Errors in the Writings of Mystics

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In His human nature, He grew in wisdom. How could His divinity and eternal nature learn anything?
 
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways—oracle of the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
my thoughts higher than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9
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There is always a difficulty talking about the operations of the divine and human in Jesus. You have to be able to affirm that “Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” Luke 2:52. And that Christ is “the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

The Christology controversies were all about these issues. Jesus has two natures, divine and human. Jesus had two wills, divine and human. etc. God took on our humanity. His knowledge as a human differed from his knowledge as God because the ways of knowing differed.
 
sealabeag said:
A canonised mystic of the church heard Jesus say that the world is, as of today, around 6000 years old. What are we to do with this, and other errors in the supposedly inspired writings of mystics?
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Getting back to the original question here , which is not about how long the world existed but rather a general one about the writings of mystics.

First, let’s deal with your specific example of Blessed (not St., as someone pointed out) Anne Catherine Emmerich.
Her writings about alleged visions have not been approved by the Church, as for one thing there is a significant question about whether they were written in large part by someone else. Because they are not approved, they fall in the category of “unapproved private revelations”, which we aren’t permitted to discuss on this forum.

She was beatified based on the holiness of her life, and NOT on her alleged visions and writings about them. The Congregation for the Causes of the Saints was very clear on this. Her visions/ writings were not part of the process.

So whatever she allegedly wrote (allegedly because it could have been written by someone else as I said) is a moot point.

Now, let’s assume you had used an example of a saint having private revelations that were approved by the Church.
There have been cases of mystic saints all having visions of the same event - the Crucifixion, for example - and seeing it all kinds of different ways. Clearly, Jesus was only crucified in one way, so that means at most one saint’s vision is factually correct and the other saints’ visions are not correct and did not portray how Jesus was actually nailed or whatever.

In this case, you need to keep in mind the following:
  • In many if not most cases, mystic saints are canonized based on their holy lives and not on the alleged correctness or incorrectness of their private revelations. There are cases of mystics whose visions were approved by the Church, but who did not end up canonized or beatified or even venerable themselves, because they just led ordinary lives, not super holy lives.
  • Even if a private revelation to saints is explicitly approved by the Church (example: St. Francisco and St. Jacinta Marto’s visions of Our Lady at Fatima), it’s still private revelation, and Catholics are not required to believe in private revelation.
  • Mystics often receive private revelations that are symbolic in some way and are not intended to present an actual, true, factual picture of exact events that occurred.
  • As someone else said, mystics are human and can err. Mysticism is not an exact science, and because Catholics are not required to believe in approved private revelations, it doesn’t have to be exact.
 
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I like to think of science as the hobby of proving previous scientists wrong.
 
It doesn’t bother me. I think we can view time from both a theological and natural perspective.
 
Since God is eternal, any measure of our time compared to Him is divided by infinity, therefore approaching zero. So whether the universe is only 10000 years old or 13.6 billion, either one divided by infinitely is essentially instantaneous from God’s “viewpoint.”

I am fine with viewing time and creation from both scientific and theological viewpoints. For instance, heliocentrism is established by science since it can be shown that the Earth revolves around the sun. Yet theologically, Earth can be seen as theocentric, the center of God’s creation since it is home to man made in His image. In this sense, the Sun is a servant to the Earth, providing its heat, light, and gravitational pull. So just as the Church, the Bible, and Christ are fully human and fully divine, Earth in the same manner is fully natural yet theologically God’s centerpiece of Creation.

Likewise, the earth may naturally be 4.5 billion years old; but theologically, from man’s perspective of acknowledging the Earth as God’s creation, it is much younger. Therefore Earth as Earth, i.e. a planet consisting of elements and minerals formed in a specific way by God, is billions of years old. But Earth as man’s home until heaven is much younger, perhaps the 6000-10000 years a reading of Genesis can calculate. The theological perspective, marked by man’s awareness of himself amidst a home created by a higher being, is much younger than the planet’s scientifically calculated age.
 
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Anne Emmerich is not canonised and her writings are not approved by the Church. In fact, Anne Emmerich never wrote any of her alleged revelations.
 
My apologies, yes I realised she isn’t a canonised saint, but just “Blessed”. Is it true that she didn’t write any of her alleged revelations? Who wrote them, then? They are quite expansive and go into some detail, where was this material garnered for whoever wrote them?

Thanks for the replies everyone. I suppose another example that might spring to mind is one mystic saying St. Joseph was a young unmarried man, maybe a nazarite, and another saying he was an older widower, etc. Now, I don’t know if this is the case and I don’t have writings of mystics on this topic, but that’s what I’ve heard.

One final thing, if you don’t mind - I have been reading “The Mystical City of God” by Venerable Mary of Agreda. However I’ve seen people saying here in these forums that there’s errors in her book. One is concerning the presentation, for example. To me, if there’s an error, then nothing in that book can be taken with anything other than incredulity. How are we to deal with this? I do ask for myself, as I find it a bit of an obstacle. Again, she is Venerable, not a Saint, but her book “The Mystical City of God”, is considered a mystical classic and much read by faithful catholics, especially as she does carry the title “Venerable”. If we find an error in such a book, how do we respond? I know, again, that even canonization does not equal approval of that saints writings, but you can see my issue?
 
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Jesus was and is the second person of the Holy Trinity, that is, God. Not simply “a 1st Century Jew”, understanding the world as any other 1st century Jew would.
 
@sealabeag

Consider this idea:
Counting from the creation of Adam and Eve, the world is about six thousand years old.
This is what Christ meant. Remember He was talking to people who would never have understood if He spoke of creation the way we understand it.
He spoke of the world they knew.
 
Blessed Anne Emmerich was interviewed by a poet named Clemens Brentano who took notes and then wrote books about her alleged visions based on his notes. At this point it’s believed he embellished the notes or made stuff up and attributed it to Anne. The Church didn’t consider the books during her cause because they are unreliable and probably don’t reflect what if anything she actually said about her visions.

Venerable Mary of Agreda is still being considered for beatification. I’m sure the Vatican will consider her written work very carefully in deciding whether to move her cause forward. At this point I doubt there is any “error” you or I could spot that wouldn’t also be noted by the Vatican officials dealing with her sainthood process. We also usually read her works in abridged form and in translation, which may inadvertently create errors. Her book Mystical City of God was on the Index of Forbidden Books for a while due to a faulty French translation. It was later taken off.

Even if you did read the whole unabridged work in original language and still saw an error, my previous post would apply:
  • mysticism is not an exact science;
  • mystics are human and can err;
  • mystical revelations are often symbolic or making some point to the visionary, not meamt to be an exact factual representation of events that occurred;
  • as of now Ven. Mary’s works are unapproved private revelations, and even if they were somehow approved by the Church, Catholics would not be required to believe in them.
So if you think a private revelation contains errors and this bothers you, you’re free to ignore it, not read it etc. It is not essential to your faith that you read private revelations. Some people find them inspiring and helpful in their faith journey, others don’t believe them or find then confusing or get fixated on possible errors and thus reading such revelations is not a productive experience for them.

Many Catholics have been inspired over the centuries by reading Ven. Mary’s writings. If you’re not one of them, that’s fine, don’t read them. There are also many good Catholics who don’t read her writings and probably don’t even know or care who she was.
 
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Brendan_64 said:
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In fact, Anne Emmerich never wrote any of her alleged revelations.
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Is that your opinion or are you stating that as a fact?
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It’s a fact because Blessed Anne Emmerich was mostly illiterate. She could not have written her revelations down herself. She relied on Clemens Brentano to do that.

She spoke to him in dialect, during which he wasn’t even allowed to take notes in her presence, then he would have to go elsewhere and write down what he remembered of the conversation. And then it’s thought that when he actually wrote the books with the revelations based on his notes, he added stuff to them.

Here’s a source from Catholic News Service from the time of her beatification stating that she was mostly illiterate:

https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/file...cjrelations/topics/emmerich_beatification.htm

Here’s a story from The New Yorker saying the same:

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Tis_Bearself said:
Even if a private revelation to saints is explicitly approved by the Church (example: St. Francisco and St. Jacinta Marto’s visions of Our Lady at Fatima), it’s still private revelation, and Catholics are not required to believe in private revelation.
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Fatima is not a private revelation but a public prophetic revelation. Our Lady prophesied that WWII (obviously, She didn’t use that term) would happen if men did not repent and other things as well.
 
If I’m not wrong, don’t many Christians think Earth is around that age?
 
Margaret_Ann said:
Fatima is not a private revelation but a public prophetic revelation.
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No, Fatima is classified as a private revelation. “Public revelation” as defined by the Catholic Church ended when the last apostle died. Everything since then has been “private revelation”. Fatima is an approved, Vatican-recognized private revelation.

Catholics are not required to believe in Fatima. Or Lourdes, or Guadalupe, etc. A Catholic could dismiss all of those saying he doesn’t believe in any of them, and still be a good Catholic.

Here is an article discussing this in more detail:

 
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Chistian-ity said:
If I’m not wrong, don’t many Christians think Earth is around that age?
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Young Earth Creationists believe the Earth is about 6,000 years old.
Old Earth Creationists believe God created the universe and the Earth, billions of years ago. Old Earthers differ among themselves as to how it was done, and as to how, and how long ago, Mankind was created.
I am an Old Earth, and believe in a literal Adam and eve who were created some unknown number of thousands of years ago.
 
Chistian-ity said:
If I’m not wrong, don’t many Christians think Earth is around that age?
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6,000 years old? I think a significant minority do.

But I feel that it’s a tenet that’s largely - but not exclusively - restricted to American Christians (whether Catholic or Protestant) and those non-American churches influenced by American theological debates.

I’ve never had an Australian Catholic assert to me a 6,000 year geological age of the planet.
 
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