The Apostles Were Orthobros
Jesus dealt with it. We can, too.
One of my favorite passages from Scripture is the bit in Luke where Jesus and His disciples are passing through a Samaritan village, and the locals give them a chilly reception, so James and John ask the Lord, “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?”
Massacring a whole village full of people may not seem like a proportional response. Then again, as the lads point out, there’s a strong scriptural precedent!
James and John are two young men who have devoted their whole lives to following Christ. To put it another way: their religion has become their whole personality. They’re extremely well read in their own faith-tradition, though their understanding of what they read appears to be somewhat superficial. They’re extremely zealous, as young men often are. They’re also hot-tempered, impatient, and overconfident in their own opinions.
James and John are two of the three disciples whom Christ dubbed Boanérges, or Sons of Thunder. Today, we would call them Orthobros.
The problem for James and John—and for the Orthobros—is that, while we can study the tradition, that doesn’t mean we understand it. This becomes clear a few chapters earlier, when Luke recounts the Temptation of Christ. Satan appears to Jesus in the desert, and the two of them spend a few hours firing Bible verses back and forth. Hence the saying, “Even the Devil can quote Scripture for his purpose.”
This is an especially important point for the Orthodox. When Christ appears to the Apostles, just before He ascends into Heaven, Luke says, “He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.” In the original Greek, the word for “understanding” is nous, which could also be translated as “heart.” The nous is an intuitive epistemic faculty—as opposed to reason, which is a discursive epistemic faculty. Reason needs to “work out” the truth using logic and evidence; the nous simply perceives and comprehends.
Western (i.e., Catholic and Protestant) theology tends to be more rational, while Orthodox theology is more noetic. We don’t worry as much about reading books about God or debating theories about His nature. We try to focus more on purifying the heart so that, per the Beatitudes, we can see God.
This is why Christ doesn’t bother to argue with James and John. He doesn’t try to put the passages about Elijah in their “proper context” or anything like that. What would be the point? He knows their nouses (or noes) are closed. What they lack isn’t head-knowledge. They’ve got plenty of that. It’s heart-knowledge.
Many “progressive” Orthodox Christians are quick to condemn the Orthobros. Their attitude owes more to the Western/rationalist paradigm than the Orthodox/noetic one. They act as though it’s simply a matter of putting the correct theological data into one’s meat computer. But that’s not it at all.
Put it this way. Saint Peter spent three years traveling with Jesus. Three years. They were together all day, every day. And yet, when Christ predicted His own death, Peter says, “This shall not happen to you!” Peter thinks he knows better than Jesus. He’s more Christian than Christ. Jesus, of course, replies: “Get behind me, Satan!”—which is exactly what He says to the literal Devil during His temptation in the wilderness. The Lord couldn’t make Himself any clearer. And yet, when the mob comes to arrest Jesus, Peter still cuts off someone’s ear. Total Orthobro move.
Do you see? Jesus doesn’t coddle these guys. He doesn’t hesitate to put them in their place. But He does so as their friend. They go to house parties together. They hang out in bars. They go hiking. They take fishing trips. They grill on the beach. The Lord is such good friends with John—the genocidal maniac—that His mom comes to live with him when Jesus dies.
Frankly, that’s one element I don’t find in our discourse about the Orthobros: love.
Do we love the Orthobros as Christ did (and does)? Are we willing to befriend them, as He did? Are we capable of honoring their masculine zeal as He did when He called them Sons of Thunder? Because that’s what it will take to help them grow spiritually, to help purify their hearts.
A few weeks ago, I talked about how, at the end of his life, St. John summarized Christ’s teaching in one sentence: “Little children, love one another.” His disciples would get annoyed because whenever they asked him for a teaching, he always said the same thing: “Little children, love one another.” Finally they asked him, “Why do you always say this?” He replied, “Because it is the Lord’s commandment, and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.”
This is the same man who, sixty years ago, wanted to burn down a whole Samaritan village.
That transformation was the work of a lifetime, even for the disciple whom Jesus loved. Let’s give each other a little grace.
Another great Orthobro Disciple moment: St. Thomas in John 11.16, upon hearing Lazarus has died: "Let us also go, that we may die with him!" He perhaps was the disciple with most flair for the dramatic.
What tends to get lost in the whole Orthobro debate is that the vast majority of these people *chill out* with experience. It happened to me, and like 95% of the other guys at my parish who might have been described as Orthobros. You just have to be a *little* bit patient and gentle nudge in the right direction/toward focusing on the right things, and the life of the Church will do the rest of the work.
I see it, Br. Theophan. I was blind before, but now I am beginning to see... Thank you again for this enlightening article.