In order to prove his theory about "the soul after death," Fr Seraphim drew on every available source, religious and secular, not the least of which was the Lives of the Saints, East and West. In this, he followed the lead of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov.
Fr Seraphim was greatly impressed with a tale told by the 10th century Gnostic, Gregory of Thrace (Greece), a tale of the appearance of the departed St Theodora of Constantinople (d.940) in a dream to the Elder, Basil the New (d.944). Whether in its Greek or Slavonic version, the authenticity of the story has been seriously questioned. It is not part of the medieval synaxaria (collection of Saint's Lives) of the Orthodox Church. The spread of Basil's Life in Russia is the result of Bogomil literature reaching the popular imagination.(1)
According to Gregory, she came to Basil in a vision and related to him her experiences after her soul left her body, of her encounter with twenty toll-houses in her soul's ascent to heaven. Rose believes the story to be true and takes the account literally; others do not, including Fr Michael Pomozansky.(2)
In a letter to Deacon Lev Puhalo concerning "Prayers for the Dead,"(3) Fr Michael takes up the question of the toll-houses. He observes that this vision came about in a dream. "This dream is of course allegorical and is composed of a series of symbols," symbols which Basil "put into a certain order, ... the sins of people into a certain scheme, as this is the generally accepted [practice of] ascetic writers."
Fr Michael, therefore, interprets "Theodora" as the soul, the angels as being its virtues and the demons as being in reality, its sins. "Both are in the soul of a man and perhaps after death are found, as it were, on the scales of a balance."(4) Our sins accuse and convict us, the grace of God and our faith save us.
Fr Michael's attitude of "heavenly things," he confesses, comes from Metropolitan Macarius' Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, where Vladika advises, "Accept earthly things here as the weakest kind of depiction of heavenly things."(5) Fr Seraphim was certainly aware of Fr Michael's interpretation of the toll- houses, but chose to ignore it; or did he? Perhaps, his use of the word "metaphor"(6) to describe the toll-houses signifies, on account of his respect for Fr Michael, a slight retreat. In any case, Fr Seraphim Rose did not learn his lesson.
Fr Seraphim illustrates his theory from the Lives of the Saints (hagiography). We will examine only two - from St Adamnan's Life of St Columban and "the vision of a monk at Wenlock" from the Letters of St Boniface. He prefaces his treatment of these medieval Saints with the admission that the name of "toll-houses" is not found in any of their Lives. The term, he says, seems to be restricted to Eastern hagiographies, "but the reality described in Western sources is identical."(7)
Turning our attention first to St Columban (d. 597), Fr Seraphim recounts the Saint's words spoken to his monks.
Now let us help by prayer the monks of the Abbot Comgell, drowning at this hour in the Lough of the Calf for behold, at this moment they are warring in the air against hostile powers who try to snatch away the soul of a stranger who is drowning along with them. Then after the prayer, he said, `Give thanks to Christ, for now the holy angels have met these holy souls, and have delivered that stranger and triumphantly rescued him from the warring demons'.(8)
We observe that the holy angels have "met these holy souls" and "delivered" the stranger. Inasmuch as the word "soul" also means "human being" in Western medieval literature, we cannot be certain whether the monks drowned. St Columban says, "drowning," not drowned." In any case, they are met by demons "in the air," precisely where we would expect to find them. Also, St Columban refers to "warring demons," not "judging demons."
The choice of this episode is a poor one; it has no application to the argument at hand. No Orthodox denies that his life is a struggle against the devil. We anticipate his lies and slanders, now and at the Final Judgment. We do not deny the hatred and pretensions of the demons; nor the protective love of God's angels.
Fr Seraphim next calls upon the Letters of St Boniface (680-754), "Apostle to Germany," for corroboration. Boniface had learned personally about the vision of a monk of the monastery of Wenlock "who died and came back to life after some hours," as Rose describes the experience (The Soul After Death, p. 85-86). As he cites Boniface:
Angels of such pure splendour bore him up as he came forth from the body that he could not bear to gaze upon them.... `They carried me up,' he said, `high into the air...in the spirit...' He reported further that in the space of time while he was out of the body, a greater multitude of souls left their bodies and gathered where he was than he had thought formed the whole race of mankind on earth. He said also that there was a crowd of evil spirits and a glorious choir of the higher angels. And he said that the wretched spirits and the holy angels had a violent dispute concerning the souls that had come forth from their bodies, the demons bringing charges against them and aggravating the burden of their sin, the angels lightening their burden and making excuses for them.
Fr Seraphim copies two more paragraphs in which the monk was given a vision of "many fiery pits vomiting forth terrible flames" which tortured the damned. His angelic escort warned him that only the saved can avoid this punishment. The monk is further shown "the heavenly Jerusalem where holy souls shall live forever" with God in everlasting happiness.(9)
Even a cursory reading of the text reveals that the monk of Wenlock was "in his spiritus" or spirit - not his anima or soul (10) - when carried "high into the air." His "spirit" was free of his body. There is no mention of the monk's death, only of what occurs after death. There is no indication of souls passing through toll-houses, only the accusation of demons and the defense of angels. The monk is shown the joys of heaven and the terrors of hell;(11) but not as the places where souls are cast for failing the test of twenty "tax-collectors." The monk was given a vision of the future. Nothing more.
Fr Seraphim's analysis of the monk's "vision" is dishonest. When St Boniface tells us that his "spirit" was carried away by an angel, Rose substitutes "soul" and declares him dead. When the Saint writes that his spirit was given "heightened awareness," Rose intrudes the notion that a soul free of the body naturally has "heightened awareness" of the spiritual world. When St Boniface states that "he (his spirit) returned to himself," Rose says the monk returned from the dead. When St Boniface mentions the demons condemning the monk and the souls of the dead for their sins (as is their wont), Fr Seraphim describes "the monk of Wenlock, after being raised by angels" as "passing through toll-houses."(12)
Fr Seraphim Rose violates all the Lives of the Saints in the same way. They are valuable to him only as they may be construed (with some imaginative interpreting) to illustrate his theory. He is not cautious about words and their meaning. One is left in the uncomfortable position of not trusting him.
1. The Bogomils were Manicheans, that is, they believed that spirit is good but matter evil; hence, the soul is good but the body is evil. The Manichean heresy originated in the second century AD; the Bogomils developed in the tenth. The first Bogomil was "Pope Bogomil," a Bulgarian from whom his followers derived their name. From Bulgaria the heresy spread to southern Russia, Serbia and Bosnia, and then into western Europe, where this eastern dualistic doctrine bore different names: Patarins in Italy, Cathari in Germany and Italy, Poblicans and Albigensians in France (A.A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, vol. 2. Milwaukee, 1964, p. 383f.).
2. Rose cites Protopresbyter Michael Pomozansky as a toll-house believer (The Soul After Death, p. 257). But Fr Seraphim translated Fr Michael's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (Platina, 1984) into English; and The Ascent of the Soul is footnoted on page 334. Several comments in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology might lead us to consider Fr Michael his ally. But, then, Pomozansky cautions the reader to view the toll-house in "a spiritual sense" (loc. cit.). Moreover, Fr Seraphim's appeal to Fr Michael Pomozansky is unjust, because in a letter to Fr Puhalo, Fr Michael expresses exactly the opposite opinion. He states that the entire "Theodora dream" is, after all, only a dream, and that all the elements of it are purely metaphorical. Indeed, he instructs that the "toll-houses" should be considered a metaphor for one's own conscience (see fn. 3 below).
3. See The Soul, the Body, and Death, pp. 158-162.
4. Ibid., p. 162.
5. Pomozansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, p. 334.
6. "It is obvious to all but the youngest child that the name of `toll-house' is not to be taken literally; it is a metaphor... for describing the reality which the soul encounters after death" (The Soul After Death, p. 255). Does he concede that the soul ascending to God does not literally encounter demons which judge its fitness for heaven?
How does Fr Seraphim explain these things metaphorically? Fr Michael understands the toll-house as the person's own conscience; the demons as vices; and the angels as virtues? If Rose does not accept his allegorization of the story, what does "metaphor" mean? What is a metaphorical toll-house and a metaphorical toll-collector? What is the metaphorical interrogation the soul is given? If he does not take literally the toll-house theory, his book was for nothing, a complete waste of time.
7. Ibid., p. 85.
8. St Adamnan, Life of St Columba, trans. by W. Huyshe, London, l939, III, 13 (The Soul After Death, p. 85). Incidentally, as Fr Michael Pomozansky points out in the letter cited above, the Lives of Saints do not constitute sacred tradition, but inspirational reading. Many of the stories in Lives of Saints come from completely unknown and unverified sources. They are not useful for the formation of doctrine, particularly when the stories contradict the teachings of the great Church fathers.
9. St Boniface, Letters, trans. by E. Merton, New York, 1973, pp. 25-27.
10. Man is composed of body, soul and "spirit." The soul is the principle of life. The spirit is "the inner man," bridging body and the soul. The fathers often use "heart" and "mind" and "spirit" interchangeably. Thus, "if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart..." (Rm.9:10). "I commune with mine own heart; and my spirit made diligent search" (Ps. 76:10). "Create a right spirit within me, O God; and renew a right spirit within me" (Ps.50:10). The spirit is the source of faith, wisdom and virtue. It is with the purity of spirit that we see God (Mt.5:8), whence comes sin (Mt.15:8).
11. It must be noted that, according to the doctrine of the Orthodox Church, clearly stated by St Mark of Ephesus at the Council of Florence, neither heaven nor hell exist as yet. No one is in either heaven or hell yet, and so even if this tale is true and the monk of Wenlock thought that he saw such things, he could not have seen anything like reality, but only visualized some impressions he may have had. On the other hand, the whole thing may simply have been an ordinary nightmare which, in that superstitious age, became interesting in the retelling. The monk is not identified, nor is he noted as a saint. There is no certainty at all of the source or veracity of the tale.
12. The Soul After Death, pp. 126, 144. Rose draws from the mystical experience of the monk of Wenlock's evidence for his own philosophy of the soul: the soul is immaterial and the body is material. The soul is the self. Eternity is more natural to it than its connection with the body. On the contrary, the soul and body form the human being. God created the body and soul of each person. Their separation is unnatural. From his book, one cannot be sure that Fr Seraphim was deliberately elucidating a body-soul dualism. He does not show himself a competent historian of philosophy, nor that he grasps the crucial problems of philosophy, nor their impact, if any, on Christian theology. Nevertheless, the implications are there: to believe, as he does, that the soul may be judged without the body, that the soul may achieve merit after death, give "satisfaction to the devil," or dwell in "the heaven of heavens" without the body, provides him with excellent Gnostic and Hellenistic credentials.