ORLAPUBS P. R55: SOLA SCRIPTURA

WHAT MEANING CAN SOLA SCRIPTURA
("SCRIPTURE ALONE") HAVE WHEN
THERE ARE HOW MANY BIBLES,
HOW MANY TRANSLATIONS,
AND HOW MANY "LITERAL"
INTERPRETATIONS?

To judge by conversations on the Internet and off of the net, as well as what is written in Denominationist statements of their positions, Denominationists accept only the Bible as revealed truth; and most of them (say, half of the reported 22,000 denominations in the USA alone) say that they take what is said in the Bible literally--often in its entirety. Nor should it be overlooked that they omit part of the Bible finally canonized (in the latter fourth century)--or that Luther reordered the New Testament books, in his translation making James and a few other books (including the Apocalypse) appendant. If you remove from Scripture the parts you disagree with, then you empty the slogan, "Scripture alone," of all but a certain emotional significance.

Whose Bible? The books in the Orthodox, Latin, and KJV Bibles differ. Luther demoted six books to deuterocanonical status in his German translation, putting them at the end. Of these, he decanonized the Epistle of St. James.

Whose translation? The energy words do not appear as such in Western translations; the Creator is called a "Word"; the Assimilation to God is mistranslated as "likeness"; etc., etc.

Whose interpretation? Literalists read non-literal senses into the words, everyone interprets that "the" Bible says according to the premises of one's own paradigm (on which SEE HERE).

The consequence of the foregoing is that "the Bible" has such a variety of meanings as to amount to nothing of a general nature. Since the Greek text (translated by Alexandrine Jews around 250 BC) is over a millennium older than the existing Hebrew text, and since the Orthodox Church canonized the New Testament in the latter fourth century and has continued to understand what the Greek means down to the present, the Orthodox Bible and Orthodox Church's interpretations have (even in terms of the most secular probabilities) the best chance of being the right ones.

Let us pass over doubts about their sincerity when we find that John 6:48-58 is interpreted non-literally by all of them that I've every tried to discuss the passage with--though a few claim that it does not even refer to the m. h. Eucharist--but to who knows what? Those who interpret flesh "spiritually" (though flesh [sárx] and spirit [pnevma] are two very different things) ignore that the Greek verb for "eat" here is not the usual word for "eat" but a very down-to-earth quasi-animal-like eating. Some would have us believe that the passage refers to the tokens or emblems or elements of a memorial that Christians can ultimately do without or else (unless one is a Campbellite) partake of a few times per year--not even on Christ's Birthday and His Resurrection in some groups, if those days do not happen to coïncide with the first Lordsday of the calendric quarter.

It is basic logic that a document cannot be more infallible than its compiler (the person or body that assembles a book, separating reliable from unreliable documents) is infallible. From this it follows that only the body on which the promises of Christ in John 16:13 were bestowed--centuries before either the current form of papalism or any hint of Reformation Protestantism existed--can compile a reliable collection of books--as the Orthodox Church in fact did (about the same time as it fixed the Creed) in the latter fourth century. Thus, a Protestant Bible, translation of the Bible, or interpretation of whatever books the interpreter accepts can be no more infallible than its codifier--Luther, Calvin, Swedenborg--any critic you choose. For fallible definers of a book simply cannot produce or interpret an infallible book. The evidence confirms this conclusion.

Let us rather simply consider how 10,000 different "literal" interpretations of the same Bible (a minimalist one, since these groups do not accept various books included in the traditional Scriptures) can be! There cannot logically be more than one out of the myriad of disagreeing interpretations which is correct--and there doesn't have to be even one! Each group claims that it has got the right set of (literal) interpretations--however non-literal much of what they interpret is and of course ignoring that the Bible was finally assembled and canonized by the Orthodox Church--and not until in the latter fourth century. (Where, e.g., does the Bible--or for that matter, any writer of the first millennium and a half--say that the Lordsday is the "Christian Sabbath"?) Luther more or less de-canonized the Epistle to James and some others--because he could not accept their view--particularly St. James's view of good works and Grace.

If it were possible for any individual, no matter how gifted, to plumb the depths and ascend the heights of Holy Scripture, then how could 22-28 thousand denominations exist? How can one individual be compared with the combined efforts of so many holy and intellectually gifted Fathers and Mothers who have contributed to the sacred tradition for almost twenty centuries? It takes more than one person to present all points of view on a controverted issue--which in turn is necessary for the holy tradition, over time and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (John 16:13), to sort out the truth from the various errors. The notion that this could be done be any individual, however gifted, is simply absurd--as the results (so many denominations nearly all accepting "the" [i.e. their] Bible "literally") amply demonstrate!

     If "literal" interpretations are often non-literal, what credence have such virtually literal interpretations got? If you reject the interpretations set forth by the disciples of the authors of the Gospels and Epistles and their successors in the first two centuries of Christianity, and if you permit everyone to interpret the Scriptures according to one's individual whims instead of being guided by the holy patristic tradition, it follows that "Scripture alone" is a for all practical purposes a consummately empty slogan--there being no objective way to select the fittest interpretation from the different individualistic opinions on each point. There is no control--like the holy tradition, which, having tried out every possible answer to every mooted point, sifts them and selects (to hand on) the only one that does no despite to the entire system of belief inherited from the Apostles and their disciples.   In fact, these have stood the test of two millenniums. The Orthodox believe that the Church was guided by the all-holy Spirit (John 16:13)--that the Spirit was not dormant for a millennium and a half till Luther came along, as a Denominationist has got to assume.
       It is a great irony that soi-disants "anti-modernists" are the most modern of all; for they interpret the Bible as if the ancient world were modern North America. Lacking any feel for ancient Near East culture--especially the Hellenistico-Hebraic blend of Tiberias near where Jesus grew up and preadhed--these modernist literalists have inherited the sola scriptura of Luther, who tells us he subscribed to Ockham's via moderna or fifteenth-century modernsism--a philosophy as greatly at odds with the ancient world as could possibly be.     They think they can understand the Bible (literally) apart from knowledge of ancient writings and Church history.   Of course, time, like matter, has no religious value for most of them; so tradition and history can be dispensed with.   Conceiving of ancient culture as what they imagine it must have been, wannabe anti-modernists interpret the Apostolic and (if they read them) the post-Apostolic writings as if the Hellenistic-Roman world had been one amenable to a Congregationalist or Methodist or Pentecostalist congregation. (It's like the film, Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the hero fought for democracy!) This goes by the name of anachronism.
      What does honesty require of those who would make the claims about literal interpretations under scrutiny? It is so obvious as not to require stating.

The following is an edited reply to an email from a person who accepts what's in "the" Bible but refused to consider what it means unless "what it means" is defined in "the" Bible:

     Trying to understand your position, I have to presume tTrinity on the grounds that it's not in your Bible. But you did speak of something "sacramental" in marriage; that term is also not in the English Bible or, as such, in the Greek Bible. i am not trying to argue with you; all I want to do is get answers to certain questions so that i will be able to understand what you are putting forward.
     One problem is that you don't tell me which Bible you are referring to. Nowhere in the Bible does it list which books belong to it. The Greek Bible canonized in the late fourth century (about the same time as the creed) by the Orthodox Church included (as did the original 1611 KJV) books not found in most Denominationist Bibles; Revelation got in at the last moment. And of course, Luther put a number of books that disagreed with his interpretation of {faith : justification} at the end of his N.T. translation as a sort of Appendix, claiming in particular that James was worthless. He was honest enough to admit that you couldn't accept James literally and embrace his own views of {faith : justification}.
     Do you decide on your own which books are in your Bible (you presumably don't accept the canon of the original Greek Bible or the original KJB or Luther's Bible, perhaps because it was canonized by a Church that i assume you don't concede the authority for deciding which books are Biblical? So my question is: What authority--some other person or body or yourself--decided which books belong to "the" Bible you refer to? Once that is clear--then we can discuss what's defined there, whether you accept it all--literally or metaphorically--, and how you can speak of terms that are not defined there and in fact are not there at all.   If you yourself define what is in the Bible, as one person I know pretty well claims to do--he arrives at the same books found in most Denominationists Bibles--two problems arise (for me), which you presumably can explain:

--If you accept only books you agree with, isn't it circular to say that you believe X because it is in one of the books you yourself have included because of that belief?
--Since Trinity is not defined in the Bible or even present there, any more thanother words that Denominationist tracts use, how can one justify the use of such a term, let alone believing in what it represents--at least, when one insists on using only terminology defined in (one's) Bible? On the other hand, Jesus's command to wash one another's feet should be even more obligatory for you than for the Orthodox, where the custom obtains in some quarters. (The pope washes 12 beggars' feet on Maundy Thursday, as the English monarch once did.) If you accept the Gospel of John, then you would have to eat (the Greek word means a literal, and in Classical Greek, an animalish kind of eating--like German fressen) Jesus's Flesh and drink His Blood, or there will be no life in you--that is, unless you don't accept the word literally. Isn't that so?

I'm befuddled by your position. But there must be an explanation, and all I would like to know is what it is. As i said, I don't intend to argue against your views--just to find out what they are. If you don't address the questions but rather answer other questions (or if you attack my supposed views or my person), then there will of course be no reply from me--because then our exchange of views will have turned into an argument.

Consider how different Christian thinkers view the search for the "right interpetation." On the Orthodox side, consistent tradition is decisive on matters that have been mooted in the history of the Faith: Authoritative are developments inspired by the Holy Ghost in sifting out beliefs inconsistent with the whole tradition in favor of those able to stand up for centuries and millenniums. Though the Latins hedge a bit, saying, for example that women cannot be clergy because Jesus selected only male apostles (as if, in that culture, it was possible for men and women to consort together, bathe together in a river, etc., etc.!), nevertheless the pope can and does overrule tradition and everything else he wills to deal with. At the opposite extreme from Orthodoxy, on the left wing of Christianity, we find the individualism of Liberals and Fundamentalists. Both write off history and tradition in favor of individualism--though there is some difference in their view toward reason. They seek the right faith either (1) in the Bible (not necessarily the books defined by the tradition in the late fourth century), which set down the tradition about Jesus a generation or more after His death and after the holy tradition had been developing for decades. They let each person interpret it as each person thinks fit (this is the Fundamentalist approach); or they seek to get behind the Bible (as though it were not part of the tradition inspired by the Holy Spirit) to find what the real Jesus said or did--or how the Apostle Paul allegedly countered what the real Jesus did and formed the Faith in his mould (this is Liberalism). Each of these approaches to the right faith leads to divergent and often incompatible conclusions and to a different ethos in each instance.

Most Evangelicals and Fundamentalists fall into the error of Gnosticism, interpreting flesh (the Greek word is translated as "sinful nature" in a very widely used Evangelical Bible translation) or body, including Christ's risen body, "spiritually"--though flesh/body are far from being "spiritual." Spirit is something other than body or flesh. They assume that human nature is "sinful," though they don't tell us how to make sense of the idea of our nature's sinning. (Only individuals can sin!) These ideas come from Gnosticism. They are at odds with the traditional idea that Salvation has come through time and matter--that OLGS Jesus Christ's Incarnation is the first Mystery (Sacrament) of Salvation (as St. John of Damaskos, Robert of Melun, and others have put it), that therefore other Mysteries (Baptism, the Body and Blood of Christ in the most holy Eucharist, anointing, etc.) channel the uncreated Energy of Grace though material vehicles--precisely because of the hallowing of matter and time (tradition) in the Incarnation. The Resurrection of Christ's Body is effaced by the juridical Crucifixion, and the resurrection of the bodies of the faithful plays only a dispensible rôle in Salvation.
That all of this is actually biblical means nothing to the individual who interprets the Bible in some blend of Gnosticism and modern culture. The whole biblical concept of "energy" is absent in the translations done by many. God the Logos (Creator of the cosmos in John 1:1-3) is a "Word"--a Word created all that is and nothing that has been made has been made apart from Him!! And this is believed--and vouched for as "biblical."