Bible, Church, Tradition

Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View; Volume One In the collected works of Georges Florovsky is an excellent introduction to Orthodox biblical exegesis and ecclesiology. It should be read by Protestants, many of whom are unfamiliar with Orthodox views on Scripture, as well as Roman Catholics for an alternative view to their own tradition, as well as Orthodox themselves who are looking for a short, academic but intelligible introduction to this topic. Fr. Florovsky is considered by some to be one of the most outstanding and profound theologians of twentieth-century Orthodoxy.

The first section of the book deals with the Church's proclamation of God's revelation to man, the Gospel, in the Holy Scriptures, and the "catholic" nature of the Church itself. The Church is labeled "catholic" because it possesses within itself a distinct universality and applies to all mankind. The Scripture needs to be proclaimed as God's Word revealed to man through the ages: first to the ancient Hebrew tribes in the form of the Old Testament and to the entire world through the New. The Bible should not be treated as a "history" book as such, nor is it a manual on the natural sciences, as many "fundamentalists" of various sects today uphold.