Unveiling the Old Testament: An Orthodox Understanding of Scripture

Reconciling the Old and New Testament Portrayals of God

One of the major problems that Christians need to address today is how one is supposed to reconcile the apparent disparity between the way God is portrayed in the Old Testament and how he is portrayed in the New Testament. How does one reconcile that in the Old Testament, God commits infanticide and wills Israel to commit genocide whereas in the New Testament the Son of God, Jesus Christ, commands us to turn the other cheek and to love our enemies? How does one reconcile that in the Old Testament God wrathfully punishes Israel and the world’s sins, but in the New Testament, Jesus Christ takes on our sins and our sufferings and humbles himself to the point of dying on a cross to conquer death and open Eternal Life to us?

Marcionism and Modern Misunderstandings

Do the two testaments speak of different gods as the heretic Marcion claimed? Does the Old Testament speak of one god, a vengeful demiurge, and the New Testament speak of the true God, a loving God? This is the stance that some people take today, as if we must dismiss the Old Testament and embrace the New Testament, but is this really possible from a Christian standpoint? No, because this would go against the New Testament itself. When the New Testament refers to “the scriptures” it is referring to the Old Testament and it speaks of Christ as “fulfilling” the scriptures. Moreover, a key component of the process by which the disciples came to understand who Christ really was, was through “the scriptures.”

Scriptural Interpretation in Luke 24

In Luke, after Jesus’ death on the cross, two of the disciples encounter the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus, but because of His failure, in their minds, to be the Messiah by dying on a cross, His identity was veiled to them. Jesus began the process of revealing who He was to them by “interpreting to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” and then after they came to understand who He was by “breaking bread with him” (e.g. partaking of the eucharist), they remembered, “did not our hearts burn within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he opened up the scriptures to us (Luke 24:27,32)?”

St. Paul’s Insight on the Veil over Scripture

I think the major reason we see such dissonance between the Old Testament and the New Testament is because we misunderstand how to approach the Old Testament in interpreting it as to arrive at its proper meaning. If we view the Old Testament as having one authorially intended meaning discoverable by the historical-grammatical method as many protestants do, then we have a problem because the sole meaning of the Old Testament is in its plain historical literal sense. But if we realize as St. Paul notes in 2 Corinthians that “a veil” lies over the scriptures (the Old Testament) which is only lifted by Jesus Christ, then we no longer have the problem of dissonance between the two Testaments because we realize that to understand the Old Testament we need an interpretative key, Christ. It is only by looking at the Old Testament through “the prism of the cross" as John Behr likes to say, that we begin to understand what the Old Testament is really saying.

Typology and Fulfillment in Early Christian Thought

The earliest manner of interpreting scripture for Christians was to see the Old Testament as full of “types” and “figures” and “prophesies” which only were fulfilled and came to mean what they were supposed to mean with the coming of Christ. The Early Church and the Fathers of the Church approached the Old Testament much like the Greeks did in interpreting the Homeric Epics. The scriptures provided the symbolic field of meanings which the apostles and evangelists used in order to interpret and understand Christ and the impetus for this interpretation was the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus, it isn’t crazy to say that it is Christ himself who is the one who interprets scripture (like on the road to Emmaus) by his self-revelation and we are able to understand or properly interpret the Old Testament as much as we have adopted what Paul calls, “the phronema (or mindset) of Christ” through eucharistic union with him.

The Principle of Consonance: Adopting the Phronema of Christ

This “principle of consonance” as John Anthony McGuckin puts it, between our phronema and Christ’s, was seen by the Fathers of the Eastern Orthodox Church as foundational to any valid interpretation or understanding of the scriptures. Origen exposes this truth when he says that it is only by us being like the disciple Jesus loved in John’s Gospel—by us inclining on Jesus breast and standing at the foot of the cross—that we are able to understand scripture. To acquire this mindset moreover, we must undergo the process of purifying ourselves of the passions [sin] to undergo deification and enter into union with God. Only in this way, are we equipped to interpret the deeper, unveiled, spiritual meaning of scripture. As McGuckin writes in The Path of Christianity: The First Thousand Years:

The principle of consonance… is extensively set out… in the first of the Five Theological Orations by St. Gregory the Theologian, who elsewhere throughout his work describes the biblical commentator as a priest who is allowed entry into a temple, but the deeper the progression into the sacred areas… the more pressing is the need for purity of heart and acumen of mind. Both things, moral and intellectual power, are seen by Gregory to be significant charisms that cannot be neglected, and if they are not present in the manifested works of the interpreter, the priestly act of biblical exegesis will be rendered into sacrilege (773-774).

Gregory the Theologian on Scriptural Interpretation

As we can see in the quote above, the interpretation of scripture was seen by the great 4th century Father of the Church, Gregory the Theologian, as something to be only undertaken with great timidity and humility and even then only properly accomplished by those who are holy and intellectually capable. This is why in the Eastern Orthodox Church the primary means of understanding scripture for the average person is by consulting the Fathers of the Church and adopting the mind of the Fathers. Moreover, it is not the surface or literal meaning that is seen as being so precious by Gregory the Theologian, but rather the spiritual meaning.

The Approach of Origen, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nyssa

The question we are left with is what do we do with the literal, historical meaning of scripture?

First of all it is important to note, as McGuckin points out, that although the Church Fathers saw scripture as inspired:

this is not to imagine that the sophisticated biblical theologians such as Origen, Athanasius, and Cyril, or the Cappadocian fathers, ever envisaged a direct or literal transference of information from God to the human author…but rather they imagined Inspiration as being a divine energeia (energy) that inspired the charism of “comprehension” of the things of God in a human heart. Such comprehension was seen to be partial (inevitably so, since no human mind could fully comprehend the purposes of God) but substantively accurate insofar as it represented the will of God concerning the issues of human salvation. (The First Thousand Years, 772-773)

It is because of this understanding of “Inspiration” that Origen even saw particular books of the Bible as more of a more inspired nature than others. He saw the Gospel of John and Paul’s letters as the most luminous books of scripture and even if we don’t follow Origen and rank the scriptures according to their degree of inspiration, it is a fallacious misunderstanding to think that what they contain is inspired outside of how they represent “the will of God concerning the issues of human salvation.”

Literal vs. Spiritual Interpretations

But still the question remains: Do we have to accept the literal, historical meaning of the Old Testament?

To respond to this problem, I’ll quote the great Father of the Church St. Gregory of Nyssa who addresses this problem in his work, Life of Moses, when interpreting the meaning of God’s killing of the first-born children of the Egyptians during Passover. After offering a spiritual interpretation that the killing of the first born “laid down for us the principle that it is necessary to destroy utterly the first birth of evil” and that “it is impossible to flee the Egyptian life [evil] in any other way,” St. Gregory says that:

It does not seem good to me to pass this interpretation by without further contemplation. How would a concept worthy of God be preserved in the description of what happened if one looked only to the history? The Egyptian acts unjustly, and in his place is punished his newborn child, who in his infancy cannot discern what is good and what is not. His life has no experience of evil, for infancy is not capable of passion. He does not know to distinguish between his right hand and his left. The infant lifts his eyes only to his mother’s nipple, and tears are the sole perceptible sign of his sadness. And if he obtains anything which his nature desires, he signifies his pleasure by smiling. If such a one now pays the penalty of his father’s wickedness, where is justice? Where is piety? Where is holiness?

And then he goes on to state outright:

Do not be surprised at all if… the death of the firstborn… did not happen to the Israelites and on that account reject the contemplation we have proposed concerning the destruction of evil as if it were a fabrication without any truth. For now in the difference of names, Israelite and Egyptian, we perceive the difference between Virtue and Evil.

Thus, Gregory of Nyssa, great 4th century defender of Orthodoxy and Father of the Church, was not at all phased by the idea that the meaning of this passage of scripture was not to be found in it happening historically, but rather in a proper spiritual interpretation of its typology indicated by the history.

Christ as the Measure of Scripture’s Meaning

But what about the Fathers who did read it more literally?

It is the case that some Fathers such as John Chrysostom offered a more literal reading of scripture following the "Antiochian" rather than "Alexandrian" school of interpretation mentioned above. But even for John Chrysostom one must understand that his so-called literal interpretation of scripture is nothing like our literal interpretation of scripture, because he still read the Old Testament through the lens of the cross of Christ.

This is exemplified in his reading of the flood in Genesis. When remarking upon the text he reads into it meanings which are not at all found in the plain sense of the text, because of his understanding of God's love and mercy revealed by the cross of Christ. He writes:

The fact, too, that he brought on the deluge for forty days and nights is a further wonderful sign of his loving kindness. His purpose in his great goodness was that at least some of them might come to their senses and escape that utter ruin, having before their eyes the annihilation of their peers and the destruction about to overwhelm them. I mean, the likelihood is that on the first day some proportion were drowned, an additional number on the second day, and likewise on the third day and so on. His reason for extending it for forty days was that he might remove from them any grounds for excuse. You see, had it been his wish and command, he could have submerged everything in one downpour. Instead, out of fidelity to his characteristic love he arranged for a stay of so many days.

As we can see here even the supposed literal readers of scriptures among the fathers were willing to go beyond what is clearly indicated of the text in their exposition of it, because after Christ, there is no way to understand the flood or other such mentions of judgment and violence in the Old Testament without seeing Christ's loving hand reaching out to every person to give them every possible opportunity to be saved.

Unity of the Old and New Testaments through Christ

So do we have to accept the literal historical meaning of the text? I think by this point it is clear that if by the literal historical meaning of the text we mean that found by the historical grammatical method of reading scripture, then the answer is definitively no. In fact, it is quite clear that such a reading can become means of losing track of the one, who, as Saint Paul tells us, unveils scripture. Moreover, as the second century CE Father of the Church St. Irenaeus of Lyons said when he was arguing against the Gnostic heretics, for those who do not read the scriptures through the lens of Christ, the text remains but "myth." In a strong sense then, the grounding of the Old Testament is less in the history of Israel, than what this history points us toward and is fulfilled and illuminated by: Christ.

So I think it is safe to say whether or not you feel it needful to read the Old Testament literally or spiritually, you will miss the entire point of scripture without Christ standing as the measure of its meaning. Whether you follow the Antiochians and believe its historicity or follow the Alexandrians and allow for the meaning to be found primarily in its allegorical or anagogical meaning, the point is to see at all times God's work in history as only unveiled by and understood through Christ.

Conclusion

In "Unveiling the Old Testament: An Orthodox Interpretation of Scripture," we have explored the profound unity between the Old and New Testaments through the lens of Christ. By understanding the Old Testament was veiled until the death and resurrection of Jesus, we can see how the apparent disparity between the portrayals of God in both Testaments can be reconciled. As the Gospel of Luke shows us, Christ only came to be understood by the apostles once he “interpreted himself according the scriptures” and thus the very gospel is intrinsically tied up with a Christoform reading of the Old Testament where Christ is seen as fulfilling and illuminating what was before his coming merely enigmas or “myth.”

Moreover, we have shown how important it is to, approach scripture with humility, purity of heart, equal to or greater than our intellectual acumen. It is only by drawing close to Christ by leaning on his breast and standing at the foot of the Cross that the deeper meaning of the Old Testament becomes accessible to us. By adopting this Orthodox hermeneutic, we engage with scripture not merely as historical text but as living word, continuously revealing Christ and His love for humanity.