‘The Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field; you must sell everything and buy that field to come into possession of the treasure’. All these images and parables say: you need to acquire what you already have, make your own what is yours, that is, what you have, but do not yet possess. In apostle Paul, there are images of children who are no different from slaves until they reach maturity, which in the time of Paul the father of the child determined. The father determined when the son reached maturity, and from then on the son was no longer under the supervision of a tutor, but free and independent – an heir who manages the inheritance. The son has everything as an heir, but possesses nothing until he reaches maturity.
‘Beloved! We are now children of God, but it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. We know only that, when it is revealed, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is’. This experience of apostle John the Theologian, to which he referred in such simple words, was confirmed by the hosts of Venerable Fathers and Mothers (Venerable to God in Christ – V.A.). For example: Venerable Seraphim of Sarov and Silouan the Athonite at the beginning of their ascetic struggle experienced an encounter with Christ (for a moment they became like Christ, each to his measure, as much as he could bear, so as not to die; by the law of spiritual life – like unites with like, so they had to change ontologically, began to be, as much as they could, like Christ), and then for years struggled for the acquisition of Christ’s ineffable humility. (Forgive me for rambling on. You have already felt that this text is a compilation of various quotes from the father, which I, despite my ignorance in writing, want to combine into one integral text to illuminate one intended theme. We are like walking through an art gallery, where the exhibition is dedicated to one theme, and we are looking at one painting, but to better understand some details, we need to methodologically turn to the examination of other paintings. Therefore, if they interest you, you can examine them in detail under the guidance and advice of spiritual fathers-advisors, more experienced brothers and sisters. But I must return to the main theme – V.A.).
Holy Scripture is the experience of the Church, the experience of communion with God, recorded by the Church and only for the Church. The author of Holy Scripture is the Church, the recipient, the receiver of the message – the Church. And the source and key to understanding Scripture – Christ, who is presented to us in the Mystery of the Kingdom, the Mystery of the Church – the Eucharist. Without the experience of the Kingdom of God, which has come in power, outside the Eucharist in which the Church introduces communicants into the Holy of Holies of the Triune God, Holy Scripture is not read. We have said above that without existential experience, the word is an empty sound. Therefore, the word of Scripture turns only to those who were baptized into the Church (conditionally speaking – Old Testament or New Testament), who ontologically became participants in the Covenant with God, special relations, status, and mode of being in the Old Testament symbolically, typologically, symbolically, and in the New Testament, who entered into it and received the power to be a son or daughter of God by grace, in the Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ became the only begotten sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father.
Let’s demonstrate our assertion with the example of the Bible. (The father understood Holy Scripture – the Tradition of the Church as an expression in various forms of the experience of communion with God (life in the Holy Spirit): in music, in colors – icons and works of painting, in stone and architecture, in the literary word – Scripture itself and others, and which (Scripture – V.A.) contains the Bible and is much broader – V.A.). The Bible is not a collection of theological works on the topics: God, Church, Salvation, Jesus Christ, Son of God, etc. The authors of the Biblical books did not write them for the Bible and never wrote (did not address) future generations, it was always (and only because it is at all times) the living Word here and now. No author of the books of the Bible wrote philosophical ‘treatises on the topic’. For example, apostle Paul writes his letters-epistles to a specific Church (in Rome, Ephesus, Thessalonica…) or to a person (Philemon, Timothy…), baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (always the addressee – the Church) with a certain specific pressing purpose. And so every book of the Bible. The collection of books of the Bible into one book and giving them the status of the Word of God, God-inspired Scripture is done by the Church (whose essence – in silence to keep all the Words of Eternal Life, Ineffable, and in the last resort, when it cannot not speak, clothes in a word worthy of God) and one of the main impulses – the appearance of apocryphal, false (untrue, fake, forged…) literature, which begins to be issued as the Word of God, Scripture of the Church and which supposedly expresses the life of the Church. ‘The malice of heretics compels (forces – V.A.) us to speak about what needs to be silent’, – said the Fathers. By what criterion were ‘the Gospel of Thomas’, ‘the Gospel of Peter’, and others recognized as apocryphal forgeries, and those in the canon of the Bible – as the Word of God? It is first necessary to clarify the foggy, often misinterpreted concept of ‘God-inspired’ or ‘Word of God’ (we are not talking about philology, not about the words Jesus Christ used to communicate). God-inspired words, the Word of God – this means not that God takes, like a pencil or a megaphone, the author of the book of Holy Scripture, and writes through him, or speaks through him, using him, as a ‘thing’ or ‘means’ (this would contradict the fundamental truth: God – a personality in three hypostases, and man, the image of God – a personality, who can never be a means or a thing, but only a goal, an end; where man is a means, even for God, then it is already paganism, and such a God is not the God of the Gospel, but an idol – V.A.). When we talk about the God-inspired nature of Scripture, we mean that these words were born in the true experience of communion with God and point to an experience identical to the experience of the Church – knowing God as He is. In the Old Testament, in images and symbols, prophets contemplated the ‘back’ of God, the shadow of the Mystery of the New Testament, and in the New Testament in the Only Begotten Son we have access to the Father, by the Holy Spirit we are introduced into the flow of the Triune Divine Life, we know God as Humble Sacrificial Love. Man – always a coworker (co-creator – V.A.) with God (in the creation of creaturely gods – V.A.). A prophet is one with whom God shares His thoughts. Holy Scripture is the announcement of the truth about God, the Church, Man, the World, always in the expression of the catholic experience of the life of the Church in the Holy Spirit.