The Bible is called the written Word
of God. This does not mean that the Bible fell from heaven ready made.
Neither does this mean that God dictated the Bible word for word to men who
were merely His passive instruments. It means that God has revealed Himself
as the true and living God to His People, and that as one aspect of His
divine self-revelation God inspired His People to produce scriptures, i.e.
writings which constitute the true and genuine expressions of His Truth and
His Will for His People and for the whole world.
The words of the Bible are human
words, for indeed, all words are human. They are human words, however, which
God Himself inspired to be written in order to remain as the scriptural
witness to Himself. As human words, the words of the Bible contain all of
the marks of the men who wrote them, and of the time and the culture in
which they were written. Nevertheless, in the full integrity of their human
condition and form, the words of the Bible are truly the Very Word of God.
The Bible is truly the Word of God in
human form because its origin is not in man but in God, Who willed and
inspired its creation. In this sense, the Bible is not like any other book.
In the Bible, in and through the words of men, one finds the self-revelation
of God and can come to a true and genuine knowledge of Him and His will and
purpose for man and the world. In and through the Bible, human persons can
enter into communion with God:
"All scripture is inspired by God and
is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in
righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good
work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
It is the faith of the Orthodox Church
that the Bible, as the divinely-inspired Word of God in the words of men,
contains no formal errors or inner contradictions concerning the
relationship between God and the world. There may be incidental inaccuracies
of a non-essential character in the Bible. But the eternal spiritual and
doctrinal message of God, presented in the Bible in many different ways,
remains perfectly consistent, authentic and true.
Authorship
The Bible has many different human
authors. Some books of the Bible do not indicate in any way who wrote them.
Other books bear the names of persons to whom authorship is ascribed. In
some cases it is perfectly clear that the indicated author is in fact the
person who actually wrote the book with his own hands. In other cases it is
as clear that the author of the book had another person do the actual
writing of his work in the manner of a secretary. In still other cases it is
the Tradition of the Church, and not seldom the opinion of biblical
scholars, that the indicated author of a given book of the Bible is not the
person (or persons) who wrote it, but the person who originally inspired its
writing, whose name is then attached to it as its author.
In a number of instances the Tradition
of the Church is not clear about the authorship of certain books of the
Bible, and in many cases biblical scholars present innumerable theories
about authorship which they then debate among themselves. It is impossible
to establish the authorship of any book of the Bible by scholarship,
however, since historical and literary studies are relative by nature.
Because the Orthodox Church teaches
that the entire Bible is inspired by God Who in this sense is its one
original author, the Church Tradition considers the identity of the human
authors as incidental to the correct interpretation and proper significance
of the books of the Bible for the believing community. In no case would the
Church admit that the identity of the author determines the authenticity or
validity of a book which is viewed as part of the Bible, and under no
circumstances would it be admitted that the value or the proper
understanding and use of any book of the Bible in the Church depends on the
human writer alone.
Interpretation
The Bible is the book of sacred
writings for God's People, the Church. It was produced in the Church, by and
for the Church, under divine inspiration as an essential part of the total
reality of God's covenant relationship with His People. It is the authentic
Word of God for those who belong to God's chosen assembly of believers, to
the Israel of old and to the Church of Christ today and forever.
The Bible lives in the Church. It
comes alive in the Church and has the most profound divine meaning for those
who are members of the community which God has established, in which He
dwells, and to which, through His Word and His Spirit, He has given Himself
for participation, communion and life everlasting. Outside of the total life
and experience of the community of faith, which is the Church of Christ,
"the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15) no one can truly
understand and correctly interpret the Bible:
"First of all you must understand that
no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no
prophecy came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke
from God." (2 Peter 1:20)
Scholars of the Bible can help men to
understand its divine contents and meaning. Through their archeological,
historical and literary studies they can offer much light to the words of
the scriptures. But by themselves and by their academic work alone, no men
can produce the proper interpretation of the Bible. Only Christ, the living
and personal Word of God, Who comes from the Father and lives in His Church
through the Holy Spirit, can make God known and can give the right
understanding of the scriptural Word of God:
"In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God and the Word was God .... And the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth .... For the law was given
through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever
seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has
made Him known." (John 1:1-18)
Jesus Christ, the Word of God in human
flesh, alone makes God known. And Jesus, besides being Himself the living
incarnation of God, the living fulfillment of the law and the prophets
(Matthew 5:17), is also the One by whom the Bible is rightly interpreted:
"And (being risen from the dead) he
said to them, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe all that the
prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer
these things and enter into his glory?"
And beginning with Moses and all the
prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning
himself." (Luke 24:25-27)
"And he said 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...."
(Luke 24:44-45; also John 5:45-47)
Jesus Christ remains forever in His
Church by the Holy Spirit to open men's minds to understand the Bible. (John
14:26, 16:13) Only within Christ's Church, in the community of faith, of
grace, and of truth, can men filled with the Holy Spirit understand the
meaning and purpose of the Bible's holy words. Thus, speaking about those
who do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah, the apostle Paul contends that
when they read the Bible a "veil" hides its true meaning from them "because
only through Christ is it taken away." (2 Corinthians 3:14)
"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 (i.e. believers in Christ) 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, .... 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. In their
case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep
them from seeing the light of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of
God." (2 Corinthians 3:15 - 4:4)
In the New Testament, Christ not only
provides the correct interpretation of the Bible, He also allows the
believers themselves to be directly enlightened by the Holy Spirit and to be
themselves "the letter from Christ.... written not with ink, but with the
Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human
hearts." (2 Corinthians 3:3) Thus is fulfilled the prediction of the old
covenant that in the time of the Messiah "they all shall be taught of God"
by direct divine inspiration and instruction. (John 6:45, Isaiah 54:13,
Ezekiel 36:26, Jeremiah 31:31, Joel 2:28, Micah 4:2, et. al.) It is only
within the living Tradition of the Church under the direct inspiration of
Christ's Spirit that the proper interpretation of the Bible can be made.
Bible Origin - Authenticity of New Testament Scripture
A primary attack against divine Bible origin is that the books of
the New Testament were agreed upon (canonized) by men hundreds of
years after the books were written. Actually, the fathers of the
early Christian church reveal that most of the New Testament books
were accepted as scripture almost immediately. For instance, in 2
Peter 3:16, the writer takes for granted that Paul's letters were
already considered inspired scripture on the same level as the Old
Testament. In 1Timothy 5:18, Paul joins an Old Testament reference
and a New Testament reference and calls them both Scripture. The
need for official canonization of the New Testament scriptures only
came about because of certain heresies that were being spread
throughout the church starting in the mid to late second century.
For instance, Marcion created his own religion by only teaching from
ten of Paul's letters and certain portions of Luke. In addition, the
Gnostics, especially in Alexandria, were introducing new "secrets"
to the standard Christian doctrine, including new gospel accounts
altogether.
For the church leaders in the mid second century, the four Gospels
were baseline authority in their teachings. In about 170 AD,
Irenaeus cited 23 of the 27 New Testament books, omitting only
Philemon, James, 2 Peter and 3 John. The Muratorian fragment,
written about the same time, attests to the widespread use of all
the New Testament books except Hebrews, James, 1 Peter and 2 Peter.
However, other church fathers had already cited those omitted books
in various writings defending against Gnostic doctrines. The Codex
Barococcio from 206 AD includes 64 of the 66 books of today's Bible.
Esther and Revelation were omitted, but they had already been
declared as inspired scripture by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement,
Tertullian and the Muratorian Canon. In 230 AD, Origen declared that
all Christians acknowledged as scripture the four Gospels, Acts, the
epistles of Paul, 1 Peter, 1 John and Revelation.
By the early 300's, all of the New Testament books were being used
in the mainstream church body. In 367 AD, Athanasius formally
circulated the Easter Letter that listed all 27 books as canonical.
The Synod of Hippo (393 AD) and the third Synod of Carthage (397 AD)
also recognized these 27 books as canonical. In addition, during
this time, the highly influential church fathers, Jerome (340-420
AD) and Augustine (354-430 AD) published their lists of 27 books
completing the New Testament.
It's important to remember that the canon of the New Testament was
not the result of any pronouncement by any official of the church or
any organizational body. Rather, the canon was determined by the
authoritative use of these books right from the start by the rapidly
expanding church of the first and second centuries. The New
Testament canon was merely a process of formal recognition of
already recognized scripture, to defend against the various forms of
Gnosticism and heresy that were starting to creep throughout the
ever-expanding church.
From: Bible and Church History by
Fr. Thomas Hopko,
Dept. of Religious Education -
Orthodox Church in America, New York, 1998
