Divine Revelation

According to the orthodox faith the Church is not founded upon written texts, rather on the admission that Christ is Theanthropos ; in other words that in the face of Christ, God was united to man "without confusion, without change, without division and without separation" (c.f. Theotokion of the Third Tone), and man came in a true communion with God. He was united "hypostatically" in Christ's person, i.e. in a one and unique "hypostasis", God and man.

The Son and Word of God continues to be hypostatically united with His Body and as the Head of the Church He is always thus united with us as well (Matt. 18: 20/28: 20). The presence of Christ is energised by the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church (1 Corinth. 12: 3); for this and the Church is "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15; see also 1 Corinth. 2 : 7-11).

It was in the Body of Christ, to "the saints", that our holy faith was delivered "once and for all"; the one who does not belong to this Body cannot interpret correctly the holy Bible (2 Thessalonians. 3: 6. 2 Peter 3:16. Jude 3-4). In this context, the Divine Tradition is the experience of the Church, the divine memory of the Church , which is kept like a priceless treasure (2 Tim. 1:13-14).

St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist The holy Bible does not include the completeness of the divine revelation. The importance of the spoken tradition and the care taken for its spreading from generation to generation was already underlined from Old Testament times (Psalm. 43:2 / 44:1 and Joel 1:3). The New Testament notes that it does not contain the completeness of the words and works of Christ (John 21:25).

That very book, the Holy Bible, makes use of the tradition (Numbers 21: 14-15. Matt.2: 23. Acts 20: 35. 2 Tim. 3: 8. Jude 14). Christ did not motion his disciples to write books but to preach, promising that He will always be among them (Matt. 28: 20) and that He will send them the Holy Spirit to stay with them (John 14: 16), to teach them and to remind them of His preaching (John 14: 25-26); to lead them "to the whole truth", revealing to them the deeper meaning of His words: all those things that they could not "hold" by their own powers (John 16: 12-15).

But even the Apostles did not limit themselves in writing the written texts; they spread to the first Christians (in spoken) much more than what was written "with paper and ink" (2 John 12. 3 John 13-14. 1 Corinth. 11: 34). Some of the written words proved to have an importance only at the time period of writing, for they were not kept in the Church: the number of the deacons (Acts 6: 3), the order of the widows (1 Tim. 5: 9), the cover of women (1 Corinth. 11: 5), the washing of the feet (John 13:14).

At the centre of the holy Bible is Christ's face (John 5: 38-39. Gal. 3: 24). Without Christ we cannot understand the Holy Bible (2 Corinth. 3: 14). Thus, the union in the body of Christ, i.e. in the Church, ascertains the purity of the evangelic truth (1 Tim. 3: 15).

The Holy Bible does not address itself to scattered individuals, but to devotees that are organised in one body. The Divine Tradition is the atmosphere inside which this body lives and understands correctly (orthos) the truth; it is the continuing experience of the Church, her conscience and not personal opinions, teachings, warrants or writs of men (c.f. Isaiah 29: 13. Matt. 15: 3.4.9. Mark 7: 8. Coll. 2:8).

Based on the treasure of the divine memory of the Church, the study of the Holy Bible leads to unity, not to division of the Church. In this way Christ's wish for unity of the devotees is fulfilled (John 17: 20-21). For this reason the apostles too would suggest to the Christians that they keep the traditions, i.e. the treasure they trusted upon them (1 Corinth. 11: 2. Philip. 4: 9), "whether by word, or our epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2: 15. c.f. 2 Tim. 1: 13).

The shepherds of the Church were placed in this position to stay awake, i.e. to be overseers (= bishops) of the purity of the life and teachings of the Church (Acts 20: 28-31): "...thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on my hands...hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me...that good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us"; "and the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. 2:2).

In other words, the apostolic succession coexists with the apostolic teaching. In this context we understand the words of St. Ignatius (d. 110): "For Jesus Christ, our true life, is the opinion of the Father, as the bishops too, who have been placed at the ends of the earth, are in accord with the opinion of Jesus Christ. So, you too must also follow the opinion of the bishop; something that you do, because the worth of his name is your presbytery, which is also God's worthy, and is connected to the bishop, much like the strings are to the guitar" (Ign. Eph. III, 2-IV,1).

This teaching is not today's; it is first-christian belief: "From the dogmas and the truths that the Church keeps, others have been taken from the written teaching, and others that secretly reached us have become accepted [stemming] from the tradition of the apostles. Both these elements, the written and the spoken tradition, hold the same importance for the faith. And nobody from the people that have even a small knowledge of the ecclesiastical decrees raises any objection to this. For if we tried to abandon any of the unwritten things, because apparently they have no great importance, without realising it we would harm the Bible in its essence, or, rather, would transform the sermon to a name void of any meaning" (Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 27: 66).

In Basil the Great's times, therefore, we see that whoever had even a "small knowledge of the ecclesiastical decrees", would admit that the divine revelation had been secretly kept in the Church in all its completeness. For example, Basil the Great mentions the habit of "those hoping in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" to show their faith "by doing the sign of the Cross".

Here therefore we have a basic difference with the protestant world. The axiom "only the Bible" leaves the Bible itself "exposed"; exposed to the "interpretational superiority" and to the "infallibility" of every pastor!

The Holy Bible cannot become absolute, for that would substitute the alive Christ with the word of the Bible, that becomes "a god" in its own right, if cut from the body of Christ, from the life of the saints (Jude 3). The holy Bible is "word for God that passed from the heart of the saints; it is God's word about God", as someone once put it nicely; the truth that was delivered "once and for all" to the saints (Jude 3) and actually not the whole truth, but part of it. It cannot make sense cut off from the Church (1 Tim. 3: 15).

hypostasis = (plural: hypostaseis) comes from the Greek verb uphistemi, which is a compound of upo (under) and istemi (stand); thus the basic meaning of uphistemi is to stand (or be placed) under as a support or foundation. Etymologically, hypostasis is the equivalent of the Latin substantio (substance). It is only after the Synod of Chalcedon that "person" becomes a reliable translation for hypostasis. To make this point we use the word as it is.

evangelic = related to the gospels; Gospel is called Evangelion in Greek from ev- for good (prefix) and angelos for messenger; i.e. the book of good messages. The word Evangelion refers to any of the four gospels of the New Testament (Mark, Luke, John and Matthew), for these were the ones that told the world the good message of Christ's coming. The Orthodox Church via her Divine Tradition rejects the so-called Apocryphal gospels (however the Orthodox and Protestants do not consider the same gospels as apocryphal, as the Protestants have rejected parts of the Greek translation according to the O' (70) from the Old Testament, i.e. of the Septuagint, and called these "apocryphal" too). Unfortunately, the word evangelical has been misused today by protestant groups to mean essentially hyperdogmatic i.e. not belonging to a specific christian group or viewing existence within a particular group as secondary, and thus, in some format, appearing to be "above dogma" (hence the name hyperdogmatic). On occasion, we will find the word evangelical to mean adogmatic i.e. having no specific doctrines, either formally (admitted by the group itself) or indirectly (when the group is hyperdogmatic and/or the doctrines are "clouded"). Clearly this is not the definition used by the so-called evangelicals themselves, but the term is not accurate anyway, exactly because their beliefs are not accurate (as a whole and not only locally). As an example of a definiton used by them, we will give that of the baptist pastor Billy Graham: evangelicals are those christians who accept the full authenticity of the Bible, have accepted Christ as their "personal Saviour" and wish to follow Him in the real life. Of course, this usually means that they accept only the authenticity of the Bible, and their interpretation of who Jesus was, and the beliefs of the Church in their opinion differ considerably even within similar evangelical groups. Strictly speaking the word evangelical should mean "related to the gospels" so when I want to use that word I will use the word evangelic instead, to avoid (hopefully) confusion that could arise otherwise.

Chrysostom = name added to one of the three Hierarchs, John (Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian are the other two), meaning "having a golden mouth". John Chrysostom's Liturgy is conducted in Orthodox Churches around the globe every Sunday. Basil the Great also wrote a Liturgy which is still conducted a few times a year; it is essentially the same as Chrysostom's, whose Liturgy is an abridged version of St. Basil's. Both Liturgies are essentially identical apart from some non-sacramental prayers, and both stem from St. James' Liturgy. In all three ones (including a fourth one by St. Mark the Evangelist which is still conducted in Alexandria, Egypt, stemming again directly from St. James' one) we notice that the sacramental parts are identical. These cannot be changed for they were told by our Lord to us, so that we know exactly how to conduct the Sacrament of Eucharist, the whole setting of the remembrance of the life and crucifixion of our Lord etc. For this reason these Liturgies are called divine Liturgies.