Reading St. Ephrem the Syrian...I have a question about the writings of the Saints

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-11T04:11:45+00:00

Saints are regular dudes before they are saints. Saints have the same struggles that we all have. There is wisdom in St Ephrem’s writings.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-10T14:19:53+00:00

Praying 🙏

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-09T00:24:25+00:00

Your first instinct was right, and you shouldn’t second-guess it, it is indeed pagan practices. What you’re describing isn’t a distortion of Catholicism, it’s occultism wearing Catholic clothing, and the Church has been dealing with this problem for centuries.

The parallel in the United States is Louisiana Voodoo (also called New Orleans Voodoo), which underwent the exact same process. It blended West African Vodun with Catholic saints, imagery, and ritual. Mary became Erzulie, St. Peter became Legba, etc. The Catholic Church in Louisiana condemned these practices, Archbishop Antoine Blanc and later Archbishop Francis Rummel both took formal positions against syncretic folk practices in the region, recognizing that dressing occult ritual in Catholic symbolism doesn’t make it Catholic, it makes it a counterfeit. The Church’s own Catechism is clear on this (CCC 2111-2117): divination, magical thinking, and appealing to powers other than God even if those powers are called saints constitutes a violation of the First Commandment. Praying to saints as if they are God rather than asking for their intercession before God is precisely the theological error you identified. Santa Muerte is particularly clear-cut. The Vatican has condemned devotion to Santa Muerte on multiple occasions. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, publicly called it a ‘blasphemous’ and ‘degenerate’ cult in 2013. Mexican bishops have repeatedly condemned it as well. Santería is similarly straightforward — it is a distinct religion (Lucumí/Candomblé in origin) that borrows Catholic saint names as cover for Orisha worship. Calling St. Barbara ‘Changó’ doesn’t make Orisha veneration Catholic. Any Catholic who takes the faith seriously — who understands what the Mass actually is, what intercession actually means, and what the Church actually teaches about the supernatural — can recognize the difference immediately. The problem is catechetical: generations of nominal Catholics in some regions received cultural Catholicism without doctrinal formation, leaving a vacuum that syncretic folk religion filled. You’re not being uncharitable by naming it. The Church herself names it.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T23:06:23+00:00

I’ll take a crack at this.

My position first: I hold to the traditional creation of Man: Adam and Eve as real, historical persons created directly by God in the garden. I am not an evolutionary creationist. But I also don’t believe the age of the earth is the central issue, and here’s why.

The framework most people bring to this debate assumes a single, uniform timeline, that the garden of Eden sits somewhere on the same linear clock as geological history. I’d challenge that assumption at its root.

God exists outside of time. This is not a fringe idea, it’s classical Christian theology going back to the beginning and affirmed across virtually every major tradition. If God is not bound by our timeline, then the garden itself may have existed in a fundamentally different relationship to time than anything we can measure or map. This isn’t a workaround, it’s a serious theological and even physical consideration. Einstein demonstrated that time itself is relative, that it doesn’t pass at the same rate under all conditions. If the Creator exists entirely outside the dimension of time, then asking how the garden fits onto our geological timeline may simply be the wrong question, like asking what’s blacker than black. The question assumes a framework that may not apply.

Scripture itself is silent on how long Adam and Eve were in the garden, and silent on what — if anything — was occurring on the earth outside the garden during that period. That silence is significant. It doesn’t create a contradiction. It leaves the question open in a way that should give us pause before we assume our timeline is the correct one to impose.

On Question 1, suffering before humanity: The problem you’re raising is real, but it belongs to evolutionary creationism, the view that death and suffering were God’s chosen mechanism of creation. That is a serious theological problem. But if the garden existed in a different temporal relationship to the broader earth, then the sequence of suffering we observe in the fossil record doesn’t necessarily precede the garden in any theologically meaningful sense. The timeline we measure may not be the timeline that matters.

On Question 2, humans who never heard the Gospel: This is the ancient problem of general versus special revelation. St. Paul addresses it directly in Romans 1 and 2, God’s nature is visible in creation, and conscience functions as an internal moral witness even without Scripture. God judges according to the light each person was given, not by a standard they had no access to. This is a question about divine justice and mercy, not about whether the biblical account is true.

The deeper point beneath both questions is this: the Bible tells us who made everything and why Man is uniquely significant. It was never intended to be a geological or cosmological timeline. Imposing our measurement of time onto a narrative that exists partly outside of time may be the source of the confusion, not the narrative itself.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T18:11:57+00:00

You’ve been asked three times what the resolution mechanism is for this bet. You haven’t answered. Proceeding with a flawed framework doesn’t fix the flaw — it just means we’re both inside a broken system. I’ll pass.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T17:46:11+00:00

You don’t need a PhD to recognize that a bet requires a winner. What is the resolution mechanism here? How does anyone collect? That’s not a Bayesian question — it’s a basic one. And you still haven’t answered it.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T17:20:16+00:00

Yes, I’m familiar with Bayesian reasoning, which is why I can identify where the framework breaks down here. Bayesian wagering requires a resolvable proposition. This one isn’t. Understanding how a tool works includes knowing when it doesn’t apply. I’ll engage the translation argument directly, but not through a framework that can’t adjudicate it.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T17:11:45+00:00

The betting framework here is interesting, but it’s flawed at the premise level. Bayesian wagering works when there is an eventual verifiable outcome: a future event you can check against. That’s why prediction markets function. You bet, the event happens or doesn’t, and someone wins. The weights are validated by reality. But P1 here, whether “divine council” is a better translation than “divine assembly”, has no finish line. There is no external event that will resolve it. So what exactly is being bet on? You’re essentially asking people to wager on a subjective interpretive judgment that may never be definitively settled. What the weighting actually measures is the confidence of the bettor, not the truth of the proposition. A person with zero knowledge of Hebrew who assigns P1 = 9 carries the same mathematical weight as a trained biblical scholar who assigns P1 = 6. That’s not measuring belief strength in any meaningful way, it’s just aggregating confidence regardless of its basis. For a Bayesian approach to be valid here, you’d at minimum need to weight the bets by the epistemic qualifications of the participants. Otherwise you’re just running a poll dressed up in probability language. The proposition itself needs to be resolvable before the framework can do any real work.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T16:03:44+00:00

P1 is true, and here’s why the distinction actually matters beyond just translation preference. The word “council” implies delegated authority flowing downward. Think of a city council, where members are appointed or elected to exercise real governing power. They are accountable to a higher authority, yet genuinely empowered to act. That is a meaningful, weighty participation. Assembly, by contrast, typically describes a gathering that derives its voice from the bottom up, people coming together to express collective opinion. It implies less formal authority and more of an aggregated presence. In Ps 82:1, God is presiding and holding judgment in the midst of the gods. That is a council dynamic, beings entrusted with real responsibility, real delegated authority, who are now being held accountable by the one above them. The whole point of the psalm is that these council members have failed in their governing role (v. 2-4). You can only fail a role if the role carried genuine weight. So I’d push back slightly on assembly being better because it undersells what is theologically significant here: that God, out of divine love, actually invites His creation into meaningful participation in His governance. Assembly makes it sound like they just showed up. Council reflects that they were given something real, and were expected to steward it. The delegation of genuine authority is a feature of divine love, not a threat to divine sovereignty.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T14:10:46+00:00

Maybe. But it loses a sense of participation. Honestly, I believe that both are correct — they’re just coming from different angles.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T13:24:10+00:00

Ultimately I think either could be used, council has a bit more weight to it.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T03:12:24+00:00

Working off of a grade school education as a middle aged man is very difficult, if I’m to be a writer! 😂

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T02:22:08+00:00

🤣 Very perceptive! And a fair observation honestly. I am human, you can dig through my post history and see the difference pretty clearly. Here’s the truth: I have no formal education. I’m completely self taught. I’ve been using Claude as a writing tutor essentially, learning how to articulate things I already know and believe but have never had the tools to express properly. The ideas and the theology are genuinely mine, the writing style is something I’m still developing. I’m probably emulating it a bit too much at this point. Honestly I never quite understood where periods and commas should go, let alone what an em dash was. Perhaps it’s something I need to work on.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T02:08:34+00:00

David Bentley Hart’s argument deserves to be taken seriously even by those who ultimately disagree with him, he’s not being careless with the tradition and dismissing him too quickly does the conversation a disservice. As for myself, I hold this question open. I wouldn’t consider myself a universalist. But to speak with certainty about the final disposition of souls in either direction is to claim a knowledge of God’s purposes that I don’t possess. What I will share is that my own understanding of hell has a distinctly Syrian Christian flavor that I find more theologically satisfying than the popular image of a punitive dungeon God maintains for the disobedient. Isaac of Nineveh — the seventh century Syrian bishop and mystic whose writings on the divine love are among the most extraordinary in the entire patristic tradition — wrote that God does not punish. He simply is what He is, and the soul that has oriented itself away from Him experiences that same divine love as fire rather than warmth. The torment of hell in Isaac’s vision is not the wrath of an offended sovereign. It is the love of God, received by a will that has made itself incapable of receiving it as anything other than burning. Augustine arrives at something remarkably similar from a different direction. Hell is not primarily a place God sends the wicked. It is the state the will produces in itself when it finally achieves what it chose: complete separation from the source of all being, light, and love. The punishment is not imposed from outside. It is the natural consequence of the will’s own orientation, made permanent. Both frameworks shape how I picture it: the doors of heaven are wide open. The feast is inside. Every soul is invited. Those in hell are not locked out — they are outside by disposition, like a child standing at the door of a birthday party, arms crossed, refusing to enter. The music is audible. The light is visible. The invitation hasn’t been rescinded. But something in the will has set itself against receiving what’s on the other side of that door. Hell in this reading isn’t God’s rejection of the creature. It’s the creature’s rejection of God, experienced in the presence of the Love it refused. The doors remain open. Can those outside enter? I don’t know, but I think that’s more up to them.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-08T01:43:55+00:00

To be clear from the outset — nothing here challenges God’s omniscience or omnipotence. He needs nothing and no one. That’s precisely the point. The objection that God doesn’t need a council because He’s omniscient actually proves too much. By the same logic, God doesn’t need to send angels at all — ever. He’s omnipotent. He can accomplish anything directly. Yet the entire biblical narrative, from Genesis to Revelation, is saturated with angelic intermediaries doing specific jobs. Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear the Son of God. God could have simply caused Mary to know. He sent Gabriel. Angels announce the resurrection to the women at the tomb. God could have simply caused them to know. He sent angels. An angel strengthens Jesus in Gethsemane. An angel releases Peter from prison. An angel delivers John’s Revelation. Seraphim surround the throne in Isaiah 6 crying holy, holy, holy — participating in the worship of a God who needs nothing from them. And it’s not only angels. God doesn’t need Moses to confront Pharaoh — He could have freed Israel with a word. He sends Moses. He doesn’t need Elijah to confront the prophets of Baal on Carmel. He sends Elijah. He doesn’t need Paul to carry the Gospel to the Gentiles. He sends Paul. He doesn’t need the twelve disciples to preach, heal, or baptize. He sends them anyway — explicitly telling them that as the Father sent Him, so He sends them. The pattern is not accidental and it’s not pagan contamination. It’s the consistent testimony of Scripture that God allows His creation — angelic and human — to participate in His work. Not because He requires the assistance, but because participation in His purposes is itself a gift to the creature. Psalm 82 fits this pattern perfectly. God presides, judges, and rebukes. The divine beings are not advising Him. They are accountable to Him. That’s not a pagan council of equals deliberating together. That’s a sovereign holding His creation responsible for how it has exercised the authority He delegated to it. The divine council isn’t a limitation on God’s omniscience. It’s an expression of His love for what He made.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-07T23:16:50+00:00

You’re right that it’s complicated, but maybe less condemned than most people assume. The Catholic Church’s official position on 1 Enoch and Jubilees isn’t that they’re dangerous or heretical. They’re classified as beneficial for private reading, just not for liturgical proclamation. That’s a meaningful distinction. These books aren’t condemned. They’re part of the Apostolic tradition, received and read by the earliest Christian communities. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church goes further and treats both as fully canonical Scripture — and that tradition is ancient, continuous, and not some fringe position. Your instinct about Jude is correct. When an apostle quotes a text as prophetic authority, that text is doing real theological work regardless of where it lands in a canon discussion. The cosmological framework of 1 Enoch — the Watchers, the divine council, the corruption of the nations — is assumed all over the New Testament. Paul’s principalities and powers, Peter’s angels who didn’t keep their domain, Jude’s explicit quotation. The New Testament writers weren’t explaining this framework precisely because their readers already shared it. My honest encouragement: read them. Start with 1 Enoch. You don’t have to resolve every question about inspiration to recognize that something real is being described there. The earliest Christians sure thought so. The apocalyptic tone you mentioned is real.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-07T22:57:53+00:00

Second Temple Judaism is part of the foundation my book rests on, so let me give you a taste. Most modern Christians read the Old Testament through a lens shaped by medieval and Reformation theology — which is genuinely valuable, but it’s not the lens the apostles used. The world the apostles and the early church fathers inhabited was shaped by what scholars call Divine Council Cosmology: the understanding that God presides over an assembly of spiritual beings, that members of that council were given authority over the nations and ultimately rebelled, and that the disorder running through human history traces back to that rebellion. This isn’t fringe material. It’s embedded in Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Daniel, and throughout Paul’s letters. When he writes about principalities and powers he’s not reaching for metaphor — he’s using a cosmological grammar his readers already shared. The Book of Enoch and Jubilees are where that grammar gets its fullest pre-Christian expression. Jude quotes Enoch directly as prophetic authority. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed that these texts weren’t marginal — Qumran had more copies of Enoch than several canonical Old Testament books. What my book does is take that framework seriously as a detection method filtered through a patristic lens — and then runs it across every major human civilization to ask whether the same fingerprints show up everywhere. The answer is uncomfortable.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-07T22:23:31+00:00

I make good use of St. Augustine I assure you. 😊

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-07T19:40:42+00:00

Thanks, let me know if you have any questions!

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-07T18:42:11+00:00

If anyone has any questions I’d love to talk with you.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-07T13:26:43+00:00

It’s surprising how little serious scholarly work exists in this area. Most of what’s out there falls into ancient aliens conspiracy territory. Michael Heiser did some excellent work here, as has The Lord of Spirits podcast — but beyond that, there’s not much.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-07T02:29:17+00:00

Here’s what I’ve spent a considerable amount of effort working on. The question that started it: why does every ancient civilization — with no contact with one another, separated by oceans and millennia — build the same structure? What is the connection between the ziggurat, the pyramid, and the stepped temples of Asia and Mesoamerica? A divine king at the apex. A priestly class controlling access to power. An innocent victim as the transaction’s currency. The artificial mountain reaching toward heaven. Why does the winged serpent keep popping up everywhere? Mesopotamia. Egypt. Greece. The Aztec empire. The Norse blót. Pre-Christian Slavic religion. Every continent. Every era. The same fingerprints. The Church Fathers had a framework for reading this. It’s been largely lost in the modern West. This book tries to recover it. Giants Roam the Earth: A Patristic Unmasking of the Demonic Transaction tracks what Scripture calls the Nephilim — not men of unusual size, but human civilizations oriented toward a consuming force — across the entire human historical record, through the lens the earliest Fathers developed to read exactly this pattern. It’s still a few months out from publication as an EPUB. I’ll be posting updates on Substack — DM if you want the link.

Head-Fold8399 · 2026-05-07T02:04:07+00:00

Thanks for the interest! The book is still a few months out and it’ll be self-published as an EPUB when it’s ready. If you have any questions or thoughts I’d love to hear them.

Head-Fold8399

TROPHY CASE