On the Scriptures: Alexandrian Fathers

INTRODUCTION

A good idea to start this lesson is to give the youth this passage from the Bible to read and think about what it means. The servant can divide the class into 3 or 4 groups and ask them to read and interpret.

"Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come." (Matthew 12: 31-32)

Give them 5 minutes and then go round and ask them how they interpreted the passage.

What do you think this means? (discussion)
Who is the Son of Man? This is our Lord Jesus Christ. In this verse, Jesus is saying that all our sins will be forgiven when we repent. Great, right?
Now, some parts of this passage are really hard to understand What do you find hard here? The first is that Jesus is speaking about a sin that will not be forgiven. The second is that this verse may imply that the Holy Spirit is greater than the Son of Man Because a blasphemy against the Son of Man will be forgiven but one against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

(Note: the servant doesn't need to give the interpretation of the passage now because it will be given at the end of the lesson).

CONTENT & DISCUSSION

We saw from our discussion that it is easy for a passage to have many interpretations. Well, that can get confusing, right? Of course, there are several ways to understand the same Biblical passage and many of them are right, but some might be very wrong too. And this is important, because when the Bible is understood wrongly, it can lead to misunderstandings and heresies. The dangerous thing about a heresy is not that it is different to what we know, but that it endangers our relationship with God and our salvation.

Show the youth this video of an artist who creates mosaic portraits using magazine scraps:

Discuss:

How many different portraits do you think she can make from the same scraps? Lots, & they would be really different One church father said that this is exactly what Bible interpretation can be like. Someone can take the Bible stories and teachings and understand them in one way, like a portrait. And then someone else can come and use the same stories and teachings, and reach a very different overall picture It's as if an artist made the portrait of a king and then someone else came and rearranged the mosaics into the image of a beast. And so, we need guidance to understand the Scriptures correctly, according to the faith of the church, or we might be like the artist who produced the image of a beast instead of the king.

Since the early centuries of the church, the church was aware of this issue, and we find almost all the church fathers reading the Bible in a specific way that allowed them to know its truth. How did they do it? Today we'll learn from two of our church fathers how to read and understand the Bible. These are Sts. Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria.

Why these two saints? Both were Egyptians who lived in Alexandria. They are well known in all the Christian churches today, because they lived before the church was split into many groups. Each one of them lived at a time when other people were interpreting the faith and the Bible in very different ways, and heresies were spreading. Sts. Athanasius and Cyril each interpreted the Bible in the ways that explain the Christian faith & helped strengthen the faith, and so they have a lot to teach us about how to read the Bible today.

St. Athanasius was born to a non-Christian family and became a Christian at a very young age. He became a deacon and traveled with the pope of Alexandria (Pope Alexander) to the very first ecumenical council in a city called Nicaea in 325 AD. An ecumenical council means a gathering of the bishops of many cities of the church to discuss a certain issue. St Athanasius traveled there with the pope when he was a young man. Why was there a council in the first place? It was because a priest called Arius had said that Jesus Christ is less in divinity than God the Father. Like most everyone at the council, St Athanasius rejected what Arius was saying. Arius interpreted some Bible verses in a way to support his claims, but St. Athanasius demonstrated from the Bible that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and consubstantial (of one essence, the same essence/substance) with Him.

St Cyril lived after St Athanasius (actually, he was probably born a year before St Athanasius died). During his lifetime, another problem happened in the church when it was heard that an archbishop called Nestorius said that Jesus Christ is not God and man fully united but that there are 2 separate "persons" in Him. Another ecumenical council took place in 431 AD in a city called Ephesus. There St Cyril and the other bishops argued that what Nestorius was saying was in fact against the faith of the church and of the correct interpretation of the Bible.

So in these two incidents, who was using the Bible? Both Athanasius and Arius, and both Cyril and Nestorius Well, what was the difference then? It was how they read the Bible that made the difference This doesn't mean that someone must have bad intentions or be evil in order to interpret the Bible incorrectly. This means that the church teaches us a specific way to understand the Bible. So, let's learn 4 principles from Sts Athanasius and Cyril to read and understand Scripture.

Based on the Faith of the Church

Remember the artist in the video? We know we should arrange the pieces "correctly." But how can we know this correct arrangement? We know it from the church. You know that the church has existed for longer than the New Testament? From the book of Acts, we know that the church was already gathering and holding the Eucharist and preaching the joyful gospel of salvation. At that time, most of the New Testament was not even written yet, and would not be completed for another 50 or 60 years. This is why we understand the teachings of the Bible from the church.

What does the church teach us? It teaches us that the Bible is about God's love for His creation, especially humankind, and the relationship between them. The reason we read the Scriptures is to know God and His wonderful love for us. This takes us to point 2.

As One Unit

In very broad lines, Scripture tells a single story. So, everything in it is a continuous line of events describing the relationship between God and humans. What is this story? It is the story of God's love for us, our relationship with God, and the story of our salvation. This is why we cannot pick one story or one verse and interpret it in a way that is independent of the others.

For example, how many of you have heard this sentence: "when you are sad, just open the Bible at random and the first verse you see is God's message to you"?? Do you think it works? Imagine if the first verse you see is: "he Judas went away and hanged himself" (Matthew 27: 5)?

Of course, God may sometimes have a specific message to a specific person. BUT this is usually not the way the Bible works To really listen to God's voice and know Him, we should read the Bible regularly, and in this way whenever we are in any situation we'll remember what we read earlier and find suitable advice. What we have in the Bible is not a magic answer to all our problems, but a relationship with God Himself.

Christologically

What does reading the Bible Christologically mean? It means that we recognize that everything the Bible says is really about Christ Sometimes it talks about Him explicitly and sometimes implicitly, but it's always about Christ. As Christians, we'll never really understand what the Bible is saying to us if we do not realize that Christ and His incarnation are the real core of the Scriptures.

And actually, the Bible itself shows us that this is the right way to read it. See what St Paul says in this verse: "the Israelites drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ." (1 Corinthians 10:4(. What is this rock? This verse refers to the incident in Exodus 17: 6 when Moses hit the rock in the desert and out of it flowed water. St Paul here says that, if we read this story as Christology, we will see that the rock they drank from symbolizes Christ, because Christ is the water of life, and He is our refuge in all the troubles that face us.

Perhaps this incident was short and clear. But some stories in the Bible are simply full of details and we can get confused. What can we do? St Cyril offers us a helpful solution. He says: when you read the Scripture, you should be like the bees when they go from flower to flower. Their purpose is not to stay on a single flower all day but to gather from each flower the nectar that they need to make honey Reading the Scriptures is very similar. We gather from it all that can teach us about Christ. Some details will not matter, and that should not bother you. For example, we know that the crossing of the Red Sea in the Old Testament is considered a symbol of baptism and salvation, right? This is the important thing to get from this incident. But someone might come and say: the Red Sea has fish and other creatures living in it. What do they symbolize and are they also get baptized by being inside the water? St Cyril would say: these are the details that do not matter The Bible wants to teach us about baptism from this incident. We should not get bogged down with unimportant details like this.

Liturgically, with Prayer and Submission

If you notice, we read a lot of Scripture in the liturgy (& by liturgy here I mean all the prayers of the church). Think of the Agpeya, midnight praises, vespers, Matins, the Eucharist, the baptism prayer, all the sacraments, the Pascha, and other services. Why? The Scriptures hit us differently when we hear them inside the liturgy than when we read them alone at home. Both are important, of course. But in the liturgy, it is as if our eyes are opened to the power of the words of Scripture.

Do you remember when Jesus appeared after His resurrection to two disciples who were traveling to a village called Emmaus? He started to explain to them the Scriptures and the prophecies that were written concerning Him, but still they did not know Him. When did they eventually recognize Him? "Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"" (Luke 24). When did they recognize Jesus? When did they finally understand the prophecies that were written regarding Him? Only when Jesus blessed the bread. The blessing of the bread refers to the Eucharist. This means that in the liturgy, God opens our hearts to understand and accept His word.

In the liturgy we have two main sections: the liturgy of the Catechumens in which we read the epistles and the Gospel, and the liturgy of the believers when we take communion. The fathers say that in the former we get to know God through the Scriptures, and in the latter, we get united with Him.

You know, St Anthony went to church and heard the verse saying: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me" (Matthew 19: 21). And he went out of church and did just that

God does not only open our hearts to the Bible when I hear it in church, but also when I read it at home, as long as this is aligned with how the church teaches and uses the Bible in the liturgical prayers. When I read the Bible, I should know that God is talking to me. The word of God is living and powerful (Hebrews 4:12). I am not approaching the Bible as a history or science book, but it is where I can find eternal life (John 5:39).

APPLICATION (Action)

Now let's get back to our passage about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. To recap, the passage reads:

"Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come." (Matthew 12: 31-32)

This was a troubling passage for many people. In the 4th century, a bishop called Serapion asked St Athanasius about the meaning of this verse.

St Athanasius acknowledged that it is a difficult verse. To explain it, he applied the points that we just talked about:

First, he expressed his fear that he might not get to the deep meaning of this verse, and that he might not provide the best answer because of his human weakness.
Then, he explained the faith of the church regarding the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Next, he traced and explained all the mentions of the word "Spirit" in the Bible. Remember that in the fourth century there was no easy way to search for a word in the Bible
Then, he looked up and summarized how the earlier fathers explained this verse. He quotes two of the fathers before him, who said that the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit means when those who received the Holy Spirit in their baptism return to the life of sin.
Then, St Athanasius discussed this point of view and stated that he did not agree with this opinion (in your opinion, why?), because:
- If someone sinned or even denied the faith after baptism then repented, God would definitely forgive them. For example, Athanasius said that St Paul encouraged the Corinthians to accept a sinner back after he repented (2 Co 2: 5-11).
- The baptism is performed in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not the Holy Spirit alone. And therefore, if someone sins after baptism, they sin against the Trinity, not only the Holy Spirit.
- Jesus spoke this verse to the Pharisees who were not baptized. This means it's not talking about sinning after baptism.
- This interpretation does not solve the problem that the Holy Spirit in this sense is more "important" than the Son of Man
After this, St Athanasius started to analyze the context of this verse. Our Lord said this to the Pharisees when they claimed that Jesus cast out demons by the power of the ruler of the demons, rather than the power of God And that He is possessed by an unclean spirit rather than the Holy Spirit.
Finally, St Athanasius gave this explanation:

Many people who were listening to Jesus did not believe that He was the Son of God, as they were confused by His human nature. Many believed He was a prophet like John the Baptist or Elijah (Matthew 16: 14). But in all cases, they praised God for the miracles that they saw Jesus performing. In this case, Athanasius says, the blasphemy is against the "Son of Man" because of His weak human nature, not against the Son in His glory, and therefore it can be forgiven as it is a result of ignorance and unbelief.

But for the case of the Pharisees, not only did they not believe in Jesus, but they also attributed His miracles to Satan. So, Jesus here is telling them: if you don't believe in the Son of Man because of how he looks as a human, then this can still be forgiven. But if you attribute the works of God to Satan, and switch the Holy Spirit with the demonic spirits, then at this stage there is no way you can still believe in God (as you believe in Satan instead) and therefore this cannot be forgiven.

DISCUSSION/ACTIVITY

Some quotes can be distributed as handouts to the youth (see the handout PDF)

CONCLUSION

Let's recap: St Athanasius and St. Cyril teach us to read the Bible (1) according to the faith of the church, (2) as one unit, (3) Christologically, and (4) liturgically. How can we practice these 4 ways?

Prayerfully and asking for the Holy Spirit's guidance when reading the Bible.
Pay attention to the Scripture being read in the liturgies
Always focusing on the person of Christ whether I am reading the Old or New Testaments.
Bible commentaries written by the fathers can greatly help explain the Bible, and especially the difficult parts

RESOURCES

App: Catena: Bible & Commentaries
App: Spirit and Truth
The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit to Bishop Serapion
Dr George Awad, Tafsīr al-Kitāb al-Muqadas 'ind al-'Abā' (The Interpretation of Scripture for the Fathers), Arabic. PDF here