Reading with the Church

The practical synthesis: how an Orthodox Christian actually reads the Bible. Not alone and as one’s own final authority, but with the Church — with the Fathers, in the Liturgy, and in prayer. Personal reading is warmly encouraged; private interpretation, the making of oneself the final arbiter against the mind of the Church, is what is cautioned against. This file offers a rule of reading drawn from the whole collection.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Personal Reading, Not Private Interpretation

A persistent caricature holds that Orthodoxy discourages the laity from reading the Bible. The opposite is true. The Fathers urge personal reading insistently: St. John Chrysostom rebukes those who imagine that Scripture is “for monks only,” telling his lay hearers that they need it more, not less, amid the cares of the world, and exhorting whole households to read (Chrysostom, prologues and moral sections of the Homilies on Matthew and on John, NPNF I/10, I/14; see Chrysostom and the Exegetical Homilies). What Orthodoxy distinguishes is personal reading from private interpretation. The former — reading the Bible daily, prayerfully, for oneself — is a duty and a joy. The latter — treating one’s own reading as the final authority, over against the mind of the Church — is what 2 Peter 1:20 forbids: “no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation” (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993, “The Bible”; see The Patristic Mind). The Orthodox reader reads freely and much, but reads within the community that produced and interprets the book — not isolated, but accompanied by the whole Church, living and departed.

Reading with the Fathers

To read with the Church is, first, to read with the Fathers — to let the great interpreters of the tradition form one’s own reading. This does not mean consulting a Father before venturing an opinion on every verse; it means acquiring, over time, the patristic phronema, the mind of the Church, so that one reads Scripture christologically, typologically, and within the Rule of Faith, as the Fathers did (Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition, Nordland, 1972, ch. 5; see The Patristic Mind). Practically, the Orthodox reader is helped by the Fathers’ own works — Chrysostom’s homilies above all, accessible and pastoral — and by the guidance of a priest or spiritual father. The patristic consensus does not answer every question, and the Fathers themselves disagree on details (see Antioch and Alexandria); but their overall trajectory sets the boundaries within which the Orthodox reader thinks, guarding against readings that would overturn the faith (Breck, Scripture in Tradition, SVS Press, 2001).

Reading in the Liturgy

To read with the Church is, second, to read in the Liturgy — to receive the primary formation in Scripture through the worship of the Church, where the Bible is chanted, prayed, and enacted (see The Bible as the Liturgical Book). The Orthodox Christian’s deepest schooling in the Bible comes from standing in the services: hearing the appointed Gospel and Epistle, praying the Psalter, singing the biblical canticles, keeping the feasts that make the biblical events present. The lectionary itself teaches how to read — christologically and toward Pascha (see The Lectionary and the Cycles). A fruitful practice, therefore, is to read at home the passages the Church reads in her services — to follow the daily lectionary — so that personal reading is synchronized with the Church’s, and the individual reads within the rhythm of the whole Body (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993; Barrois, Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship, SVS Press, 1977).

Reading in Prayer

To read with the Church is, third, to read in prayer — to approach Scripture not as a text to be mastered but as the living Word to be received, in the disposition the monastic tradition teaches (see Scripture and the Life of Prayer). This means reading slowly and attentively, ready to stop and pray when a word strikes the heart; returning to the same passages until they are known; carrying a verse through the day; letting the reading pass over into the Jesus Prayer and the praying of the Psalms. It means reading with humility and repentance, expecting the word to convict and to heal, not only to inform. The Fathers insist that the Scriptures are understood in the measure that one lives them — that an “honest mind and a life modelled on the saints” is the condition of true understanding (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 57; Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert, Oxford, 1993). Reading in prayer is thus inseparable from the ascetic and sacramental life: one reads best who is being purified, and reading rightly is itself part of that purification (see Scripture and the Transformation of the Reader).

A Rule of Reading

Drawing the threads together, the collection’s practical counsel for the Orthodox reader may be gathered into a simple rule — not a law, but a shape for the reading life:

  1. Read daily and personally. Make the reading of Scripture a regular part of life, as the Fathers urge; do not leave it to clergy and monks (Chrysostom).
  2. Read in the Church’s rhythm. Follow the daily lectionary where possible, so that personal reading moves with the Liturgy and the calendar (see The Lectionary and the Cycles).
  3. Read with the Fathers. Let the patristic mind form your reading; use Chrysostom and the Fathers; read within the Rule of Faith and the Creed (see The Patristic Mind).
  4. Read the Old Testament christologically. Look for Christ, the shadow and the fulfillment, the type and the truth (see Christ the Key to the Scriptures).
  5. Read in prayer and repentance. Approach the word to be changed by it; let reading become prayer (see Scripture and the Life of Prayer).
  6. Read under guidance, not in isolation. Where a passage is hard or a question serious, seek the mind of the Church through a priest or spiritual father; do not make yourself the final judge against the Church (2 Peter 1:20).
  7. Use scholarship as a servant. Critical study, maps, and background can help; but let the Church’s mind, not the autonomous academy, govern the reading (see The Historical-Critical Method).

The Freedom of Reading in the Church

Far from cramping the reader, reading with the Church is experienced in the Orthodox tradition as a liberation. The solitary reader, thrown back on his own resources, must either bear the whole weight of interpretation alone or surrender to whatever authority he happens to trust. The reader in the Church is set within a communion: the same Spirit who inspired the Scriptures, the same Christ to whom they testify, the same Fathers and saints who read before him, the same Liturgy that opens the book “in the breaking of bread” (Luke 24:35). He is free to read boldly and personally precisely because he is not reading alone. This is the practical form of the collection’s first principle — that Scripture is the Church’s book, read within Tradition — brought home to the individual believer with his Bible open (Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition, ch. 2; Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993; see The Bible as the Church’s Book). To read with the Church is to read in company, and to find in that company not a constraint but the very condition of hearing the Word rightly.

See Also

References

  • Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. (“The Bible”; personal reading vs. private interpretation.)
  • Breck, John. Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001.
  • Florovsky, Georges. Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View. Collected Works, vol. 1. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972 (ch. 2, ch. 5).
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew and on John (NPNF I/10, I/14) — the exhortations to lay reading.
  • Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation 57 — the holy life as the condition of understanding.
  • Burton-Christie, Douglas. The Word in the Desert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. (Reading as doing the word.)
  • Barrois, Georges. Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977.
  • Scripture: 2 Peter 1:20; Luke 24:35.