(Chapter One in Bread & Water, Wine & Oil: An Orthodox Christian Experience of God, Archimandrite Meletios Webber, (Conciliar Press: Ben Lomand, CA, 2007.)
Perhaps the foundation for decisive biblical interpretation did not seem so decisive. For Christians of the West, Roman Catholic and Protestant, there is a very tangible foundation for their reading of Scripture. The Roman Catholics have their Pope, Protestants have their Bible.
For Orthodox Christians, neither of these qualify as the means by which our understanding of the Faith is settled. There is the Bible, the apostolic succession, the councils, but none of one of these in and of itself stands as a final arbiter. Yes, our bishops issue rulings, but some of these require adjustments. Especially when a Nestorius becomes an Archbishop, and error is promulgated.
Ultimately, God the Holy Spirit is in charge, leading us into all the truth. (St. John 16) And He is likened to the wind in St. John 3:8; as the wind blows where it wills, and we hear the sound of it, but we don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going, so it is with the Holy Spirit. And so we accept the uncertainty and trust the Tradition.
Archimandrite Meletios describes the fallen state of man as a rupture between the harmonious workings of our minds and our hearts. Our minds ruminate on the past, worry about the future, and ignore the present moment, the only place where we truly live. And it seeks to dominate the heart.
The heart of which he speaks is a translation of the Greek word “nous.” It is not the source of our feelings, which are actually by-products of our thoughts; it is the very core of our being.
This heart of which he writes lives entirely in the present, and is intuitive. It operates with quiet awareness, making connections in all relationships rather than critical and judgmental distinctions. In the natural order of things, the heart is to rule the mind, for by it’s agency we can come to constant awareness and trust in God, at peace with the past and whatever the future may bring, by God’s providence.
The healing of this lack of harmony between the heart and the mind comes from God as we seek Him with prayerful effort.
And so decisive biblical interpretation, ultimately, is not primarily about the certainty and propositional clarity which our minds long for, but about the inner peace which is engendered by God’s grace as we carry our crosses daily in the prayerful effort of seeking God with all our hearts, trusting in the Apostolic Tradition which the undivided Church has maintained for us through all its generations. We may have, in the Apostolic Tradition, “the prophetic word more sure,” but each of us must embrace this precious seed in our very depths, watering it, weeding around it, that we may grow up to salvation in Christ. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.
Impelled by the Scriptures into the Orthodox Church 
Thanks, brother Ephrem! “I can’t believe I ate (read) the whole thing!”
My Protestant friends never asked me why I became an Orthodox Christian. Perhaps they regarded our move to the Orthodox Christian faith as the act of a loose cannon. At least that’s my suspicion, which could simply be another of my numerous vain imaginations. In any case, I thought my journey was worth sharing with whoever might be interested, and as I seem to have gotten the gist of blogging, I put it here. This entire journey is one from faith to knowledge and back to faith, as knowledge is partial. (1 Cor. 13) Fr. Stephen Freeman, on “Glory to God for All Things,” shared a quotation from Mother Thekla from the Monastery of the Holy Assumption in Normandy, England, today which sums up what I (relying on Archimandrite Meletios’ insights) tried to express in this last post. Here it is: http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/01/03/contradiction-and-paradox/