Part 2: How does the Church understand the Bible?

The following should be read aloud as a group, with each person reading one paragraph before passing on to the next person. Afterwards discussion will follow with the provided discussion questions.

But should you meet with a person not yet believing the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, “I do not believe”? For my part, “I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.”

St. Augustine of Hippo 1

We know, receive, and interpret Scripture through the Church and in the Church.

The Moscow Agreed Statement of 1976 2

Arguments about how to correctly interpret the Bible have been around as long as the Bible has. Even the first Church council, convened by the Apostle James in Jerusalem and recorded in the book of Acts, was ultimately a council about the implications of biblical interpretation for the Church’s practice (namely, if Gentile converts to Christianity were required to follow the law of Moses or not).3 Given that the Church is the community in which Scripture was written, read, and lived, it makes sense that the Church, the Body of Christ guided by the Holy Spirit, has always seen herself as the interpreter of Scripture. While trying to combat incorrect readings of Scripture in his own day, St. Irenaeus of Lyons (a second-century bishop from Gaul and spiritual grandson of the Apostle John) gave an analogy about proper interpretation of Scripture involving the stones making up a mosaic:

Such is their [the heretics’] hypothesis which neither the prophets preached, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles handed down. They boast rather loudly of knowing more about it than others do, citing it from non-Scriptural [works]; and as people would say, they attempt to braid ropes of sand. They try to adapt to their own sayings in a manner worthy of credence, either the Lord’s parables or the prophets sayings, or the apostles’ words, so that their fabrication might not appear to be without witness. They disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures and, as much as in them lies, they disjoint the members of the truth. They transfer passages and rearrange them; and, making one thing out of another, they deceive many by the badly composed fantasy of the Lord’s words that they adapt. By way of illustration, suppose someone would take the beautiful image of a king, carefully made out of precious stones by a skillful artist, and would destroy the features of the man on it and change it around and rearrange the jewels, and make the form of a dog or of a fox out of them, and that rather a bad piece of work. Suppose he would then say with determination that this is the beautiful image of the king that the skillful artist had made, and at the same time pointing to the jewels which had been beautifully fitted together by the first artist into the image of the king, but which had been badly changed by the second into the form of a dog. And suppose he would through this fanciful arrangement of the jewels deceive the inexperienced who had no idea of what the king’s picture looked like, and would persuade them that this base picture of a fox is that beautiful image of the king. In the same way these people patch together old women’s fables, and then pluck words and sayings and parables from here and there and wish to adapt these words of God to their myths…You see, my friend, the method which these men employ to deceive themselves, while they abuse the Scriptures by endeavouring to support their own system out of them.4

In short, in order to properly understand Scripture, one must understand the message and purpose of the Scriptures, just as one seeking to understand how stones form an image in a mosaic must first understand what image the artist intended to make. What is this message of Scripture one must understand? According to Irenaeus, this message is “the canon of truth,” the narrative of Christ’s incarnation, life, death, and resurrection taught by the Church and confessed by the faithful before being baptized and chrismated. This canon of truth is nothing other than the teaching of Christ and the apostles passed down in the Church until the present day:

…anyone who keeps unswervingly in himself the canon of truth received through baptism will recognize the names and sayings and parables from the Scriptures, but this blasphemous hypothesis of theirs he will not recognize. For if he recognizes the jewels, he will not accept the fox for the image of the king. He will restore each one of the passages to its proper order and, having fit it into the body of the truth, he will lay bare their fabrication and show that it is without support.

[…]

Suppose there arises a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary in that case to follow the course of tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?

To which course many nations of the barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without paper and ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the Creator of heaven and earth and all things therein, by means of Christ Jesus, the Son of God; who because of his surpassing love towards his creation, condescended to be born of the virgin, he himself uniting man through himself to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again, and having been received up in splendor, shall come in glory, the Savior of those who are saved and the Judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform the truth, and despise his Father and his advent. Those who, in the absence of written documents, have believed this faith, are barbarians so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, manner and tenor of life, they are, because of faith, very wise indeed, and they do please God ordering their conversation in all righteousness, chastity and wisdom.5

The key to interpreting the Scriptures, for the Orthodox Christian, is itself the narrative of Christ preserved and taught in the Church. This leads us to another important point: all Scripture is about Christ and intended to lead us to Christ. The Apostle Paul, writing to the church of Corinth in the mid-first century, speaks of Christ as the key to unlocking and understanding the Old Testament Scriptures:

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendor. But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.6

For the Apostle Paul and the early Church, all Scripture was about Christ and must be interpreted through the lens of Christ. The first-century Jews of his day failed to understand the Scriptures that were read in the synagogue every Sabbath precisely because they did not know Christ, to whom all Scripture points and from whom all Scripture originates. Only when one turns to Christ is their mind opened to understand the Scriptures. After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, and “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”7 When the risen Jesus appears to all his disciples later in the same chapter, he says to them:

“These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.”8

To give one example of how all Scripture is about Christ, consider the opening chapters of Genesis. Is the account to be taken as a historical account of the creation of the world and the plight of the first man and woman? Maybe it is, maybe it is not. Consider the following passage:

The Lord God said, “It is not good that the human is alone; let us make for him a helper like him.” And God further formed from the earth all the wild animals of the field and all the birds of the heavens…yet for Adam, no helper resembling him was found. So God laid a trance upon Adam and put him to sleep; and he took one of his ribs and filled up the flesh in the place of it. The Lord God built the rib that he took from Adam into a woman, and he led her to Adam. And Adam said, “Now this is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh; she will be named ‘Woman’ because she was taken from her man.” For this reason a man will leave behind his father and his mother and will cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.9

The true meaning of this passage is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. The Church understands Adam to be a foreshadowing of Christ, the true human being, who leaves behind his Father in heaven and his mother (the Virgin Mary) on earth in order to cleave to his wife, the Church, which comes out of his side in the form of blood and water as he sleeps in death on the cross.10 Whether or not the creation narrative is historical is secondary to the fact that Adam was, in the words of St. Paul, “a type of the One to come,” a foreshadowing of Christ.11

Finally, the Church interprets the old from the perspective of the new. Contrary to the interpretation of most texts, where one would read the opening chapters and then understand later chapters in light of the opening chapters, the Church does the opposite, understanding all Scripture in light of Christ’s advent, resurrection, and impending second coming. This is to say that for the Church, one does not read Genesis in order to understand the Gospels, but rather reads the Gospels in order to understand Genesis. The New Testament must be understood first in order to interpret the Old Testament precisely because the New Testament teaches us of Christ, the key to unlocking the meaning of all Scripture. This was similarly the case for Christ’s disciples, who only understood that all the Scriptures bore witness to Christ after his crucifixion and resurrection and not before it. The Gospel of John, for example, says the following about Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and his disciples’ ability to understand what was happening: “It is written, ‘Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on an ass’s colt!’ His disciples did not understand this at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that this had been written of him and had been done to him.”12

May Christ enlighten us to understand his Scriptures through the prayers of his most pure mother and all the saints!

Discussion Questions:

  1. What role do you think the Church plays in helping us understand the Bible?
  2. St. Irenaeus compared Scripture to a mosaic that reveals Christ. What does that image suggest to you?
  3. How might reading the Bible through the lens of Christ change the way we understand the Old Testament?
  4. What does it mean for you personally to read Scripture “with the Church”?

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1 St. Augustine of Hippo, “Against the Fundamental Epistle of Manicheaus,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 4. Translated by Philip Schaff.
2 The Moscow Agreed Statement of 1976. The Anglican Consultative Council.
3 Acts 15:1-35
4 St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 1.8-1.9. Translation quoted from Fr. John Behr’s The Way to Nicea and Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.
5 Ibid.
6 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:3 RSV.
7 Luke 24:27 RSV.
8 Luke 24:44-49.
9 Genesis 2:18-20, Lexham English Septuagint.
10 Cf. John 19:31-37.
11 Romans 5:14 RSV.
12 John 12:14-16 RSV.