CHAPTER 2.
The Holy Bible and traditions
This doubting of the authority of the Church by Protestants is entirely unprecedented. But equally arbitrary is the acknowledging of the absolute and self-existent value of the Holy Bible. These unprecedented arbitrary acts not only led to simple “medical paradoxes” as the one mentioned above, but literally to “teratogenesis” (births of monsters)! Monstrosities, which have to date been created by about 23.000 protestant groups.
The more that protestants do not want to look for the correct key that unlocks the Holy Bible, the more they will continue to compromise it with their subjective and arbitrary interpretations.
As Schaeffer says, The Church never saw itself as a chaos of spiritual individualism, much less as a whirlpool of 23.000 confessions squabbling amongst themselves for their vital territory, each armed with its own subjective interpretation of the Scriptures and its own, self-discovered traditions.
And the former protestant rightly asks himself: What is the difference between the phrase: ‘today the Holy Spirit told me to tell you’ and the phrase: ‘in the name of the Constitution of the United States, I order you to wash the dishes!’” Both of them originate from the arbitrary action of subjectively interpreting a tradition (of a text), cut off from the source that gave birth to -and safeguards- it.
But what can one expect from the spiritual offspring of Luther, who initially, during his University lectures on the interpretation of the Epistle to Romans, acknowledged the interpretational authority of the Latin Church, then was taken by “storm” (Storm was the name of the lady he married) and afterwards released the winds of Aeolus, by supporting the following: “When a person becomes personally involved with Christ, he can substitute not only the hierarchy of the Church, but that very Church itself. As regards the faith, every Christian is -unto himself- both pope and Church!” (These are exactly Luther’s words, as appearing in the German edition of his works, volume 5, page 407).
Thus, we frequently hear Protestants insisting that: “The Church lives in my heart... It is the faith that I have inside me... I carry the Church inside me!”
This is the sorry state that the war cry of “Sola Scriptura” (Lat.=only the Bible) led them into, which, according to Schaeffer is nothing more that the first line of the protestant song: “I did it my way” (which –loosely translated- implies: “this is how I believe, because that’s how I like it!”). And this orthodox American concludes that the revolution that started with the war cry “Down with bishops! Only the Bible!” ended with the acknowledgement that: the Bible, outside the boundaries of Holy Tradition, Divine Liturgy, Sacramental life and prayer, ‘signifies’ whatever each person wants it to signify.
Schaeffer says that such a usage of the Scriptures opens the door to the ‘theology of demons’”, as Evagrios of Pontus had said. This kind of Bible study, devoid of any interest in history, worship and Church interpretation, demotes it to a concoction, no different to the astrologers’ guidance that is published daily in newspapers. This is the kind of astrological content that they attribute to the Scripture: they do not regard it as the book that speaks of the One truth, but more like a kind of game of fortune, which contains personal and magical messages.
Schaeffer continues to say that the motive behind this astrological perception of ‘bible study’ and this kind of accompanying ‘prayer’ is the same one that leads tens of thousands of people to psychics and fortune-tellers. This is a complete privatization of religious belief. It just may be the final blow to the assertions of Christian historicity.Modern Protestantism rendered the text of the Bible incomprehensible if removed from personal emotional reaction. Thus, the circle of subjectiveness was completed: The faith has now become personalized, in a “rebirth experience”. The Church “lives inside our hearts”. The Sacraments are “only symbols”. After all, the “message” of the Bible proves to be a message that can only be “heard” inside certain irresponsible people, to whom mystic voices “reveal” things that no-one else can hear.
So, where did these contemporary, splintered Protestants – especially the Pentecostals - find the outspokenness to deride the Orthodox Church about pursuing human traditions that oppose the Holy Bible and Apostolic teaching? When will they understand that which another Orthodox converted Protestant – the American father Gregory Rogers – understood, i.e., that the question is not if I am a supporter or an opponent of tradition or traditions, but rather, which tradition I should follow! (Coming Home, page 23-35)
a. Father Gregory belonged to a protestant sect, which had its roots in the Born-Again Movement of Alexander Campbell. “Suddenly”, he says, he realized that he, the anti-traditional, was actually the follower of a human, subjective tradition: the tradition of Campbell.”
Rogers’ springboard for exiting the chaos of protestant subjectivism and his subsequent treading on the guiding ground of the historical Church, was the Canon of Saint Vicentius of Leirinos, which says: “Faith is that which is believed in every place, at all times and by everyone”. This canon, albeit characterized by Florovsky as “inadequate, for fully defining the delivered Faith”, was nevertheless enough to turn the eyes of the former Protestant to the texts of the Fathers and the Minutes of the Ecumenical Councils (Synods).
b. Another -also American- father John Pro, a Baptist pastor for 35 years, found his way to the historical Church by reading more carefully the 13th chapter of the Epistle to Hebrews and especially the passage: “Commemorate your priors, who had spoken the word of God, whose ….. faith you should emulate”, and the passage: “Be convinced by your priors and subject yourself….” Which turned his eyes towards the historical hierarchy of the Church. It was thus, that he began to search for his prior, in other words his bishop, through the very Apostolic Father, saint Ignatius the God-bearer, as his guide. The most touching part is when he bade the Baptists farewell with a rousing sermon titled: “The Holy Bible, the way we Baptists don’t like to hear it!”. At the end of the sermon, he left the room….. almost through the window! (Coming Home, pages 95-103).
c. I should finish my reference to converted brethren with – again an American - Peter Gillquist, who, amongst the other “arousals” that awakened him, also mentions the passage from the 2nd chapter of the Epistle II to Thessalonians: “My brothers, stand fast and keep the traditions that you were taught either by word or by an epistle of ours”.
It was there, that father Peter noticed that Apostolic Succession was not handed down only in writing, but also by word of mouth. (Peter Gillquist, Becoming Orthodox, pages 61- 75). He thence began to look for the historical carrier of that word.
Naturally, he didn’t find any organized Information Bank with tapes of the Apostles’ sermons! He did however discover that the Church (it is not forbidden to also keep it in our hearts, like everything else that we love) also had a historical dimension; and that this was the One, Apostolic Church, through which the Holy Spirit expresses Himself.
Of everything that the aforementioned Orthodox converted Protestants confess, they reveal that the chief cause that led Protestantism to the arbitrary subjective interpretation of the Scriptures was their misconstrued perception regarding the divine inspiration behind the sacred texts of the Holy Bible. They believe that divine inspiration is a random action of the Holy Spirit, by which the sacred authors were able to write the canonic books, so that they would comprise the unerring guides of the ensuing Church. The extremity of this viewpoint was that these texts were dictated to the authors by the Holy Spirit, hence they are divinely inspired, word for word!
In this way, they have equated the Holy Bible to a revelation of God. Inge was therefore justified when accusing them that “their Creed is essentially a return to the Gospel, with the spirit of the Koran!”
Father John Romanides straightforwardly (uprightly stating the truth) says that this idea (of equating the Holy Bible to the Revelation) is “not only ridiculous from a Patristic point of view, but also a genuine heresy. The Scripture is not a revelation, but a word that speaks of the revelation”. And father John concludes with a paragraph that puts everything into its proper perspective:
“For the Fathers, the Bible is not the sole authority; it is the Bible, together with all that is deific, i.e., the prophets, the apostles, the saints – in other words, whatever is linked to the tradition of the Pentecost, by which the Holy Spirit sanctifies the selected ones and through them, illuminates those to be illuminated and cleanses those being catechized. The Bible -per se- is neither inspired by God, nor infallible. It becomes divinely inspired and infallible within the community of saints, who possess the experience of unspoken divine glory that is described in the Bible, but is not transmitted through the Bible. To those outside of the living tradition of theory (the sighting, the epiphany of God), to those who are outside of the Church, the Bible remains a closed book, which does not unlock its mysteries as long as the key of theory is missing, and that key is found only in the hands of those who behold the body of Christ” (Charisteria Melitonos, page 498).
File created: 10-9-2005.
Last update: 10-9-2005.