Status Updates From The Orthodox Church

"Orthodoxy regards the Bible as a verbal icon of Christ." (232)

"Hell is not so much a place where God imprisons humans, as a place where humans, by misusing their free will, choose to imprison themselves. [...] Hell exists as as final possibility, but several of the Fathers have nonetheless believed that in the end all will be reconciled to God. It is heretical to say that all 'must' be saved, for this is to deny free will, but it is legitimate to hope that all 'may' be saved."

"Latin Scholastic theology, emphasizing as it does the essence at the expense of the persons, comes near to turning God into an abstract idea. He becomes a remote and impersonal being, whose existence has to be proved by metaphysical arguments - a God of the philosophers, not the God of Abraham, [...] what is important is [...] that we should have a direct and living encounter with a concrete and personal God."

"But if Christians are People of the Book, the Bible is the Book of the People; it must not be regarded as something set up 'over' the Church, but [...] understood 'within'."

"It is from the Church that the Bible ultimately derives its authority, for it was the Church which originally decided which books form a part of Holy Scripture; and it is the Church alone which can interpret Holy Scripture with authority."

"...icons were part of the transfigured cosmos." (18)