From Not of this World: The Life and Teaching
of Fr. Seraphim Rose by Monk Damascene Christensen (Chapter 61, pp.
464-476)
A man who does not express a desire to link himself to the latest
of the saints (in time) in all love and humility owing to a certain distrust in
himself, will never be linked to the preceding saints and will not be admitted
to their succession, even though he thinks he possesses all possible faith and
love for God and for all His saints. He will be cast out of their
midst, as one who refused to take humbly the place allotted to him by God
before all time, and to link himself to that latest saint (in time) as God had disposed.
- St. Symeon the New
Theologian
Father Seraphim lived at
a time when there was talk among scholars and intellectuals of a fashionable
“Patristic revival.” This was a positive phenomenon in that many
rare Patristic texts were being made known in the modern world; but Fr. Seraphim
was also to see its dangers. Having himself learned how to approach
the Orthodox Tradition through a direct, living transmission from saints, he
was unhappily though inevitably set at odds with scholars and theologians who
had not received such a transmission. These people, he said, were
creating “a whole new approach to Orthodoxy”; and his times demanded that he
speak out.
The new breed of
scholars came first of all from the so-called “Parisian” school of Orthodox
thought, composed mostly of members of the Russian
intelligentsia. While in Russia, some of these people had helped
pave the way for the revolution. (One, Peter Struve, had even been
the translator of Marx’s Das Kapital into
Russian.) Seeing the horrors this would bring, they had repented of
their work for the Marxist cause. But it was too late: the horrors
did come, and they all fled the country. They formed an émigré
community in Paris, and in their philosophy attempted a return to their
cultural and religious heritage. When they came to Orthodoxy,
however, it was largely to an Orthodoxy of their own devising. They
looked down their noses at the “popular piety” of the “masses,” which they felt
they had to refine according to their superior knowledge and intellectual
expertise. The most famous thinkers of this school were Nicholas
Berdayaev and Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, who, in trying to be original, defended a
whole system of heretical ideas which were later condemned by the Russian
Church both in the Soviet Union and in the free world. The next
generation of thinkers was more subdued and careful; they would never fall into
teachings so foreign to the Church. In many respects, however, they
shared the same general approach. Some of them came to America,
bringing that with them. Chief among them was Fr. Alexander
Schmemann.
Fr. Schmemann came to
New York from Paris in 1951, and very soon became the unrivaled ideologue of
the American Metropolia. There were many things which he felt needed
changing. Like his predecessors, he was critical of “old-fashioned
piety,” particularly that of pre-revolutionary Russia. He believed
this “piety” (the very word he used in a pejorative sense) was the result of
unfortunate “cultural accretions” which had to be reevaluated and stripped off
in layers by modern scholars. He said that Orthodoxy had come under
“Western captivity,” that its theology had been completely dominated by
“Western influences” in recent centuries. He spoke of finding “new
ways of Russian theology,” of intellectually “mastering history” and thus
“restoring” Orthodoxy to what he regarded as its pure form. This, he
said, was the task of the new theological “movement” that had sprung up in the
1920’s to supersede the old, “antiquated” understanding of
Orthodoxy. As Fr. Seraphim put it: “For Fr. Schmemann, the whole of
Orthodoxy is transformed into a series of tremendously important ‘problems’ to
which only a few of the academically elite have the approach to any
‘solutions.’”
Fr. Schememann believed
that much could be gained for Orthodoxy in place of the old-world
mentality. He and his colleagues wanted Orthodoxy to be recognized
by the big names in contemporary theology and the ecumenical movement, to
address problems in the Western Christian “dialogue” in a fresh and exciting
way. To do this, they naturally resonated the theological fashions
which were then in the air, making use of the new catch words and phrases such
as “crisis” and, following Teilhard de Chardin, the “sanctification of the
world.”
One of the currents of
“progressive” Christianity was the disparagement of what was now termed
“private virtue.” Thomas Merton had been one of the first to take
part in this, and Fr. Schmemann also reflected it, claiming that Orthodox piety
had become too self-centered and individualistic, too concerned with the
personal salvation of individual souls. Compared with famous figures
like Thomas Merton and Patriarch Athenagoras, however, Fr. Schmemann was more
guarded in his conclusions. He did not accept all the ramifications
of the main contemporary currents of thought, but worked to effect an
enlightened “synthesis” between these currents and Orthodoxy. Very
quickly he gained widespread recognition as a “dynamic and articulate spokesman
of Orthodoxy.”
Fr. Herman had
encountered Fr. Schmemann’s books when he was at Jordanville. As he
explained: “When I came to Jordanville, I read three books which were bound up
with my conversion: the life of St. Seraphim, the Life of Elder Ambrose of
Optina, and The Way of the Pilgrim. I found that the
most interesting thing about Christianity is the ascetics, because they make
all of Christ’s talk about the Kingdom of God make sense. And then
someone said, ‘If you really want to know what’s happening in Orthodoxy today,
read Schmemann.’ So I read it, and I was bored. I read
more, and I was still bored. I wondered what was
wrong. And then I figured it out. He speaks abstractly,
albeit eloquently, not from experience, like the ascetics. And then
I thought: Big deal. I could do the same – read books and think
about them. It was to-dimensional, while the saints are
three-dimensional, because they have sought and attained the Kingdom of God and
His righteousness. They try their best to get it across to us, and
it’s only our denseness that prevents us from understanding their experience.”
Fr Seraphim had an even
stronger reaction to modern academic theology. Once, when Fr. Herman
read to him from some recent theological journal, Fr. Seraphim became
indignant. “If you read too much of that,” he said, “you may begin
to take it seriously, which will detract from the power of the true spiritual
texts which gave you life.” We have seen how Fr. Seraphim had left
the modern academic world because it was not governed by a love of Truth and
had degenerated into “playing around with ideas.” Here, he felt,
were people doing much the same to the most precious thing in the world to him:
Orthodox Christianity. Like modern scholars in other fields, they
had to “kill” their subject, take away its pulsing life, before they could
dissect and study it. Often their talk seemed a mere juggling of
loaded theological terms, deprived of concrete application.
Of course, some of their
writings and lectures were better than others. But as Fr. Seraphim
noted, “the message of even the best lecturers and writers today seems
strangely powerless, without spiritual force.” In an article for The
Orthodox Word, he explained why:
“Orthodoxy today, with its priests and theologians and
faithful, has become worldly. The young people who come
from comfortable homes and either accept or seek… a religion that is not remote
from the self-satisfied life they have known; the professors and lecturers
whose milieu is the academic world where, notoriously, nothing is accepted as
ultimately serious, a matter of life or death; the very academic atmosphere of
self-satisfied worldliness – all these factors join together to produce an
artificial, hothouse atmosphere in which, no matter what might be said
concerning exalted Orthodox truths or experiences, by the very context in which
it is said and by virtue of the worldly orientation of both speaker and
listener, it cannot strike to the depths of the soul and
produce the profound commitment which used to be normal to Orthodox Christians…
“In the Russian
emigration, the ‘theologians’ of the new school, who are eager to be in harmony
with the intellectual fashions, to quote the latest Roman Catholic or
Protestant scholarship, to adopt the whole ‘casual’ tone of contemporary life
and especially of the academic world – have been aptly called ‘theologians with
a cigarette.’… Their message has no power, because they themselves
are entirely of this world and address worldly people in a worldly atmosphere –
from all this it is not Orthodox exploits that come, but only idle talk and
empty, pompous phrases.” [1]
Writing about an
80-year-old “living link” in Australia, the aforementioned Fr. Nicholas
Deputatov, Fr. Seraphim noted that such true theologians “are not, as a rule,
to be found in Orthodox academies, nor in pompous ‘theological
conferences.’ They are to be sought in humbler places, and usually
they will not bear the name ‘theologian.’ They themselves would not
presume to call their handing down the Orthodox Theological tradition anything
more than ‘faithfulness to the Holy Fathers’ – but it is just this faithfulness
and this humility that mark them out as bearers of the authentic tradition of
Orthodoxy – qualities which are lacking in the most renowned ‘Orthodox
theologians’ today.” [2]
As early as 1957, Fr.
Seraphim had read in the writings of Rene Guenon about modern scholars who look
into traditional religion to find “something that can be made to fit the
framework of their own outlook,” and then claim that this represents the “primitive
and true” form of the religion, “whereas the remaining forms, according to
them, are but comparatively late corruptions.” [3] This, as Fr. Seraphim
understood, was exactly the approach of the modernist Orthodox
spokesmen. They were not at all restoring Orthodoxy to some lost
purity, but were instead “renovating” it to conform to modern
prejudices. While disclaiming the fruits of the Reformation, they
were in effect doing what Guenon had said of Protestantism: “exposing
revelation to all the discussions which follow in the wake of purely human
interpretations… [giving] birth to that dissolving ‘criticism’ which, in the
hands of so-called ‘historians of religion,’ has become a weapon of offense
against all religion.’”
In his
book Introduction to Orthodox Liturgical Theology, Fr. Schmemann
had critiqued the whole substance of Orthodox worship in a manner that appeared
more Protestant than Orthodox. Relying on Western, non-Orthodox
sources, he yet claimed to have escaped the “Western captivity” of
Liturgics. He rejected the traditional Orthodox view that the
history of worship was “divinely established and Providential,” and looked upon
it rather as the result of mere historical circumstances. Like
Protestant scholars, he put the changes that occurred at the beginning of the
Constantinian era in a dubious light, regarding them not as new forms of the
expression of the same piety but rather as a reformation of the interpretation
of worship and a deviation from the early Christian liturgical spirit and
forms. The true, “eschatological” nature of worship, he said, had
been partially obscured by “mysteriological piety” and “symbolical
explanations,” as well as by the “ascetic individualism” arising largely from
monasticism. Accordingly, the theological idea of the cycle of
services had been “obscured and eclipsed by secondary strata in the Ordo,” and
it remained for modern theologians to find it again. This “secondary
strata” consisted of precisely those elements which Protestantism has disowned
– the Mysteries as a source of individual sanctification, the division of
clergy and laity, the distinction between church feasts and “ordinary days,”
the glorification of saints, the veneration of relics, etc. – elements which
Fr. Schmemann referred to by such terms as the “cult of mysteries” and the
“cult of saints.” He expressed doubts as to “the complete liturgical
soundness of Orthodoxy,” decried the present “liturgical piety,” and claimed
that the Church was in a “liturgical crisis.”
As could be expected,
Fr. Schmemann’s book was acclaimed by non-Orthodox scholars. Its
approach was quite disturbing, however, to one of Fr. Herman’s teachers at
Jordanville, Fr. Michael Pomazansky. Being one of the last living
theologians to have graduated from the theological academies of
pre-Revolutionary Russia, Fr. Michael felt called upon to write an article on
Fr. Schmemann’s book. Originally printed in Russian, the article was
translated by Fr. Seraphim and printed in The Orthodox Word. Fathers
Seraphim and Herman thought it was excellently written: evenhanded, with clear
expositions of Orthodox teaching to contrast with Fr. Schmemann’s distortions.
About the author
of Introduction to Orthodox Liturgical Theology, Fr. Michael wrote:
“He pays tribute to the method that reigns completely in contemporary science:
leaving aside the idea of an overshadowing of Divine grace, the concept of
sanctity of those who established the liturgical order, he limits himself to a naked
chain of causes and effects. Thus does positivism intrude nowadays
into Christian science, into the sphere of the Church’s history in all its
branches. But if the positivists’ method is acknowledged as a
scientific working principle in science, in the natural sciences, one can by no
means apply it to living tradition, nor to every sphere of the life of
Christianity and the Church, insofar as we remain believers.” [4]
It may be argued that
Fr. Schmemann was inwardly not as Protestant as he appeared, that he was only
trying to get the attention of heterodox theologians by writing in the key of
modern academia, with its pretensions at “objectivity.” At the
canonization of St. Herman, for example, when he personally experienced the
maximum expression of the “cult of saints,” he said he felt “the whole
substance of faith.” Reading this in an article, Fr. Seraphim wrote:
“His heart is still Orthodox… but with his mind he is leading the ‘reform’ of
the Metropolia and of Orthodoxy that will precisely make it impossible for
future generations to feel what he felt… In all fairness, it should be noted
that Fr. Schmemann probably does not see himself as a ‘reformer,’ and it will
doubtless be left to other less sensitive souls, another generation removed
from the life of genuine Orthodoxy, to draw the inevitable iconoclastic
conclusions from Fr. Schmemann’s already Protestant views.” [5] In the words of
Rene Guenon: “once launched, the revolt against the traditional outlook could
not be arrested in mid-course.”
It should also be said
that Fr. Schmemann’s “reforms” were actually a sincere attempt on his part to
improve the morale of contemporary parishes. In one article he wrote
that the Metropolia’s “financial bankruptcy only reveals and reflects its
spiritual state – a state of apathy and demoralization.” He
correctly diagnosed the disease, but, in Fr. Seraphim’s view, he gave the wrong
cure. The chief hierarch of the Metropolia, Ireney, had been trying
to help matters by salvaging
at least some parts of the liturgical practice of the Russian
Church. But Fr. Schmemann believed that the nominal parishioners would even find this minimum unmeaningful. “He
believes,” wrote Fr. Seraphim, “the Typicon must be revised in light of our
knowledge of its historical development, of other traditions, and the
like. In a word, the services must be made somehow palatable
to spiritually bankrupt people! Fr. Schmemann takes a bad
situation and makes it worse, advocating the establishment of a new typicon, a
lower standard – which the next generation of the Metropolia will undoubtedly
likewise find ‘unmeaningful’ and too demanding!” [6]
Elsewhere Fr. Seraphim
wrote that the new breed of Orthodox “adapts the faith to the present low level
of spiritual awareness; there are exceptions, of course, but that is the
general trend.”
This could also be seen
when reform-minded Orthodox gathered in 1971 to prepare for an “Eighth
Ecumenical Council,” a council which was supposed to do for Orthodoxy what
Vatican II had done for Roman Catholicism. One of the reports on the
agenda, entitled, “Revision of the Ecclesiastical Prescription Concerning
Fasting, in Conformity with the needs of our Epoch,” proposed that, since most
Orthodox believers do not keep the whole Orthodox fast, the fast should be made
easier to suit them, “in order to avoid the problems of conscience create by
the violation of the severe ecclesiastical prescriptions.”
“Such an approach,”
wrote Fr. Seraphim, “is totally un-Orthodox, and constitutes an obvious and
crude imitation of the reform spirit of the Latin church, which ended by
abolishing fasting altogether. The Orthodox rule of fasting is not
intended to ‘avoid problems of conscience,’ but rather to call believers to a
difficult, inspiring and humbling standard of Christian life; if they fall
short of the standard, then at least they can see how far their life is from
the standard, the norm, which always remains the
same. The Papal idea, based on the corrupt modern principle of
spiritual self-satisfaction, is either to give a special ‘dispensation’ from
the standard (an idea which has already entered some Orthodox jurisdictions),
or else to change the standard itself so that the believer can fulfill it
easily and thereby obtain a sense of self-satisfaction from ‘obeying the
law.’ This is precisely the difference between the Publican and the
Pharisee: the Orthodox man feels himself constantly a sinner because he falls
short of the Church’s exalted standard (in spirit if not in letter), whereas
the ‘modern’ man wishes to feel himself justified, without any twinge of
conscience over falling short of the Church’s standard.” [7]
Fr. Seraphim, then, saw
that the cure for apathy lay not in dissecting Orthodoxy into pieces, but in
setting up the whole of its tradition as a goal towards which people could
strive. “We, the last Christians,” he wrote, “are far from the
normal life of Orthodox piety; how much, therefore, must we struggle in
order to get back to that normal life! But how inspiring is the path of
it!” “Enlightened” criticism of Orthodox piety only distracts people
from the main concern. As Fr. Seraphim observed, what is needed is
“a priest of the ‘old-fashioned’ mentality, on fire with Orthodoxy and so
desirous for the salvation of his flock that he will not excuse their sins and
worldly habits but is constantly urging them up to a higher spiritual life.”
[8]
With pain Fr. Seraphim
and Herman watched the new ‘American” Church that Fr. Schmemann, in his own
sincere way, was striving to create. Since America has no deep,
long-standing Orthodox roots, the greatest danger in this lay in cutting off
the roots of living tradition. Fr. Seraphim stated, Fr. Schmemann
was paving the way for a rootless Orthodoxy for new generations of Americans
who “will not even know what they have lost.” He was seeking to
build American Orthodoxy on the autonomous “theology” of modern scholars rather
than on a living transmission of spiritual wisdom from holy
bearers of the tradition. Fr. Seraphim knew from experience how
vital that transmission was: without it he would never have entered the “heart
of hearts,” the deeper dimension of Orthodox life for which it was worth giving
up “all that is in the world.” Once this transmission was lost, it
could not be restored.
Fr. Schmemann was
ignoring the “living links” by which alone, according to the teaching of St.
Symeon the New Theologian, he could be tied to the ancient
saints. He said the idea of “Holy Russia” was just romantic
nostalgia. And its brightest luminaries – those whom Providence had
washed onto American shores – represented to him an immigrant parochialism and
an obsolete, “apocalyptic” piety unsuited to what he regarded as “the mission
of Orthodox theology today.” As a case in point, not twenty miles
from his home in New York lived Fr. Adrian, that link with the Optina Elders
and a clairvoyant spiritual guide himself, who was very open-minded with regard
to thinkers like Fr. Schmemann. Although Fr. Schmemann knew about
him, he chose to receive his wisdom from modern institutes instead.
It was from the example
of the new breed of theologians that Fr. Seraphim first beheld how perilous was
the attitude of “knowing better”: nothing so hindered
one from receiving the living tradition. “In our confused days,” he
wrote, “when a hundred conflicting voices claim to speak for Orthodoxy, it is
essential to know whom one can trust as spokesman for true Orthodoxy. It is not enough to claim to speak
for Patristic Orthodoxy: one must be in the genuine tradition of
the Holy Fathers, not merely ‘rediscovering’ them in a modern academy or
seminary, but actually receiving their tradition from one’s own
fathers. A merely clever explainer of Patristic doctrine is not in
this tradition, but only one who, not trusting his own judgment or that of his
peers, is constantly asking of his own fathers what is the proper approach to
and understanding of the Holy Fathers.”
After Archbishop John’s
death, Fr. Seraphim’s own guide to the Holy Father’s had been Archbishop
Averky, to whom Archbishop John had once told the brothers to turn whenever
they had questions. “Archbishop Averky,” Fr. Seraphim wrote, “is in
the genuine patristic tradition as few other living Orthodox
fathers. A disciple of great 20th century theologian and holy
hierarch, Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, Archbishop Averky is a bearer and
transmitter, in a direct and unbroken line of Orthodox theologians,
of the genuine Patristic doctrine which is in danger of being eclipsed by
today’s generation of Western-educated proud ‘young theologians.’ In
recent years his voice has resounded and thundered as never before… as he
strives to give the true Orthodox teaching to Orthodox Christians who are
rapidly losing the salt of Orthodoxy.” [9]
Archbishop Averky
himself addressed the phenomenon of the new theologians. “Alas!” he
wrote. “How few people there are in our times, even among the
educated, and at times even among contemporary ‘theologians’ and those in the
ranks of clergy, who understand what Orthodoxy is and wherein its essence
lies. They approach this question in an utterly external, formal
manner and resolve it too primitively, even naively, overlooking its depths
completely and not seeing the fullness of its spiritual contents.” [10]
One difference between a
modern Holy Father like Archbishop Averky and a mere explainer of Patristic
doctrine was their respective attitudes toward the apocalyptic and prophetic
aspects of Orthodoxy. Being in a direct line of prophets, Archbishop
Averky did not hesitate to impart what to the lovers of this world might be a
hard saying. Modern academic theology, on the other hand, was
already too much a part of the world to do this. “If the Christian
faith is indeed eschatological,” Fr. Schmemann wrote, “it is precisely not
apocalyptic…. Apocalypticism is truly a heresy.” Not only Archbishop
Averky, but all the holy people Fr. Seraphim had known had a very sober view of
imminent tribulations and deceptions. The new theologians
demonstrated their foreignness to this traditional outlook by calling such
people ‘neurotic’ and defeatists.’” [11]
It was clear to Fr.
Seraphim that today’s academic theology could not be successfully blended with
the life of monasticism. Various attempts at such a combination bore
this out, and the reasons were not difficult to discern. Whereas the
former was abstract, the latter was down-to-earth; whereas the former was
filled with talk of complex theological “problems,” the latter required
simplicity of heart; and whereas the former was devised according to the way
the world thinks, the latter was by nature at odds with the
world. Of all the academic theologians, Fr. Schmemann had the most
animated vision of Orthodoxy in America; but even this could do hardly more
than raise one a step above nominal Christianity. It could not
inspire one to take the first step of the Ladder of Divine Ascent:
renunciation.
In theory, Fr. Schmemann
regarded monasticism very highly, but in practice he was suspicious of it for
what he regarded as its corruptions, blaming monastic influence in large part
for the piety and church traditions of which he disapproved. [12] He
placed the monastic-ascetic tradition at odds with the “lay” Orthodoxy he
envisioned, rather than seeing the former as the prime motivator and inspirer
of the latter. As Fr. Seraphim wrote, however: “It is precisely
the monastic services which are taken as the standard of the
Church’s life of worship, because monasticism itself most clearly expresses the
ideal toward which the whole believing Church strives. The condition
of monasticism at any given time is ordinarily one of the best indicators of
the spiritual condition of the whole Church, or of any local Church; and
similarly, the degree to which the local parishes in the world strive toward
the ideal of the monastic service is the best indicator of the condition of the
Divine worship which is conducted in them.” [13]
Father Seraphim saw the
final argument against modernist theology in its very
fruits. Traditional Orthodoxy, with all its alleged “cultural
accretions” and “impurities,” has nurtured saints even in our own times;
“restored” or “rediscovered” Orthodoxy, with all its claims at being more pure
or better informed, has produced, at best, clever men. The latter,
Fr. Seraphim perceived, has lost the feeling for the whole atmosphere of piety
in which saints have been raised.
Whereas academics
theologians were trying to inspire the new generation of American Orthodox with
“the task of Orthodox theology today,” Fr. Seraphim wanted to inspire it above
all with ascetic podvig: “emphasis on doing spiritual
life rather than talking about it.” Podvig was what had
moved all the great “living links” to become men and women of sanctity, and it
alone would give birth to more sanctity in the American land. As
Archbishop Averky had said, “Orthodoxy is an ascetic faith
that calls to ascetic labor in the name of the uprooting of sinful passions and
the implanting of Christian virtue.” And, according to the teaching
of St. John Climacus and other Holy Fathers, one must conquer the passions
before even attempting to theologize.
In almost every issue
of The Orthodox Word, the fathers presented the Life of an ascetic
laborer, a true knower of God. They knew that, more than
anything else, it was love for the ascetics themselves that
inspired one to podvig. Fr. Seraphim did not see this
love for ascetics coming from the journals of the new
theologians. “And without love for saints,” he wrote, “one’s
Orthodoxy is crippled and one’s sense of direction is off – for they are the
examples one has to follow.”
In 1973 the fathers
began to publish the Lives of the desert-dwellers of Northern Russia, having
painstakingly written and compiled them from a number of rare
sources. Their definite aim, they said, was to give them “not merely
as an example of dead history, but of living tradition.” Even while
they were printing them separately in each issue, however, one leading academic
theologian chastised in print “those who call to non-existent deserts,”
evidently regarding such Lives as an appeal to a religious “romanticism”
totally out of step with contemporary conditions of life. When the
fathers finally printed the Lives together in a book, which they called The
Northern Thebaid, Fr. Seraphim answered this criticism as follows:
“Why, indeed, should we
inspire today’s Orthodox youth with the call of the ‘Northern Thebaid’ [of
Russia] which has in it something attractive and somehow more accessible for a
20th century zealot than the barren desert of Egypt?
“First of all, the
monastic life here described has not entirely disappeared from the earth; it is
possible to find Orthodox monastic communities which teach the spiritual
doctrine of the Holy Fathers, and to lead the Orthodox monastic life even in
the 20th century – with constant self-reproach over how far one falls short of
the Lives of the ancient Fathers in these times…. The wise seeker can find his
‘desert’ even in our barren 20th century.
“But this book is not
intended only for such fortunate ones.
“Every Orthodox
Christian should know the Lives of the Fathers of the desert, which
together with the Lives of the Martyrs give us the model for our own life of
Christian struggle. Even so, every Orthodox Christian should know of
Valaam, of Solovki, of Svir, of Siya and Obnora and White Lake, of the Skete of
Sora, and of the Angel-like men who dwelled there being translated to heaven,
living the Orthodox spiritual life to which every Orthodox Christian is called,
according to his strength and the conditions of his life. Every
Orthodox Christian should be inspired by their life of struggle far from the
ways of the world. There is no ‘romanticism’ here. The
actual ‘romantics’ of our times are the reformers of ‘Parisian Orthodoxy’ who,
disparaging the authentic Orthodox tradition, wish to ‘sanctify the world,’ to
prostitute the spiritual tradition ‘for the life of the world,’ to replace the
authentic Orthodox world view with a this-worldly counterfeit of it based on
modern Western thought. The spiritual life of the true monastic
tradition is the norm of our Christian life, and we had better
be informed of it before the terrible last day when we are called to account
for our lax life. We shall not be judged for our ignorance of the
vocabulary of contemporary ‘Orthodox theology,’ but we shall surely be judged
for not struggling on the path to salvation. If we do not live like
these Saints, then let us at least increase our far-too-feeble struggles from
God, and offer our fervent tears of repentance and our constant self-reproach
at falling so short of the standard of perfection which God has shown us in His
wondrous Saints.” [14]
In some of his later
works – those which were aimed more at the orthodox faithful than at
academicians – Fr. Schmemann succeeded in providing practical edification while
avoiding modern criticism of the “defects” of traditional
Orthodoxy. But for him, and especially for his followers, the
transmission remained severed. Although he made frequent mention of
St. Seraphim in his lectures, he could only appreciate selected aspects of
him. He could not fully enter into this Saint’s ascetic and
apocalyptic spirit (as seen, for example, in the “Great Diveyevo Mystery”), for
he had cut himself off from the saints of his own time, even from those of St.
Seraphim’s same spiritual lineage who lived nearby.
It was their burden to
preserve the living transmission of Orthodoxy in America that caused the
fathers to take such a sharp tone against “renovated”
Orthodoxy. “Schmemannism” posed a real threat, but the fathers were
after all able to separate the man from the “ism.” The distortions
of Orthodoxy could never be accepted or passed over, but the man himself could
be forgiven. Fr. Seraphim had no personal animosity toward him, and
in fact respected him for his commitment to bringing the Orthodox Faith to his
fellow Americans. Fearing that Fr. Schmemann might have
misinterpreted Fr. Seraphim’s intention and had been personally hurt, Fr.
Herman went to visit him after Fr. Seraphim died. He made a
prostration before Fr. Schmemann and asked forgiveness on the part of his
departed brother. Fr. Schmemann, who was then approaching death
himself, readily forgave Fr. Seraphim.
Thus,
by God’s grace, were the souls of Fr. Seraphim and Fr. Alexander Schmemann
reconciled for the future life. Fr. Schmemann, although there is no
indication that he came closer to agreeing with Fr. Seraphim’s ideas, must have
placed value in the fact that Fr. Seraphim was a product of the very American
Orthodox mission to which he, Fr. Schmemann, had devoted the greater part of
his life. In the case of Fr. Seraphim, it was no immigrant, born in
19th-century Russia, who was calling Americans too old-fashioned, apocalyptic
Orthodoxy piety, but rather full-blooded American who had himself been
raised in this secular, pluralistic society, who had never even been told of
Orthodoxy while growing up but had instead been inculcated with the “American
dream,” which he had rejected. Soon after Fr. Seraphim’s death and
not long before his own, Fr. Schmemann was able to look at Fr. Seraphim’s life,
the life of an American Orthodox convert, and to say: “Here is a man to whom
belongs the future.” [15]
1. [Fr. Seraphim Rose], “The Holy Fathers,
III,” pp. 234-236.
2. [Fr. Seraphim Rose], “Our Living Links with the
Holy Fathers: Archpriest Nicholas Deputatov,” The Orthodox Word,
no. 69 (1976), p. 100.
3.
Rene Guenon, Introduction
to the study of Hindu Doctrines (London: Luzac and Co., 1945), p. 195.
4.
Fr. Michael Pomazansky,
“The Liturgical Theology of Fr. A. Schmemann,” The Orthodox Word,
no. 35 (1970), p. 263.
5.
Ibid., p. 260
6. [Fr. Seraphim Rose], “The Typicon of the
Orthodox Church’s Divine Services: Inspiration of True Orthodox Piety”
(Introduction), The Orthodox Word, no. 53 (1973), p. 224.
7. [Fr. Seraphim Rose], “Towards the ‘Eighth
Ecumenical Council,’” The Orthodox Word, no. 71 (1976), pp.
190-191.
8. [Fr. Seraphim Rose], “The Holy Fathers, III,”
p.235.
9. [Fr. Seraphim Rose], “Our
Living Links with the Holy Fathers: Archbishop Averky of Jordanville,” The
Orthodox Word, no. 62 (1975), p. 95.
10.
Archbishop Averky, “What
is Orthodoxy?” Orthodox Life (Jordanville, New York:
Holy Trinity Monastery, May-June, 1976), p. 1.
11.
Alexander
Schmemann, Church, World, Mission (Crestwood, New York: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), pp. 231-232.
12. See Alexander Schmemann, The
Eucharist, (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987),
pp. 231-232.
13. [Fr. Seraphim Rose], “The Typicon,” p. 225.
14. The Northern Thebaid (Platina,
California: St. Herman Brotherhood, 1975), pp. xi-xii.
15.
Fr. Seraphim Rose, Heavenly
Realm, p. 10.
