They’re not two different things. Scripture is part of Holy Tradition.
That’s the short answer, but it probably sounds strange if you grew up Baptist or Church of Christ here in Southeast Texas. Most of us learned “the Bible alone” as the rule of faith. Tradition meant human customs that got added later and corrupted the pure gospel. But that’s not how the early Church worked, and it’s not how we understand things in Orthodoxy.
Tradition Came First
Here’s what actually happened. Jesus didn’t write a book. He founded a Church. He taught the apostles, they taught others, and the faith spread through preaching, baptizing, celebrating the Eucharist, and living in community. Christians worshiped, prayed, and believed for decades before anyone wrote the first Gospel. When the apostles and their close associates did write letters and accounts, they wrote to churches that already knew the faith. Paul’s letters assume his readers already believe certain things. He’s not starting from scratch.
The New Testament emerged from the life of the Church. It didn’t fall from heaven leather-bound with Jesus’s words in red. The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, recognized which writings were truly apostolic and which weren’t. That process of discernment took centuries. The canon of Scripture is itself a product of Holy Tradition.
So when we say Scripture is part of Tradition, we mean the Bible is the central written witness to the apostolic faith that was handed down. “Tradition” just means “that which is handed over.” It’s the whole faith once delivered to the saints. Scripture is the heart of it, but not separate from it.
Why Not “Bible Alone”?
If you pull Scripture out of Tradition and try to read it by itself, problems show up fast. Whose interpretation counts? You end up with thousands of denominations, each claiming the Bible alone but reaching different conclusions about baptism, communion, church government, salvation, and everything else. I’m not trying to be harsh. It’s just what happens.
The Orthodox Church says Scripture must be read within the context that produced it. That means the liturgy, the Fathers, the councils, the lives of the saints. These aren’t additions to Scripture. They’re the living voice of the same apostolic faith. Saint Basil the Great said that without this living context, Scripture becomes “mere letter.” You can make it say almost anything.
Think about it practically. When the Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on your door with their Bible, they’ve got verses too. So do the Mormons. So does every heretic in history. The question isn’t whether you have a Bible. It’s whether you’re reading it the way the Church has always read it, in the Spirit who inspired it and who guides the Church.
The Church Interprets Scripture
This makes some people nervous. It sounds like we’re putting human authority over God’s Word. But that’s backwards. The Church isn’t above Scripture. The Church is the body of Christ, the pillar and ground of truth, the community where the Holy Spirit dwells. When the bishops gathered at Nicaea in 325 to clarify what Scripture teaches about Christ, they weren’t inventing something new. They were protecting what had always been believed from a new distortion.
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware puts it well. The Church gave us the Bible, and the Church tells us what it means. Not individual bishops making things up, but the whole Church in council, in continuity with the apostles and the Fathers, guided by the same Spirit.
You see this every Sunday in the Divine Liturgy. We read the Gospel in the context of worship, surrounded by icons of the saints, praying the same prayers Christians have prayed for centuries. The Scripture isn’t isolated. It’s alive in the Church’s life.
What This Isn’t
We’re not saying the Bible is insufficient or unclear. We’re saying it was never meant to be read alone, outside the community of faith. And we’re not saying you need a theology degree to understand it. But you do need the Church. You need the liturgy, the Fathers, the creeds. You need to read it as an Orthodox Christian, not as an isolated individual with a concordance.
This also isn’t the same as the Roman Catholic view, though it’s closer to theirs than to the Protestant one. Catholics tend to speak of Scripture and Tradition as two separate sources of revelation. We see them as one living reality. Scripture is the written form of the Tradition. They’re not two streams running parallel. It’s one river.
Living Water
If you’re visiting St. Michael’s and this feels unfamiliar, that’s okay. It takes time. But pay attention during the services. Notice how Scripture saturates everything. The Psalms, the Gospel, the epistles, the hymns woven through with biblical language. We’re not downplaying the Bible. We’re reading it the way it was always meant to be read, in the worshiping life of the Church where it was born.
The Bible is precious to us. But it’s not a paper pope. It’s the living word of the living God, received and proclaimed by the living Church. Come to vespers on Saturday evening and hear the Psalms chanted. Come to liturgy and hear the Gospel. You’ll start to see what we mean.
