The Eastern Orthodox Church affirms that the Sacred Scriptures are divinely inspired and serve as the supreme written authority for faith and life. Scripture is understood as the Church's book—written within the community of faith, read within the community of faith, and interpreted by the community of faith through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is therefore inseparable from the living Tradition of the Church; it cannot be properly understood apart from the Fathers and the Councils.

Orthodox biblical interpretation recognizes the authority of the consensus patrum (the consensus of the Holy Fathers) as the norma normata for interpreting Scripture. The Orthodox Church is suspicious of private, individualistic interpretation of Scripture apart from the Tradition—a concern it directs both against Roman Catholic Magisterial claims to exclusive interpretation and against Protestant sola scriptura. The Scripture-Tradition relationship in Orthodoxy is often expressed as: Scripture is Tradition in written form; Tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, of which Scripture is the supreme written expression.