MYSTAGOGY: Father Arseny: Fact or Fiction?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Father Arseny: Fact or Fiction?

January 28, 2010
Length: 31:10

Dr. Bouteneff discusses a pair of books about Father Arseny, Fr. Arseny: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father and Fr. Arseny: Cloud of Witnesses, both of which his mother translated from Russian into English.

Listen to the podcast here.

4 comments:

AnonymousFeb 4, 2010 07:50 AM
I found this book on Father Arseny on web (in Russian)and read it in two days in January. I liked it very much (the best orthodox experience up to date). Later I found some comments that book could be fully or partially fiction and that puzzled me. I searched but to be honest I could not find any reasonable solution. Last week I listened to the speech by Dr. Bouteneff but this did not convince me. The facts are:
1) There are no public photos of Father Arseny
2) In the first book it is written he died in 1973 and in the second (cloud of witnesses) that he died in 1975
3) His grave is lost but cemetery is known?
4) I read a comment on the web that in the preface of first russian edition (half 90ties) was written that story is fictious. I have not yet checked it.
5) The official name of Father Arseny is Peter Andrejevic Strelcov. Dr. Bouteneff said it was fictious. It was new fact for me but could be expected given that the book or parts of it was firstly published in samizdat in 80ties and smugled to Russia.
6) There is not known architecture and iconopis historian in Russia who could be Father Arseny. As in point 5 we can deduce that certain legend was created but this should be written in the book.
7) Dr. Bouteneff said that he personally met in Russia a few (or one) poeple who said they are spiritual children of Arseny. Similar commnets I read by other people. Why the spiritual childern of Father Arseny or people who knew these spiritual children do not witness publicly? This would be very nice appendix. Would I be a publisher I would do that.
8) There are many other new Russian martyres and we know their names and can find photos etc.

I read now Lives of the New Martyrs by Ivan Andryev and these stories have similar spirit as stories in books on Father Arseny. This is indirect proof that there is a lot of truth in these books.

I suspect the Orthodox Russian should definitely know or quite easily find the full truth on the truthfulness if given person lived or not.

Pavel

So I will folw my search
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AnonymousFeb 4, 2010 03:38 PM
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/11/metropolitan-jonah-father-arse.html

http://www.arcadelamor.org/storytellingmonk/ref/holy_sights/people/arseny.htm

The controversy, if you can call it that, stems from the lack of information available from independent sources regarding Fr. Arseny. If you read the books however, they are chock full of addresses, places, people and accounts by people who personally knew him. They relate their experiences, conversations and meetings with him. It would be an elaborate conspiracy to put something like this together.
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AnonymousFeb 5, 2010 02:42 AM
Thats true but the names are usually Ivan Ivanovic so you cannot discern almost anything. The places are usually very vague. We do not know the name of the gulag etc. We know that he lived from 1958 till 1973 (or 1975) in R. which means Rostov. The place of the grave was lost. If Arseny had tens or maybe hundreds of spiritual children who visited Rostov on irregular basis it seems to me alsmost increadible that his grave was lost. The monument depicted in the second link you showed was raised in year 2002 (?) by Vera Bouteneff. The next problem is that nobody from the priesthood in Rostov knows him (I read that in anonymous commnent) so it seems he lived like catacombnik. Moreover some of his spiritual children became priest in official church. Why they or they relatives friends did not witness?
The first link you send is also very vague - that guy said as far as I know. And maybe he should be canonised. So it seems that there should be people in Moscow patriarchate who should know much more. Why DR. Bouteneff did not mention this very important info in his discussion? Moreover he said in the speech that he does not expect any significant new infos to be found. This seems to me incredible. Bouteneff family have conflict of interest given royalties from translation.
So to sum up - the lack of important infos and many inconsistencies are very suspicious.
I liked the story very much but now I rather consider it to have true core with some urban legends around it. Spiritually I still like the message very much.

Pavel
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AnonymousFeb 26, 2010 03:58 PM
Read the first 42 pages of Vera Bouteneff's 'a cloud of witnesses' on Google books, this is a book I'm very much looking forward to reading -- absolutely superb!
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