Reading The Soul After Death, one cannot always tell which translation of the Scriptures Rose uses. On more than one occasion, he not only accepts the Scriptural interpretation (exegesis) of his "Russian mystics" but has naively assumed that they explain the Bible with the authority of the fathers.
Fr Seraphim's Scriptural defense of the toll-house theory is completely unreliable. He seems unconcerned with the context of the verses and phrases he draws from the Bible (and the holy fathers). These charges can be proved with several examples of Rose's exegesis of the Scriptures.
1.
"The teaching of the toll-houses is the teaching of the Church," proclaims Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov. "There can be no doubt whatever (emphasis in the original) that the holy Apostle Paul is speaking of them when he declares that Christians must do battle with the spirits of wickedness under the heavens (Eph. 6:12). We find this teaching in the most ancient Church tradition and in church prayers." Fr Seraphim follows the Bishop in his explanation of the Apostle's words as a call to the Ephesians and all Christians to struggle with the demons in both this life and the next.(1)
With the same brazen confidence, Rose repeats the Bishop's quotations from the fathers who presumably teach the toll-house theory - Sts Athanasius, Macarius, Isaiah the Recluse, Hesychius, Gregory the Dialogist, Ephraim the Syrian, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus, and John Chrysostom.(2) In fact, every one of Fr Seraphim's quotations from these fathers may be understood as wrestling with the evil spirits in this world, not after death. Fr Seraphim continually and deliberately confuses the Biblical powers in the air (Eph.2:2) in our universe with the so-called "aerial toll-houses" of the invisible realms.(3)
What does Ephesians 6:12 actually say? For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. What is the context of the sixth chapter? Beginning with verse 10:
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, in the power of His Might. Put on the whole Armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against... Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand....
How must we understand St Paul? St John Chrysostom says:
Further, why does he call the Devil, `the prince' of the world? Because nearly the whole race has surrendered itself to him, and all have willingly and deliberately chosen to be his slaves.... `According to the power of the air,' Paul says, `and of the spirit.' Here again the Apostle means that Satan occupies the space under the heavens, and that the bodiless powers are spirits of the air... His kingdom is of this age, i.e., it will cease with the end of the present age. Hear what he says at the end of his epistle, `Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the rulers of darkness' (Eph. 6:12). He does not want you to hear of `world-rulers' and think of the Devil as uncreated. Elsewhere Paul calls a perverse time `an evil world' (Gal. 1:4). For it seems to me that the Devil has dominion beneath the sky...(4)
St Gregory the Theologian sums up the meaning of St Paul's exhortation to Christians, "We struggle with things below, in order to inherit the glory above."(5)
2.
"It is well known to Orthodox Christians," Fr Seraphim asserts, "that man can in fact rise above the limitations of his bodily nature and journey to invisible realms." He mentions the famous experience of St Paul:
I knew a man about fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knows), such a one was caught up into the third heaven. And I knew such a man (whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knows); how he was caught up into paradise, about which it is not lawful for a man to utter (2Cor.12:2-4).
There is no need "to speculate" as to "how the body can become refined enough to enter heaven (if his experience was actually `in the body')," Fr Seraphim muses, "or in what kind of `subtle body' the soul may be clothed during an `out of body' experience - if indeed such things can be known in this life."(6)
Fr Seraphim does not pay close attention to the words of St Paul, nor does he concern himself in the least with what the holy fathers have to say about this event. Had he done so, he would have discovered that they differ quite radically from the interpretation offered by Bishop Ignatius and himself (see fn. 9 below). What is this third heaven? The Apostle does not say. And the paradise? He does not say. The monk from Platina assumes that the reader will equate them with "heaven" where the righteous spend eternity. Notice, too, that St Paul does not say anything about his soul leaving his body. His ecstasy was an experience impossible to decipher: logic and the five senses cannot tell him whether he was in the body or out of the body.
In truth, then, Fr Seraphim does nothing but "speculate" on the matter. First, he wishes us to believe that the body needed to be refined if St Paul did indeed enter the third heaven with it. The Biblical text makes no mention of a body alteration. Second, Fr Rose introduces the theosophic idea of the "subtle body," a body spiritualized so that it might go where and do what it could not otherwise.
The soul, he says, may have been "clothed" in a "subtle body," a body whose materiality had changed in order for St Paul to enter the "third heaven" and "paradise." But if the soul has shed the body, what need for another? St Paul can go anywhere with his body if God wills it. In any case, nothing in the Apostle's epistle allows Fr Rose to take such liberties with the text. Moreover, more than one of the great holy fathers of the Church has given precisely the opposite explanation, completely contradicting Fr Seraphim Rose's Theosophical speculations, but evidently, Fr Seraphim did not do any real research on the question and did not bother to see what the actual teaching of the Church is on the subject.(7)
How, for example, does St John Chrysostom explain the words of St Paul? There is not much to explain.
Was it the mind that was caught up or the soul, while the body was dead? Or was the body caught up? It is impossible to tell...why was he [Paul] caught up? I think so that he might not seem inferior to the other Apostles. They had been in Christ's company, Paul was not: He therefore was caught up into glory, `Into paradise....'(8)
There was a very definite purpose for St Paul's glimpse of glory, of the Age to Come. Very few people, indeed, share in this privilege. It was a forlorn hope if Fr Seraphim expected to support the toll-house theory by drawing on the Apostle's supernatural experience.
"Your adversary the devil," says the Holy Apostle Peter, "walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" (1Pet.5:8). According to Fr Seraphim, this takes place "both during our earthly life and after the separation of the soul from the body." He further asserts: "When the soul of a Christian, leaving its earthly dwelling, begins to strive through the aerial spaces towards its divine homeland,(9) the demons endeavour to prevent it, and strive to find a kinship with it. They desire to drag the soul into the hell which God has prepared for the devil and his angels (Mt.25:41). "They act thus by the right which they acquired."(10)
Fr Seraphim is playing games with the obvious meaning of the holy Scriptures. Let us put 1 Peter 5:8 in context:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion walks about, seeking whom he may devour: whom you must steadfastly resist in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. But the God of all grace, who has called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you (vv. 8-10).
There is no justification for adding the words both during our earthly life and after the separation of the soul from the body. Fr Seraphim cannot just throw in a sentence to suit himself - They act thus (i.e., judge souls) by the right they acquired. Who gave the evil spirits this right? God? We must be shown. Where in the Scriptures or the fathers is it written that God permitted the demons to erect toll-houses to judge the souls of the righteous in their ascent to heaven?
Fr Seraphim (who borrows it from Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov) only compounds the error by linking 1 Peter 5:8 to the words of the Lord in Matthew 25:41, which, as the Gospel shows, refer to the state of the fallen angels and the unrighteous after the Last Judgment. Again, nothing in the text permits Fr Seraphim to picture the fallen angels "dragging" anyone into hell. They have no such authority now, nor in the Day of Judgment. Only God has the "right" and the "power" to glorify or condemn (Rev.20:14). The fathers say nothing differently, nothing that could be construed as supporting Fr Seraphim Rose's novel interpretation.
Listen to St Cyprian of Carthage. He warns his flock to be on guard and strive with all your powers to repel, with solicitous and full watchfulness, the enemy raging and aiming his darts against every part of our body which can be stricken and wounded, in accordance with the Apostle Peter, in his epistle, wherein he warns and teaches, saying, Be sober, and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about, seeking anyone to devour.
Of special concern to the saint are the sins of jealousy and envy, by which the devil himself lost the "illustrious grandeur" of heaven. Cyprian ends the discourse with the words, "We who are always to please Him in His kingdom, must previously please Him in the world."(11)
Later, the saint will warn that without leading a God- pleasing life one may expect, in that aweful Day, when the Son of man shall come in His majesty to judge the quick and the dead, to be cast into everlasting fire, which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels (Mt.25:31-46).(12)
If we scour the entire Bible, we will find not a single indication of toll-houses; there is absolutely no justification in Scripture for such a teaching. The interpretations forced on Scripture by Fr Seraphim Rose demonstrate a serious lack of understanding of Orthodox theology and of the holy fathers. Only those who read them with the eyes of the Apostolic Tradition will uncover the mysteries of the divine Word. One thing is certain; it is not the devil and his demons who will judge the saved - Know ye not that we shall judge the angels? (1Cor.6:3).
1. Works (vol. 3), p. 138. Quoted in The Soul After Death, p. 78f.
2. Ibid., pp. 79-83. See also Fr Seraphim's other quotations from the fathers (and Service Books of the Church) in answer to "the Critic" (a.k.a. Archbishop Lazar Puhalo). Afterwards, he writes, "Some of these references, it will be noted, are partial and do not give the whole Orthodox teaching on the subject. This is obviously because they are references to a teaching with which the ascetical and hymnological writers themselves and their readers are already familiar and which they accept, and there is no need to `define' it or justify this teaching whenever it is mentioned" (Ibid, pp. 259-260). Astonishingly, Fr Seraphim Rose makes such "qualifications" without blushing throughout his book.
3. "Toll-house" is mentioned in the homily, In exitu animi (On the Departure of the Soul) wrongly attributed to St Cyril. From its contents, it is clear that the document is from a Gnostic source (see Introduction).
4. Commentary on Ephesians, Homily 22:1; and St Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius II, 15 PG 45 569BC; St Leo the Great, Sermon on Lent 39 PL 54 265BC; St Ambrose, Epistle LXXXV, etc.
5. Apology (Oration 2), 17 PG 35 425C.
6. The Soul After Death, p. 107. We are informed also that Bishop Ignatius knew two nineteenth century ascetics (Elder Basilisk of Siberia and Schema-Elder Isaiah) "whose souls likewise left their bodies while they were at prayer" (loc. cit.). Both Fr Seraphim and his master appear to be completely unaware of the vast patristic literature which condemns the idea of "out of body experiences," and identifies such phenomena as "demonic delusions," and "fantasies." According to the holy fathers, "out of body experiences" are never real, but only hallucinations and delusions. This subject is covered in depth and in a profoundly patristic manner in the book Out of Body Experiences: the Orthodox Christian Teaching (Synaxis Press, Dewdney, B.C., 1994).
It is passing strange that Fr Seraphim is so quick to accept the Theosophical "out of body" experiences recorded by modern parapsychology as authentic. One might as well accept the teachings of the Rosicrucian Order. The latter are "satanic hallucinations." Again, Fr Seraphim says that the souls of these holy men left their bodies, but there is no quote in The Soul After Death from them, and since such "experiences" are often reported by schizophrenic patients in mental hospitals, one is left to wonder about the sanity of those who reported such experiences. Incidentally, Fr Seraphim does not tell us whether these ascetics encountered toll-houses in their ascent.
7. See, for example, St John Chrysostom, Homily 24, on 2 Corinthians; St Athanasios the Great, Discourse Three Against the Arians, para.47; St Gregory Palamas, The Triads, 1.3:5;21; 2.1:44; 2.3:36-37, and many others. Concerning the heresy of "out of body experiences," see the book Out of Body Experiences: the Orthodox Christian Teaching, Synaxis Press, 1994.
8. Comm. on 2 Corinthians, Homily 26:1-2.
9. This is a concept drawn directly from Gnosticism. The idea that the soul was a pre-existent, divine spirit which became entrapped in matter, and is always seeking to "return to its divine homeland" is a major element in Manichaeism and its offspring. It may be that Fr Seraphim did not realize the source of his doctrine, but that is not an excuse. He was obligated to know if he was going to pass it off as a "teaching of the Church."
10. The Soul After Death, pp. 73-74. As Rose admits, this interpretation of 1 Peter 5:8 was taken from Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov (Collected Works [vol. 3], pp. 132-133).
11. Treatise 10, On Jealousy and Envy, 1-3.
12. Treatise 12, Testimonies Against the Jews, Bk. 3, i.