Do Not Trust "Saint" Theophan the Recluse on Hagiography

Was Peter the Aleut a Martyr? · Do Not Trust "Saint" Theophan the Recluse on Hagiography

He lied about St. Ephrem the Syrian claiming he had pretended to be a disciple of the heretic Apollinaris in order to sabotage the books in which he had put his "dialectic" against "the Orthodox".

The real Apollinaris was bishop of Laodicaea, as I found out by consulting the wikipedia, he was not put to shame by the embarrassment of not being able to open his books, as Theophan lied, or as by the lie THeophan promoted, but by a Council which very much was able to open his books.

And he did not write openly "against the Orthodox", he wrote against Arians, and so was an apparent ally to all the Orthodox, but a bad one.

It is possible that St. Ephrem (who died before the Council at Constantinople in 381) called the bishop of Laodicaea out, but he did not do so by sneaking to get private access to the books of Apollinaris and sabotage them. Apollinaris would not have needed to confide his books to an old woman, since he lived as a bishop, and St. Ephrem would not have calumnied his own Orthodoxy by claiming before the old woman to be a disciple of a de facto heretic.

But even more : clerical duties held them in different cities. St. Ephrem lived in Edessa, in the Syrian part of what is now Turkey, and the city is now called Şanlıurfa. He was a deacon of Edessa. Apollinaris was bishop of Laodicaea, which is now called Latakia (or rather, the ancient city is some small distance away from the modern one, as with Pompei). By car you drive nearly six hours from Latakia to Şanlıurfa.

"5 h 44 min (453.5 km) via Adana-Şanlıurfa Otoyolu/O-52/E90"

And yes, it is precisely this bishop Apollinaris who was a Christological heretic and got condemned on Constantinople I. It was not a layman - a lay theologian smartass - who concocted the heresy. Proposing St. Ephrem could have walked into the home of the heretic while he was absent is ridiculous.

The story told by Theophan the Recluse is probably made to sanctify the methods of the infamous Okhrana. Because Феофа́н Затво́рник or Theophanes the Recluse lived January 10, 1815 – January 6, 1894 in Imperial Russia. From his cradle in Chernavsk to his grave in Kazan, he lived under the Czarist administration, which in 1881 formed the Okhrana. Only 13 years before his death? Yes. Perhaps after he had told this story which is not true about St. Ephrem? Possible. If so he contributed to the dishonesty of the Okhrana and to the fall of the Czars.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Val d'Europe
Apparition of Our Lady in Lourdes
11.II.2020