Why Orthodoxy

A fully-sourced case, claim by claim, with traceable citations

Chapter 08 of 12 · The case for Orthodoxy

Scripture, Tradition, and the Canon

Who decided what the Bible is? The Orthodox answer is the Church, in the light of the Holy Spirit, on the basis of the faith it already confessed — never Scripture as a self-interpreting book floating free of the community that produced it. This chapter documents the canon, the Septuagint, and the exegetical principles at stake.

The form. The question here decides the method of everything else: where the norm of faith stands. The objections are the Reformation principle in its strongest form; the sed contra cites the New Testament's own teaching on Scripture and tradition; the determination follows.

Whether Holy Scripture is the sole and sufficient rule of faith, to be interpreted by each believer for himself, or whether it is the possession of the Church, and is read within the tradition by which the Church canonized it and in which the Spirit guided her.

Objections to the Orthodox position

  1. Obj. 1 — From the sufficiency and clarity of Scripture. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Timothy 3:16–17). "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21); the Bereans "searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (Acts 17:11). The Scripture is sufficient and clear; a private reader, equipped by grace, needs no human magisterium.1
  2. Obj. 2 — From Scripture's own warning against tradition. "Ye have made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition" (Matthew 15:6); "beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men" (Colossians 2:8). The apostolic age warns against exactly what the Orthodox Church now embraces: human tradition added to the Word.2
  3. Obj. 3 — From the impossibility of the "Church decides" alternative. If the canon is an act of the Church, and the faith is determined by "reception," then no determinate authority exists anywhere: every council and every tradition floats on the opinion of a historical process, and the individual believer is thrown back, in the end, on his own judgment about which church and which tradition to trust — which is sola scriptura under another name, without its honesty.3

On the contrary

Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

2 Thessalonians 2:15 — apostolic tradition, oral and written, commanded together4

And: "Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the traditions, as I delivered them to you" (1 Corinthians 11:2); "for I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received" (1 Corinthians 15:3). And: "the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15).5 And: "no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation" (2 Peter 1:20–21).6 And when the Lord met the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, He did not leave them alone with the scroll: "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27) — the living voice interpreting the written word. And the Ethiopian could not read Isaiah without a guide: "How can I, except some man should guide me?" (Acts 8:31).7

I answer that

Three facts must be established, and they are as near to incontrovertible as historical facts can be.

St. Basil, in a little-read chapter of On the Holy Spirit (27.66), says the quiet thing out loud: "of the dogmas and preachings preserved in the Church, some we possess from written teaching, others we have received from the tradition of the apostles, delivered to us in mystery; and both have the same force." The Confession of Dositheus (Jerusalem, 1672) repeats it against the Reformers: the Church is a surer interpreter than any private person. That is the Orthodox rule, stated before anyone coined the slogan sola scriptura as a system.15

First, Scripture itself teaches the authority of the apostolic tradition, and never teaches sola scriptura. The same Apostle who commends the reading of Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16) commands the holding fast of the traditions "whether by word, or our epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15) — an oral tradition, distinct from the written, and of equal binding force. He thanks the Corinthians for "keeping the traditions, as I delivered them to you" (1 Corinthians 11:2), and he grounds his gospel in a "delivery" that precedes his writing: "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received" (1 Corinthians 15:3). Scripture nowhere says "Scripture alone is the rule"; the verses the Reformation cites for perspicuity are verses about the profit of Scripture, read — as all Paul's churches read them — within the mysteries and tradition he delivered (Chapter 9). The principle of sola scriptura is, in fact, a tradition: the tradition of the sixteenth-century Reformers, asserted with exactly the authority it denies to every other tradition.8

Second, the canon of Scripture is itself an act of the Church's recognition, and sola scriptura cannot ground it. The Bible did not descend complete; the twenty-seven books were written over half a century, circulated locally, and were received gradually. The first surviving list of the exact twenty-seven is the Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter of Athanasius (367); earlier lists differ (the Muratorian fragment, c. 170–200, lacks Hebrews, James, 1–2 Peter); East and West debated Revelation to the end; and the Church made her recognition not by private judgment but by the rule of faith and the apostolic testimony she had already received and lived. Every Christian who accepts the canon accepts, willy-nilly, an act of the Church's authority; the Protestant who denounces tradition has accepted the Church's tradition at the very first step, and has no principle by which to explain it.9

Third, the manner of reading in the Church is the only one the New Testament authorizes. The Gospel was given to a community — "one body" (Ephesians 4:4), founded upon "the apostles and prophets" (Ephesians 2:20), whose assembly is "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15). The same Spirit that inspired the writers (2 Peter 1:21 — "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost") is the Spirit of the Church (Acts 15:28 — "it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us"); and the interpretation of Scripture belongs to the Church's life — the liturgy in which it is proclaimed, the Fathers who received it, the rule of faith — not to the isolated reader, however learned. The private reader is not the Berean ideal; he is the eunuch without Philip (Acts 8:31), and the Lord's own method on the Emmaus road — the living voice expounding the written word — is the Church's permanent model.10

And the empirical record closes the case. Sola scriptura was embraced for unity; it produced, within a generation, a fragmentation that now runs to tens of thousands of denominations, each appealing to the same Bible for doctrines the others deny. The Church of the first millennium — which held the Bible as its own book, read it in its liturgy, and interpreted it in the Spirit, in one faith and one confession — was one Church confessing one Creed. The principle of the lone reader has produced a thousand churches confessing a thousand creeds; and the index of that principle's failure is visible wherever the Bible is carried but the Creed is not. That is not an argument against the Bible; it is an argument against a Bible without its Church.11

The Orthodox Church therefore honors Scripture as the Word of God — reads more of it in her liturgical cycle than any other communion — and refuses only the amputations: a Scripture severed from the tradition that canonized it, a reader severed from the Church that nourishes him, and a "private interpretation" that 2 Peter 1:20 expressly disowns. The Bible is the Church's book. The Church that owns it is the Church that wrote it, sealed it, kept it, and still reads it where it has always been read: in the assembly of the faithful, under the Spirit, before the altar of the Lamb.

Replies to the objections

  1. Reply to Obj. 1. Scripture is sufficient in its content; it is not self-interpreting, and "prove all things" requires a standard by which to prove. The Orthodox Church holds that Scripture contains everything necessary for salvation — but that its interpretation belongs to the Church, for "no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation" (2 Peter 1:20). The Bereans "received the word with all readiness of mind" and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so (Acts 17:11). They were not yet a Christian church; they were synagogue Jews testing a new proclamation against the writings they already held. That fact cuts both ways: it shows Scripture as a real norm, and it shows that the norm was applied inside a worshipping community with an already-received canon — not by a lone reader inventing a Bible. They were not private judges of which books count. "Prove all things" (1 Thessalonians 5:21) presupposes the standard by which to prove: the faith delivered — which is exactly why the same chapter commands the holding of the Spirit's gifts in the Church, and why the same Apostle commands the holding of the traditions (2 Thessalonians 2:15).12
  2. Reply to Obj. 2. Scripture condemns the traditions of men that void the command of God; it commands the apostolic tradition as its own norm. Matthew 15 and Colossians 2 speak of human inventions — the Corban practice, the philosophies of men — set against the Word; 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and 1 Corinthians 11:2 command the apostolic tradition in the same breath as the epistles. The apostolic age did not warn against tradition; it defined the rule as "the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle" — a tradition of the Spirit, not of men, precisely the tradition the Orthodox Church claims to carry and the West to have invented again.13
  3. Reply to Obj. 3. The East does not appeal to a process; it appeals to a fact — the faith once delivered, visible in the consensus of the Church. The canon is an act of recognition, and the recognition is not private or procedural but the Spirit's own work in the body of Christ: "the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15). That is not "an endless historical process" any more than the Creed is: the Church received the canon and the Creed and has not un-received them in seventeen centuries. And the Objection's own alternative — the infallible office — is the deeper problem: Rome's authority is self-referential (the office defines its own infallibility, ex sese, without the consent of the Church it purports to bind), whereas the Orthodox appeal is to the faith the whole Church has always confessed, which any reader can examine in the sources (as this site does on every page). The Objection throws the seeker back on private judgment; the Orthodox answer does not pretend to spare him the judgment — it gives him the full record to judge by, and asks, as the Bereans were asked, whether these things are so.14

Citations for this chapter

  1. 2 Timothy 3:16–17; 1 Thessalonians 5:21; Acts 17:11 (KJV): 2 Timothy 3:16–17.
  2. Matthew 15:6; Colossians 2:8 (KJV): Matthew 15:6.
  3. The objection is the standard Protestant and secular criticism of the Orthodox appeal to reception; it gains force from the absence in Orthodoxy of a final deciding organ (conceded in Chapter 3, §Respondeo).
  4. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 (KJV): 2 Thessalonians 2:15.
  5. 1 Corinthians 11:2; 15:3; 1 Timothy 3:15 (KJV): 1 Timothy 3:15.
  6. 2 Peter 1:20–21 (KJV): 2 Peter 1:20–21.
  7. Luke 24:27; Acts 8:31 (KJV): Acts 8:30–31.
  8. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 (fn. 4); the claim that sola scriptura is itself a tradition is now acknowledged even by Protestant scholars; see the survey in Wikipedia: Sola scriptura.
  9. The canon: Athanasius, Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter (367): NPNF2-04, newadvent.org/fathers/2806.htm; the Muratorian fragment: earlychristianwritings.com; the documentary history: Wikipedia: Development of the Christian biblical canon.
  10. Ephesians 4:4; 2:20; 1 Timothy 3:15; 2 Peter 1:21; Acts 15:28; Luke 24:27; Acts 8:31 (KJV): Ephesians 2:20.
  11. The fragmentation of Protestantism is historical commonplace; the contrast with the Orthodox confessional unity is documented in Chapter 2 and in the empirics of church history.
  12. Acts 17:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:21; 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 2 Peter 1:20 (KJV): fns. 1, 4, 6.
  13. Matthew 15:6; Colossians 2:8; 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 11:2 (KJV): fns. 2, 4, 5.
  14. On the self-referential character of the ex sese doctrine: Chapter 2 (Pastor Aeternus, ch. 4): vatican.va.
  15. Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 27.66: newadvent.org/fathers/3203.htm. Confession of Dositheus (Jerusalem 1672), Decrees 1–2, on the Church as interpreter: Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2; survey Wikipedia: Synod of Jerusalem (1672).