St. Tikhom du Zadonsk (1724-1783) wrote: "If an earthly king, our emperor  should write you a letter, will not you read it with joy? Of course with great joy, care and attention". What will be our attitude towards the letter that was sent by  God Himself? You have been sent a letter, not by some earthly emperor, but by the King of Heaven. However, almost you despise such a gift, a priceless treasure". To open and read this letter, says St. Tokhon, means getting in a personal conversation face to face with the living God. "Every time I read the Gospel, Christ Himself is speaking to you. And as you read, you are in prayer and in conversation with him".

    Exactly this is our Orthodox attitude towards the reading of Scripture. I need to see the Bible as God's personal letter addressed specifically to me. The words are not meant only for others who lived far away and long ago, but they are written especially for me and aimed directly at me, here and now. Every time we open the Bible, we enter into a creative dialogue with the Savior: "Speak, for your servant is listening", we respond to God (1Sam 3:10), "Here I am" (Is 6:8).

   Two centuries after San Yikhon, in the Conference held in Moscow in 1976 between the Orthodox and the Anglicans, the approach to Scripture is expressed in different, but equally valid terms. The Joint Declaration signed by delegates from both traditions, form an excellent summary of the Orthodox point of view. Combining the words of St. Tikhon and the Moscow Declaration, we can distinguish the four characteristics that mark the orthodox "scriptural mind": the reading of the Scriptures is obedient, eclesial, Christ-centered, personal.

 

Reading the Bible with Obedience

First of all we consider the Scriptures as inspired by God and we approach them in a spirit of obedience. Divinely inspired, the Bible has a fundamental unity, a coherence value: the same Spirit speaks in every page. We refer to it not in the plural: "the books," but we call the Bible "the book" in the singular. This is a book of the same general message: a history and at the same time single composite, from Genesis to Revelation.

    The Bible is also expressed in a human way. It is an entire library of distinct writings, compounds at different times by different people in widely different situations and each book reflects the era in which it was written and the particular point of view. We find God speaking "many times and in many ways" (Heb 1:1). God did not abrogate our individuality, but exalts it. The divine grace cooperates with human freedom: we are "collaborators," cooperators with God (1 Cor 3:9). The author of each book not only records a message, but he helps with his gifts. Alongside the human, however, we must always consider the divine aspect. What we hear in the Scriptures are not merely human words, marked by a greater or lesser skill and perception, but the eternal, uncreated Word of God himself: the Word of God who "comes out of silence" to use the words of Saint Ignatius of Antioch. We approach the Bible, therefore, not with a position of mere curiosity, or for historical information, but with a specific question: "How can I be saved?".

The sense of wonder and the listening attitude

    The obeyed receptivity to the Word of God is primarily about two things: to experience a sense of wonder and to have an attitude of listening. The wonder is easily extinguished. Often, reading the Bible, we realize that it has become familiar too. Hence the need to reread the Bible with awe and wonder, especially with new eyes, to see the miracle that these  pages propose to us. Plato rightly remarked: "The beginning of truth is the wonder at things."
If obedience means wonder, it also means listening. This is the meaning of the word "to obey" in Greek and Latin: to hear. However, the most part of us are more inclined to talk than to listen. If we want to acquire a "scriptural mind", one of the first requirements is to stop talking and to start listening. When we enter into a Byzantine church, in the apse we see the figure of the Mother of God with her hands raised to heaven: the ancient scriptural way of praying used by many people today. That should be our attitude toward the Scriptures: openness and careful receptivity, with our hands outstretched toward the sky.

    Reading the Bible we are called to imitate the Virgin Mary, the one who so supreme listens to. To the Annunciation, after listening to the angel, she gives her obedient response: "Be it done unto me according to thy word" (Lk 1:38). If she had not first heard the Word of God, receiving spiritually in her heart, she could never accept the Word of life in her womb.
The receptive listening continues to be the attitude of the Virgin throughout her life, as recorded in the Gospels. At the birth of Christ, after the adoration of the shepherds: "Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Lk 2:19). After the visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve years old: "His mother kept all these things in her heart" (Lk 2:51). The vital importance of listening is also shown in the last words spoken by her at the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee. Mary said to the servants, and to all of us: "Do whatever he tells you" (Jn 2:5). In all this, the Virgin is a mirror and a living symbol of the Biblical Christian. Listening to the Word of God, as we are called to meditate, to keep in our heart, to do what the Son says.

Understanding the Bible through the Church

   As the Moscow Conference states: "We know, receive and interpret the Scripture through the Church and in the Church". Our approach to the Bible is not only obedient but also ecclesial. The words of the Scripture are addressed to us as a person and at the same time as members of a community. The Book and the Church should not be separated. The interdependence of Church and Bible is evident in two ways.

   First, we receive the Scriptures through the Church and in the Church. The Church tells us what is part of the Scripture. In the first three centuries of Christian history, after a long process, it has come to establish what were the "canonical" and the "spurious” Scriptures, the latter perhaps useful for teaching, but not as a normative source of doctrine.

  Second, we interpret the Scriptures through the Church and in the Church. The Church tells us how the Scripture should be understood. To the Ethiopian who was reading the Old Testament in his chariot, Philip the Apostle asked: "Do you understand what you are reading?". "And as I could” replied "if someone guides me?" (Acts 8.30 to 31).

   His difficulty is also ours. The words of the Scripture can not be explained by only. The Bible always has an underlying theme of beautiful simplicity, but when it is studied in detail can be a difficult book. Indeed, God speaks directly to the heart of each of us as we read the Bible, but we also need a guide. And our guide is the Church. We can use our personal understanding, assisted by the Spirit; we can use biblical commentaries and the discoveries of modern research, but we must submit individual opinions - our or of scholars – to the trial of the Church.

   We read the Bible in a personal way, but not as isolated individuals, but in communion with all the other members of the Body of Christ spread throughout the world and all generations. The decisive criterion for understanding the meaning of the Scriptures is the "mind of the Church." To discover "this mind" we must first know how the Scriptures are used in worship/cult. In particular, how you choose to read passages from the Bible in different feasts. A second step is to consult the writings of the Church’s Fathers, especially St. John the Chrysostom, and how they analyze and apply to the text of the Scripture. Our ecclesial way to read the Bible becomes so liturgical and patristic.

   How to develop this way of reading the Scripture in the Bible study groups, within our parishes? A person can be given the task to notice when a particular step is used for a holiday or for the memory of a saint, and the group can then try and find out why that passage was chosen. Research tasks can be assigned to others among the Fathers. We can initially be disappointed: the Fathers think and speak in a way often different from ours. But there is "gold" in the patristic texts: we need patience and imagination to find out.

Christ, the heart of the Bible

    Third the reading of the Scriptures is Christ-centered. In the person of Christ we find the unifying feature running through the entire Bible, from first to last sentence. Jesus meets with us on every page. It all makes sense because of him. "All the things exist in him" (Col 1:17).
        Much research on the Scriptures by modern Western scholars have adopted an analytical approach, breaking down each book in what are seen as its original sources. The bonds of connection are dissolved, and the Bible is reduced to a series of isolated units. Recently there has been a reaction to this approach, and biblical critics in the West have given more attention to the way in which the primary units were joined together.

    As Orthodox, we can certainly be favorable to this. We need to see the unity of the Scripture as well as diversity, the overall cohesion of the end as well as dispersion at the beginning. Most of the Orthodoxy prefers a style of interpretation "synthetic" on the analytical, as she sees the Bible as an integrated whole, and Christ, everywhere, as his bond of the union.
Interpreting the Old Testament in the light of the New, and the New in light of the Old -as the lectionary of the Church encourages us to do-  we discover that all Scripture finds the point of convergence in the Savior. In this respect, the words of Father Alexander Schmemann are illuminating, "A Christian is one who, looking everywhere, finds Christ and rejoices in him." This is particularly true of the Christian Biblical. Wherever you look, on every page, Christ is everywhere.

The Bible as a personal reading

    According to Saint Mark the Monk ("Mark the Ascetic" the fifth / sixth century): "He who is humble in his thoughts and active in spiritual work, when reading the Scriptures, will apply everything to himself and not his neighbor”. We must look at all the Scriptures for a personal application. Our question is simply: "What is this page?" But:  "What does it mean for me?". As St. Tikhon insists, Christ Himself is speaking to you. The Scriptures are a direct dialogue, intimate between me and the Savior. Christ turns to me and my heart responds. This is the fourth feature in our reading of the Bible.

   I have to read the narratives of the Scriptures as part of my personal history. The description of Adam's fall, i.e., is an account of something that falls within my own experience. Who is Adam? His name means simply "man", "human": I'm Adam. God asks me: "Where are you?" (Gen 3:9). We often ask, "Where is God?". But the real question is that God puts to Adam that is in us, "Where are you?" Who is Cain, the murderess of his brother? It's me. The challenge of God: "Where is your brother Abel?" (Gen 4:9), is given to Cain in all of us.

   There are three steps to be taken in reading the Saint Scriptures. First you need to reflect on the fact that is sacred history: the history of the world from the Creation, the story of God's chosen people, the history of God Incarnated in Palestine, the history of the "great works" (Acts 2:11) after Pentecost.

   So, we observe the uniqueness of the sacred history. In the Bible we find that God intervenes in specific times and in particular places and enters into dialogue with Abraham, Moses and David, Rebecca and Ruth, Isaiah and the prophets. God Incarnated in a particular corner of the earth, at a particular time and a special Mother. We must consider this special nature as a blessing.

   This specificity of the Bible is a vital element in the Orthodox "scriptural mind". If we really love the Bible, we will love the genealogies and the details in the dating and in geography. One way to approach the Scriptures is to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. To walk where Christ walked. To get off at the Dead Sea, to climb to the Mount of Temptation observe the wastelands, to feel what Christ must have felt during his forty days of solitude in the desert. To drink from the well at which Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman. To go at night to the Garden of Gethsemane, to sit in the dark under the ancient olive trees, and watching through the valley the lights of the city.

   This fully enjoy the characteristic “flavor” of the historical environment, we need to recall it in the daily reading of the Scripture.

 
   The third step is to apply directly to ourselves. In other words we say to ourselves: "These are not just distant places, events of the distant past, belong to my encounter with the Lord. The stories include me".

   In this personal reading of the Bible are not simply detached observers and targets, which absorb information and take note of the facts. The Bible is not a literary work or a collection of historical documents, but a sacred book, addressed to believers, reading in faith and love.

Reading the Scriptures according to the four listed properties: with obedience, as members of the Church, finding Christ everywhere, seeing each page as a personal story- we will receive something of the strength and the healing found in the Bible.

   At the peak of his spiritual crisis, while he was fighting with himself in a garden, Augustine heard a voice saying, "Take and read”. He took the Bible and read, and what he read changed his life. We, too, take and we read: "Lamp to my feet Your word is a light to my path" (Ps 118 [119], 105).

Kallistos Ware
Metropolitan Bishop of Diokleia