We experience the Holy Scriptures as the “living breath” through the Holy Spirit. Written accounts came after personal encounters with the living God over the course of thousands of years. As the Word became flesh, so the Holy Spirit gives life to the letter of the word and the written accounts of experiencing God. In a similar way, the letter of the Law, that once guarded Jewish tradition, was made alive through the Word that became flesh, the Incarnate Jesus Christ who gives all meaning to the Holy Scriptures. The connection between the letter and Spirit, the Law and the Messiah, the whole New Testament and Jesus Christ is like the inner and outer workings between our flesh and spirit. For us, both are born at once. But the spirit is eternal, and the flesh decays. We could even venture to say that, as Orthodox Christians, the body is in the spirit, rather than the spirit being in the body, as Jean-Claude Larchet describes that interrelationship in the patristic tradition. Likewise, the written word doesn’t necessarily limit the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures. The spirit expresses itself through the word. Christ is the cornerstone of interpretation and “liturgical worship,” and the Gospels are even used as a representation of Christ Himself in the healing rites of the Church, for instance.
The historical, philological, and textual criticism approach may add some useful bits of information to the cultural context of Holy Scriptures, but those disciplines ultimately lack the Church’s spiritual interpretation that is required for knowing what it means. To take a purely historical analysis of Scripture to arrive at spiritual meaning would fall short of the truth because the Church not only has continued the traditions and teachings of Christ, but the Church has the Holy Spirit as her guide. Whereas former methods attempt to eliminate, crystalize and organize complexity from the bottom up, the latter approach, in the Church’s experience, calls on the Holy Spirit to illuminate, enlighten and enliven not only our intellectual understanding of scriptural truths but to clarify how we should live and act in a chaotic and complicated world below.
Three major approaches to understanding Holy Scripture developed early on by the church fathers: the literal application, allegorical, anagogical method. These interpretive methods require that the Scriptures contain the mysteries, that the prophecies about Jesus are true, and that the Holy Spirit by grace leads us toward salvation, when we deepen our understanding through reading the Scriptures. So, all three methods are in a sense literary, requiring the reading or hearing of these books and letters, and are applicable to our lives directly.