Scripture

Overview

• Scripture is the Church's inspired book — but first of all a liturgical book. Its native home is the worshipping assembly: the Psalter is a hymnbook, the Epistles were written to be read aloud in the gathering, and the Gospel is proclaimed, sung, and venerated in the Liturgy.

Summary

For the Orthodox, the first function of Scripture is not to serve as a private quarry of proof-texts but to be proclaimed in the assembly, where Christ opens Himself to His people. The pattern is Emmaus: the risen Lord "opened the Scriptures" so that the disciples' hearts burned, and was then "made known in the breaking of bread" (Luke 24) — the two movements of the Divine Liturgy, the Word and the Table, in a single afternoon. This is also where the texts came from: the Psalms are temple song, and Paul's letters were written to be read aloud to the gathered ekklesia (1 Thessalonians 5.27; Colossians 4.16). Read in worship, the Word does what the Eucharist does — it makes Christ present; and the working test of which books were canonical was, in large part, which books were read in the churches. Scripture's boundary, its interpretation, and its function turn out to be one liturgical fact.