According to Roman Catholicism, after its separation from the body, the saved soul ascending to God passes through a state of fire-cleansing (purgatorium), a purging from all unconfessed and venial sins committed after Baptism. The Latins also believe that, because such souls continue as members of the Church, the prayers, alms, and good works of the Faithful, as well as the Masses for the dead, apply the grace generated by Christ and the Saints (indulgences), shortening their time in purgatory.(1)
The toll-house theory of Seraphim Rose is similar, but far worse in its construction and implications. One may argue whether or not it involves a cleansing, but it alters the Orthodox doctrine concerning the After-life (about which more will be said), placing the judgment of men in the hands of the demons. "We have also seen," he writes, "that the progress of the soul through the aerial realm, once the body has actually died and the soul is finished with earthly things, is described as an ascent through toll-houses where the Particular Judgment begins in order to determine the fitness of the soul to dwell in heaven. Those souls that are convicted of unrepented sins are cast down by the fallen spirits into hell; those that pass successfully through the trials of the toll-houses ascend freely, guided by angels, to heaven."(2)
According to Fr Rose, the demons determine the fitness of the soul to dwell in heaven and they convict it of sin. They cast down the wicked soul into hell. Fr Rose also believes that the prayers of the Church help those who struggle through the toll-houses.(3)
From where does he derive such ideas, if, as we argue, they are not found in the Scriptures, the holy fathers, the Lives of the Saints or the public worship of the Church? Obviously, from outside the Church or, as the evidence shows, from the ancient heresy of Gnosticism.(4)
A clear understanding of the difference between the Church and Gnosticism (hence, Fr Seraphim's form of it, "new Gnosticism") requires a knowledge of what the Church teaches about the world beyond the grave.
The Saviour descended before He ascended. He went to hades in order to despoil it and to remove those who believe His preaching, that His glory might be complete.(5)
"Penetrating hades at the ninth hour," writes St John Cassian, Christ, "by the brightness of His splendour extinguished the indescribable darkness of hades," shattered its power and "brought with Him to the skies the captive band of saints which was shut up there, detained in the darkness of hades," took the "fiery sword and restored paradise to its original inhabitants."(6)
Christ takes from it "the band of saints" who were detained there; thus, even the righteous of old went to hades - albeit, as the Church teaches, not to a permanent state. The Lord took them to the "skies" (not "heaven") - to the "paradise" which Adam had lost. We also know that Eden would not have been the final condition of our first parents had they remained obedient to God. They would have ultimately achieved deification.
The fallen angels, under the leadership of the devil (Lucifer, Satan, etc.), dwell in our physical universe. They were cast out of "heaven" for their rebellion against God into the air (Job 1:7; 2:2; Eph.2:2). As the Prophet Isaiah exclaimed, How you have fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you have been cut down, you who did weaken the nations! (Is.14:12). And the Lord testifies, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven (Lk.10:18).
Thus, St John the Theologian declares, Therefore, rejoice, ye heavens, and you who dwell in them. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea, for the evil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing well that he has but a short time (Rev.12:12). Before the Coming of Christ, the devil could taunt and tempt, and above all, deceive (Rev.20:2). At death, both the righteous and the wicked came to dwell in hades.
By the Cross, the devil's power was broken. Nevertheless, he continues to fight a rear-guard action. He and his band of demons seek to lure human beings to the "place" which he knows is prepared for them (the demons) - the "spiritual death," "everlasting fire," hell, gehenna (Mt.25:41). But they have no real power over men, for even now, as St Jerome states, "they lament under despair near the tombs of the saints."(7)
We need not give place to the devil (Eph.4:27). We have the grace and faith to oppose his wiles (Eph.6:11). He cannot devour us if we remain steadfast in faith (Eph.5:8). Resist the devil, urges St James, and he will flee from you (Jas.4:7). Jesus rebuked the devil (Mt.17:18), and so can we (Jude 1:9). In a few words, if the devil and his demons have no power over us on earth, they can have none anywhere else. The theory of toll-houses contradicts a basic fact of spiritual life.
Just prior to His Crucifixion, the Lord said to the disciples, Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of the world be cast out (John 12:31). Thus Jesus was lifted up on the Cross that He might be lifted up into the air which is inhabited by the devil and his hosts (John 12:32). In the words of St Peter Chrysologos, "On the Cross, Jesus was captured by the devil," but in so doing the evil one was overcome by Him "Who although slain...opened the way for His sheep to conquer the devil and death."(8)
Until Judgment Day, the ordinary place for the souls of the departed is hades in the Greek language, sheol in the Hebrew. But not the hades of our ancestors. We recall what the crucified Christ said to the repentant thief next to Him, Verily, I say unto you, Today you shall be with Me in paradise (Lk.23:43). But on that very day, the Saviour descended into hades to free its captives, to release them who believed His word.
Hades is the intermediate state (not place) for most souls until that time.(9) Hades is the "occasion" of Particular Judgment, where, with some exceptions, all the dead "repose." As the resurrected and ascended Christ Himself, the Mother of God was exempt; they have their deified body.(10) The saints dwell elsewhere, "in the heavens," but not "in heaven," "the heaven of the heavens," for they too must undergo the Particular Judgment. But how does "judgment" take place? According to the holy fathers, the "judgment" takes place in, and by means of, one's own conscience, not by means of "demons." Indeed, the whole legalistic, "physical" concept of the judgment is specifically refuted by the holy fathers. Everything that Fr Seraphim conceives and teaches as part of the "judgment" is contrary to the teachings of great Church fathers.(11)
In other terms, hades is divided into "Abraham's Bosom" or "paradise" and "a place of flame," phlygos - not "fire," pyr (Lk.16:22-28). Because Abraham's Bosom is the foretaste of everlasting blessings to come, it is sometimes called "paradise"; and because the other dimension of hades, "a place of torment," foreshadows unending misery, it is often equated with "hell" in Christian literature.
Where is hades? According to Fr Rose (who uses the words "hell" and "hades" interchangeably), it is "in the bowels of the earth" even as "heaven" is above it. "Of course, hell is not material in the sense that the lava that flows up and under the crust is material," he writes. Neither is it a geographic place. No matter how deep we dig, no matter how high we fly, without "spiritual eyes" we can see neither of them.(12)
It is curious that Fr Seraphim quotes St John Chrysostom with regard to the location of "hell."
You ask where hell (hades) is; but why do you want to know it? You need only know that hell (hades) exists, not where it is hidden... In my opinion, it is somewhere outside the whole world... Let us not attempt to find where it is, but how to escape it.(13)
With his curious conception of the spiritual world, we understand how Fr Seraphim Rose constructs a theory of toll-houses for it.
Intrigued by various "Russian mystics" whom he believed to represent the true and ancient beliefs of Orthodoxy, and desiring to support their teachings by universal religious experience, Fr Seraphim developed the theory of the After-life which he appears not to have known was Gnostic in origin.
The reality of the Gnostic system is divided into three parts: the earth, "tartarus" or hell beneath the ground, and the heavens above composed of the "firmament" or physical universe, and beyond it a continuum of seven planetary levels of existence which, in some Gnostics systems, is surrounded by twelve areas of the zodiac.(14)
Within the spiritual realm abide celestial "watch- stations" or "places of retention" with their "watch- house keepers" or "toll-keepers" which every soul, ascending to God, must confront. They are compelled to endure a cleansing, the "ordeal of scales," on which their sins are weighed, the result of which is to determine the place of the soul in the Kingdom of Light.(15)
The soul is able to ascend to it because Christ had already paved the way. If the soul succeeds in passing through "the demonic spheres," as the Ophite Gnostics called them, it is because of the "secret gnosis" which Christ gave them.
Behold I shall reveal to you your redemption... When you die...a multitude of Archons will seize you... When they say to you, `Where will you go?' You are to reply, `To the place whence I came...' Responding this way, you will escape their attacks...(16)
In some forms of Gnosticism, it is necessary to know the secret names of the Archons, which, they assert, Christ gave His followers.(17) Also, the earthly Gnostic communities assist the soul with their prayers, rites and sacraments. Important, too, for the Gnostic mystery cults, are the "Masses for the dead," offered by the family of the dead on the first, third, seventh, and forty-fifth day after the burial, and, too, on the anniversary of his death.(18)
Departure from the toll-houses, which such earthly assistance furnishes, is the final act in the soul's "liberation." This experience of the soul in its ascent to God is, according to Hans Jonas, "the most constant and common features in otherwise divergent (Gnostic) systems".(19)
Fr Seraphim's toll-house theory is a modified version (neo-) of Gnosticism. Remarks made in The Soul After Death must lead us to conjecture whether he understood Orthodoxy as a "gnosis" whispered by the Saviour into the ears of the Apostles; and whether he and his spiritual guides, special persons - "pneumatics," as the Gnostics called them - have been ordained by God to bring the message of truth to the ignorant. As Rose views it, the Liturgy, as in ancient Gnosticism, helps those seeking to reach the Light through a gauntlet of demons.(20)
Let us now turn our attention to the Scriptures to discover what they reveal concerning Fr Seraphim's theory.
1. See, e.g., Council of Trent, Session VI, Canon 30.
2. The Soul After Death, p. 136. Our italics, to show that Fr Seraphim takes Judgment away from God and places it, in part, under the control of the devil and his minions.
3. The Soul After Death, pp. 197-200, 264-268.
4. "Purgatory" may also have its roots in Gnosticism, but we have no way of proving it. In any case, this doctrine has no "toll-houses" whatever the variety of Gnosticism.
5. Speaking to the angels, Christ commanded (Psalm 23: 9-10), "Lift up your gates, O ye princes; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting gates, and the Kingdom of Glory shall enter in! Who is this King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in war." See St Irenae of Lyons, Homily on the Burial of the Lord in The Lamentations for Matins of Holy and Great Saturday,. trans. by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, 1981, p. 48). The Saint does not mention the reaction of the angels to the descent of St John the Baptizer into Hades, where "He proclaimed even to those in hades the God Who appeared in the flesh" (Troparion of the Kairon).
6. Institutes, III, 3.
7. Ep. VIII ad Eust., 13.
8. Sermon 42.
9. St Irenae, Haer. V, xxxi, 2 PG 7 1209B.
10. St John of Damascus, Homily 8, 12 PG 96 720A.
11. See, for example, St Basil the Great, On The Holy Spirit, para.38 and para. 40. St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 18:14-15. St Basil the Great, Homily on Psalms, 33:4; 48:2. These are clear and direct statements of doctrine. There are many others.
12. The Soul After Death, p. 139f.
13. Comm. on Romans 21:3-4 (Ibid., p. 140). There is a contradiction here. Either "heaven" and "hell" are "places" (spiritually perceptible), one under the ground, the other up in the heavens - wherein abide the toll-houses - or they are not. Fr Seraphim cannot have it both ways. He cannot agree with St John Chrysostom that they are "somewhere" beyond the cosmos and, at the same time, maintain that heaven is "certainly up from any point on the earth, and hell is down," under its surface (Ibid., p. 138).
14. Rudolph, K., Gnosis: the Nature and History of Gnosticism, trans. by R.L. Wilson, San Francisco, 1983, p. 68f. Together with the familiar universe to which earth belongs, the planetary system and the Zodiac planes (the levels of existence outside of "heaven" total twenty), are occupied by mischievous beings, sometimes called "Archons" or "Cosmocrators," etc. (See J. Danielou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (vol. 1), trans. by J.A. Baker, London, 1964, p. 192). Twenty toll-houses and demonic tax-collectors is the exact number that Fr Seraphim requires the soul must pass in order to reach heaven (The Soul After Death, Ibid., p. 256). The entire toll-house mythology comes directly from Gnosticism.
15. Archbishop Lazar observes that the appearance of the toll-house in Russian religious art, including icons of the Last Judgment, is "very late and extremely limited," no earlier than the 16th century. The depiction of an angel with "a set of scales, weighing souls" is an intrusion on Russian iconography from the occult tradition of the West which, incidentally, has a long history, reaching to the era of the Renaissance. Germany and Poland were hotbeds of Jewish Kabbala and other forms of Theosophy (Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Angelus Silesius, etc.), which have roots in Gnosticism (See Z.V. David, "The Influence of Jacob Boehme on Russian Religious Thought," Slavic Review XXI, 1 [1962], pp.41-64). Their writings and translations of ancient literature, such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, often carried illustrations of "judging angels" (See L. Puhalo, The Soul, the Body and Death. (Synaxis Press, Dewdney, B.C.) 1979, pp. 163, 174).
16. Rudolph, p. 171.
17. Origen, Contra Celsum, VII, 60, for example.
18. The Great Book or The Book of the Souls of the Mandeans, the Gnostics of Iraq and Iran, deals with the ascent of the soul "on the road of death" to the realm of the Light. It contains hymns sung during "the Mass for the Dead." As W. Forester explains, "since the journey of the soul leads through dangerous demonic spheres certain guarantees are required," such as Baptism, the Sign (Seal), good works, the magical power of the word and, of course, the prayers of the community (Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts (vol.2), trans. by R. McL. Wilson. Oxford, 1974, p. 133). It is important to note, therefore, the correct Orthodox teaching about the commemoration of the reposed. Fr Rose is content with the Gnostic explanation and doctrine on the subject, and seems to be completely unaware of the actual Orthodox teaching, as expressed in the Constitutions of the Twelve Apostles (Bk.8, Ch.42), and by St Symeon of Thessaloniki (Homily on Things Done for the Departed). Fr Seraphim relies also upon the Massalian homily on the third, ninth and fortieth day services, falsely attributed to St Macarius of Egypt.
19. The Gnostic Religion: the Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, Boston, 1958, p. 165.
20. The Soul After Death, pp. 189-195.