THE CANON OF THE BIBLE:
OR
THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE FROM AN ORTHODOX PERSPECTIVE
(published in
J.-M. Poffet,L'
autorité de l' Écriture,Paris
2002, pp. 113-35)
To address any issue, “from an Orthodox perspective,” is an extremely
difficult enterprise. What can really be an “Orthodox perspective”, at a
time when the very attribute (“orthodox”) is widely understood as having
more or less negative connotations? In fact, it is almost impossible to speak on
any subject from an Orthodox perspective, even in the conventional confessional,
or denominational, sense. On what ground and from what sources can one really
establish an Orthodox perspective. The Roman Catholics have Vatican II to draw
from; the Orthodox do not. The Lutherans have an Augsburg Confession of their
own; the Orthodox do not. The only authoritative so-called “sources” the Orthodox possess are in fact common to the
rest of the Christians: the Bible and the Tradition. How can one establish a
distinctly Orthodox perspective on a basis which is common to non-Orthodox as
well? And even more: the width of these so-called “sources” is nowadays
strongly debated, at least within the scholarly community; not to mention that
sometimes they are differently interpreted.
On top of that, Orthodoxy always appears as something “exotic”, an
interesting “eastern phenomenon” vis-à-vis
the “western” individualistic mentality, provoking the curiosity and
enriching the knowledge of Western believers and theologians. According to an
eminent Orthodox theologian (J. Zizioulas), this role has been played enough up
to now. There are modern Orthodox theologians who define Orthodoxy as meaning
the wholeness of the people of God who share the right conviction (orthe
doxa=right opinion) concerning the event of God's salvation in Christ and
his Church, and the right expression (orthopraxia)
of this faith. Everyone is, therefore, invited by Orthodoxy to transcend
confessions and inflexible institutions without necessarily denying them.
Orthodoxy is not to be identified only with us Orthodox in the historical sense
and with all our limitations and shortcomings. The term was originally given to
the Church as a whole over against
the heretics who, of their own choice, split from the main body of the Church.
The term is, thus, exclusive for all those, who willingly fall away from the
historical stream of life of the One Church, but it is inclusive for those who
profess their spiritual belonging to that stream. Orthodoxy, in other words, has
ecclesial rather than confessional
or even historical connotations.
And it is from this angle that I propose to tackle the subject.
***
What I am going to present in this article as “personal reflection for
further discussion” is the way we Orthodox, and by extension all Christians,
should address specific questions pertinent to the canon of the Bible (why a
canon, what canon, and how etc.); namely the whole issue of the Bible. After all,
the canon is an issue closely related to the way the Bible is viewed in the
Church.
Despite all these, the Orthodox have from time to time issued official doctrinal
statements concerning the Bible, which under certain theological conditions can
lend authority to the Orthodox perspective of the Canon of the Bible. These are
the canons of certain local synods (Laodicea, Carthage etc.) and of some Fathers
(Athanasios, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzos., Amphilochios of Iconion), whose
canonical status became universal (ecumenical) through the decisions of the
famous Penthekti Council in Troullos (691/2 ce.). But all these canons
leave the issue of the number of the canonical books of the Bible (especially of
the O.T., but in some way [e.g. Apocalypse] of the N.T. too) unsettled. It may
not be an exaggeration to state that the undivided Church has not solved the
issue of, and therefore not imposed upon her members, a canon of the Bible.
The whole problem in a more rigid and authoritarian way was brought to the
attention of the Orthodox only after the tension between the Catholic Church and
the Protestants. After the model of the western “confessions”, a number of omologiai
(Confessions of the Orthodox Faith) from the 17th century c.e.
onwards (Cyril, Mitrophanis, Mogila, Dositheos, etc.),
started to come out, including statements concerning the canon of the
Bible. But these statements, all coming from the period of their indirect
engagement to the polemics between Catholics and Protestants, are no longer
considered as representing the Orthodox tradition (Florovsky). In addition, some
of them incline toward the wider canon of the O.T. (49 books), whereas others
seem to support its smaller canon (39 books), depending on their Catholic or
Protestant source, or the “enemy” they wished to combat.
In
short, the Orthodox – having to respond to the burning issue
of their fellow Christians in the West – seem to have settled and
accepted as canonical:
(a) With regard to the N.T. – together with the Catholics and the Protestants
– the 27 books canon of the N.T. in their usual order. It is to be noted,
however, that the Apocalypse is still enjoying a special status, having yet to
enter into the liturgical usage. The only remaining problem is the text the
various autocephali Churches use in their liturgical services. The Greek
speaking ones use the so-called Patriarchal text, a Greek edition similar to the
textus receptus, prepared by a synodical committee in 1904, whereas the
slavic Churches the Old Slavonic translation. The Romanian Orthodox
Church use an old Romanian translation. Only the so-called diaspora (better
western Orthodox) and the new missionary (Asian and African) Churches, plus the
autonomous Finnish Orthodox Church, use modern translations, based on the
critical text. It is a hopeful sign that with the modern inter-confessional
development in the Bible Societies movement, and the ecumenical cooperation with
Catholics and Protestants, most Orthodox Churches are in the process of new
common language translations. On a university and scholarly level, of course,
the vast majority use the critical editions, despite their shortcomings.
(b) With regard to the O.T. – together with the Catholics the Protestants and
the Jews – for sure the 38 books of the tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures),
separating Esra and Nehemiah and making a total of 39. The only difference from
all the above is that the official version in the Orthodox Church is not the
Hebrew original, called the Masoretic text, but the Septuaginta.
In addition to those – together with the Catholics – the Orthodox Church,
following the tradition of the Early Church, has added 10 more books in the
canon, which are called Anagignoskomena (i.e. Readable, namely
worthy of reading). As in the Catholic Church, these are neither of secondary
authority (i.e. Deuterocanonical, a term invented in the 16th
century by Sixtus of Siena), nor Apocrypha (i.e. non canonical,
as in the Protestant Churches), a term which in the ancient Christian
tradition was given to other books (the Book of Jubilees, the Assumption of
Moses, the Martyrdom of Isaiah, etc.) whose authority was rejected by the Church.
Those are the books the Protestants normally call Pseudepigrapha. Some
Orthodox scholars, under the influence of modern scholarship and terminology,
apply to them alternately the term (wrongly in my view) Deuterocanonical.
In view, however, of their wide use in the liturgy their authority can hardly be
differentiated from the so-called canonical books of the Bible. It is also to be
noted in addition that the Orthodox Anagignoskomena do not exactly
coincide with the Deuterocanonical books (only seven) of the Catholic
Bible.
In short, (a) with regard to the text the Orthodox accept the
authenticity (some like Oikonomos ex Oikonomon even their inspiration!) of the
Greek translation of the Septuaginta; (b) with regard to the number of
the Anagignoskomena, these are the Catholic Deuterocanonical, plus
Maccabees 3 and Esdras, and dividing Baruch from the Epistle of Jeremiah. There
are some additional texts that are normally taken up in the Orthodox Bibles, and
are either accorded some value (like the Prayer of Manasses and Psalm 151) or
added as appendices (like Maccabees 4 in the Greek version alone, or (the
Deuterocanonical) Esdras 2 in the Slavonic version alone); (c) with regard to
the sequence, as well as the naming, of the 49 books these are as follows:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (=Pentateuch), Joshua, Judges,
Ruth, Vasileion (Regnorum) 1 and 2 (=Samuel 1 and 2), Vasileion (Regnorum)
3 and 4 (=Kings 1 and 2), Paralipomenon 1 and 2 (Chronicles 1 and
2), Esdras 1 (=Deuterocanonical), Esdras 2 and Nehemiah (=the
canonical Esra), Esther (together with the Deuterocanonical additions), Judith
(=Deuterocanonical), Tobit (=Deuterocanonical), [some editions (e.g. the 1928
Bratsiotis edition) follow the order cod. B and A, i.e. Tobit, Judith, Esther],
Maccabees 1 and 2 (=Deuterocanonical), and 3,Psalms (in some editions
plus Psalm 151 and the 9 Odes and the Prayer of Manasses), Job [in some editions
after the Song of Songs], Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom of
Solomon (=Deuterocanonical), Wisdom of Siracides (=Deuterocanonical), 12 Minor
Prophets (starting with Hosea and ending with Malachias), Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Baruch (=Deuterocanonical), Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah (=Deuterocanonical),
Ezekiel, Daniel (together with the Deuterocanonical additions, i.e. Susana, the
Prayer of Azariah and the Songs of the Three Youths, and the story of Bel and
Dragon), and Maccabees 4 (as an appendix in the Greek versions only, whereas the
Slavonic version, probably under western influence, contains also the 2nd
Deuterocanonical Esdras).
***
What has so far been presented is the “canon” of the Bible according to the accepted and blessed by Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities editions of the Bible. There is neither conciliar, nor official canonical or doctrinal authority attached to it as yet. Not to mention, of course, that with the so-called Oriental Orthodox Church the problem of the canon is still more complex even for the N.T., ranging from a shorter canon to a much wider one (37 books in the Ethiopian Church). It was for this reason that in the agenda of the forthcoming Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church the canon of the Bible was originally added for a final settlement. But such an event is not expected in the foreseeable future, unless a truly ecumenical Synod can ever take place. Until that time, when the entire Church of God can definitely decide about her criteria and her canonical documents, if any, the Orthodox perspective in dealing with all issues pertinent to the Bible has to bear into consideration the following parameters:
1.
The Liturgical Background.
The essence of Orthodoxy, vis-à-vis Western
Christianity in its entirety, i.e. Catholic, Anglican and Protestant, is beyond
any theological statements or affirmations: I would dare say it is a way of life;
hence the importance of its liturgical tradition. It is exactly for this reason that the
Orthodox have placed the Liturgy on such a prominent place in their theology.
The Church, according to a historic statement by the late G. Florovsky, is first
of all a worshipping community. Worship comes first, doctrine and discipline
second. The lex orandi has a
privileged priority in the life of the Christian Church. The lex
credendi depends on the devotional experience and vision of the Church.
Any doctrinal statement, therefore, concerning the Bible―and
more specifically the Canon of the Bible―should come only as
the natural consequence of the liturgical, i.e. eucharistic, communion
experience of the Christian community, of the Church.
Postmodernity has challenged the priority of the
texts over the experience,
a syndrome still dominant to modern scholarship. It has even challenged the
priority of theology over ecclesiology.
I would even dare state that it has challenged the priority of faith
over the communion experience of the Kingdom of God. The dogma, imposed after
the Enlightenment and the Reformation over all scholarly theological outlook,
that the basis of our Christian faith cannot be extracted but from a certain depositum
fidei, most notably from the
Bible (to which usually Tradition was added), can no longer be sustained; more
careful attention is now paid, and more serious reference is now given to the
eucharistic communion experience that has been responsible and produced this depositum
fidei.
Recent scholarship is moving away from the old affirmation that the
Christian community was originally initiated as a “faith
community”.
More and more scholars are now inclined to believe that
it started as a communion fellowship
gathered on certain times around a Table in order to foreshadow the Kingdom of
God. Of course this eucharistic Table was not “lived”¾at
least by all¾ as a Mystery cult, but as a foretaste of the coming Kingdom of God, a
proleptic manifestation within the tragic realities of history of an authentic
life of communion, unity, justice and equality, with no practical
differentiation (soteriological and beyond) between Jews and gentiles, slaves
and free people, men and women (cf. Gal 3:28). This was, after all, the profound
meaning of the johannine term aionios zoe (eternal
life), or the pauline one kaine ktisis
(new creation), or even St. Ignatius’ controversial expression pharmakon
athanasias (medicine of immortality).
2. The
Concept of Tradition.
In the Orthodox Church
closely connected to the liturgical background in dealing with the Bible is the
concept of tradition. Tradition (in Greek παράδοσις=paradosis), according to
modern sociological definition, is the entire set of historical facts, beliefs,
experiences, social and religious practices, and even philosophical doctrines or
aesthetic conceptions, which form an entity transmitted from one generation to
another either orally or in a written and even in artistic form. Thus, tradition
constitutes a fundamental element for the existence, coherence and advancement
of human culture in any given context.
In the wider religious sphere
– taking into
consideration that culture is in some
way connected with cult – tradition has to do more or
less with the religious practices, i.e. with the liturgy of a given religious system, rather than with the religious beliefs
that theoretically express or presuppose these practices, without of course
excluding them.
In Christianity, paradoxically, tradition was for quite an extensive period of
time confined only to the oral form of Christian faith, or more precisely the
non-biblical part of it, both written in later Christian literature or
transmitted in various ways from one generation to another. Thus, tradition has
come to be determined by the post-reformation and post-Trentine dialectic
opposition to the Bible, which has taken the oversimplified form: Bible and/or (even
versus) Tradition. Only recently, from the beginning of the ecumenical era, has
tradition acquired a new wider sense and understanding, which nevertheless has
always been the authentic understanding in the ancient Church. Tradition no
longer has a fragmented meaning connected to one only segment of Christian faith;
it refers to the whole of Christian faith: not only to the Christian doctrine
but also to worship.
It is not a coincidence that the two main references in
the N.T. of the term in the sense of “receiving”
(in Gr. parelavon) and “transmitting”
(in Gr. paredoka), as recorded by St. Paul
in his 1st epistle to Corinthians (ch.11 and 15), cover both the kerygma
(doctrine in the wider sense) and the Eucharist
(the heart of Christian worship).
Thus, the importance of tradition in Christianity
underlines a sense of a living continuity with the Church of the ancient times,
of the apostolic period. Behind it lies the same determination that kept the
unity of the two Testaments against the Gnostic (Marcion) attempt to reject the
O.T. Tradition in this sense is not
viewed as something in addition to, or over against, the Bible. Scripture and
Tradition are not treated as two different things, two distinct sources of the
Christian faith. Scripture exists within Tradition, which
although it gives a unique pre-eminence to the Bible, it also includes
further developments – of course in the form of
clarification and explication, not
of addition – of the apostolic
faith.
Of course, at first glance the very concept of
tradition seems to be a contradiction, since the Holy Spirit who guides the
Church to all truth (Jn 16:13), cannot be limited by traditional values only,
for the “pneuma blows wherever he wishes” (Jn 3:8). If we take the
trinitarian and eschatological principles of Christian faith seriously into
account, the Church as a koinonia proleptically manifesting the glory of the
coming Kingdom of God, i.e. as a movement forward, toward the eschata, a
movement of continuous renewal, can hardly be conditioned by what has been set
in the past, with the exception of course of the living continuity and of the
communion with all humanity – in fact with all the created world –
both in space and in time. The consequences of such an affirmation for
reconsidering and reassessing the notion of the canon of the Bible are
inescapable.
Thus, tradition can hardly be considered as a static
entity; it is rather a dynamic
reality, it is not a dead acceptance of the past, but
a living experience of the Holy Spirit in the present. In other words it
is a relational principle, completely
incompatible with all kinds of individualism and with the absolute and strict
sense of objectivism. In G. Florovsky' s words, “Tradition is the witness of
the Spirit; the Spirit’s unceasing revelation and preaching of the Good news...It
is not only a protective, conservative principle, but primarily the principle of
growth and renewal”.
3. The Eucharistic Criterion.
It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to state that the liturgical
– more
precisely the eucharistic
– dimension is perhaps the only safe criterion, in
ascertaining the way in which the Orthodox approach any issue pertinent to the
Bible; the way they read the Bible; the way they know, receive, and interpret
the Bible; the way they are inspired and nourished by the Bible. Those who
regularly attend the Eucharist according to the Eastern Orthodox Rite, realize
– some
perhaps are astonished, or even shocked by the fact
– that in the Orthodox
Divine Liturgy the Bible normally is not read but sung, as if the Bible readings
were designed not so much in order that the faithful understand and appropriate
the word of God, but as if they were designed to glorify an event or a person.
The event is the eschatological Kingdom, and the person the center of that
Kingdom, Christ. Perhaps, this is the reason why the Orthodox, while always
traditionally in favor of translating the Bible (and not only) into a language
people can understand (cf. the dispute in the Photian period between Rome and
Constantinople over the use in the Church’s mission to Moravia of the Cyrillic
language, i.e. a language beyond the “sacred”
three: Hebrew, Greek, Latin), they are most reluctant in introducing
common language translations of the Bible readings in their Divine Liturgy. For
in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy it is not only Jesus Christ in His first coming,
who speaks through Scripture; it is also the word of the glorified Lord in His
second coming which is supposed to be proclaimed.
Any particular issue, therefore, like the canon of the Bible, cannot be
detached from the framework of the ecclesial eucharistic community. Without
denying the legitimacy of its autonomous status within the world literature, the
historical process of development of the individual books, their historical
collection, as well as the authority attached at a quite late stage to the Bible
as a closed composition (canon), but also the famous patristic
– even
conciliar (ecumenical)
– statements, the Orthodox have always believed that the
Bible acquires its fullness only within this ecclesial eucharistic community.
All
the functions within the life of the Church pertinent to expressing the faith,
determining the truth, and authoritatively preserving it, are related to the
eucharistic identity of the Church, and therefore are the responsibility of the
eucharistic community as a whole. Even synodality, the ultimate criterion of the
truth, is mutually inter-related with the Eucharist. Last century (1848) the
Patriarchs of the East turned down Pope Pius’ IX invitation to participate in
Vatican I by saying: “after all, in our tradition neither patriarchs nor
synods have ever been able to introduce new elements, because what safeguards
our faith is the very body of the Church, i.e. the people themselves”.
Thus, they consciously underlined that the ultimate authority of the
Church lies neither on doctrinal magisteria, nor on any clerical (even
conciliar) structure, but to the entire people of God. The only limitation is that this “communal” magisterium,
the “many” in the Church’s life, cannot function in isolation from the
“one” who is imaging Christ,
i.e. the presiding in love over the
local (bishop), regional (protos or primate), or universal Church (Pope
or Patriarch). And this “one” is the only visible expression of the Church.
All that has been said so far, being the result of the “eucharistic
ecclesiology”, is neither an “excessive generality”, nor a kind of
“liturgicalism” and/or “eucharisticism”, a quasi-hermeneutical key to
solve all questions (cf. Th. Stylianopoulos’ admonition to some Orthodox
theologians). It is rather a conscious shift of the center of gravity from a
verbal/written authority to a communal and eschatological one.
4. The Ecclesial Perspective.
The Orthodox perspective, therefore, of dealing with the Bible is first
and foremost ecclesial. The “eucharistic and trinitarian” approach to all aspects of
theology is the approach most widely used by Orthodox in modern times.
Eucharistic theology gives preeminence to the local communities and
– believe
it or not – to the contextual character of Christian life. Trinitarian theology, on
the other hand, points to the fact that God is in God’s own self a life of
communion and that God’s involvement in history aims at drawing humanity and
creation in general into this communion with God’s very life. The implications
of these affirmations for the proper way of dealing with the Bible are extremely
important: the Bible is not primarily read in order to appropriate theological
truths or doctrinal convictions, or to follow
moral commands, and social or ethical norms, but in order to experience
the life of communion, that exists in God. And historically this was the way the
Bible was approached by certain groups in the Orthodox tradition (monastics,
ascetics, nyptic women and men etc.): as a means for personal spiritual
edification; as a companion to achieve holistic personal growth, to reach theosis
(deification), in other words to share the communion that exists in God. This
means that the Orthodox Church’s attitude to the reading of Scripture is personal.
The faithful consider the Bible as God' s personal letter sent specifically to
each person. It is self-evident that the hermeneutic that is based on the model
of the charismatic saint, illumined and glorified through the ascetic life
according to the eastern tradition, which has been developed quite recently (Romanidis),
is a hermeneutic that goes to a rather unacceptable extreme.
Nevertheless, the words of Scripture, while addressed to us human
beings personally, they are at the same time addressed to us as members of a
community. Book and ecclesial community, or Bible and Church, are not to be
separated. In the West the authority of the Bible was imposed or rediscovered (as
it is the case in the Protestant and Roman Catholic tradition respectively) in
order to counterbalance the excesses of their hierarchical leadership, the
authority of the institutional Church. In the East this task – not always
without problems I must confess – was entrusted to the charismatic, the
spiritual, the starets. In the West, where more emphasis was given to the
historical dimension of the Church, this solution was inevitable; in the East,
where the Orthodox theology has developed a more eschatological understanding of
the Church, it is the people, the members of the eucharistic communities, that
are the guardians of the faith. To relate again to the above mentioned
charismatic hermeneutic, one should argue with Th. Stylianopoulos that
“charismatic claims must be tested out by the communal tradition and the life
of the Church as the final criterion. Experience of God belongs to the whole
Church and not only to an elite group, which would smack of gnosticism”.
It was these considerations, among others, that makes us believe that a dynamic
encounter of the East with the West will not only enrich both approaches to the
Bible; it will also enhance and broaden the different understandings of
catholicity.
This interdependence of Church and Bible is evident in at least two ways:
(i) First, the Christians receive Scripture
through and in the Church. The Church told them what was Scripture. In the first
three centuries of Christian history a lengthy process of testing was needed in
order to distinguish between those books which were authentically “canonical” Scripture, bearing authoritative witness to the
Church’s self-understanding, and
above all to Christ's person and message; and those which were “apocryphal,”
useful perhaps for teaching, but not a normative source of doctrine. Thus, it
was the Church that had decided which books would form the Canon of the New
Testament. A book is part of Holy Scripture not because of any particular theory
about its date and authorship, but because the Church had treated it as
canonical; It is debatable whether that treatment was juridical, i.e. through a
proper conciliar process, or experiential, i.e. “eucharistic”
in the above mentioned sense.
(ii) Secondly, the Christians also
interpret the Bible through and in the Church. If it was the Church that
told them what was Scripture, equally
it was the Church that told them how
Scripture was to be understood. Going deep into the history of the liturgical
life of the Church one immediately realizes that the Bible might be read
personally, but not by isolated individuals. It was read by members of a family,
the family of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. It was 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. Orthodox Christianity believes that God
did indeed speak directly to the heart of each person during the Scripture
readings, but all need guidance, a point of reference. And this point of
reference is the Church.
Because Scripture is the word of God expressed in human language, there
is of course a place for an honest critical inquiry in dealing with the Bible.
The Orthodox Church has never officially rejected the critical inquiry of the
Bible. In theory she makes full use of biblical commentaries and of the findings
of modern research. In her attempt to grasp the deeper meaning of the word of
God she even makes use of a wide range of methodologies. In her struggle to make
it relevant to the world it is quite legitimate to even accept the contextual
approach to the Bible. Taking for granted that “every text has a context,”
which is not merely something external to the text that simply modifies it, but
constitutes an integral part of it, Orthodoxy is in fact even prepared to accept
a kind of “hermeneutics of suspicion”: certain biblical sayings,
clearly influenced by the cultural and social environment of the time of their
production (e.g. those referring to women, slavery etc.), can be legitimately
valued according to, and measured over against, the ultimate reality of the
Gospel, the inauguration of the Kingdom “on earth as it is in
heaven”
(Mt 6:10). Even an “inclusive language” can be
legitimated, as long as it does not disaffirm the fundamentals of the Christian
faith. Of course, any idea of rewriting the Bible cannot (and will not) be
accepted. These suggestions are the inevitable consequences of placing the
authority of the Bible over the eucharistic community, exactly as the concept of
“Canon within the Canon” was developed by honest Protestant scholars (cf. Käsemann)
in an attempt to set up an ultimate criterion to match with the Christian
doctrine. It is important to note that the Orthodox Church in her long tradition
has never allowed any doctrinal statement not clearly rooted in the Bible.
In short, all critical suggestions in the biblical field are legitimate
and can easily be expressed and even proposed for adoption to the Christian
community. However, all individual opinions, whether coming from members within
the Christian communities or from any expert outside them, are to be finally
submitted to the Church; not in the form of a juridical or scholarly magisterium,
but always in view of the eschatological character of the Church as a glimpse
and foretaste of the coming Kingdom. In other words in the Orthodox Church objectivity and the individual
interest are always placed at the service of the community and of the ultimate reality of God’s Kingdom. It is of fundamental importance that the Orthodox approach
the Bible, as the inspired word of God, always in a spirit of obedience, with a
sense of wonder and an attitude of listening, but never as a closed
(canonical?) issue.
5.
The Hermeneutical Concept of Theoria: Pneumatology.
The way the Orthodox interpret the Bible is
related to the perennial issue of hermeneutics and the important and
peculiar concept of theoria or theoptia; a concept that goes back,
according to most Orthodox scholars, to the Early Christian community. The words
of Jesus recorded in the Gospel tradition –
no matter whether
authentic of not – while very similar both in form and sometimes in content with those of
contemporary rabbis, were in fact very different in their profound perspective,
at least with regard to the authority of Scripture. To the contemporary Judaism
the supreme authority of every single word of the Bible was unquestionable.
There could be no question of its inspiration or authenticity. This
hermeneutical idea is clearly expressed in the tractate Sanhedrin of the
Babylonian Talmud:
“He who says ‘The Torah is not from God’, or even
if he says ‘The whole Torah is from God with the exception of this or that
verse which not God but Moses spoke from his own mouth’, shall be rooted up”
(99a).
The historical Jesus on the other hand did not hesitate
to critically re-interpret the Scriptures in a very radical way. It was not only
that he regarded the whole Bible in the light of the two great commandments (love
of God and love of neighbor), or that he established in the six antitheses of
the Sermon on the Mount a new Law; one can even argue that Jesus’ messianic
interpretation of Scripture
─ namely the fulfillment
of the prophesies in his mission
– was not novel, since
similar messianic interpretations have been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. What
is novel and pioneer, is Jesus’ revolutionary proclamation, and the early
Church's assured conviction, that the reign of God was at hand; in fact it was
inaugurated in Jesus’ own work. And this was also the main feature of the
early Christian hermeneutics: namely its christocentric character.
The question which arises is whether Jesus (and his
Church thereafter) undermined the authority of the existing at that time
Scripture by replacing in its place another authority contained in certain
written documents. At the beginning of the second century the answer was
certainly “No”.
Bishop Ignatius of Antioch although he knew some of the
N.T. books – certainly 1 Cor and other Pauline letters, probably John and possibly the
Synoptic Gospels, at least some of them
– he never appealed to
them; nor did he make extensive use of the O.T. His only authority was Jesus
Christ and his saving work and the faith that comes through him («emoi
ta archeia Christos»: to me the “charters” are Jesus Christ).
This new understanding of scriptural authority, which
began to show up in the N.T. writings, was the result of the early Christian
Pneumatology. The doctrine, of course, of the Holy Spirit in the N.T. and the
early Fathers cannot be easily reduced to a system of concepts; actually this
systematization did not happen until the 4th century c.e. However, with this
doctrine Christianity opened up new dimensions in the understanding of the
mystery of the divine revelation. Nevertheless, this new pneumatological
perspective in Patristic theology did not replace the normative christocentric
one. This new development was in fact a radical reinterpretation of
Christology through Pneumatology. By placing the Holy
Spirit to an equal status in the trinitarian dogma with the Father and the Son,
the Christian theology of the early undivided Church broke the chains of
dependence on the past authorities. The conciliar declaration of the divinity of
the Holy Spirit was undoubtedly one of the most radical considerations of the
mystery of deity – to our view certainly of equal importance with the dogmatic definition of
the homoousion of the Logos to the Father.
It is a common place that the first Christian method to
interpret the Old Testament, used by the N.T. writers was generally that of
typology. However, this method's real meaning and profound significance has been
lost or at least concealed by the conflict which arose a hundred years or so
later between the exegetical schools of Alexandria and Antioch. The typological
method apart from the affirmation of the historical reality of the biblical
revelation – a concept which was lacking from the allegorical method
– was
in fact based on the presupposition that the authority of the Law and the
Prophets was somehow limited; for the entire Old Testament looks beyond itself
for its interpretation. It was along those lines that the famous antiochean
principle of theoria was later
developed by some ecclesiastical writers. This term was especially used in
eastern hermeneutical tradition for a sense of Scripture higher or deeper than
the literal or historical meaning, based of course firmly on the latter. Its
meaning, however, was not exhausted simply on that; it had some further very
significant connotation. Acknowledging that in the Church every Christian, and
the saint in particular, possesses under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the
privilege and the opportunity of seeing (theorein) and experiencing the
truth, later Byzantine theologians developed (or presupposed) a concept of
revelation substantially different from that held in the West under the
influence of Aristotle. Because the concept of theologia in cappadocian and antiochean thinking was inseparable
from theoria (i.e. contemplation),
theology could not be
– as it was at least in high scholasticism
– a
rational deduction from “revealed”
premises, i.e. from Scripture or from the statements of an ecclesiastical
magisterium; rather it was a vision experienced by the faithful, whose
authenticity was of course to be checked against the witness of Scripture and
Tradition. True theologian in later Byzantine thinking was to a considerable
extent the one who saw and experienced the content of theology; and this
experience was considered to belong not to the intellect alone (the intellect of
course is not excluded from its perception), but to the “eyes of the Spirit”,
which place the whole human being
– intellect, emotions
and even senses – in contact with the divine existence.
According to J. Meyendorff, “this was the initial content of the debate between Gregory Palamas and
Barlaam the Calabrian, which started the theological controversies of the
fourteenth century (1337 -1340)”.
Defining, therefore, revelation as a living truth, accessible to a human
experience of God's presence in His Church without the absolute limitations of
certain scriptural documents, and in later ecclesiastical theology even of
conciliar definitions, the Orthodox pneumatology in some sense seems to reject
the idea of any canonical authority.
According to an ancient Byzantine hymn from the feast of Pentecost, still used
in the Orthodox liturgy, “the Holy Spirit is the source of all donations” (panta
horigei to pneuma to hagion).
6. The Christological
Perspective
In addition to the ecclesial perspective in dealing with the Bible, and
despite the hermeneutics of theoria and the pneumatological novelty in
Orthodoxy, the christological perspective
is also affirmed in the Orthodox Church. In a joint
statement by the Orthodox and the Anglicans, issued in a Conference held in
Moscow (1976), it was rightly stated that “the Scriptures constitute a coherent whole.” Its wholeness and coherence lies in the person of Christ. He is the
unifying thread that runs through the entirety of the Bible from the first
sentence to the last. It is Jesus who meets his people on every page. “In
Him all things hold together” (Col.1:17). Without neglecting the
analytical approach, breaking up each book into what are seen as its original
sources, the Orthodox traditionally used to pay greater attention to the way in
which these primary units had come to be joined together. The unity of the
Scripture, as well as its diversity, are equally affirmed; Its all-embracing end,
as well as its scattered beginnings, are both taken into consideration. But in
general the Orthodox prefer for the most part a "synthetic" style of
hermeneutics, seeing the Bible as an integrated whole, with Christ everywhere as
the bond of union. This christocentrism,
however, has never developed into a christomonism, which led Christian
mission early this century to a kind of “christocentric
universalism”. As I underlined above, in the Orthodox Church,
with few exceptions, Christology was always interpreted through Pneumatology.
This “trinitarian” understanding of the divine reality was what actually
prevented the Church from intolerant behavior, allowing her to embrace the
entire “oikoumene” as the one household of life.
This christological, and therefore incarnational,
perspective in dealing with Scripture ― in other word in reading,
understanding, interpreting, and of course determining the extent of, the Bible
― has given rise within the Orthodox world, to the legitimacy of a
pictorial presentation of the Bible, and at the same time to a witnessing to the
Gospel through the icons. Such a
witness to the Gospel through the icons, especially
those of the Byzantine art and technique, has been found exceptionally efficient
and effective for the dissemination of the profound meaning of the Christian
message, by stressing its transfigurative and eschatological dimension. For in
the Orthodox Church the icons are not
only the “book of the illiterate,” but also a “window to the heavens.” What the icons
actually express is not a de-materialization, but a transfiguration of the world.
For in the icons the material and
cosmic elements which surround the holy figures (divine and holy alike) are also
shown transformed and flooded by grace. The Byzantine icon in particular reveals how matter, in fact the whole of creation,
human beings and nature alike, can be transformed: not just to the original
harmony and beauty they possessed before the Fall, but to a much greater glory
they will acquire in the Kingdom to come. Although depicting worldly schemes,
the icons are not concerned with the
world we live in, but foreshadow the world to come. As in the Eucharist, so also
in the icons, the same interaction of
past, present and future is manifest, and the same anticipation by this world of
the world to come is present.
***
If any conclusion is to be drawn from the above short and very sketchy
reflection, this is in fact a questioning of the ultimate authority given to the
canon in the West.
By certainly relativizing the authority of the canon
as an issue of cardinal importance and of binding significance for the life of
the Church I do not claim to have offered the final solution to
the problem. My views, deliberately emphasizing the peculiarities of my
tradition, are to be synthesized with the widely held among Catholics
ecclesiological views, which underline a more centralized authority.
Lit.: Kallistos WARE, “How to Read the Bible,” The
Orthodox Study Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers Nashville 1992, pp. 762-770; idem.,
“Tradition”,
in (Nicolas LOSSKY
and others eds.), Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement; Georges FLOROVSKY Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View, Belmont 1972;
John MEYENDORFF,
Byzantine Theology. Historical Trends and
Doctrinal Themes, New York 1974, pp. 5ff.; Savas AGOURIDIS, The Hermeneutics of the Holy Scriptures, Athens 19791,20002
(in
Greek); Nikos NISSIOTIS,
“The Unity of Scripture and Tradition,” GOTR 11 (1965/66), pp.
183-208; Dumitru STANILOAE, “La Lecture de la Bible dans l’ Eglise Orthodoxe,” Contacts 30
No 104 (1978), pp. 349-353; John ZIZIOULAS, Being as Communion. Studies in
Personhood and the Church, SVS Press, Crestwood New York 1985; Theodore STYLIANOPOULOS, The New Testament: An Orthodox Perspective,
vol. I, HCO Press, Massachusetts 1997; John ROMANIDIS, “Critical Examination of the Applications of Theology,” in S. AGOURIDIS (ed.),
Procès-Verbaux du deuxième Congrès de Théologie Orthodoxe, Athens 1978,
pp. 413-441; Petros VASSILIADIS, Eucharist
and Witness. Orthodox Perspectives on the Unity and Witness of the Church, WCC
Publications/HCO Press Geneva/Massachusetts 1998); idem, “The Reading of the
Bible from the Orthodox Church Perspective,” Ecumenical Review 51 (1999), pp. 25-30; idem, Issues of Biblical Hermeneutics, Thessaloniki, 1985 (in Greek).