All the more, then, if Bishop Theophan was even slightly mistaken as to the emphasis of Bishop Ignatius’ teaching, should this disagreement be regarded as “minor” in my opinion.
3. Bishop Theophan was once specifically asked whether in the teaching of Bishop Ignatius he had found any other error, apart from the supposed teaching of the “materiality” of the soul. He replied: “No. In Bishop Ignatius there is only this error — his opinion on the nature of the soul and angels, that they are material.... In all that I have read in his books, I have noticed nothing un-Orthodox. What I have read is good” (Letter of Dec. 15, 1893, in The Russian Monk, Pochaev Monastery, No. 17, Sept., 1912). Thus, in the context of the whole Orthodox teaching of Bishops Ignatius and Theophan, this disagreement is truly a “minor” one.
Now to pass to a final point, concerning the aerial toll-houses encountered by the soul after death. In your open letter you quote a letter of Bishop Theophan in which he states that life after death “is a land closed to us. What happens there is not defined with precision.... As to what shall be there — we shall see when we get there.” From this, as well as from the fact that Bishop Theophan does not mention the toll-houses often in his writings, you conclude that “the teaching as such, in all of its symbolism, was ... at most peripheral to his thinking,” and you think I am mistaken at least in my emphasis that Bishop Theophan was a staunch defender of the Orthodox teaching of the toll-houses. To this I would reply with several points:
1. I also can recall only these two direct references in the writings of Bishop Theophan to the teaching of the toll-houses. However, these two references are sufficient to show that he did indeed hold this teaching and taught it to others, and that he was quite critical, even scornful, of those who denied it (“No matter how absurd the idea of the toll-houses may seem to our ‘wise men,’ they will not escape passing through them”).
2. The fact that in some of his letters when the subject of life after death is touched on, he does not mention the toll-houses, does not seem to me a necessary indication that this subject is “peripheral” to his teaching, but only that he speaks in each case to the need of his listener, and some people do not need (or are unable) to hear of the toll-houses. I have found this same thing in my own experience as a priest: With those who are ready for it, the teaching of the toll-houses is a powerful incentive to repentance and a life lived in the fear of God; but there are those for whom the teaching would be so frightening that I would not even speak of it to them until they were better prepared to accept it. A priest sometimes encounters dying people so little prepared for the other world that it would be pointless to speak to them even of hell, let alone the toll-houses, for fear of removing in them the little hope and awareness they might have of the Kingdom of Heaven; but this does not mean that hell has no part in the teaching of such a priest, or that he would not defend its reality decisively if it were attacked. Especially in our “enlightened” 20th century, many Orthodox Christians are so immature spiritually, or have been so misled by modern ideas, that they are simply incapable of accepting the idea of encounters with demons after death. Any Orthodox priest in his pastoral approach to such people must, of course, condescend to their weakness and give them the “baby food” they require until they are more prepared to accept the strong food of some of the Orthodox ascetical texts; but the Orthodox teaching on the toll-houses, handed down from the early Christian centuries, remains always the same and cannot be denied no matter how many people are incapable of understanding it.
3. Moreover, in actual fact the teaching of the toll-houses does appear in other works of Bishop Theophan — in his translations if not in his original works. There are numerous references to this teaching in his five-volume translation of the Philokalia, several of which I have cited in the text of The Soul After Death (pp. 80-81, 258-59, 262)92. In Unseen Warfare also (Part Two, ch. 9), there is an exposition of the Orthodox teaching of the “examination by the prince of this age” given to everyone on his departure from the body; the word “toll-houses” does not appear there, but the text says clearly that “the most decisive battle awaits us in the hour of death,” and it is obvious that the reality is the same as that which Bishop Ignatius is so concerned to defend, and which in other places Bishop Theophan does call by the name of “toll-houses.”
4. The text of Bishop Theophan’s Soul and Angel contains not one word critical of Bishop Ignatius’ teaching on the toll-houses. Now in Bishop Ignatius’ “Homily on Death” he states unequivocally that “the teaching of the toll-houses is the teaching of the Church” (vol. III of his works, p. 138), and goes on to justify this statement in great detail. And Bishop Theophan, in his criticism of Bishop Ignatius’ teaching, states that “in the present article the new teaching of the above-mentioned brochures [“Homily on Death” and the “Supplement” to it] is examined in full detail, without leaving uncensured a single thought in them which should be censured” (Soul and Angel, p. 4). It is quite clear, then, since Bishop Theophan found nothing whatever to censure in Bishop Ignatius’ ideas on the toll-houses, that he is in full agreement with Bishop Ignatius that “the teaching of the toll-houses is the teaching of the Church.”
5. In the very text of Soul and Angel, Bishop Theophan sets forth the conditions of the soul after its departure from the body in terms identical to those of Bishop Ignatius’ exposition. These are precisely the conditions required for the occurrence of the encounter of the soul with demons at the toll-houses, so this quote, even though it does not directly mention the toll-houses, may be taken as an indication of Bishop Theophan’s agreement with Bishop Ignatius on the nature of after-death reality, his sole difference with Bishop Ignatius being on the question whether the nature of angels is only body (which, as I stated above, I do not believe Bishop Ignatius actually taught). Here is the quote from Bishop Theophan:
“The soul, after its departure from the body, enters into the realm of spirits, where both it and the spirits are active in the same forms as are visible on earth among men: they see each other, they speak, travel, argue, act. The difference is only that there the realm is an ethereal one of subtle matter, and in them therefore everything is subtly material and ethereal. What is the direct conclusion from this? That in the world of spirits the outward form of being and of mutual relations is the same as among men on earth. But this fact does not speak of the bodiliness of the nature of angels, or say that their essence is only body” (Soul and Angel, pp. 88-89).