Noticing the levels can be scary-weird. It's like there is an entire world that has been invisible. The angst of "how did I not notice this for 50 years?" What is stranger is how I "instictively" know how to play the game and be a part of it. Now the ringer .. other people begin to mirror and imitate it. Spreading it, like a cancer. A Love cancer. And there is not cure. We will all succumb to the love of God Almighty .. yet never forget where we came from.
Two people can definitely witness the same event and come away with completely different interpretations of it. Certainly the last couple of years has taught us that lesson with a sledgehammer.
The wielders of giants is here. For they stole the knowledge for their personal gain, And used it its powers for their evil. This was series of events that caused a fall
Yes. People have increasingly lost their attention span and ability to see the truth for over 500 years (or more .. I have only looked back 500 years.) Look at history and you will see why. More distractions, more things of the world that clamore for attention .. And it's exponentially gotten worse since the popularity of the world wide WEB. People are intended to operate from a place of wholeness. These distraction pull at us, leaving tears that become frays, fraws become threads, thread become holes. ANYONE would think men are women if they have HOLES in them! GOD FITS THAT HOLE. BUT .. things are changing, slowly, so people don't freak out and hurt each other. We are the conduits for God to use .. And it is this simple way (like a fairy tale that civilizes a child in a magical way) that God will prepare the world for His coming. Now go do something beautiful. *Gory be to God*
I love Pageau. His formulations of crime scenes are wrong though. Anyone that has any experience with eyewitness testimony in crimes scenes know there are countless contradictions among people who witness the same event. It's super common for eyewitnesses to report vastly different accounts to the same event. So the contradictions in the Gospels provide evidence that they really "historically" happened.
Remember the first temptation satan used against Eve in the Garden? He told her (did God really say?) not to eat the forbidden fruit. Satan always attacks the authority of God. And he clearly still does.
I know God, I walk in covenant with God and I Love God. I fear God as well and that is the beginning of Love because until you fear disobeying God and causing God to look upon you in shame so you feel horrible then you can not love Him. I started this walk when I was 32, to look for God. I started to actually begin to find God when I was 39 and sealed myself to God as the gospel tells us to, those of us who listen to the gospel teacher and not the ones who came after him, know to take up the commandments of God and to seek out our roots back to Abraham and to Moses and Yehoshua and the prophets so we become firm in knowledge of what GOD ALONE asked of us. It took me several years of fighting sin and the devil by obeying God. I fought the sin out of me with God's help, by his instructions in the written word. It is a very narrow road and as the mattan/Matthew gospel says very few will find it. We have to fight Satan and the whole world that serves him in sin in order to get out and the one who will help is God alone because we can't trust anyone else. I am with God, God provides for myself and my family and yes there is absolutely evidence BUT not until you absolutely come clean, in thought, word and deed, the absolute opposite of all the lying religions. The gospel was sent down to free us from sin by sending us to our teacher and if you reject it then you are freed from God into sin perpetually and to death spiritually from God which as I can now see is absolutely hell on earth, your light you pretend to have is absolutely darkness caused by your unwillingness to even try to obey God. I speak to 99% of the population. If you can't put everyone first after God and stop yourself from all sin THEN YOUR NOT WORTHY AND YOU ARE ALREADY FINISHED BEFORE YOU EVEN STARTED. So come out of all sun, take up the commandments and begin your battle, call to GOD ALONE, LEARN YOUR ROOTS, BE GOD'S PEOPLE. FIGHT SATAN WHO IS THE SINNERS INNER VOICE, THE CONSCIENCE THAT LEADS YOU TO HURT YOU, that's not you, it's Satan the deceiver. If you come to God and pass the trials cleansing yourself by obedience then GOD WILL BECOME YOUR CONSCIENCE AND YOU WILL LOVE GOD AND HATE SIN, SATAN WILL FLEE FROM YOU. SO there it is. Peace, the ball in in your court Be wary of this world, it is the valley of death, you need God's light and God doesn't dwell with sin or sinners. Not until they begin the journey to stop sin. 😀😉
Joseph Campbell was saying this before Jonathan was born. The key to literalism is the desire for authority and power over others. Once you understand the Bible to be “truth rooted in fiction” to highlight principles within reality, then you no longer have weight to convince and pursued others to sacrifice time and money for your sake. It’s not a matter of arguing Faith over material proof, but it is a matter of overconfidence in one’s faith that gives them authority to proclaim power over others. Atheists have no problem at all with the Bible being interpreted as symbolic and metaphorical. You have to understand, what Jonathan is saying on how to approach the Bible is the same way you should approach the BOOK OF MORMON. They are both truth rooted in fiction. What grounds does Jonathan have to dismiss the book of Mormons symbolism?
Excellent. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his series on the life of Christ, the historical critical method of Biblical theology has nothing more to offer us that it hasn't already offered.
It's still a touchy question even in Orthodox (like Jonathan is) circles. Fr./St. Seraphim Rose was insistent on a literal interpretation, many Orthotrads on the internet are the same way. While the Church Fathers do have an allegorical view, they also seem to assume these things happened (although Jonathan does that as well). Literalism is a complicated thing that hasn't been helped by Bible Belt America.
How much of a narrative can be factually inaccurate (regarding details of physical events as they occurred in physical reality) before we dismiss its symbolism? What's your take, for example, on the Book of Mormon? Is it "true" or not?
Maybe the highest thing has to land the deepest? If Christ was not real in every way, something would be missing. If you do not think of Noah as a "historical figure", but still perceive him as part of the pattern that is connected to Christ, with Christ filling your life, Noah is "literal"/"historical" in YOUR story. But we need an anchor, something to grasp when subtle bodies try to delude us. I hope this helps. God bless
Does not to read "literally" mean to read "as written"? That it makes sense that one would read poetry with the poetry frame around it, so as to not be frustrated as one would be reading it with a prose frame around it (which is why folks are frustrated with poetry these daze .. poetry frame requires patience.) And with the proper frame, the things I have forgotten fall out of the ether .. looking for clear soil in my brain-place. If my brain-place is not full of distractions (aka "the world,) then these Forgotten Things of Importance nestle in. If I can keep the place out of perpetual darkness and not so dry as to parch, those Forgotten Things begin to make themselves known. Glorious little things of beauty they be. God has plans for the world. A simple prayer can change the world. LITERALLY :D
Why can’t the Bible be symbolic AND literal? I don’t think that a book that is primarily talking about the spiritual reality should be taken literal 100% of the time in the physical/earthly reality. It can still be 100% true in the ‘hyper-reality’ of the spiritual universe-which probably ISN’T ephemeral or ‘less real’ than our physical reality. The spiritual reality may very well be MORE real and MORE ‘physical’ than what we experience right now in our own corner of creation. Think dimensionally. Why would a spirit-being have multiple wings and multiple faces/heads. Maybe because it lives in a higher dimensional reality and it needs those things in order to properly function. I have a firm conviction that our 3 dimensional universe is simply a scaled-down model of a far greater reality. We are the flatlanders. Yet we are also the focus because we are being used by God to exhibit and demonstrate truths that transcend all the dimensional realities-not just for our sake, but to also for the sake of those beings above us.
I abandoned my concordism and now see Genesis 1-2 very differently. It appears as a polemic against the creation stories in surrounding pagan nations around Israel. God alone is the creator who came to tabernacle among his creation.
The thing is, I understand that it is not necessary for these things to have literally happened in the exact way that they are described, but I do believe that they happened in the way that they are described. Most, if not all, of the apparent contradictions can be resolved with relative ease, and we do have a God Whom not only paints symbolic pictures of reality and of Himself, but Who evidently enjoys to use reality itself to paint these pictures. When God established Israel, that wasn't just a metaphorical fiction to describe His future Kingdom. He really did establish a nation of Israel that still exists today. I don't see why I should have an arbitrary cut-off point where I decide that, because the event is too small, that it probably never happened as described. I understand that specifics are harder to preserve than abstractions, but I'm saying that I don't see why I need to assume that therefore the preservation of specifics must've failed.
@@lucbriedecooper I listen to them all but I still don’t get it. I’ll have to hope I get a free pass into heaven because I’m too thick to understand anything! Or does that make me chaff? I suppose it does 😢
For some reason I've been watching things that have to do with Christian Orthodoxy. I was raised Presbyterian but stopped going to church when I was a teenager. Our my mid-forties I've been interested in it. I was diagnosed with OCD and that doesn't really go well with the religion. I've been trying to come to terms with the whole confession thing and that seems to be an absolute and doesn't leave any room for somebody with OCD. Interesting either way
Wow. I had so much admiration for you Johnathan, now I'm starting to question literally everything that you say. Why would you choose to indulge this brief moment in time where some pop philosophers are interested in gaining some knowledge or power from the scriptures, when their integrity has been established as accurate narratives for thousands of years? Do you have the balls to question a single story in the scriptures? Let's here it. Not the parables, but the historical narrative. What didn't actually happen, can you name one thing?
Didn't he already say it? The creation of the world in Genesis. There are also some contradictions in the Old Testament, also in Genesis related to Abraham. For example, at a point his wife was probably in her 90s and he lied about being his wife because she was very beautiful and attracted the attention of the ruler of the area where they stayed at a certain point. Or the age of Ishmael is sometimes confusing because in one story it says that he is 12 and in a future story it is considered that he is a baby. Also I know that Saint Maxim the Confessor was talking about an incorrect information in the Bible and was explaining that it has a symbolic meaning. You can search the writing "Responses to Thalassios" from Saint Maxim the Confessor, question 65. I hope that is the same question in the English translation you may find.
@@paulr5246 I think that his view about evolution is that he doesn't really care. The stories in the Bible don't lose their values if evolution is true or not. I heard also a priest talking about this subject and saying that we don't really know what happened at the beginning of times. And I wonder: does knowing this does really help my salvation? Or maybe I should focus on something else? Personally I started more and more to accept that we will never know if evolution, Bing Bang theory, etc. are true. Because the way paleontology, whatever is called the science which studies evolution and all sciences focused on passed events work like this: you have some pieces of evidence and you create a story where all these pieces of evidence fit. This is how history related sciences work. But it is very hard to actually know what happened in the past.
Evolution is a replacement hypothesis for God. The foundation of evolution, that the observable processes of today must have been what formed the world is a laughably absurd phantasy.
Jonathan, what are you talking about? The majority of Orthodox believers both Eastern and Orientals believe that the Biblical stories happened from a literary point of view. Or at least the life Christ. We believe that Jesus literally healed lepers, cured the sick, raised people from the dead and casted out demons. He died on the cross and was raised from death. The metaphors are there, but if it didn’t happen literary then going to church would be celebrating, singing and crying for a philosophical illusion. It would be insanity.
I think i might stop listening to Jonathan after this one. His points are very weak this time around. Thought he was better than this. It's like Peterson saying Revelation was written by people high on LSD.
How do you imagine destroying death literally? Just curious. Do you imagine death as some sort of a material substance, an old hag in a hoodie? How does one LITERALLY destroy an abstract notion?
He said toward the end that it is important for the historical figure of christ to have existed in actuality. So yes, God literally instantiated in Christ. Now the rest of your comment is not connected to that statement. Wtf does literally destroying death mean to you? What is death? What would a literal ascent to heaven be? Increasing altitude? The problem is your understanding of heaven and death, not the literality of the story
Noticing the levels can be scary-weird. It's like there is an entire world that has been invisible. The angst of "how did I not notice this for 50 years?" What is stranger is how I "instictively" know how to play the game and be a part of it. Now the ringer .. other people begin to mirror and imitate it. Spreading it, like a cancer. A Love cancer. And there is not cure. We will all succumb to the love of God Almighty .. yet never forget where we came from.
HOW DO I KNOW THINGS THAT I DON"T KNOW???
Always a pleasure to hear insight from Jonathan. I just recently purchased the St Athanasius study Bible.
Ha! Me as well
@@larryjake7783 Lol what a coincidence
Two people can definitely witness the same event and come away with completely different interpretations of it. Certainly the last couple of years has taught us that lesson with a sledgehammer.
A soft Sledge hammer, now that they know what it takes. Wait for the next one.
The wielders of giants is here. For they stole the knowledge for their personal gain, And used it its powers for their evil. This was series of events that caused a fall
Yes. People have increasingly lost their attention span and ability to see the truth for over 500 years (or more .. I have only looked back 500 years.) Look at history and you will see why. More distractions, more things of the world that clamore for attention .. And it's exponentially gotten worse since the popularity of the world wide WEB. People are intended to operate from a place of wholeness. These distraction pull at us, leaving tears that become frays, fraws become threads, thread become holes. ANYONE would think men are women if they have HOLES in them! GOD FITS THAT HOLE. BUT .. things are changing, slowly, so people don't freak out and hurt each other. We are the conduits for God to use .. And it is this simple way (like a fairy tale that civilizes a child in a magical way) that God will prepare the world for His coming. Now go do something beautiful. *Gory be to God*
I love Pageau.
His formulations of crime scenes are wrong though. Anyone that has any experience with eyewitness testimony in crimes scenes know there are countless contradictions among people who witness the same event. It's super common for eyewitnesses to report vastly different accounts to the same event.
So the contradictions in the Gospels provide evidence that they really "historically" happened.
Remember the first temptation satan used against Eve in the Garden? He told her (did God really say?) not to eat the forbidden fruit. Satan always attacks the authority of God. And he clearly still does.
And Eve's response was "no that is not what He said"
I know God, I walk in covenant with God and I Love God. I fear God as well and that is the beginning of Love because until you fear disobeying God and causing God to look upon you in shame so you feel horrible then you can not love Him. I started this walk when I was 32, to look for God. I started to actually begin to find God when I was 39 and sealed myself to God as the gospel tells us to, those of us who listen to the gospel teacher and not the ones who came after him, know to take up the commandments of God and to seek out our roots back to Abraham and to Moses and Yehoshua and the prophets so we become firm in knowledge of what GOD ALONE asked of us. It took me several years of fighting sin and the devil by obeying God. I fought the sin out of me with God's help, by his instructions in the written word. It is a very narrow road and as the mattan/Matthew gospel says very few will find it. We have to fight Satan and the whole world that serves him in sin in order to get out and the one who will help is God alone because we can't trust anyone else. I am with God, God provides for myself and my family and yes there is absolutely evidence BUT not until you absolutely come clean, in thought, word and deed, the absolute opposite of all the lying religions. The gospel was sent down to free us from sin by sending us to our teacher and if you reject it then you are freed from God into sin perpetually and to death spiritually from God which as I can now see is absolutely hell on earth, your light you pretend to have is absolutely darkness caused by your unwillingness to even try to obey God. I speak to 99% of the population. If you can't put everyone first after God and stop yourself from all sin THEN YOUR NOT WORTHY AND YOU ARE ALREADY FINISHED BEFORE YOU EVEN STARTED.
So come out of all sun, take up the commandments and begin your battle, call to GOD ALONE, LEARN YOUR ROOTS, BE GOD'S PEOPLE. FIGHT SATAN WHO IS THE SINNERS INNER VOICE, THE CONSCIENCE THAT LEADS YOU TO HURT YOU, that's not you, it's Satan the deceiver. If you come to God and pass the trials cleansing yourself by obedience then GOD WILL BECOME YOUR CONSCIENCE AND YOU WILL LOVE GOD AND HATE SIN, SATAN WILL FLEE FROM YOU.
SO there it is.
Peace, the ball in in your court
Be wary of this world, it is the valley of death, you need God's light and God doesn't dwell with sin or sinners. Not until they begin the journey to stop sin.
😀😉
Joseph Campbell was saying this before Jonathan was born. The key to literalism is the desire for authority and power over others. Once you understand the Bible to be “truth rooted in fiction” to highlight principles within reality, then you no longer have weight to convince and pursued others to sacrifice time and money for your sake. It’s not a matter of arguing Faith over material proof, but it is a matter of overconfidence in one’s faith that gives them authority to proclaim power over others. Atheists have no problem at all with the Bible being interpreted as symbolic and metaphorical.
You have to understand, what Jonathan is saying on how to approach the Bible is the same way you should approach the BOOK OF MORMON. They are both truth rooted in fiction. What grounds does Jonathan have to dismiss the book of Mormons symbolism?
Perhaps we can think of the Bible as the original icon
Excellent. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his series on the life of Christ, the historical critical method of Biblical theology has nothing more to offer us that it hasn't already offered.
It's funny how 1800 years ago Origen addressed the criticism that people are throwing at the Bible today.
It's still a touchy question even in Orthodox (like Jonathan is) circles. Fr./St. Seraphim Rose was insistent on a literal interpretation, many Orthotrads on the internet are the same way. While the Church Fathers do have an allegorical view, they also seem to assume these things happened (although Jonathan does that as well). Literalism is a complicated thing that hasn't been helped by Bible Belt America.
What did Origen say about the criticism? Link(s)? Really interested
Christianity is so amazing. Hope John can help others including Christians see it.
Love your avatar.
How much of a narrative can be factually inaccurate (regarding details of physical events as they occurred in physical reality) before we dismiss its symbolism? What's your take, for example, on the Book of Mormon? Is it "true" or not?
all plants start in darkness in the ground as a seed.
My Question is: Why think of Christ as a historical figure, but not think of other stories/people in the bible as literal historical figures?
Maybe the highest thing has to land the deepest? If Christ was not real in every way, something would be missing. If you do not think of Noah as a "historical figure", but still perceive him as part of the pattern that is connected to Christ, with Christ filling your life, Noah is "literal"/"historical" in YOUR story. But we need an anchor, something to grasp when subtle bodies try to delude us. I hope this helps. God bless
These clips replace my morning coffee. Gets me FIRED UP LETS GOOOO
Does not to read "literally" mean to read "as written"? That it makes sense that one would read poetry with the poetry frame around it, so as to not be frustrated as one would be reading it with a prose frame around it (which is why folks are frustrated with poetry these daze .. poetry frame requires patience.) And with the proper frame, the things I have forgotten fall out of the ether .. looking for clear soil in my brain-place. If my brain-place is not full of distractions (aka "the world,) then these Forgotten Things of Importance nestle in. If I can keep the place out of perpetual darkness and not so dry as to parch, those Forgotten Things begin to make themselves known. Glorious little things of beauty they be. God has plans for the world. A simple prayer can change the world. LITERALLY :D
Why can’t the Bible be symbolic AND literal? I don’t think that a book that is primarily talking about the spiritual reality should be taken literal 100% of the time in the physical/earthly reality. It can still be 100% true in the ‘hyper-reality’ of the spiritual universe-which probably ISN’T ephemeral or ‘less real’ than our physical reality. The spiritual reality may very well be MORE real and MORE ‘physical’ than what we experience right now in our own corner of creation. Think dimensionally. Why would a spirit-being have multiple wings and multiple faces/heads. Maybe because it lives in a higher dimensional reality and it needs those things in order to properly function.
I have a firm conviction that our 3 dimensional universe is simply a scaled-down model of a far greater reality. We are the flatlanders. Yet we are also the focus because we are being used by God to exhibit and demonstrate truths that transcend all the dimensional realities-not just for our sake, but to also for the sake of those beings above us.
I abandoned my concordism and now see Genesis 1-2 very differently. It appears as a polemic against the creation stories in surrounding pagan nations around Israel. God alone is the creator who came to tabernacle among his creation.
The thing is, I understand that it is not necessary for these things to have literally happened in the exact way that they are described, but I do believe that they happened in the way that they are described. Most, if not all, of the apparent contradictions can be resolved with relative ease, and we do have a God Whom not only paints symbolic pictures of reality and of Himself, but Who evidently enjoys to use reality itself to paint these pictures. When God established Israel, that wasn't just a metaphorical fiction to describe His future Kingdom. He really did establish a nation of Israel that still exists today. I don't see why I should have an arbitrary cut-off point where I decide that, because the event is too small, that it probably never happened as described. I understand that specifics are harder to preserve than abstractions, but I'm saying that I don't see why I need to assume that therefore the preservation of specifics must've failed.
Why people are understanding this clip in a weird way? This is totally in line with the rest of this work.
How are we to know what is right or wrong..whether it is true or a deception??
I know John Vervaeke addresses that thoroughly
@@lucbriedecooper I listen to them all but I still don’t get it. I’ll have to hope I get a free pass into heaven because I’m too thick to understand anything! Or does that make me chaff? I suppose it does 😢
For some reason I've been watching things that have to do with Christian Orthodoxy. I was raised Presbyterian but stopped going to church when I was a teenager. Our my mid-forties I've been interested in it. I was diagnosed with OCD and that doesn't really go well with the religion. I've been trying to come to terms with the whole confession thing and that seems to be an absolute and doesn't leave any room for somebody with OCD. Interesting either way
Why is OCD a problem for practicing the faith, especially going to confession?
OCD is no obstacle to becoming Orthodox. A priest will work with you and your issues, not against. Please seek us out.
Nothing wrong with looking at methods of coping with OCD in psychology and in OCD support communities! Whatever works works
@@FrJohnBrownSJ scrupulosity for starters and it gets a whole lot more complicated.
@@Alritealritealrite I hear confessions from people with OCD and scruples all of the time. Don't let that stop you.
What stories will the new world base itself in? What characters and archetypes will they involve?
It's always gonna be christ no matter what.
Be careful for heresy
Wow. I had so much admiration for you Johnathan, now I'm starting to question literally everything that you say. Why would you choose to indulge this brief moment in time where some pop philosophers are interested in gaining some knowledge or power from the scriptures, when their integrity has been established as accurate narratives for thousands of years? Do you have the balls to question a single story in the scriptures? Let's here it. Not the parables, but the historical narrative. What didn't actually happen, can you name one thing?
Didn't he already say it? The creation of the world in Genesis. There are also some contradictions in the Old Testament, also in Genesis related to Abraham. For example, at a point his wife was probably in her 90s and he lied about being his wife because she was very beautiful and attracted the attention of the ruler of the area where they stayed at a certain point. Or the age of Ishmael is sometimes confusing because in one story it says that he is 12 and in a future story it is considered that he is a baby.
Also I know that Saint Maxim the Confessor was talking about an incorrect information in the Bible and was explaining that it has a symbolic meaning. You can search the writing "Responses to Thalassios" from Saint Maxim the Confessor, question 65. I hope that is the same question in the English translation you may find.
I can't understand why Christian's believe in the absurd idea of evolution. Now even pageau you are saying? Is that true? IDK about that.
@@paulr5246 I think that his view about evolution is that he doesn't really care. The stories in the Bible don't lose their values if evolution is true or not.
I heard also a priest talking about this subject and saying that we don't really know what happened at the beginning of times. And I wonder: does knowing this does really help my salvation? Or maybe I should focus on something else?
Personally I started more and more to accept that we will never know if evolution, Bing Bang theory, etc. are true. Because the way paleontology, whatever is called the science which studies evolution and all sciences focused on passed events work like this: you have some pieces of evidence and you create a story where all these pieces of evidence fit. This is how history related sciences work. But it is very hard to actually know what happened in the past.
Evolution is a replacement hypothesis for God. The foundation of evolution, that the observable processes of today must have been what formed the world is a laughably absurd phantasy.
Jonathan, what are you talking about? The majority of Orthodox believers both Eastern and Orientals believe that the Biblical stories happened from a literary point of view. Or at least the life Christ. We believe that Jesus literally healed lepers, cured the sick, raised people from the dead and casted out demons. He died on the cross and was raised from death. The metaphors are there, but if it didn’t happen literary then going to church would be celebrating, singing and crying for a philosophical illusion. It would be insanity.
I think i might stop listening to Jonathan after this one. His points are very weak this time around. Thought he was better than this. It's like Peterson saying Revelation was written by people high on LSD.
So is the story of Christ literal, Jonathan? Did he literally destroy death by death and rise from the dead and ascend bodily into heaven? Yes or no?
How do you imagine destroying death literally? Just curious. Do you imagine death as some sort of a material substance, an old hag in a hoodie? How does one LITERALLY destroy an abstract notion?
He said toward the end that it is important for the historical figure of christ to have existed in actuality. So yes, God literally instantiated in Christ.
Now the rest of your comment is not connected to that statement. Wtf does literally destroying death mean to you? What is death? What would a literal ascent to heaven be? Increasing altitude? The problem is your understanding of heaven and death, not the literality of the story
You’re not intelligent enough to watch these videos.
@@olgakarpushina492 i cannot stand how often people use the word "literally" in a non-literal manner.
@@1214gooner seriously?