The Bible

Authority of Scripture

"A lot of the textual criticism of the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, have certain fantasies about them. What we really are left with then, is to take what the Church has taught us as the meaning of the scripture, and accept that as being the revelation of God about the meaning of scripture. It doesn't matter if someone claims that God wrote every single word of scripture or not. What matters is, what does the Church say that the scripture means. The Church is the sole and singular authority for the interpretation of scripture in this world. God did not leave us in a state of chaos and confusion so that we could have a thousand different interpretors, and a thousand different versions of the scripture. But this is precisely what happens when people cease accepting what the scripture says: that Jesus Christ created his Church, and that the gates of Hades would not prevail against it." -- Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, YouTube Broadcast, December 26, 2008.

"The scripture is not the final authority for the Church. The Church is the authority for the scripture." -- Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, YouTube Broadcast, December 26, 2008.

"Having given it canonical form and canonized the scripture, the scripture becomes the touchstone for all that is taught and all that is understood in the Church. The Church has given it the seal of authority and it becomes "God's Word" because the Church has sanctified it and certified it as such." -- Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, YouTube Broadcast, December 26, 2008.

Textual Criticism

"Of course you can find anomalies in scripture. You can find things that are incorrect. That is the problem of insisting that God wrote every single word of scripture and that man had nothing whatsoever to do with recording things as he saw them, and as he understood them. This is another place where textual criticism falls short. Because they're also going on this premise that there should be a kind of absolute fluidity and concrete systematic revelation, and some kind of systematic theology unfolding in scripture. There is no need to have such a view or such an understanding. People recorded what took place as they saw it -- as it impacted upon them -- and they told it from their point of view. When the prophets were speaking, their words were being recorded by someone. We needn't think that Isaiah or Ezekiel or someone else wrote the sermons that they were giving in public ahead of time and studied them. But rather that these things poured forth from them through the grace of the Holy Spirit, and they were recorded by someone. There is no suggestion that the prophets sat down and wrote their own books about their own prophecies, but that others recorded what they had said. There are bound to be some textual differences in each one of the books. This is another place where this so-called higher textual criticism breaks down and falls short. How can you make a higher textual criticism when you don't know which scribe wrote what part; how many scribes were involved; and which different places their words were recorded in, even of the prophets? We need to take the scripture and understand the meaning of it, as the Church gives it to us, otherwise we come into this same cacophonous distortion, misunderstanding, contradiction, which we find in the Protestant world. Most Protestants are quite sincere, and try to be honest about it, and yet they're faced with the same problems that those who wish to rip the scripture apart with higher criticisms are faced with. We do not know who were the scribes who recorded the prophet's words; which ones of them recorded which parts; and who put it together in a single book. Each scribe would have written a little bit differently" -- Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, YouTube Broadcast, December 26, 2008.

"Cain knew his wife. And you can ask the question, "where did he get that wife?" Was it sons of Adam and Eve? You can't interpret that biologically. There's no way it is to be interpreted biologically. It can be interpreted theologically and historically. Theologically as showing the truth of God, and historically, meaning these are events that take place among human beings, so that the root is historical. But the story is not historical, and that's a very biblical thing. You're dealing with real events in human history, but how they're being presented is in a quasi-historical manner for theological purposes. But they are not simply, literal history in the modern sense." Fr. Thomas Hopko.

See also Oral Tradition