Authority From Which We Speak
(An excerpt from The Ikon of God)
The first and most basic element any reader would want to examine when reading non-fiction is authority: how does the reader know that what the writer is saying is true? What does the author base his information on? Essentially, how do you know that you can trust us and what we say? Primarily, our authority starts and ends with the Bible. The first and foremost presupposition is that the Bible is understood to be the inspired, infallible Word of God that does not err. Even if the student does not have all of the theological nuances of what that means, he or she must understand that we are using the Bible as the authority for the way we should think about, implement, and live out a core understanding of Man and his relationship to God. Simply stated, it is through the Bible that we are able to peer beyond the veil of human limitation into God’s wondrous plans. Answers to all of the major questions of life are found in the Bible.
While mainly referring to Scripture as our guide for our study, we also will be referring to theological commentators from a broad spectrum of the Church. Interpretations will be quoted from some relatively new Christian authors and some very ancient writers, theologians, and Church Fathers. The wealth and volume of revelation contained in Christendom is immense and it spans many generations and comes from Christians of all walks of life.
Our study can be described as your grandmother’s stew. Many things go into that stew, both vegetables and meat. The flavors of potatoes, carrots, beef, and many seasonings, all intermingle when cooked over time.. Here, you will find the Protestant with the Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian and the Charismatic, the new with the old. We will not be camping out in a particular denominational perspective but will be taking from a broad treasure and throwing it into one pot, simmering it until the common flavor exudes from every morsel. Like when the potatoes take on the flavor of the meat and carrots, we see a unity across the division as when we realize how various thoughts settle together from various branches of Christendom.
This melting pot of sources will, as we said, include some of the Church Fathers (by consulting the Church Fathers on matters of biblical interpretation, we are using the lens of tradition). Many people today would ask why we consult the Church Fathers on Bible interpretation. How could they be relevant in obtaining a deeper understanding of the Scripture? There are two reasons: one, they were closer to the time of Christ and the first apostles. This makes their commentaries more reliable because we are always reforming and referring back to what God had established at the beginning. And two, they express a common thought for the entire, complete, and unified Church. It is hard for us today to think of the Body of Christ in any state other than its current condition with all of its denominations and non-denominations. The modern Church is highly fractured, but this has not always been. The Church developing out of its roots in Jerusalem was one in thought and mission. For 1,000 years (think about that) the Church was, very much a united body. The first major division did not occur until AD 1054 when the Catholic (western) and Orthodox (eastern) churches split. And even then, for another 500 years, the Church was only split in two. With the emergence of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, a fracturing process began to shape Protestant churches, first with the establishment of multiple denominations and— in recent times— a further splintering with the establishment into the “non-denominational/independent church,” each having a customized form of outside oversight or none at all. Modern writings no longer represent the stance of a unified whole, as the writings of the Church Fathers did. We certainly do not consider what the Church Fathers wrote to be of equal authority as the Scripture, but looking back at the Church and its writings in its pre-divided state brings a more accurate interpretation of the biblical authors for the very reason that the Church was completely unified and these men were closer to the Apostles (some, such as Clement of Rome, had even conversed directly with and learned personally from them).
Saint Vincent of Lérins (5th century Christian writer) articulates why we need the lens of tradition when interpreting Scripture:
If someone wants to be protected from tricks and remain healthy in the faith, he must confine his faith first to the authority of the Holy Scriptures, and secondly to the Tradition of the Church. But someone may ask, is not the canon of Scripture sufficient for everything, and why should we add thereto the authority of Tradition? This is because not everyone understands the Scriptures in the same way, but one explains them this way and another that way, so that it is possible to get there from as many thoughts as there are heads. Therefore it is necessary to be guided by the understanding of the Church ... What is tradition? It is that which has been understood by everyone, everywhere and at all times ... that which you have received, and not that which you have thought up ... So then, our job is not to lead religion where we wish it to go, but to follow it where it leads, and not to give that which is our own to our heirs, but to guard that which has been given to us.[i]
Basically, we are not saying much that new in this volume. We disclose things already discovered and they can be found in other writers throughout church history. We only hope for a pulling together into one location from across a broad history in order to obtain a better understanding of things already known and understood.
As with the astronauts of Apollo 8, discussed in the “Introduction,” Man needs outside perspective. It is not within Man to discover his origins or the origins of the universe on his own. He needs outside help. He needs God’s help. God provides that help through the Church (as well as the Holy Spirit); without the historical perspective of the Church, most readers succumb to their own private interpretation (2 Peter 2:20), formulating errors.
[i] Deacon George Maksimov, “Three-Hundred Sayings of the Ascetics of the Orthodox Church,” Orthodox Missionary Society
of Venerable Serapion Kozheozersky, 01-18-2013, http://orthodox.cn/patristics/300sayings_en.htm.
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