extent they accept it, they first cherry-pick, sanitize, and adapt it, formulate agreeable interpretations of it, all ostensibly to accord with Holy Scripture, but in practical terms this means according to what suits my doctrine, what appeals to me, what I think best. In the end, Holy Tradition will be only a caricature of itself, reduced, like everything else, to somebody's private opinion.

It's a cunning trap. I have to admire the neatness of it. All it takes to fall in is to suppose each man is his own arbiter of truth, faith, Church, and Scripture – and the door to unity slams shut. Yet to avoid being your own (fallible!) pope, by definition you have to have something to which or someone to whom each person can submit his varying opinions, solitary revelations, conflicting interpretations, questions, disagreements and private judgment. Searching for that within Protestantism, I am stymied. I marvel that these separated denominations can’t seem to see that this individualism, promulgated chiefly via Sola Scriptura, was guaranteed, from the beginning, to cause fractures and to keep causing them endlessly. What a poison pill individualism is!

Is there any way out? I hope so. Can I come up with any recommendations? No. It seems that to get out of the dilemma would require the oft-mentioned "seismic paradigm shift", akin to the earthquake that released St. Paul from prison.


"First of all you must know this, that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation." (2 Peter 1:20) [No, that Greek word for "interpretation" does not, alternatively, mean "origin". It means resolution.]

We Base Everything Upon Scripture

I must be feeling cranky today, perhaps because I'm just getting over The Crud (that 24-hour digestive bug), but I've gotta say this, because it, too, is bugging me today.

I don't usually cover my head in church and have no idea why so many priests don't require it any more, and I can't think of any valid excuse for myself, either. It's a practice clearly mandated in Scripture, by the great and glorious St. Paul, no less.

It usually doesn't occur to me. But when it invariably does is when someone tries to tell me his or her denomination goes strictly and only by Scripture, period.

And don't even get me started on all the things not mandated or even implied in Scripture that most of us do anyway, like Sunday School, choir robes, flowers on the altar, candles, kneelers, stained glass windows, pews...

Who do you know who goes strictly by his or her interpretation of Scripture? Some of the Friends, perhaps, or the Amish or Mennonites? Anybody else?

Rethinking Reading, by Fr. Stephen

Here's Fr. Stephen again, on reading the Bible. I'm reprinting it for your convenience, but heartily recommend you read it at his own blog, so you can profit from the comments there as well.

by Fr. Stephen Freeman

If, as I have wrtten, the Orthodox Church itself is the proper interpretation of Scripture - then one might ask, “How am I supposed to read the Scriptures if their interpretation is the Church?” It is a good, even an obvious question, but one which points us to the very thing at hand: the nature of interpretation.

In general usage, to speak of interpreting something is to speak of explaining and commenting and seeking questions of meaning. Of course, this presupposes that the answer to the question is something that can be spoken, explained, commented, etc. Thus, interpretation is seen as essentially a literary question.

I have taken my lead from two verses of Scripture - both of which illustrate how I am re-presenting interpretation. The first is St. Paul’s statement to the Christians in Corinth:

Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart (2 Cor. 3:2-3).

And St. John’s description of Christ as the exegesis of the Father [John 1:18]:

No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared (exegato) him.

(Exegesis is the technical term that theologians use when they speak of explaining a passage of Scripture.)

Thus the question can be pushed back and asked, “How are the Corinthians an epistle?” and “What does it mean that Christ exegetes the Father?”

In both cases the answer is not a literary event, but a matter of a life lived. Christ so exegetes the Father that He can say, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father,” (John 14:9). God did not make Himself known by giving us words about Himself. Those who think the Scriptures are the revelation of God are sadly mistaken. Christians are not Muslims. Christ Himself is the Word of the Father and it is through Christ that we know God, not through the Bible. The Scriptures have their place of great importance and are an essential part of the life of the Church, but that place is precisely that of which I am writing.

The revelation of God to the people of Corinth is not to be found in St. Paul’s two epistles written to the young Church in that city, but in the Church itself. They are God’s revelation to Corinth, “written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God; not in tables of stone but in the fleshy tables of the heart.”

If the people of Corinth do not see and come to know Christ in and through the Church, His Body, which has been established in that place, then Corinth will not know God.

Some of this goes to the very heart of the Church’s existence. It has become a commonplace in modern Christianity to reduce the Church to a fellowship of convenience, existing only to encourage and strengthen individual Christians (this is particularly true in Evangelical Christianity but has spread as a larger cultural understanding as well). Whereas the Scriptures speak quite differently of the Church.

The Church:

Is the Pillar and Ground of Truth (1 Timothy 3:15);

Is the Fullness of Him that filleth all in all (Eph. 1:23).

Is the very Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12 and other places).

Is the Bride of Christ (Rev. 21:2 and elsewhere).

Such descriptions in no way fit an organization whose purpose is to encourage and strengthen individual Christians. The modern understanding of the Church is blasphemous in its denial of God’s own description of His Bride, His Fullness, His Body, the Pillar and Ground of Truth.

The Church is an epistle just as Christ exegetes the Father. Christ said, “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). In the same manner, Christ is the life of the Church. The Church does not exist merely to speak words about Christ but to manifest the very life of Christ among mankind. The Church has no other life.

“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 2:2-4).

Thus we do not “read” the Church as though we were reading a book. We “read” the Church as its life impacts and informs our own life. If we are part of the Church, then our life itself is to be increasingly the life of Christ, an epistle written on the fleshy tables of the heart. But this is not for us to do as individuals, for we cannot do this outside the Church and without the life that is lived by the whole Church. We do not Baptize ourselves.

The great challenge to the Orthodox Church in the modern world is to remain the Church, to be God’s faithful epistle to the world and not simply an exotic brand of modernized Christianity. For we are an epistle, written by the Spirit of the Living God, not an organization whose programs entertain the interested.

Let the dead bury the dead. The Church has to be about living a Life.

Please forgive me if the force of my writing in this post is in any way scandalous. I do not mean to cause someone to stumble, but rather to point the way to the truth of God’s Church and the place of Scripture within it.

Faith in What or in Whom?

Someone recently wrote on the Internet that she had always supposed the proof for Jesus was to be found in the Bible. The Bible was what supported our belief in Christ.

If this were so, then please notice what the situation would be. Our faith in Christ would be derivative, derived from the Bible. If we believed in Christ "for the Bible tells me so", then our faith in Christ would be a function of that, would be secondary. Our primary faith would be in the Bible.

The word for that is not "Christian" but "biblicist".

Is the Bible True? by Fr. Stephen

Again, as so often, I begin to wonder whether the main reason my blog exists is to promote Fr. Stephen's! Here is another in his series on the Scriptures, this time having to do with fundamentalism v. liberalism, both of which, as he points out, are two sides of the wrong coin. Read this especially if evolution, for example, is an issue for you.

by Fr. Stephen Freeman

There is a fundamentalist anxiety that I hold in great sympathy. My sympathy is driven by the fact that I lived for many years under the burden of that very anxiety. It is the hidden fear that possibly, despite all faith exercised in the opposite direction, the Bible may not, in fact, be true. A great deal of energy is spent in maintaining the integrity of the dike that withstands this anxiety.

I grew in the shadow of Bob Jones University, one of the most prominent bastions of American fundamentalism. The ideas of that university permeate not only the students who study there, but in many ways the surrounding culture of Christianity in the area. The fear is pointed towards Darwin and any possibility of his evolutionary theory. It drives biology students at the university to reach strange conclusions, regardless of the science. I was taught at age ten by a biology student from Bob Jones, in a Baptist summer camp, that blacks were simply biological inferior to whites based on false information that he shared with a group of young, impressionable kids. Perhaps his biology was not the product of his university classes. But it was as baseless as much of the science that was done there.

The same fear drives the concern for the Flood of Noah and the age of the planet (not to mention any possible hint of evolutionary science). Thus the earth must be young, the flood must be literal (with perhaps a still existing Ark on Mt. Ararat). Science has an answer that it must prove, rather than a question to be answered. The agenda of such fundamentalist science is set by the need to refute anything that possibly undermines a peculiar view of Scripture. One flaw and the entire house of cards comes tumbling down.

It makes for bad science and even worse Biblical interpretation.

I am no friend of liberal Biblical studies. I suffered under such oppression for a number of years and can say that fundamentalism also has a liberal form. I was punished (intellectually) for believing all of the articles of the Nicene Creed as much as a Darwinist would suffer at Bob Jones. But that is its own story.

The history of literalism is a checkered affair. Some of the early fathers leaned in a literalist direction for many parts of Scripture, though leaving room for other, more symbolic approaches, where appropriate. The great battles over the historical literalism of Scripture arose in the 18th and 18th centuries in Europe and America (battles over certain scientific matters versus literalism began even earlier).

Part of the tragedy in these battles was that the battlefield itself was a fairly newly-defined area and failed to take into account the full history of Biblical interpretation. For a young believer in the midst of America’s own intellectual religious wars in the late 20th century - my question was whether the choices presented were the only choices available.

I should preface my remaining remarks with the simple affirmation: I believe the Bible is true.

Having said that, I must add that the Scriptures do not stand as an independent work of literature or a self-contained Holy Book. The Bible is not God’s revelation to man: Jesus Christ is God’s revelation to man. The Scriptures bear witness to Him and are thus “true” as a true witness to the God/Man Jesus Christ.

As others have noted, the Scriptures are true as they are accepted and understood by the Church that received them. They are Scripture as recognized by the Church and cannot be removed from the Church only to turn them against the Church. They are unique writings, and must be read in a unique way. That way is found in the liturgies of the Church and the commentaries of the Fathers.

It is also true that within the writings of the Fathers there can be a variety of opinion on a number of Scriptural matters. The essential agreement is their testimony to Christ. Genesis is about Christ. Exodus is about Christ, and so forth. Read any other way, the books are interesting, but they will not be read in a manner that has been received by the Orthodox Christian Church.

Of course, the historical method (whether literal or historical critical) represents only two possibly ways of reading the text of Scripture. There are assumptions behind both that are problematic from an Orthodox perspective. For many, the notion of “salvation history” has become so dominant that they cannot think about history in any manner other than that which they have been taught. I can think of a number of problems:

First - the traditional modern view (whether fundamentalist or otherwise) of history, is a matter of chronology. It sees a beginning at some point in the past and a progression to some point in the future. This same chain of events is generally viewed as reality, or the ground of reality, and championed above all other things. God acts in history, they will argue, but history is somehow the reality with which God has to deal.

This is highly problematic for an Orthodox theological understanding. Not only does Scripture treat history as quite relative (Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, He is also the “Lamb slain from the foundations of the earth”), it in fact makes history subject to the end of things - making history simply one aspect of lived eschatology.

Thus time and chronology do not govern reality - God governs reality.

By the same token, Holy Scripture is a Divine account of reality, not itself explained by chronology nor subject to historical validation, but subject to the Truth as it is made known to us in Jesus Christ. Thus the New Testament is Scripture, though the writings of Josephus or Tacitus are mere history.

There is a nervousness that runs through the body fundamentalist when phrases such as “mere history” are uttered. It is a nervousness that is born of the attempts of liberal modernists to dismiss as “myth and fiction” what are seen as events essential to our salvation in Christ. No one who is a believer could treat such anxiety with anything but sympathy. In many ways, with the tools at hand, conservatives in Western Christianity have fought a valiant fight to defend the faith against a serious contender. But that fight does not justify every argument advanced by fundamentalism. Orthodoxy offers a different approach.

I recognize a nervousness that occurs among many conservatives if “truth” is approached in any manner other than literal. Liberals have played games with words for so many years that believers are rightly wary of word-games. On the other hand, for theological accuracy, it is necessary to speak of truth and its character in Christian revelation. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus Christ Himself is the Truth. This is not to say that He is the Truth as compared to some external criterion of truth, but rather that He Himself is the criterion and definition of what is true. Things are true and false only as they are compared to Him. He may be compared to nothing else.

By that token, it is problematic to define “truth” by some particular standard of “historicity.” I understand the importance of saying, “This is really true,” and would never want to deny such a thing. The tomb on Pascha was empty, Christ is truly raised from the dead by every standard and then transcending every standard. His resurrection is the true ground of all reality.

Having said that, it must also be said that the Scriptures are true (as Scriptures) only inasmuch as they reveal Christ as the risen Lord and what that means for all creation. The witness of the Church is that these writings do precisely that and are thus Scripture. But it is the resurrection of Christ that undergirds the Scriptures and not vice versa. The disciples did not understand the Scriptures until they understood the risen Lord. And this remains the case.

Thus the import of Noah’s flood is to be found in Holy Baptism and not the other way around. Creation as shared in the first chapter of Genesis is an unfolding of the Paschal mystery and it is from that mystery that it derives its value. I could multiply such examples. When this principle is forgotten, Christians find themselves arguing over points of geology or archaeology and not over the triumphant resurrection of Christ. If Christ is risen from the dead, everything else becomes moot. If Christ is not risen from the dead, then all Christian statements become moot.

Christ is risen from the dead.

What can we say to these things? The Scriptures are true because Christ is risen from the dead and this is their message. The faith of the Orthodox is that all things find their beginning and their end - their meaning and their fulfillment in the Pascha of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is the good news. What other good news could there be?

Help Reading the Old Testament

Old Testament Interpretation (Like Everything Else in Christianity) Begins and Ends With Jesus Christ

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. (John 5:39)

In the Church’s view, the whole of Israelite history, as contained in the Old Testament, is about Jesus Christ. The relationship of the Old Testament to the New is one of promise to fulfillment, and of type to anti-type. Put another way, we interpret the Old Testament neither in the same way the ancient Israelites did, because we are looking at it with hindsight; nor in the way Jews do today, for everything in it takes on new and fuller meaning in the light of Christ. Everything in Orthodox Christianity begins and ends with Jesus Christ, and the Old Testament is no exception.

… the Hebrew Scriptures are also to be understood and interpreted in relation to Jesus Christ, who is both their source and their fulfillment. He is their 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 fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures 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. Accordingly, Christ himself is our “hermeneutic principle” or principle of interpretation, in that it is he who reveals the true sense of all inspired Scripture. (Breck, John, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, New York, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001) pp. 9-10)

Every passage of the Old Testament as well as the New bears direct or indirect witness to the person and work of Jesus Christ, who is Truth itself in incarnate form. ”I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” he declares, Jn. 14:6). (ibid., p. 33)

The Fathers also insist that the God with whom all the Old Testament figures deal is God the Son. It was God the Son who walked with Adam and Eve, God the Son who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, God the Son who instructed Noah to build his ark.

All of these three stories bear typological meanings. That is, they each prefigure Christ, are each “types” of Christ or of something related to Him. The bush that burned without being consumed, for example, typifies how Mary became pregnant and gave birth to Jesus, her body alight with Him, without her virginity being destroyed or in any way diminished. Noah’s ark symbolizes the Church, bearing her passengers safely to the other side of the turmoil of life and death. The story of God liberating Israel from slavery in Egypt foreshadows Christ liberating His people from bondage to sin and death. Some fathers, with regard to some biblical accounts, go so far as to say God’s main purpose in arranging or permitting these events was for our sake, to prepare us for Christ’s coming, so we would understand what Jesus was doing.

The Early Church was not particularly interested in the historicity of the Old Testament. The early Fathers didn’t necessarily deny it, but what interested them was always what the Old Testament had to say about Jesus. They looked for Him and found Him throughout.

Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech-- unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. (2 Corinthians 3:12-16)

The Old Testament is to be interpreted according to Christ, and not vice-versa! As Christ said in a parable, nobody patches an old garment with a new piece of cloth, because the patch will shrink and the rip will be made worse. Old clothes must be patched with old fabric. Similarly, nobody puts new wine into old wineskins, or the wineskin will burst and the wine will be lost; but new wine must be put into new wineskins, to preserve both. (Matthew 9:17, Mark 2:22, Luke 5:37-38) Christ is the New Wine; He transfigures the Old Testament. We must not interpret Him by it, but it by Him, “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Christ Himself began the process of giving new, deeper interpretations to the Old Testament; or, rather, of bringing out what was implicit there all along but hidden. The Fifth Chapter of Matthew contains several examples of Jesus giving the Old Testament deeper meanings than others had seen there before. Perhaps the most startling example of His re-interpretation of the Scriptures came when Jesus preached against divorce.

They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?" He said to them, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so...” (Matthew 19:7-8)

In other words, God spoke to ancient Israel with great and gracious condescension, in His decrees making generous allowances for His people’s spiritual weakness and immaturity, and in His language often putting things in over-simplified, too-crude words to make it understandable to them. Meat is for adults; infants cannot digest it and need milk instead. The Old Testament is spiritual milk. The meat must await the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Another quite startling re-interpretation Jesus gives to the Old Testament is contained in one of His claims to divinity: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw [it], and was glad.” (John 8:56)

Jesus also appropriated the title “Son of Man,” giving new meaning to that figure in the book of Daniel, Chapter 7.

After His resurrection, as He was walking with two of His followers on their way to Emmaus, Jesus continued the process of interpreting the Old Testament for them. Here is His response when they spoke to Him (whom they did not yet recognize) of their distress that Jesus had been crucified.

"O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.

St. Paul also found new, Christian meaning in the Old Testament. For example, in I Corinthians 10, he says the Israelites, by passing through the sea, “were baptized unto Moses.” (10:3) Then, speaking about the rock in the desert which Moses struck with his stick and it gushed forth water for the thirsty Israelites, St. Paul says, “That rock was Christ.” (10:4) In verse 6, he adds, “Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.” St. Paul is much more concerned with the function of these events as examples today than as history; in fact, the part he mentions in verse 3 about the rock following Israel is pure legend.

In Galatians 4:21-31, St. Paul makes what he himself calls an allegory (v. 24) of the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar.

Most of the Epistle to the Hebrews is devoted to interpreting Old Testament worship in terms of shadows and patterns of “things to come”, especially in chapters 9 and 10. Moreover, it is in the name of spiritual maturity that St. Paul urges his Jewish readers to adopt this typological understanding of the old Testament. (Hebrews 5:12- 6:2)

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.

So Christians from the beginning have followed Christ and St. Paul in telling the old story in a new way, in a way that begins and ends with Jesus Christ. They have set aside parts of it (such as ritual laws) as no longer relevant to Christians (Galatians 4:10); they have found new meanings in other parts of it.

For example, Christians see Psalm 22 as an astonishingly detailed prophecy of the Crucifixion. But before Jesus was crucified, there was no way to interpret that Psalm in that way. Similarly, in Isaiah 7:14, Christians see a prophecy concerning the birth of Christ: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” But before Christ came, the prophecy only meant that God would destroy King Ahaz’ enemies within the time it would take for a maiden to marry, conceive, give birth to a son, and teach him the difference between right and wrong. Christians have always reinterpreted the Old Testament.

St. Basil the Great gives us a fine example of what it means to reinterpret Old Testament understandings of Divine Justice in the Light of the New, which Light is Christ. The “disasters” God is said to bring us are to put a stop to evil or at least contain it, or to correct us, not literally to gratify some divine hostility.

Famines and droughts and floods are common plagues of cities and nations which check the excess of evil. Therefore, just as the physician is a benefactor even if he should cause pain or suffering to the body (for he strives with the disease, and not with the sufferer), so in the same manner God is good who administers salvation to everyone through the means of particular chastisements. But you, not only do you not speak evilly of the physician who cuts some members, cauterizes others, and excises others again completely from the body, but you even give him money and address him as savior because he confines the disease to a small area before the infirmity can claim the whole body. However, when you see a city crushing its inhabitants in an earthquake, or a ship going down at sea with all hands, you do not shrink from wagging a blasphemous tongue against the true Physician and Saviour.

And you may accept the phrase ‘I kill and I will make to live’ (Deut. 32:39) literally, if you wish, since fear edifies the more simple. ‘I will smite and I will heal’ (Deut. 32:39). It is profitable to also understand this phrase literally; for the smiting engenders fear, while the healing incites to love.

It is permitted you, nonetheless, to attain to a loftier understanding of the utterance. I will slay through sin and make to live through righteousness. ‘But though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day’ (Il Corinthians 4:16). Therefore, He does not slay one, and give life to another, but through the means which He slays, He gives life to a man, and He heals a man with that which He smites him, according to the proverb which says, ‘For You shall beat him with the rod, and shall deliver his soul from death’ (Proverbs 23:14). So the flesh is chastised for the soul to be healed, and sin is put to death for righteousness to live.... When you hear ‘There shall be no evil in a city which the Lord hath not wrought’ (cf. Amos 3:6), understand by the noun ‘evil’ that the word intimates the tribulation brought upon sinners for the correction of offenses. For Scripture says, ‘For I afflicted you and straitened you, to do good to thee’ (cf. Deuteronomy. 8:3); so too is evil terminated before it spills out unhindered, as a strong dike or wall holds back a river.

For these reasons, diseases of cities and nations, droughts, barrenness of the earth, and the more difficult conditions in the life of each, cut off the increase of wickedness. Thus, such evils come from God so as to uproot the true evils, for the tribulations of the body and all painful things from without have been devised for the restraining of sin. God, therefore, excises evil; never is evil from God.... The razing of cities, earthquakes and floods, the destruction of armies, shipwrecks and all catastrophes with many casualties which occur from earth or sea or air or fire or whatever cause, happen for the sobering of the survivors, because God chastises public evil with general scourges.

The principal evil, therefore, which is sin, and which is especially worthy of the appellation of evil, depends upon our disposition; it depends upon us either to abstain from evil or to be in misery.

Of the other evils, some are shown to be struggles for the proving of courage... while some are for the healing of sins... and some are for an example to make other men sober. (If anybody can give me the reference for this, which I have lost, I shall be grateful.)

Some Fathers of the church, notably St. Gregory of Nyssa, bid us make heavy use of allegory in interpreting the Old Testament. St. Gregory does just that in his most famous work, The Life of Moses, in which he brings out allegorical and spiritual meaning and application from every incident in Moses’ Life.

Other Fathers agree that Christians ought to value the stories in the Old Testament more for their spiritual than their historical or literal meanings. “Very often many things are said by the Holy Scriptures and in it many names are used not in a literal sense... those who have a mind understand this.” (Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily 83.)

If one fails to allow the revelation in Christ quite frankly to re-work the Old Testament, to let Christ be the Light of the World, by Whom and in Whom all else is properly understood, ones reading of both Testaments will be seriously misguided and the correct doctrine of salvation will be in jeopardy.

Now please go and read Fr. Stephen's far better (and shorter!) post for some different points on the same subject here.

Why We Believe

The Bible is not the reason Orthodox Christians believe in God. It's the other way around: those things are in the Bible because we have believed them.

But we believed them before they were written there. Noah built his ark, believing God, without consulting any Scriptures. Abraham followed God out into the unknown before there was any Bible for guidance. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt before there was any written Word. Elizabeth, the mother of St. John the Forerunner, recognized the Lord in His mother's womb without having derived the idea from an interpretation of Scripture. And so did her as-yet unborn babe. So did Symeon, and Anna. It wasn't the Bible prompted St. Joseph to flee with his family to Egypt, or St. Paul to sail to Macedonia. None of these famous deeds of great saints was derived from Scripture or was normed by it, either.

Yes, yes, I can imagine someone saying, but that was back then, whereas we, today...

We, today, what? No longer have the intimate, personal presence of God among us to lead us? God has withdrawn that and left us with a Book to go by? Or He has withdrawn Himself into a Book?

That is just not the case. The Bible itself bears witness to its not being the case. God doesn't do that. (Why would He?) In fact, the reverse is true: Christians now have greater access to God (if we would but take advantage of it) than anyone ever had before the coming of Christ. Because we have living communion in Christ Himself, in Whom we live and move and have our being. Because, as the Bible bears witness, He has not left us orphans. Because He has sent us the Spirit of Truth to teach us all things, the same Spirit who taught Noah and Abraham and Moses, Elizabeth, Symeon, and Anna, Joseph and Paul and Cornelius and all the rest of us, and still teaches us today, in Person, directly. Sometimes He teaches us the Scriptures and sometimes He teaches us other things, such as what to do next or to recognize a person who intends, figuratively, to stab us or how best to help in a tricky situation. His guidance is not confined to any text.

We were probably first atrracted to Christ, first induced to throw our lot in with Him, by some small but overwhelming insight into His infinite, mighty, tender Love and our own wretchedness, so in need of healing; as St. Paul said, "God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

But now the reason we believe, or rather know, is that we have met the Crucified One as living; in fact, as our own true Life. We been baptized into a whole new existence, a new dimension; as Fr. Stephen says, "into the everywhere and always." We have been raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly [places] in Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:6) We "have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel." (Hebrews 12:22-24)

That is why we believe. Because we cannot NOT believe, once we have met Him and once He has bestowed His own Life upon us and we are living it, once the Incarnate Word has sealed us with His own Spirit, His Life. This is how we know Jesus loves us, because He ever lives for us, and we in Him.

This I Know

Last week, I found myself in the same room with an electrical music box that kept playing "Jesus Loves Me" for the whole hour I sat there. And it reminded me again that this song has it exactly backwards. There is no particular reason to credit the Bible unless you already credit its Author, and no convincing reason to believe there is a God Who wouldn't lie unless you have already encountered Him.

If the Bible were the source of doctrine, then we could know that doctrine only emotionally and/or cognitively, not existentially. The Bible bears witness to true doctrine. But for the Christian, the crucified and risen Christ is the Source; more correctly, He Himself is the True Doctrine. ("I am the Way and the Truth and the Life...") To encounter Truth, you have to encounter Him, not just read about Him.

Can you encounter Him in reading the Bible? Sure. But then it's He, and not the Book, that caused you to believe both.

Church, Scripture, Theotokos

The Church is Christ. She is not something else, of which Christ is merely the Head and His followers are the Body.

Instead, what it means to speak of Christ as the Head and Christians as the Body is that Christ includes His followers, incorporates us into Himself. It is by incorporation into Christ that we are members of the Church. The Church is “the fullness of Him, who fills all in all.” Christ is not “full” without all His members.

It is because the Church is Christ we do not say the Bible has authority over her; for what can have authority over God? Or if heterodox teaching were true, and the Church were some other entity than Christ, larger than Christ, notice, because Christ would be merely her Head instead of her whole, then even more so must we ask, what could have authority over an entity larger even than Christ?

Rather, Scripture has authority in the Church. That's a huge distinction.

It’s because we are members of Christ’s Body that the Most Holy Theotokos is the mother of us all, she who gave birth to that Body.