My friend Jason Zahariades is exploring Eastern Orthodoxy. He’s got a lot of great posts on his blog, and a recent post challenges equality in interpretation of the Scriptures. He quotes Fr. Stephen,
“Literalism is a false means of interpretation (hermenuetic) and is a vain attempt to democratize the Holy writings. If they can be read on a literal level, then everyone has equal access to them and everybody has equal authority to interpret them. Thus certain forms of Protestantism, caught up in the various modern theories of the Reformation, sought to do to the Scriptures what many sought to do with their governments. Kill the princes! Kill the priests! Everyone can be his own king, his own priest. Smash the images and any claim to authority. Of course these extreme forms always failed quickly, to be replaced by some version of moderation.
“Thus the Scriptures are not purely democratic - some interpreters are more equal than others.”
This touches on an issue for me, which is that all of our understanding is based on experience. All of our understanding about anythying is based on our experience. God speaks to us through the Scriptures, but it is not in a vacuum.
Justin Baeder makes this observation and shows how difficult it is to balance our own wants and desires with understanding the Bible in his post, Armchair Theology vs. Compromised Theology.
For example, Jesus criticized the man in his parable who tore down his barns to build bigger ones. If I move from an apartment to a house, or buy a nicer car, you could say I did the same thing. One you’ve done something, you tend to rationalize it, particularly if you benefit from it and enjoy it.
Justin surmises,
I say this to point out that we can’t depend entirely on ourselves to judge our own actions, and we can’t just judge others and expect our judgment to be fair. We need to make these determinations in community.
I’ve felt for quite awhile that our understanding of Scripture must be lived out with others striving to follow Christ. Jason brings up a good point in the comments of his post,
Many in the emerging church have argued for the local faith-community as the center of theological reflection and life. But my experiences over the past several years have left me feeling disconnected from anything larger or historical. I feel my attempts have contributed to splintering further Christ’s Body. In many ways, it’s simply been hyper-individualism in a small group form.
Alan, while I am wrestling with some of the Orthodox Church’s claims, your comment raises the question for me about the practical nature of living and experiencing the Bible’s content. If the Scriptures are the Church’s Scriptures, then experiencing and living the Scriptures must be the Church’s reality as a community, not as individuals. The more I think about it, while there is definitely a personal (not necessarily an individual) aspect of living Scripture, it must be in the greater context of the Church’s reality with Scripture. And this has to be more than just a local church’s or denomination’s reading, studying and interpretation of Scripture. And yet, the idea of the Church universal is too vague. The Church universal is too fractured to provide any real context for life in the Scritpures.
On the one hand, I see the need for a greater body of believers for being the community of understanding. Small groups are still easily swayed by shared interests which can jade them in their understanding of the Scriptures.
But that isn’t to say that large groups do not share the same flaw. For me, it is the willingness to learn from the interpretations of those who are not like us that help us better understand the Scriptures. So embracing a large, historical church for the sake of Biblical understanding could discount other communities. Unless the Church honestly should have always existed as the institutional structures we see in Eastern Orthodoxy, we should not expect to find a more perfect understanding by only looking at one segment of the Church.
There are aspects to the Scriptures, especially as it applies to living day to day in the Kingdom of God, which I think are best learned in small groups, while deeper theological questions are best understood within the context of the varying interpretations of the Church universal.
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Good thoughts, Alan. I especially like this:
“For me, it is the willingness to learn from the interpretations of those who are not like us that help us better understand the Scriptures.”
I would add a “layer,” for lack of a better word, to your description. I believe some biblical understanding will be drawn out in the context of a one-on-one or one-on-two relationship.
The fullness of an idea may fleshed by those of varying opinions. The day to day applicability may discussed in a small group. The actual practice and accountability to biblical principles, I believe, is best worked out in the smallest and usually closest of relationships.
tk
December 31st, 2007