While there is no one particular way of interpreting the Scriptures in the Eastern Church, a certain attitude and perspective is necessary to maintain while studying the Bible. It is summed up in the Eastern Christian concept of Theoria. Although this approach in no way discounts the value of academics and scholars, theoria is primarily a spiritual way of perceiving the Truth. The one who has theoria sees history and Biblical truth through the eyes of faith and spiritual experience. Without this spiritual vision, no matter how much he or she knows, he will never understand the Bible.

The East is grateful for the benefits gained through modern Biblical research, but it is not supremely focused on data. Theoria sees value in research only if it can be used to (1) increase the Church’s ability to better discern what God is trying to say to her, and (2) if it can deepen each Church member’s love for God and his brethren. These two goals are a work of the Spirit, above all else.

Theoria sees a message for this time and this generation of believers, a word that is heard and acted on. No one who reads the Scriptures in accord with the principle of theoria can say he knows the Scriptures but does not live them. According to theoria, the one who does not live the Word, does not know the Word. Theoria is a vision where God’s Word is personal, living, immediate and applicable. Theoria’s spiritual character has been presented in this manner:

….Byzantine theologians within the Ro-man Empire from around the fourth to the fifteenth century, presupposed a concept of Revelation which was substantially different from that held in the West. Because the concept of theology in Byzantium was truly inseparable from theoria, theology could not be, as it was in the West, a rational deduction from ‘revealed’ premises (i.e., from the statements of the hierarchy of the Church or from Scripture). Not that a rational deductive process was completely eliminated from theological thought; but it represented for the Byzantines the lowest and lest reliable level of theology. The true theologian was the one who saw and experienced the content of theology; and this experience was considered to belong not to the intellect alone, but to the ‘eyes of the Spirit.’ which place the whole man – intellect, emotions, and even sense – in contact with divine existence.

Theoria is a “spiritual perception of the one sent by God, possible only to the believer. It is an insight into God’s Word that cannot be received by one who is not deeply and spiritually involved in the Word of God as a means of finding focus true and real focus to his life.