6. You do not disagree with me on the main point: that Bishop Theophan, like Bishop Ignatius, did hold the Orthodox teaching of the toll-houses; your only disagreement with me is on the emphasis the two teachers placed on it (Bishop Ignatius spoke of it more, Bishop Theophan less). I think there is a very simple explanation for this seeming difference of emphasis: It was Bishop Ignatius who felt it was necessary to write a whole treatise on the subject of life after death, where the subject of the toll-houses, being an important part of the Orthodox teaching, of necessity occupies a conspicuous place; while Bishop Theophan, not having written such a treatise, mentions this subject only in passing. I would imagine (without looking through all his works to verify it) that in his other writings Bishop Ignatius mentions the toll-houses no more often than Bishop Theophan. The few references in Bishop Theophan’s writings, however, do indicate that he held the teaching as firmly as Bishop Ignatius. The difference between them, then, I would say, is not what they believed or even in the force with which they expressed their belief, but in the point I mentioned at the beginning of this letter: that Bishop Ignatius was more concerned than Bishop Theophan to do close battle with the rationalistic views of the West, while Bishop Theophan handed down the Orthodox tradition with less attention to fighting specific Western errors regarding it.
In view of all this, I believe that my statement in the preface of The Soul After Death, that Bishop Theophan “taught the same teaching” as Bishop Ignatius, is justified: in view of the whole Orthodox teaching on life after death which they had in common, the difference between them on the one point of the “bodiliness” of the nature of the soul and angels (a difference caused, I believe, more by the polemical overemphasis of Bishop Ignatius on the “bodies” of angels than by his actually holding the teaching ascribed to him by Bishop Theophan) — is indeed “minor.” With regard to the points of the teaching on life after death set forth in The Soul After Death (since I did not defend or even mention Bishop Ignatius’ supposed teaching that souls and angels are only bodies), their points of agreement are close to complete. The agreement of their teaching on life after death is all the more striking when one compares it with the views of the rationalistic critics of the West who, even up to our day, deny not only the reality of the toll-houses but also the whole after-death reality which Bishops Theophan and Ignatius described in virtually identical terms, the efficacy of prayers for the dead, and so forth. Against such false views the united witness of Bishops Theophan and Ignatius to the Orthodox teaching handed down from antiquity is indeed impressive.
I should be very interested in hearing further of your research on Bishop Theophan, for whom, as I have said, I have the greatest respect. Will you be publishing an article or book on him, or any translation of his works? I myself have translated the first part of The Path to Salvation, which is now appearing serially in the newspaper Orthodox America.
With love in Christ, Unworthy Hieromonk Seraphim
P.S. I do not know how “open” your letter to me was, or to whom it was sent. I am sending copies of my reply only to a few people who are closely interested in this subject.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Father Seraphim was born Eugene Dennis Rose on August 13, 1934, in San Diego, California. His father Frank was of Dutch and French ancestry, while his mother Esther’s family was from Norway. Esther was a Protestant, and Frank, although he had grown up as a Roman Catholic, became a Protestant for the sake of his wife. Frank worked at several occupations, owning a candy store for a while, then working for General Motors, and finally taking a job as a janitor at a sports stadium.
Eugene graduated from San Diego High School in 1952 at the top of his class. He was regarded by his parents, teachers and peers as a young “genius” destined for a brilliant career in science or mathematics. By the time he entered Pomona College in southern California, however, such earthly pursuits seemed to him unimportant beside a new, all-consuming passion: to know, to understand reality in the highest sense. Feeling estranged from the society around him, he rebelled against its superficiality and materialism, and rejected the Protestant religion in which he had been raised. His search for Truth led first through Western philosophy and then through a study of the wisdom of the Orient, for which he learned the Chinese language, both ancient and modern.
Having graduated from Pomona College in 1956 with a bachelor’s degree in Oriental Languages, Eugene enrolled in the Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco, and studied under its Dean, Dr. Alan Watts. At the same Academy, he found a true representative of the Chinese tradition, a philosopher named Gi- ming Shien. Eugene went to various Eastern temples and helped Gi-ming to translate the Tao Teh Ching from the ancient Chinese characters. In 1957 he became a student of the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his master’s degree in Oriental Languages in 1961.
The wisdom of the pre-Christian philosophers, as profound as it was, left Eugene unfulfilled, and he was in despair at not knowing why. From Gi-ming, and also from the writings of the French metaphysician Réné Guénon, he had learned the value of adhering to the traditional, orthodox form of a religion, whatever that religion might be. Unable to find the end of his search in the traditional Eastern religions he had already experienced, he went one day to see the orthodox, Eastern form of the religion he had known as a child — Christianity. Describing this moment many years later, he wrote:
“For years in my studies I was satisfied with being ‘above all traditions’ but somehow faithful to them.... When I visited an Orthodox church, it was only in order to view another ‘tradition’ — knowing that Guénon (or one of his disciples) had described Orthodoxy as being the most authentic of the Christian traditions.
“However, when I entered an Orthodox church for the first time (a Russian church in San Francisco) something happened to me that I had not experienced in any Buddhist or other Eastern temple; something in my heart said that this was ‘home,’ that all my search was over. I didn’t really know what this meant, because the service was quite strange to me, and in a foreign language. I began to attend Orthodox services more frequently, gradually learning the language and customs, but still keeping all my basic Guénonian ideas about all the authentic spiritual traditions.
“With my exposure to Orthodoxy and to Orthodox people, however, a new idea began to enter my awareness: that Truth was not just an abstract idea, sought and known by the mind, but was something personal — even a Person — sought and loved by the heart. And that is how I met Christ.”
Eugene was received into the Orthodox Church on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, February 25, 1962, in the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” Russian Orthodox Cathedral in San Francisco. On receiving the Holy Mysteries for the first time he felt a heavenly, Divine taste in his mouth which lasted for over a week.
In San Francisco Eugene became a disciple of one of the holiest men of the 20th century, Archbishop John Maximovitch (canonized in 1994 as St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco): a hierarch known the world over as a miracle-worker, clairvoyant elder, ascetic, “fool for Christ,” father of orphans, and deliverer of the oppressed. With this unearthly man as his guide, Eugene entered into what he was later to call the indefinable “savor” or “fragrance” of Orthodoxy. He cut through all the externals to go to the essence and heart of unadulterated, otherworldly Christianity.