Sowing Doubt in the Lives of Saints
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- Clip taken from "Met. Jonah Paffhausen: Modernism Cloaked as Traditional - All You Need to Know".
We hear in this clip that "you can't take the lives of Saints at face value". He clearly says that some things described in the lives of Saints such as the extreme tortures of the martyrs or a Saint not taking milk from their mother's breast as an infant, are exaggerations and didn't actually happen as described. What is the criteria for deciding what did and did not actually happen in the Lives of Saints? What are the implications of doubting events in the Lives of Saints? What Saint tells us to take this view? If it's all open to doubt, open to being symbolic and formulaic, then one wonders, are the events in the life of Christ also open to such doubt? Since the Lives of Saints are nothing other than the Incarnation carried out into the ages.
We hear in this clip that "you can't take the lives of Saints at face value". He clearly says that some things described in the lives of Saints such as the extreme tortures of the martyrs or a Saint not taking milk from their mother's breast as an infant, are exaggerations and didn't actually happen as described. What is the criteria for deciding what did and did not actually happen in the Lives of Saints? What are the implications of doubting events in the Lives of Saints? What Saint tells us to take this view? If it's all open to doubt, open to being symbolic and formulaic, then one wonders, are the events in the life of Christ also open to such doubt? Since the Lives of Saints are nothing other than the Incarnation carried out into the ages.
This is one of those topics where I feel both "sides" do not quite "get it." Hagiography is a genre of literature. It is meant to be taken literally. However, it was not a genre of literature created with a materialist epistemology in mind, meant to be examined and applied the same way that "professional," modern approaches to history are. Perhaps he could have put the issue more delicately, but there needs to be nuance to this question as not everything in a hagiography is literal, historical "fact" as people would think of facts from a materialist perspective.
For example, which hagiography is right, the Dormition narrative that says she was assumed into heaven the day she died, the one that says it took a day, or the one that says it took three days? I prefer three days, but one of them has to be wrong in a materialist sense. Another example: Saints Jerome and Ambrose assert that Eusebius of Nicomedia baptized Saint Constantine. Yet, the Life of St Sylvester of Rome says Sylvester baptized Constantine, and this is quoted during Nicea II. It is a deep vita, speaking of pagan priests trying to cure Constantine of leprosy by slaughtering innocent children (application to vaccines anyone?). The conciliar fathers did not object to this hagiography being cited. Yet, is it correct on the chronology of this question and the saints wrong? How about the fact the hymnography of the church sometimes contains this detail in one jurisdiction, but not in another? Which jurisdiction is "correct?"
What we ought not be doing is treating hagiographies like fairy tales with no application to our lives about imaginary people and events made up out of whole cloth. However, they are also not concise, materialist histories written with the intent to withstand materialist scrutiny. I do not wish a knock-down, dragged out debate on this. Perhaps I can start compiling saints on this question. It has been told to me that Fr Seraphim Rose stated that, "Hagiography is to a biography as to what iconography is to a naturalistic portrait." I've read Saints Germanus and John of Damascus make self-aware notes of their explicit of poetic exaggerations in their hagiographies. There needs to be a "via media" on this question.
@@OrthodoxChristianTheology I agree with everything you've written here in your comment. I do not think that Metropolitan Jonah, however, is espousing this understanding in the video clip here.
@@GentleBreeze1234 perhaps i can't say I've listened to a lot from him
@@OrthodoxChristianTheology There being slight variations in some accounts of Lives of Saints is one thing. It is another thing to doubt whether certain miracles happened at all, as Metropolitan Jonah does.
@@GentleBreeze1234 I agree in principle. It should be said that certain miracles are particular tropes, for example--Virgin martyrs voluntarily give up their souls commonly--I think this is a principle which links their deaths to that of the Theotokos. Another is dying by beheading after other execution methods fail. Sometimes, the amount of failed attempts is two, and the successful attempt is the third. Would it make a difference if there was a fourth attempt left out or an additional attempt added to "round the number" in the account? Hence, I don't know how to explain the paradigm from which the genre derives from, but we are supposed to be making broad theological connections (to the Theotokos, to Christ, to the other saints) and certain details at least appear to me "rounded out" to make this work well.
On another note, we have the story of Saint Agnes. She boldly confessed Christ before her martyrdom. Saint Ambrose says she was 13. Yet, I've venerated her relics--maybe she was two years old. Her skull could have not belonged to a 13 year old. It seems like her age was pushed up in the hagiography to 1. emphasize the boldness of her confession (as a 2-3 year old speaking with an immense wisdom in boldness is perhaps "not realistic enough," the truth being more miraculous than the hagiography itself) and 2. to make her story fit more neatly with the fairly common teen-early 20s virgin maiden trope of the hagiographic genre. To be honest, I can't make complete sense of it. But having venerated her skull, its a reality I have to grapple with in some way.
This is why in the preceding, I speak of a middle road. I think Seraphim Rose of blessed memory hits the nail on the head. We don't look at an icon and think of it being a historically exact portrayal. However, we also do not view it as false, dubious, or even an exaggeration. It is a spiritual, rounded-out representation that helps us peer deeper into the spiritual reality that a literal depiction cannot. In the same way, a materialist history really cannot communicate the same sort of truth that a hagiography can. They are not meant to contradict but they also don't serve the same function.
These are great. Please keep them coming.
I love how you are countering all of Met Jonah's comments with quotes of the Saints, thereby immediately proving him wrong.
I lurve how an effort by a fairly well-educated bishop to encourage his audience to read hagiography with respect to the type of literature it is and not to read it flatly as though it were the newspaper. I lurve how quickly you and the Gentle Breeze judge flawed but fairly innocuous churchmen as vipers or wolves in sheep’s clothing. What are you, GOC?
@@claesvanoldenphatt9972 Not in GOC, in full communion with him. Some of things he is teaching are very dangerous and not innocuous and people will think it's ok because it's coming from an apparently "traditional/conservative" bishop.
@@buzzard777 I’d say you are pointing out a minor semantic issue, whereas he’s teaching people to become radically rightwing in their politics, parroting the Republican line about socialism. When he spoke at some gathering last year, compared to Fr. John Whiteford he came across as immoderate and demagogic. I will look up that video to show you.
@@buzzard777 this from the Ludwell Soc. gathering, about 5 minutes in he calls non-Southron urban society Marxist: th-cam.com/video/jr2lxvuMqBo/w-d-xo.htmlsi=I6YkoknpocXLT-nN
He complains about lack of unity and here he is appealing to political reactionism calling the North Marxist, hateful of God and humanity. Whiteford makes a far better, more moderate speech saying Albania is better than America!
I’ve known Paffhausen personally since I was a neophyte. We had a very nice church life in the Marxist Leninist stronghold of the SF Bay Area where his monastery was located. It irks me intensely to see how his narcissism has led him to pander to the worst bigotry of his audience. He speaks divisively about culture mimicking the language of Republican politicians who call themselves evangelical ministers. It’s shocking to hear him utter weak generalizations and outright lies about his home state and ‘the North’. This Neoconfederate gathering is itself extremely problematic from an ecclesiastical point of view but he needs to be there for fear of missing out on the exciting movement at the far right, I suppose.
I know Met Jonah personally. I used to attend his parish in Stafford, VA of which this classroom is. He also has a monastery in Spotsylvania, VA. The amount of blessing and miracles I have seen happen in his parish are amazing. I am also friends with a lot of the monk at his monastery too. TBH you need to meet with his personally and discuss these things further. Questioning his beliefs and teachings are one thing and I think you and @OrthodoxChristianTheology have a great discuss going on. If you do decide to meet with him in person and hear of his story I think you will change your mind about who you think this man is. He has been persecuted by people in the OCA which forced him to resign as the primate of the OCA. Trust me when I say this. This man maybe a Saint. Every time you around him or the monastery you will feel the grace radiating from his presence. He reminds me a lot of Fr. Seraphim Rose.
@@jacobrickman5197 I am not saying anything about him personally. I am not disputing that he is a very nice man. I am only concerned with his public teachings, which are there for everyone to see, they're not Orthodox. Do you agree with him that events described in the lives of Saints, such as an infant refusing milk from it's mother's beast on fasting days, didn't happen? You are basically saying we should ignore his unorthodox teachings because you have had what you subjectively believe are very positive experiences? How is this relevant? I have seen so many comments that try to make everything about his personal qualities, totally ignoring the actual substance of what Met Jonah says in countless videos that are publicly available online. He reminds you of Fr Seraphim Rose and yet he rejects much of what Fr Seraphim taught on topics like evolution and ecumenism.
God have mercy on Met Jonah
Just think of the power of the testimony such a man would have if he publicly repented! Lord Jesus Christ, reveal his heart, and I pray that he receives Your mercy to not be ashamed on that day, and that it will be before it’s too late ☦️
These videos the you make, they are a guiding light in this sea of delusion. A true light of what is right and what is wrong. I will look forward my dear friend for more of your videos. May God bless you and extol you for what you are doing amen 🙏☦️
He also said that the Holy Spirit didn't inspire the Holy Councils
Dcn. Nicholas Kotar has a good explanation of this. Yes, some things didn't happen in the way we think - historiographically. That doesn't mean they aren't true. The lives are like icons - they are not biological portraits, but are still true.
Edit: Wrote this before watching the video... His Eminence says the same thing. Nothing problematic about it, really.
@@atanas-nikolov I don't know what Dcn Nicholas says, but I don't think this is a good analogy. An icon of a Saint depicts an image of a person with eyes, a nose, a mouth, etc. All of those things are literally true about the person. It does not LIE about the person. Metropolitan Jonah says that miracles described in the lives of Saints didn't happen at all, because he thinks they're too outlandish. This is atheism, this is calling the hagiographers lairs.
@@GentleBreeze1234 Where does he say miracles haven't happened because they are outlandish? He says that certain details are not supposed to be considered history in the same way as we would understand it today.
The icon of St. John the Forerunner is often portraying him carrying his head. We don't understand that to be a lie, right? There are icons of Christ and the Theotokos with different color skin. Is one lying?
It could be the case that a saint fasted from his mother's milk, or it might have happened some times, which was then accepted as a defining detail for that saint.
There are saints for which people knew very little, yet lives were commissioned for them.
I think of it like this: What do certain details in a life mean for us? Because lives are written for our edification.
I understand your reservations though. We've been raised in a culture, where rationalism is pervasive. It can indeed be better to affirm the lives as true and leave it at that. Let the rational mind dash itself against the rocks of reality. At the same time, we also don't want to play the rationalist game and say that events are true like a video recording. If we go too far down that route, we are only evolving into a different kind of rationalist.
Deacon Nicholas is a good preacher.
@@GentleBreeze1234 Fr. Seraphim Rose says that it's important to understand that icons are secondary. Other than simply not being idols, I would think this implies other things theologically. St. Paisios says we should view icons as living. You might can just say, similar to what Fr. Seraphim said, that the actual texts of the lives of the saints are secondary and more nuanced to how we should apply them to our lives (not simply how we understand them). I've heard Met. Jonah express something like this, and how only the fathers we're allowed to read the writings of the fathers, but St. John of Shanghai and San Fransisco said that laity will have to take to reading the fathers themselves in the last days because of there not being good guides. I do get the sense that there is something nefarious about the way Met. Jonah is explaining these things.
@@tracetemple7492 Met Jonah is just plainly saying that the Lives of Saints are fables, and that miraculous things described in them did not happen and are fictional stories intended to teach us spiritual lessons. We see from the Saints that such a view is even regarded as a kind of apostacy.
then write to his brother bishops instead of making anonymous internet videos like woman
How do you know he didn’t do both? Maybe he’s even reached out to Met. Jonah as well. What have you done to counter heresy and apostasy?
so these things shouldnt be made more common knowledge?
1) Many people have. The ROCOR synod doesn’t do anything
2) It’s important to warn people about the errors of supposed teachers
“You can’t take the lives of the saints at face value”
Wow
He is protestant. Not orthodox. Could someone please help him! 😭😭😭
It's a fallacy to equate the lives of saints with icons. Yes, they are icons in a certain sense, but that's not all they are. They are in the genre of history, not paintings. Met Jonah didn't give any argument disproving the historical genre, so his claim is just an assertion, which contradicts the historical view of his own jurisdiction.
@@TruthBeTold7 Yes, an icon is still a depiction of a real thing. It doesn't depict a Saint has giving three hands, it doesn't depict something just completely not true.
I think there are various indicators of spurious claims making their way into Lives of the Saints. An example would be duplications of stories and behaviors as robed to two saints of the same name who lived centuries apart, such that their hagiographies read as copy and pastes with no substantive distinguishing differences.