Contemporary Orthodox and Patristic Views of Scripture

In the process of converting to Orthodoxy some of the apologists for the Church, and there were priests involved, advanced the argument that Orthodoxy viewed Scripture somewhat like Karl Barth, in whose neo-Orthodoxy, it was said of Scripture that it "contained" the word of God. This argument was advanced, first of all, because Revelation in the primary sense is the disclosure of the person of Jesus Christ, and it is beyond reason and words. Therefore, Scripture, in this sense is not revelation but, a pointer to Revelation. But another part of the argument was that Scripture contained errors of fact, was was inerrant only in the sense that it pointed to the experience of God in Jesus Christ available to all seekers. So, in matters of historiography or science or psychology or economics , factual error, they suggested might be present, but such error would not compromise the intent of Scripture to be a pointer to the transrational revelation of Jesus Christ, to revelation itself.
Such folks used such an argument to blunt the assaults on the facticity of Scripture that have come through the Higher Critical approaches to Scripture of the past two Centuries, and also the assault on the facticity of early Genesis by the Darwinian and neo-Darwinian theories that have taken the world by storm. Apart from any putative errors in Scripture, these good folks averr, the meaning of Scripture is found in the Tradition of Interpretation that is resident within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Church has never dogmatized on early Genesis so opinion may vary all over the place as to its meaning for the believer. It might also be said that the Church has never dogmatized on the precise nature of the inspiration of Scripture, and so folks may vary considerably in their views of it.

This is true but is also somewhat misleading. For the dogmatic statements that have been canonized in Orthodox Ecumenical Councils presupposed a certain very high standard of Scripture. Scripture in the Creed is referenced repeatedly as the authority upon which the propositions of the Creed are based. The opposition to the filioque in the Creed is based as well on the very exacting view of the importance of every word found in Scripture; for it is upon the basis of fact that the Holy Spirit is said, in Scripture, to proceed from the Father, with no mention of the Son, that the Orthodox Church has been willing to persist in a 1000 year old schism with the Roman Catholic Church. And when one reads the Fathers of the Church and of the Councils one comes away with the conclusion that while no one articulated a doctrine that Scripture exhibited plenary verbal inspiration, that view was their tacit assumption. Such high view of Scripture was also maintained by Blessed Augustine when he said in the following in letters sent to St. Jerome:

Augustine wrote in his first letter; 'it seems to me that most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books' (Letter 28 chapter 3). He repeated the point in his second letter; '…by the admission of falsehood here, the authority of the Holy Scriptures given for faith of all coming generations is to me made wholly uncertain and wavering' (40.5).

Later he spelt out His own understanding of the nature of authority,

'I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error'.
(see the excellent blog http://scholasticus.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/augustine-on-scripture/ )

It seems to me, therefore, for us to lower the bar as far as our understanding of the reliability of Scripture is concerned, may provide certain short-term benefits in conversing with Darwinians and higher critical scholars; in the long term it threatens to undermine the Patristic foundation from which Orthodoxy derives much of it sinew.
I am afraid that there is also some prideful snobbery going on as I have noticed in those sorts of discussions that Fundamentalists are spoken of pejoratively in their robust defense of inerrant Scripture. I would suggest, that in this case, the Fundamentalists are defending the Faith of the Fathers when it comes to the understanding of the inspiration of Scripture and the Orthodox anti-fundamentalists are deviating sharply from the same. Fundamentalists are not wrong in their high view of Scripture but their failure to read it within the mind-set of the Church. It reminds me of what a wise priest once said, 'what the Church neglects the sects will over-emphasize.' One hopes that the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church listens as the 'rocks' cry out and praise the God who breathed upon the text of Holy Scripture so that every word as received by the Church was God-breathed.
Next I would like to address the issue which is a matter of definitions. To say that Scripture is not revelation seems extreme to me. It seems to be in the same class that says that we can learn nothing by human reason and that philosophical thinking can yield nothing of value. Now Orthodoxy classically has recognized distinct limits to the value of philosophy, but not to the extent that reason and propositions, and syllogisms and words and so forth can have no value for us at all. They do have value, or else Jesus Christ would not have spoken a word but just stood around a deaf mute, until people got it. But to the contrary, words and propositions from inspired Scripture do inform us on a certain level, reveal things to us on a certain, level and they prepare our minds to accept the higher revelations from the invisible and the uncreated, of the person of Jesus Christ himself. Perhaps it would be more helpful to speak of Scripture as revelation with a little 'r' and the transrational experience of God, revelation with a big "R". Others may differentiate between revelation and illumination. But to say Scripture is not revelation sounds too close to a debunking of Scripture that we should not allow ourselves to imply.
Lossky, in his work, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, put it this way "...we must live with the dogma expressing a revealed truth, which appears to us as an unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion that instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically. Far from being mutually opposed, theology and mysticism support and complete each other. One is impossible without the other."