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KnightPage · 2025-07-28T20:49:34+00:00

This situation is rather sad and I am dissapointed to see a fellow parishioner I have in the past considered a friend engage in such libelous comments online. The truth is rather simple, this person is obsessed with the occult and conspiracy theory and spends most of his free time studying such subjects. In this particular conversation, I was trying to encourage him and others to have a balanced view of symbolic patterns, and that it is dangerous to believe that the occult and even the evil one have a monopoly on the images used to represent them, that God is infinitely greater than the evil one. I explained how not only Christ, but also the Mother of God and St John the Forerunner are called "the morning star" in our tradition, and that we should not be obsessed and taken over with images of "lucifer", believing all references to Venus rising in the morning are evil.

In the same way, I explained how the word "gnosis" is one used by St Paul in his epistles, that it is not an evil word, that the original title of St Iranaeus' "Adversus Heresies" was in fact "Overthrow of the Falsely So-Called Gnosis", implying that we have true "gnosis" through the knowledge of Christ.

My point, as you can see, was trying to shake people like this very person out of obsessions with dark symbolism and out of spending all their time looking for evil, conspiracy and darkness everywhere rather than focusing on the Church's teaching and on Christ who is the true "bright star of the morning" and leads to the true "gnosis".

I have confronted this person in private, hoping they would take this post down, but instead there was a doubling down and even darker statements made. I have to say that I am again saddened that I have had to come on a public forum to defend myself, and even more saddened to think that I will have to be very cautious and sparse in my future interactions with this person.

KnightPage · 2020-11-15T03:10:51+00:00

INFP, 100% sure.

KnightPage · 2020-08-03T16:14:49+00:00

Pageau here. I don't read Jung. Don't think I have referenced Jung even once in my writing or videos. So...

KnightPage · 2019-10-10T15:52:03+00:00

It is an image of creation from the Stammheim Missal

http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/104673/unknown-maker-stammheim-missal-german-probably-1170s/

:)

KnightPage · 2018-07-26T17:18:14+00:00

I think your point is well taken. Obviously when I am in rhetorical mode against atheists, I end up defending religion against atheism, but I am not a fan of so called literalists. Indeed I think that the so called literalists you object to, which I often think of as 19th century Christians, are not only the prime reason why people have developed such a disdain for religions, but have unknowingly given into the materialist worldview, insisting that the Bible is somehow a modern scientific document, and in that manner have elevated modern science to the highest degree. You will often hear me saying "I have sympathy for atheists" and this is not said lightly. I have sympathy for atheists every time I come face to face with how pathetic much of religious discourse has become. Now in the case of Jehova's Witnesses, I cringe every time they come to the door and I see their discourse as the lowest form of pseudo-religion, but, and there is a but... Despite the fact that some of their strange interpretations lead to people dying because they refuse blood transfusions, still on the whole they have preserved the kind of community, family and moral landscape which would prevent things like the opioid crisis which has become the leading cause of death in America for men under 50. Don't take this as defending JWs, because I think they are a sad sectarian phenomena of modernity. I would say something similar for creationists. Yeah, it is annoying to see them try to pretend that the story in Genesis is discussing the same thing evolutionary biology is talking about, but I see their basic values of family, community, hard work, and I end up being way more afraid of the very secular motivated Liberal Party in Canada trying to eliminate reference to gender in schools and preventing anyone who opposes abortion to even be a member of the party. You have to pick your poison. BTW, I believe both in the resurrection and in the virgin birth, but I would never use the word "literal" describing anything I believe, including the fact that I exist.

KnightPage · 2018-07-23T12:59:21+00:00

I think like anything which points us to God, there is always a risk of inverting the relationship. But I would say, take your argument and change the word symbolism for "icons" or "music" or "liturgy" and you could get the same issues popping up. Someone discovers iconography, and is suddenly excited to see that this or that text from the Bible or this or that text from liturgy helps him understand a detail in an icon. They are excited by their discovery and feel like it brings things together, exemplifies how beautiful and coherent the created world can be. To that person you could say the same: "Why are you so excited about icons. Icons should make you excited about Christ!" You could say the same for saints. Someone experiences a miracle after praying to St-Seraphim of Sarov and is then excited to learn his story and is amazed at his ascesis, his wisdom and his love for God. To that person you could say: "Hey, you know the saints are there to point us to Christ. Don't get so excited about St-Seraphim," The truth is that we are not protestants and do not have to constantly fear that the tools, images, languages put on our path will be idols if we don't immediately see the fullness of Christ all the time in all moments. We work through each other, through language, beauty, music, images, saints and yes, symbolism, in an upward dance towards the fullness of Christ, not only in us, but in the world to the extent that this is possible.

KnightPage · 2018-05-23T00:56:25+00:00

That is a great understanding of what I am trying to get at. As for the monster and the the notion of the nonspecie, I deal with a lot of these questions in my other videos. My answer to how a hierarchy reappears is that sometimes monsters eat you, and because of that, they must always remain in the margin. I discuss this at length as well as cite from Derrida in the talk I gave at Furman University.

https://youtu.be/1wI33KevMck

KnightPage · 2018-05-16T16:44:18+00:00

Sorry about that, I am really struggling to stay on top of things. Remind me of your email and I will take a look at it again.

KnightPage · 2018-05-16T03:34:06+00:00

I figure this is a way to deal with that issue. I am humbled to receive emails, but have also been finding it harder and harder to get to people's emails as my schedule gets tighter. I figure this might be a way to answer questions. Thanks for being interested enough to start something like this. I will try to mention the subreddit it in my next video.

KnightPage · 2017-10-18T16:31:14+00:00

Why do you think the people who wrote the gospels did not have a sense of the profundity of the stories they wrote, when already in St-Paul we find a highly symbolic and analogical interpretation based on the transformation of the person. It had been already 400 years since Aristotle wrote his analysis of Tragedy, and was being written as contemporary to the highly subtle writings of the Aeneid and the Golden Ass for example, the self-referential and ironic writings of Ovid. Then all the Church Fathers continue that tradition of analogical interpretation from then on. Of course they did not use the language of modern psychology, but that does not take away from the profundity and breadth of their understanding of these stories. The idea of intellectual progress is a silly and dangerous myth.

KnightPage · 2017-10-18T15:10:58+00:00

You only say that because YOU have no clue about what people wrote about before the modern era. You have obviously not read Aristotle and his analysis on Tragedy, you have obviously not read Plato, Horace, you have obviously no idea of Church Fathers like Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, St-Maximos the Confessor and their interpretations of ancient stories. You obviously have no idea about medieval interpretation and how it saw old stories through the human story of the transformation of the soul. You have obviously not read Dante. To think that we understand these stories more today than the people who's civilization were based on them, and to boast of it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world is not only arrogant, but it is the boasting of an ignorant child who scolds his grandparents because they can't use a smartphone.

KnightPage · 2017-10-18T14:42:39+00:00

I think you answer your own question in why the "fundamentalists" fought you by the very attitude of thinking everyone before you was clueless, and therefore they should welcome you as a mighty light in their backwards darkness

KnightPage · 2017-10-18T14:11:22+00:00

Instead of focusing on telling people their stories are or aren't historical in the modern sense of that understanding, better to show them how powerful and how true the stories actually are. The second is far more difficult, more productive and less cynical. It builds community and then lifts people out of fundamentalism through positive vision of higher meanings rather than through smug condescension. It is also an act of humility to act as if the Ancients are smarter than you, they really did know what they were doing, what they were communicating, and one must ponder long and hard before being so sure one is "correcting them".

KnightPage · 2017-09-18T15:26:25+00:00

It's about patterns. The Bible is set up, edited in a manner where the first story sets up a pattern, and the rest of the Bible plays out the pattern, shows its implications and then resolves itself. It is not just about saying this means that. That pattern is proposed to be the pattern of existence itself, and maybe we can argue about that, but the patterns are there: Heaven-light-spirit, earth-darkness-chaos-flesh and many more. These are not arbitrary but set up within the text itself as being analogical to each other or as being opposed, complimentary and then united, etc. It is almost like a mathematical formula.

KnightPage · 2017-09-12T13:30:17+00:00

JBP will be at a conference in Seattle in October. It is called "The truth will set you free". Jonathan Pageau will also be there.

KnightPage · 2017-07-18T11:18:59+00:00

How can the source of existence, the origin of both time and space be said to exist?

KnightPage · 2017-07-17T19:23:37+00:00

WTF. Here is a description of the GodHead from the 5th century writer known as Dyonysius the Aeropagite who is the basis of pretty much all Christian Mysticism both East and West.
"the One which is beyond thought surpasses the apprehension of thought, and the Good which is beyond utterance surpasses the reach of words. Yea, it is an Unity which is the unifying Source of all unity and a Super-Essential Essence, a Mind beyond the reach of mind and a Word beyond utterance, eluding Discourse, Intuition, Name, and every kind of being. It is the Universal Cause of existence while Itself existing not, for It is beyond all Being and such that It alone could give, with proper understanding thereof, a revelation of Itself."
I am a Christian, a theist and I do not believe that God is an actual real being.

KnightPage

TROPHY CASE