Scripture and the Transformation of the Reader

The final purpose of all Orthodox reading of Scripture: not information but transformation — the deification (theosis) of the reader who is changed by the Word to whom the Scriptures testify. This file draws the collection to its end, showing that the whole apparatus of canon, text, Fathers, typology, liturgy, and prayer serves one aim — communion with God — and closes with a sober assessment of the Orthodox approach to Holy Scripture.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The End of Reading

Everything in this collection has been oriented toward a single end, and it is not knowledge. The Orthodox tradition reads Scripture not primarily to gain information — about history, doctrine, or morals — but to be transformed: to be purified, illumined, and finally deified, changed into the likeness of the Christ to whom the Scriptures testify. The whole apparatus of the Church’s reading — the canon received, the Septuagint honored, the Fathers followed, the types discerned, the Liturgy prayed, the Psalter memorized — serves this one purpose: that the reader, encountering the living Word, should be conformed to Him (Breck, Scripture in Tradition, SVS Press, 2001, on Scripture unto transformation; Stylianopoulos, The New Testament: An Orthodox Perspective, Holy Cross, 1997, on the “transformative” level of interpretation; see The Orthodox Biblical Recovery).

The Scriptures themselves name this aim. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The word of God is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing… and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12) — it does something to the one who receives it. And the destiny it opens is participation in the divine nature: “that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), the classic scriptural warrant for the Orthodox doctrine of theosis (see Theosis). To read Scripture rightly is to submit to this piercing and this transformation.

The Word That Judges and Heals

For the Orthodox tradition, then, the reader does not stand over Scripture as its judge; Scripture stands over the reader, judging and healing. This is the reversal that distinguishes an ecclesial reading from a merely academic one. The scholar analyzes a text; the disciple is analyzed by it. St. Mark the Ascetic and the fathers of the Philokalia teach that the words of Scripture are to be applied first of all to oneself — that the reader should hear every rebuke as addressed to him, every command as binding on him, every promise as offered to him (the Philokalia, passim; see Scripture and the Life of Prayer; The Philokalia). The desert tradition’s insistence on doing the word (James 1:22) is precisely this: the meaning of Scripture is not possessed until it is enacted, and the enacting changes the one who enacts (Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert, Oxford, 1993). The road to Emmaus names the sign of true reading — not the acquisition of data but the burning heart, the recognition of the Lord (Luke 24:32; see Christ the Key to the Scriptures).

This is why the tradition binds interpretation to holiness. The Scriptures are understood in the measure that one is being conformed to them: “an honest mind and a life modelled on the saints” is the condition of entering their meaning (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 57). Right reading and right living are not two things but one movement; the interpreter and the interpreted converge as the reader is remade by the Word (see The Patristic Mind). Scripture read for theosis is Scripture read as medicine and as food — the pharmakon of immortality and the bread from heaven — not merely as a document to be understood.

A Sober Assessment

It is fitting to close this collection with a sober assessment of the Orthodox approach to Holy Scripture, naming both its strength and the questions it must continue to face.

Its strength is coherence and depth. By holding Scripture within the Church, Tradition, and worship, Orthodoxy avoids the two modern extremes: the fundamentalism that isolates the letter and defends it against all comers, and the reductive historicism that dissolves the Word into a merely human artifact. It reads the Bible as the Fathers and the Apostles read it — christologically, typologically, liturgically, unto salvation — and it keeps the reading of Scripture bound to prayer, sacrament, and the transformation of life. This is a rich and integrated vision, and it is arguably closer to the practice of the ancient Church than the alternatives (Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition, Nordland, 1972; Breck, Scripture in Tradition, 2001; Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993).

Its open questions are real and this collection has not concealed them. The precise boundaries of the wider Old Testament canon remain sober and unsettled (see The Wider Old Testament and the Anagignoskomena). The relation of the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text is a genuine text-critical question that the tradition holds without a single settled answer (see Text, Numbering, and the Masoretic Question). The right measure of engagement with the historical-critical method is still being worked out, and Orthodox biblical scholarship — though flourishing — still lacks some of the basic tools (a complete critical commentary series, a fully satisfactory scholarly LXX-based English Old Testament) that its task requires (see The Historical-Critical Method; The Orthodox Biblical Recovery). And at the pastoral level, the ideal of a laity deeply at home in the Scriptures — the ideal Chrysostom preached — is imperfectly realized, as it is in every tradition. These are not embarrassments to be hidden but the honest state of a living tradition, and Orthodoxy is generally content to hold them soberly rather than to force premature closure.

The Word Made Ours

The deepest claim of the Orthodox approach is that Scripture is not finally an object at all but a means of communion. The Word of God written exists to bring the reader to the Word of God incarnate; the Bible is given so that, reading it in the Church, in the Spirit, unto Christ, the human person might be drawn into the life of the Holy Trinity. This is why the Church surrounds the Gospel book with lights and incense and kisses it as an icon of Christ: it is not the paper that is venerated but the One who speaks through it (see The Bible as the Liturgical Book). And it is why the highest Orthodox reading of Scripture is found not only in the exegetes but in the saints — those in whom the Word has done its full work, who have become, as it were, living Scriptures, the word made flesh again in a human life (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 57; Breck, Scripture in Tradition, 2001). To read the Bible as an Orthodox Christian is, in the end, to let the Word remake you — to be changed, “from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18), into the likeness of the Lord to whom every page of the Scriptures bears witness.

References

Breck, John. Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001. (Scripture unto transformation; the saints as living Scriptures.)
Stylianopoulos, Theodore G. The New Testament: An Orthodox Perspective, vol. 1. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1997. (The “transformative” level of interpretation.)
Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation 57 — the holy life as the condition of understanding Scripture.
Burton-Christie, Douglas. The Word in the Desert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. (Doing the word; the word that changes the doer.)
Florovsky, Georges. Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View. Collected Works, vol. 1. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972.
Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993.
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 3:18; Hebrews 4:12; 2 Peter 1:4; James 1:22; Luke 24:32.