The Bible is a scented garden,
delightful and beautiful …
Let us seek in the fountain of this garden
“a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
We shall taste a joy that will never dry up,
because the grace of the Bible garden is
inexhaustible.
~ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS, AN EXACT EXPOSITION OF THE ORTHODOX FAITH, 4. 17
REV. DR. EUGEN J. PENTIUC
The fourth-century exegete and theologian St. Gregory of Nyssa passionately urges his audience, “Let the inspired Scriptures be our umpire, and the vote of truth will be given to those whose dogmas are found to agree with the divine words” (On the Holy Trinity) And of the Godhead of the Holy Spirit). This is a powerful statement on the centrality of Scripture as an arbiter and criterion of truth of the Church’s doctrinal fabric.
Several centuries before Gregory, Papias, a “hearer” of the Apostle John, speaks rather differently: “For I did not think that the information from books would help me as much as that from a living and surviving voice” (in Eusebius, Church History 3.39). Papias’s statement is a clear testimony to the importance of the oral teaching in the transmission and interpretation of the apostolic kerygma (proclamation) throughout the centuries-the same kerygma that would eventually develop into the Church’s Holy Tradition. As Paul D. Hanson notices, “The most appropriate context for the theological interpretation of the Bible is the living community of faith, which for Christians is of course the church.” 1
How is this centrality of Scripture to be reconciled with the guidance of Holy Tradition? Unlike those post-Reformation Western theologies, which have resorted either to the binomial formula of “Scripture and Tradition” (i.e., the Roman Catholic view in the period from the Council of Trent to the Second Vatican Council) or to the plain reductionism inscribed in the formula of sola scriptura (by Scripture alone, i.e., the classical Reformation view), Eastern Orthodox theological discourse is dominated by an integrative model: “Scripture within Tradition.”
A caveat is warranted at this point: asserting the “centrality” -even “sufficiency” -of Scripture does not indicate a self-sufficiency. As Fr. Georges Florovsky writes, “We cannot assert that Scripture is self-sufficient; and this not because it is incomplete, or inexact, or has any defects, but because Scripture in its very essence does not lay claim to self-sufficiency. We can say that Scripture is a God-inspired scheme or image (eikon) of truth, but not truth itself…If we declare Scripture to be self-sufficient, we only expose it to subjective, arbitrary interpretation, thus cutting it away from its sacred source.”2
If it is true that Tradition is, in the view of more than one Orthodox theologian, the very life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, then Scripture might be imaged as the Church’s pulsating heart, the center, always radiating life and sustenance to other facets of the body, giving concrete content to the textual, aural and visual manifestations of Tradition.
For a better understanding of the Orthodox view on the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, consider the following analogy: Scripture may be likened to a textbook; Tradition may be compared to a set of explanatory handouts.
1. “Biblical Authority Reconsidered,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 11, no. 1 (January 1989): 76
2. Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972), 48.
Rev. Dr. Eugen J. Pentiuc is Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. He is a Senior Fulbright Scholar and Lilly Faculty Fellow. He has published several books and numerous articles in the areas of biblical studies and Near Eastern languages and civilizations. Fr. Pentiuc has just completed his latest book, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition, to be published by Oxford University Press.
~Praxis, “Theology Matters,” Vol. 12, Issue 1, Fall 2012
