Patristic interpretation means reading the Bible the way the Church Fathers did, within the living Tradition of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, and always seeing Christ as the center of all Scripture.
If you’re coming from a Protestant background, this might sound strange at first. You’re probably used to the idea that you can pick up the Bible, pray for guidance, and figure out what it means on your own. That’s not how the Orthodox Church has ever approached Scripture. The Fathers, saints like St. John Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, didn’t read the Bible in isolation. They read it within the Church, shaped by the liturgy, the Creed, and the consensus of believers going back to the Apostles.
Think of it this way. When Philip met the Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah in Acts 8, the eunuch said, “How can I understand unless someone guides me?” That’s the patristic approach in a nutshell. We don’t figure out Scripture alone. We receive its meaning from those who came before us, who fought heresies, who lived lives of prayer, who were filled with the Holy Spirit.
How the Fathers Read Differently
The Fathers read Scripture Christologically. They saw Christ everywhere, not just in the New Testament, but throughout the Old. When they read Psalm 110 (“The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand”), they didn’t see a generic royal psalm. They saw the Trinity and Christ’s divine nature. When they read about the bronze serpent Moses lifted in the wilderness, they saw Christ lifted on the Cross. When they read about Noah’s flood, they saw baptism.
This isn’t making things up. Christ Himself taught this way. After His resurrection, He walked with two disciples on the road to Emmaus and “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” The Fathers followed that pattern.
They used what we call typology. A type is a real historical person or event that God designed to point forward to Christ. Adam was a real person, but he’s also a type of Christ (the New Adam). The Passover lamb was real, but it prefigured Christ our Passover. The manna in the wilderness was real bread, but it pointed to the Eucharist. The Fathers weren’t ignoring history. They were seeing God’s plan woven through it.
Sometimes they also used allegory, especially with parables or prophetic visions. When Christ explained the parable of the sower, He gave an allegorical reading, the seed is the Word, the soils are different types of hearts. The Fathers did the same thing, but always grounded in the Church’s faith. They weren’t free-associating. They were interpreting Scripture through the lens of the Creed, the councils, and the liturgy.
Why This Matters for You
If you walk into St. Michael on a Sunday morning, you’re encountering patristic interpretation whether you realize it or not. The hymns we sing come from the Fathers. The prayers we pray echo their language. When we chant “O come, let us worship and fall down before Christ” at the beginning of Liturgy, we’re affirming what the Fathers taught, that Jesus is fully God, worthy of worship.
You don’t have to read St. John Chrysostom’s commentaries to benefit from patristic interpretation (though his homilies are wonderful if you want to). Just by showing up to services, you’re being formed by the Fathers’ understanding of Scripture. The liturgy is theology. It’s the Fathers teaching you how to read the Bible.
This is different from the “Bible alone” approach many of us grew up with in Baptist or non-denominational churches here in Southeast Texas. I’m not saying Baptists don’t love Scripture, they absolutely do. But the idea that each person can interpret the Bible independently, without reference to the Church’s historic understanding, would’ve been foreign to the Fathers. They believed the Church guards the meaning of Scripture. When controversies arose, about the Trinity, about Christ’s nature, about the Holy Spirit, the Church gathered in councils and said, “This is what Scripture means. This is what we’ve always believed.”
Living Inside the Tradition
St. Athanasius spent his life defending the divinity of Christ against the Arians, who claimed Jesus was a created being. He didn’t invent a new interpretation. He showed how the Church had always read passages like “I and the Father are one” and “Before Abraham was, I AM.” St. Basil did the same for the Holy Spirit. St. John Chrysostom preached through entire books of the Bible, verse by verse, showing his congregation in Antioch how to live the Christian life based on what Scripture actually says.
These men weren’t just scholars. They were bishops, pastors, monks. They prayed the Psalms daily. They celebrated the Eucharist. They fasted. Their interpretation of Scripture came out of a life immersed in the Church’s worship.
When you read the Orthodox Study Bible, you’ll find patristic commentary woven throughout. It’s not just the text with a few footnotes. It’s the Fathers helping you see what they saw, Christ on every page, the unity of Old and New Testaments, the continuity of God’s plan from Genesis to Revelation.
You can also find patristic resources on Ancient Faith and the OCA website. But honestly, the best way to learn patristic interpretation is to keep coming to church. Let the liturgy teach you. Listen to the Scripture readings in the context of the feast or the saint’s day. Pay attention to how the hymns connect Old Testament prophecies to Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection.
The Fathers aren’t a burden. They’re a gift. They’re the Church’s memory, keeping us connected to the Apostles, keeping us from drifting into error or novelty. When you read Scripture the way they did, you’re reading it the way the Church always has, with Christ at the center, within the Tradition, guided by the Spirit who inspired it in the first place.
