| John Anthony McGuckin Bible THEODORE G. STYLIANOPOULOS The Bible, composed of the Old and New Testaments, is a rich and diverse library of sacred writings or scriptures derived from the Jewish and Christian traditions. “Bible” (from the Greek biblos meaning “document” or “book”) points to the authority of the Bible as the book of divine revelation. “Scripture” (Greek graphe, meaning “what is written”) signifies the actual content of the books proclaiming the authoritative message of salvation – the word of God. In a process lasting nearly four centuries, the ancient church preserved, selected, and gradually formed these sacred texts into two official lists or canons of the Old and New Testaments, respectively, a significant achievement that along with the shaping of the episcopacy and creed contributed to the growth and unity of the church. In Orthodox perspective, the Bible or Holy Scripture is the supreme record of God’s revelation and therefore the standard of the church for worship, theology, spirituality, ethics, and practice. The Bible is above all a book of God and about God – God himself being the primary author and the subject matter of the scriptures. The Bible bears testimony to who God is, what great acts of salvation God has accomplished, and what God’s revealed will for humanity is, communicated through inspired men and women “in many and various ways” (Heb. 1.1). These “ways” include words, deeds, rites, laws, visions, symbols, parables, wisdom, ethical teachings, and commandments. The overall message of the Bible is the narrative of salvation about creation, fall, covenant, prophecy, exile, redemption, and hope of final world renewal. The supreme revelation of the mystery of God is through the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, “the Lord of glory” ( 1Cor. 2.8 ), who constitutes the center of biblical revelation and marks the unity of the Old and New Testaments. However, insofar as divine revelation occurred not in a vacuum but in relationship to free, willing, thinking, and acting human beings, the Bible also reflects a human and historical side which accounts for the variety of books, authors, language, style, customs, ideas, theological perspectives, numerous discrepancies in historical details, and sometimes substantial differences in teaching, especially between the Old and New Testaments. |
| For over sacrifices either refers to works of mercy, which are preferable to sacrifices in the judgment of God, who says, I desire mercy more than sacrifices, Hosea 6:6 or if over sacrifices means in sacrifices, then these very works of mercy are the sacrifices with which God is pleased, as I remember to have stated in the tenth book of this work; and in these works the saints make a covenant with God, because they do them for the sake of the promises which are contained in His new testament or covenant. And hence, when His saints have been gathered to Him and set at His right hand in the last judgment, Christ shall say, Come, you blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat, Matthew 25:34 and so on, mentioning the good works of the good, and their eternal rewards assigned by the last sentence of the Judge. The prophet Malachi or Malachias, who is also called Angel, and is by some (for Jerome tells us that this is the opinion of the Hebrews) identified with Ezra the priest, others of whose writings have been received into the canon, predicts the last judgment, saying, Behold, He comes, says the Lord Almighty; and who shall abide the day of His entrance? . . . for I am the Lord your God, and I change not. Malachi 3:1–6 From these words it more evidently appears that some shall in the last judgment suffer some kind of purgatorial punishments; for what else can be understood by the word, Who shall abide the day of His entrance, or who shall be able to look upon Him? For He enters as a moulder " s fire, and as the herb of fullers: and He shall sit fusing and purifying as if over gold and silver: and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and pour them out like gold and silver? Similarly Isaiah says, The Lord shall wash the filthiness of the sons and daughters of Zion, and shall cleanse away the blood from their midst, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning. Isaiah 4:4 Unless perhaps we should say that they are cleansed from filthiness and in a manner clarified, when the wicked are separated from them by penal judgment, so that the elimination and damnation of the one party is the purgation of the others, because they shall henceforth live free from the contamination of such men. |
| Both of these God-pleasers—the holy apostle and evangelist John the Theologian and the first hierarch Tikhon—through many sicknesses and trials labored “in the Gospel of Christ.” The love of these disciples for their Divine Teacher proved to be stronger than fear before their enemies. They so loved the Lord that they walked the path of the Cross, ascended upon the Cross and crucified themselves and their lives. They lived not for themselves, but for Him Who died and resurrected for them. At the Cross of the Savior, co-suffering with Him was John. The Savior entrusted His Mother to his boundlessly loving heart alone, adopting him to her. To His beloved disciple the Lord entrusted His Mother for care and custody until the end of her days. At the cross appearing before the Russian Orthodox Church—the Bride of Christ on earth—St. Tikhon placed himself, accepting the podvig of the patriarchal service in Russia’s terrible troubled years. To His beloved disciple the Lord entrusted His beloved bride for care and preservation. And the times were such that everything and everyone was overwhelmed with panic about the future, when malice came alive and flourished and working people stared deadly famine in the face, and fear of looting and violence penetrated into the homes and churches. A general feeling of impending chaos and the kingdom of antichrist seized Rus’. And under the thunder of guns, under the clacking of machine guns Patriarch Tikhon was placed upon the patriarchal throne by the hand of God, to ascend to his own Golgotha and become the holy patriarch-martyr. How tearfully the new patriarch wept before the Lord for his people and for the Church of God: “…O Lord, the sons of Russia have forsaken Your covenant, destroyed Your altars, shot the sacred items in churches and kremlins, beaten Your priests…” And he pronounced the answer of the Lord sounding in his mournful heart in that difficult time, ascending the Cross: “Go and seek those, for the sake of whom the Russian land still stands and is upheld. But don’t abandon the lost sheep, doomed to perdition, to the slaughter … the lost—find, those turned away—restore, the afflicted—bandage… feed them on truth.” The Lord beheld a good shepherd. |
| Then Moses, being stealthily kept from the murderers of the infants, was brought to the royal house, God preparing to do great things by him, and was nursed and adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh (that was the name of all the kings of Egypt), and became so great a man that he – yea, rather God, who had promised this to Abraham, by him – drew that nation, so wonderfully multiplied, out of the yoke of hardest and most grievous servitude it had borne there. At first, indeed, he fled thence (we are told he fled into the land of Midian), because, in defending an Israelite, he had slain an Egyptian, and was afraid. Afterward, being divinely commissioned in the power of the Spirit of God, he overcame the magi of Pharaoh who resisted him. Then, when the Egyptians would not let God " s people go, ten memorable plagues were brought by Him upon them – the water turned into blood, the frogs and lice, the flies, the death of the cattle, the boils, the hail, the locusts, the darkness, the death of the first-born. At last the Egyptians were destroyed in the Red Sea while pursuing the Israelites, whom they had let go when at length they were broken by so many great plagues. The divided sea made a way for the Israelites who were departing, but, returning on itself, it overwhelmed their pursuers with its waves. Then for forty years the people of God went through the desert, under the leadership of Moses, when the tabernacle of testimony was dedicated, in which God was worshipped by sacrifices prophetic of things to come, and that was after the law had been very terribly given in the mount, for its divinity was most plainly attested by wonderful signs and voices. This took place soon after the exodus from Egypt, when the people had entered the desert, on the fiftieth day after the passover was celebrated by the offering up of a lamb, which is so completely a type of Christ, foretelling that through His sacrificial passion He should go from this world to the Father (for pascha in, the Hebrew tongue means transit), that when the new covenant was revealed, after Christ our passover was offered up, the Holy Spirit came from heaven on the fiftieth day; and He is called in the gospel the Finger of God, because He recalls to our remembrance the things done before by way of types, and because the tables of that law are said to have been written by the finger of God. |
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| A conscious violation of God’s commandments leads moral beings (angels and humans) to moral degeneration, spiritual bondage, suffering and even to complete social destruction. Thus, for example, even before God created our visible world, a great tragedy occurred among the angels when one of them, the proud Lucifer, rebelled against his Creator and incited other angels to disobedience. Then many angels left their heavenly abodes to establish their own kingdom. After this Lucifer became known as Satan and his angels demons, and their kingdom, now called hell, became a place of eternal darkness and suffering. Another tragedy occurred in the life of mankind when our ancestors Adam and Eve violated God’s commandment regarding the tree of knowledge. Because of their transgression, human nature became sinful, and the life of their descendants became filled with crime, suffering and misfortune. Catastrophes of a lesser degree belong to the deluge during Noah’s time, the devastation of the perverted cities of Sodom and Gomorra, the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, and the fall of many ancient empires. Historians strive to find external causes which contributed to these calamities, but the Bible reveals to us that the ultimate cause was in the moral degradation of the people. Comparing further the laws of nature with the commandments of God, it must be said that the former are temporary and conditional because they are bound to this transient physical world. Moral laws, on the other hand, are eternal because they reflect the perfection of the Creator, who is eternal and unchanging. In what follows we shall briefly narrate the history of the Ten commandments, comment on their significance and explain their meaning in the light of New Testament teaching. Historical Circumstances of the Ten Commandments The reception of the Ten commandments is one of the most significant events of the Old Testament. With this event is connected the very formation of the Jewish nation and the beginning of the covenant with God that ultimately led to the creation of the New Testament. Before the reception of the Ten commandments there lived in Egypt an obscure and illiterate Semitic tribe, enslaved to build cities and monuments for the pharaohs; after it there arose a great nation called upon to serve God and to spread among other nations the true faith in Him and salvation in His Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ. |
| Leaving aside the unique claims made by the Ethiopian kings and their Church, which follows the proscriptions of the Mosaic Law more closely than any other Christian communion, the concept of Davidic kingship is one not limited to mere biological descent from King David (however fascinating that possibility is to contemplate), but one of covenantal kingship in which God anoints and consecrates the king and/or queen as His servant(s) who carry out and bear with His grace the burden of the “great service” of governing His people (see the above coronation oath of Russian monarchs). Davidic kingship, by necessity, is a royal lineage or authority which resides only with the people of Israel. Who are the people of Israel today? By this term, I do not mean Israel the geographical spot on a map (which the Romans called Palestina ) or Israel the modern Jewish political state established in 1948. Both Israel on the map and Israel the State are not the ontological entity of Israel, the people of God, which, since Pentecost and the coming down of the Holy Spirit, is the Orthodox Church, the “New Israel” of the New Covenant. Stefano Torelli’s 1777 portrait of the coronation of Catherine II, Tretiakov Gallery. Because the Church alone, in heaven and on earth, is the full dwelling place and abode of the Holy Spirit, which blesses and consecrates all things and raises up the human race to the heavenly, in the Church alone rests the ability and authority to bless and consecrate kings and queens to God’s service. This is why, from the first Christian Roman emperors of the fourth century (on through the later Eastern Roman or Byzantine emperors ) to the ancient kings and queens of England and France, to the Orthodox emperors and empresses of Russia , Christian kingdoms uniformly understood their monarchs and consorts to be first and foremost God’s anointed servants, endowed by the Church at their coronations with the charism or grace of the Church’s blessing of their “great service”. The Church always understood monarchs’ lives—however grave their individual shortcomings or crimes might be—to have been solemnly consecrated to the Lord’s service from their coronation and anointing, and dedicated to the defense, good ordering, and stewardship of His people. |
| THEIR CONVERSION TO ORTHODOXY DID not mean that Gillquist and the Evangelical Orthodox Church (EOC) rejected everything from their parachurch and EOC days. George Liacopulos noted that the evangelistic vision of the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission (AEOM) (the group formed from the EOC leaders» mass conversion) in the Antiochian Orthodox Church demonstrated that «a conscious decision has been made to reappropriate some aspects of Evangelical praxis within an Orthodox framework.» 401 Daniel J. Lehmann highlighted the presence of an Antiochian Orthodox mission at Wheaton College. 402 In his article, he quoted Peter Gillquist as having told him: We " ll use the same low-pressure, aggressive evangelism approach: knock on doors, make phone calls, give witness to students. All of us have a sense of territorial imperative. St. Paul had it in bringing the Christian faith to Israel. Our fathers were evangelicals, and our desire is to bring the fullness of faith we have found in the church to our roots. 403 As Lehmann implied, evangelical Christians in Wheaton were about to get a taste of their own medicine, Orthodox style. Gillquist consciously brought his evangelical fervor with him during his quest for the New Testament Church: «The true evangelical never sees this commission as reduced to preaching and witnessing alone, but presses on to baptism and the teaching of the holy faith as well, to the building of the Church.» 404 This same sense of mission had been present earlier when Gillquist " s group shifted from the New Covenant Apostolic Order (NCAO) to the EOC. «Our name is aptly descriptive. We are evangelical, ardent tellers forth of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. We are orthodox, insisting that our doctrine square with that biblical faith of the historic Church… And we most assuredly are Church!» 405 By having found the church of Christ in the Orthodox tradition, Gillquist had placed his concern for evangelism within the context of tradition. The evangelical fervor remained as the EOC became the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission (AEOM). «Phase I had to do with the Orthodox immigrants coming to these shores... Now it " s time to break through the national barriers and spread this Old World Church throughout the New World. That " s Phase II.» 406 Not only did Gillquist speak of a «Phase II» for Orthodoxy in North America, his Becoming Orthodox served an implicit evangelistic goal as well. Far from simply recounting the spiritual journey of a group of evangelical Christians into the Antiochian Orthodox Church, Gillquist devoted one-third of the book " s contents to apologetics, providing answers to typical Protestant objections against Orthodox Christianity 407 |
| The word of God was revealed by divine condescension (synkatabasis) to human beings who, although inspired, wrote at different times, changing cultures, and by their own degree of understanding and literary skills. The paradox of the divine and human aspects of the Bible is to some extent comparable to the mystery of the incarnation itself, the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ. Both aspects of the Bible, the divine and the human, must be taken seriously in working out a balanced dynamic view of divine revelation and of the inspiration of the Bible, in order to pass clear of the Scylla of fundamentalism and the Charybdis of historicism. By its origins and character, the Bible is also a book of the church. The biblical message or word of God is addressed to responsive human beings and summons them to a covenant relationship and personal communion with God. Before the writing of texts, God’s revelation byword and deed was received by elect persons – leaders, priests, prophets, apostles, and others – who proclaimed God’s message to a sustained community of faith, first Israel and then also the church. It was within the ongoing life of this community of faith that the ancient oral traditions and new divine interventions were celebrated, preserved, and eventually committed to writing. The community of faith was always the living and discerning context of the proclamation, reception, interpretation, transmission, and application of divine revelation in both its oral and written forms. Therefore, an organic bond exists between the church and its Bible because the community of faith, itself a result of divine initiative, is an integral part of God’s revelation and stands behind the entire Bible which is shaped, transmitted, and utilized in various ways over the millennia by the church. The Orthodox Church holds to the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament in its wider canon as the authoritative text. The church also follows closely the presuppositions and perspectives of the church fathers in interpretation pertaining to the entire Bible. |
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