Bible is TOO LONG, NOT LONG ENOUGH!

[Astronaut]

One difficulty about being Orthodox is that the Bible is a long document, with multiple and varying images of God, and equally diverse and corresponding images of the atonement.

Unlike Western Christianity, Orthodoxy is a faith of the infinite -- God is infinitely loving, and the atonement is an infinitely beautiful act.

God. God is infinitely beautiful, according to Orthodoxy; absolutely, grandly beautiful, even as the highest soul of man counts beauty, but infinitely beyond that soul’s highest idea—with the beauty that creates beauty, not merely shows it, or itself exists beautiful.

The atonement (using Marjorie's words). The atonement is an infinitely powerful and transcendent event. That which is unapproachably good and holy embraces even that which is not good and unholy. He has assumed even our own disordered nothingness. He has swallowed up Death in Life; He has swallowed up Nothingness in His depths; He has swallowed up evil in His beauty and goodness. God has always done, is always doing his best for every man.

Too long. The Bible is too long because, besides the Orthodox vision of God, it also includes many other visions of God -- including the vision of God given by the Pharisees. Attached to this vision of God is a corresponding Western atonement theory of penal substitution. In Western Christianity, God's brutal justice is satisfied in infinitely penalizing Christ, and would otherwise be satisfied in infinitely penalizing sinners. The Bible is too long because it contains all of the fuel for heterodoxy and for finite, false religion, that any sinful brain could want. Because the Bible is too long, the Orthodox have to continually explain "why they don't believe in the Bible." It should have been better if the Bible hadn't been written at all, or had been just one verse: John 3:16 telling us that God loves us and designs to save us from "perishing" (not from being penalized).

Not long enough. The Bible is not long enough because it does not contain Orthodox theological expressions which would correct the potential error caused by the Bible being too long. If only the canon would contain Athanasius "On the Incarnation" or Clement "the Tutor," Christianity could be seen as what it is -- an infinite religion, rather than what it is in the west -- Bad News of God and the atonement which is infinitely worse than what we could have hoped or imagined. Instead of (or in addition to) Paul's confused and varying epistles explaining the meaning of the atonement, we should have had Clement and Athanasius and Basil!

Please give me your thoughts!

[Maximus]

The Bible is just right.

Mistakes about it say more about those making them than about the Bible itself.

[Marjorie]

Hey again! :wave:

The Bible's many different views written by many different people, when understood in the context of the Church, by those in the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit and grounded in the love of Christ, are not contradictory but find themselves as a tapestry by which we can begin to experience the multitudinous ways in which God appears to us.

God is so beyond our understanding that we need an almost infinite amount of metaphors in order to begin to comprehend Him. This is why the East uses so many different images to explain how Christ saved us. It's not just one view like in the West; we have many, many ways of looking at how Christ saved us because it goes so beyond words.

One Orthodox theologian, John S. Romanides, put it like this: "For the Fathers, authority is not only the Bible, but the Bible plus those glorified or divinized as the prophets and apostles. The Bible is not in itself either inspired or infallible. It becomes inspired and infallible within the communion of saints because they have the experience of divine glory described in the Bible."

And only in that way can it be understood...

And only with the *revelation* of God as the All-Holy, All-Loving, All-Merciful can we begin to approach even the most unsavory of biblical metaphors.

And the Scriptures, within the patristic context, become the essence of the patristic context. "On the Incarnation" could not have been written without Athanasius's great love for God and his connection with Church Tradition which he felt *as he read the Scriptures.* Athanasius first loved God, and submerged himself in Tradition, and then he read the Scriptures-- and it was in that that he was able to understand the mysteries which he so eloquently wrote out in that book.

That being said, I'm going to side with those who in the "Hating God" thread suggested that inquirers who are intimidated by the Bible, mostly because of being used to bad interpretations thereof, should try going to DL and praying regularly before attempting to again look at the Scriptures. :)

God bless you, my sister. :hug:

In IC XC,
Marjorie

[Rilian]

I guess to me the Bible is so wonderful because it contains the fullness of humanity. The good and bad, the tragic and triumphant. It's not an idealized account; it is an eminently real and relevant work.

Personally, I view all sacred scripture through the prism of the Gospels and in light of the glorious resurrection of Christ through which all things recorded in the pages of sacred scripture are fulfilled.

Here's an essay I like called How to Read the Bible and Why (http://www.sv-luka.org/library/howtoread_jp.htm) by Archimandrite Justin Popovich.

[Marjorie]

I guess to me the Bible is so wonderful because it contains the fullness of humanity. The good and bad, the tragic and triumphant. It's not an idealized account; it is an eminently real and relevant work.

Personally, I view all sacred scripture through the prism of the Gospels and in light of the glorious resurrection of Christ through which all things recorded in the pages of sacred scripture are fulfilled.
:amen:

In IC XC,
Marjorie

[icxn]

Jacob’s well (cf. John 4:5-15) is Scripture. The water is the spiritual knowledge found in Scripture. The depth of the well is the meaning, only to be attained with great difficulty, of the obscure sayings in Scripture. The bucket is learning gained from the written text of the word of God, which the Lord did not possess because He is the Logos Himself; and so He does not give believers the knowledge that comes from learning and study, but grants to those found worthy ever-flowing waters of wisdom that spill from the fountain of spiritual grace and never run dry. For the bucket - that is to say, learning - can only grasp a very small amount of knowledge and leaves behind all that it cannot lay hold of, however it tries. But the knowledge which is received through grace, without study, contains all the wisdom that man can attain, springing forth in different ways according to his needs. - St Maximos the Confessor

[nicodemus]

Here's an essay I like called How to Read the Bible and Why (http://www.sv-luka.org/library/howtoread_jp.htm) by Archimandrite Justin Popovich.


These days, they're calling him St. Justin Popovich. :thumbsup: :liturgy: :)