The Orthodox Way

by Kallistos Ware

“The only pure and all-sufficient source of the doctrines of the faith”, writes Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, “is the revealed word of God, contained in the Holy Scriptures.”11

Always we need to keep in view that the Bible is not just a collection of historical documents, but it is the book of the Church, containing God's word. And so we do not read the Bible as isolated individuals, interpreting it solely by the light of our private understanding, or in terms of current theories about source, form or redaction criticism. We read it as members of the Church, in communion with all the other members throughout the ages. The final criterion for our interpretation of Scripture is the mind of the Church. And this means keeping constantly in view how the meaning of Scripture is explained and applied in Holy Tradition: that is to say, how the Bible is understood by the Fathers and the saints, and how it is used in liturgical worship.

When the heart is mentioned in Orthodox spiritual texts, it is to be understood in the full Biblical sense. The heart signifies not simply the physical organ in the chest, not simply the emotions and affections, but the spiritual center of man's being, the human person as made in God's image—the deepest and truest self, the inner shrine to be entered only through sacrifice and death.