Because Scripture didn’t come alone. The Bible was written, collected, preserved, and interpreted by the Church, so separating Scripture from the Church’s living Tradition is like trying to understand a letter without knowing who wrote it or why.
For Orthodox Christians, Holy Tradition isn’t something added to Scripture. It’s the other way around. Scripture is part of Tradition, the living faith handed down from the Apostles. When St. Paul told the Thessalonians to “stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter,” he wasn’t describing two competing authorities. He was describing one apostolic faith transmitted in different forms.
The Problem With “Bible Alone”
The doctrine of sola scriptura, Scripture alone, emerged during the Protestant Reformation as a response to medieval Catholic abuses. Martin Luther needed a principle to challenge papal authority, so he appealed to Scripture as the sole final authority for Christians. That made sense in his context. But it created a problem the Reformers couldn’t solve: who decides what Scripture means?
You can see the difficulty immediately. If you hand five people a Bible and tell them it’s self-interpreting, you’ll get six different churches by next Sunday. And that’s exactly what happened. Protestantism splintered into thousands of denominations, each claiming to follow Scripture alone, each reading it differently.
Here in Southeast Texas, you can drive down I-10 and pass a dozen churches between Beaumont and Winnie, all with “Bible” in the name, all teaching different things about baptism, communion, church government, and salvation. They can’t all be right. But they’re all using the same book.
Who Gave Us the Bible?
Here’s the question that makes sola scriptura collapse: How do you know which books belong in the Bible?
The table of contents isn’t inspired. There’s no verse in Scripture that lists the canonical books. The early Christians didn’t have a New Testament for decades, they had the Old Testament, oral apostolic teaching, and eventually letters and Gospels that circulated among the churches. It took centuries for the Church to discern which writings were truly apostolic and which weren’t.
St. Athanasius listed our current 27 New Testament books in 367 AD. Church councils in the late fourth century confirmed that list. But the authority behind that decision was the Church’s lived experience under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Church gave us the Bible. So appealing to the Bible against the Church is like using your birth certificate to argue that your mother isn’t your mother.
What Is Holy Tradition?
When Orthodox Christians talk about Holy Tradition, we don’t mean a grab bag of ethnic customs or a second set of secret teachings. We mean the fullness of the apostolic faith as it’s been lived and transmitted in the Church.
Tradition includes Scripture. It also includes the Nicene Creed, the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, the writings of the Church Fathers, the Divine Liturgy, the Church’s canonical order, and her iconography. All of this is one coherent whole, the life of the Church guided by the Holy Spirit into truth.
St. Basil the Great wrote about traditions received “from the teaching of the Apostles” that weren’t written down but were practiced by the Church, like making the sign of the cross or facing east to pray. These aren’t arbitrary additions. They’re part of how the Church has always lived the faith.
Scripture’s Authority Within Tradition
Orthodox Christians have enormous reverence for Scripture. We call it the inspired Word of God. Every Divine Liturgy includes readings from the Gospels and Epistles. The Psalms form the backbone of our daily prayers. Bishops carry the Gospel book in processions and place it on the altar as a throne for Christ’s presence.
But we don’t read Scripture the way someone reads a repair manual, as if any individual with a text and good intentions can figure out the truth. We read it within the Church, with the mind of the Church, guided by the consensus of the Fathers and the life of the Liturgy.
When the Fathers interpreted Scripture, they weren’t inventing new doctrines. They were articulating what the Church had always believed and practiced. The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t spelled out explicitly in Scripture, you won’t find the word “Trinity” in the Bible. But the Church recognized the Trinity in Scripture because she’d been baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from the beginning. The Council of Nicea didn’t create Trinitarian faith. It defended what was already there.
Reading With the Church
If you grew up Baptist or non-denominational, the idea that you can’t just read the Bible on your own and figure out what it means probably sounds wrong. Doesn’t the Holy Spirit guide believers into truth?
Yes. But the Holy Spirit guides the Church, not isolated individuals. That’s why Jesus promised the Spirit to the Apostles as a group, why the Apostles made decisions in council, why St. Paul corrected the Corinthians as a church. The faith is received and lived in community, not discovered solo.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read Scripture personally. You should. But personal reading happens within the larger context of the Church’s faith. When you read the Bible as an Orthodox Christian, you’re reading it with two thousand years of saints looking over your shoulder, checking your work.
The Living Faith
Maybe the simplest way to say it is this: Christianity isn’t a book religion. It’s a living faith in a living God, transmitted through a living Church. The Bible is essential to that faith, but it’s not a replacement for the Church or a substitute for the Holy Spirit’s work in the Church’s life.
If you’re visiting St. Michael’s and this feels strange, that’s normal. Most of us in Southeast Texas grew up thinking the Bible was enough. But as you spend time in the Orthodox Church, you’ll start to see how Scripture comes alive in the Liturgy, how the Fathers open up passages you’ve read a hundred times, how the Church’s Tradition isn’t a burden but a gift. You’re not losing the Bible. You’re gaining the fullness of the faith that produced it.
