FR. SERAPHIM ROSE: A MODERN ST. AUGUSTINE by Dr.

Vladimir Moss

A Review of Monk Damascene’s book, “Not of this World”

This is an instructive and moving book, big both in its length (over 1000 pages) and in
its significance. The subject is the life of the American-born member of the Russian
Church Abroad, Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, who died in 1982 at the age of 48 after an
amazingly productive life as a missionary and church writer. A man of Fr. Seraphim’s
stature would be worthy of a biography whatever age he lived in or country he came
from. But his life is of particular significance for our particular age and our particular
culture.

First, he represents one of the few, very few westerners who, having brought up in our
spiritual Babylon, have not only converted to the True Faith of Orthodoxy, but have
brought forth much spiritual fruit. This should lead us westerners to study his life with
particular attention; for, as Fr. Damascene points out, Fr. Seraphim vaulted many of the
hurdles that present such difficulties to the Orthodox western convert, and his life and
writings offer many valuable “tips” for the convert. Coming from a typically Protestant
background, he seemed set for a brilliant academic career as a Chinese expert. But his
agonized striving for the truth led him to reject the vanities of academe, and after a brief
descent into the hell of nihilism and the self-indulgent life-style of the San Francisco
hippy culture, his soul was resurrected in the light of Orthodox Christianity.

Secondly, Fr. Seraphim’s brilliant and cultured mind, illumined by true faith and honed
on the writings of the Holy Fathers, produced book-length studies of various theological
topics that have deservedly acquired “classic” status. Fr. Damascene quotes at length
from his works on the soul after death, the western saints, eastern religions, Blessed
Augustine, evolution and other topics, in which Fr. Seraphim’s contribution is second to
none. However, on one topic – the “jurisdictional issue” and the Soviet Moscow
Patriarchate in particular – Fr. Seraphim’s opinions do not reflect the consensus of the
Holy Fathers of our time, and Fr. Damascene’s uncritical acceptance of Fr. Seraphim’s
position here shows a certain bias.

Thirdly, Fr. Seraphim did not only speak and write about the faith: he also put it into
practice: as a monk and co-founder of the Brotherhood of St. Herman of Alaska in
Platina, California, as a missionary, and as a priest and spiritual father. Much of the
value of this book resides in the accounts given by his spiritual children and his co-
struggler, Fr. Herman, that witness to his quiet wisdom and warm charity. And this
reviewer, for one, has no difficulty in believing the accounts at the end of this book of
his appearances to, and intercession for, his spiritual children after his death.

So in turning now to the opinions of Fr. Seraphim which are likely to prove less
enduring and solidly based, we are in no way disputing his reputation as one of the truly
righteous men of his century. Like Blessed Augustine, whom he so ably defended, he
made errors while remaining Orthodox. And so of him we say, as St. Photius said of St.
Augustine: “We embrace the man, while rejecting his errors.”
The one major question on which, in the reviewer’s opinion, Fr. Seraphim was wrong
was the jurisdictional issue, or, if we accept that “there are no such things as
jurisdictions, only the Church”, the question: Where is the True Church? While
accepting that inter-faith and inter-Christian ecumenism were heresies, as also the
policy of submitting to atheist political power that is called sergianism, Fr. Seraphim did
not accept that the Orthodox Churches which practiced these heresies officially were
heretical and deprived of the grace of true sacraments. Again, there is a remarkable
similarity here to St. Augustine, who rejected the Donatists as schismatics while
accepting their sacraments.

Fr. Seraphim had not always been a “liberal” on this question, as early issues of his
monastery’s publication, The Orthodox Word, demonstrate. However, from the mid-
1970s another influence began to bear on his views on the subject: the “zealot” rejection
of the sacraments of the ecumenist Orthodox on the part of the “Hartford” monastery, a
pseudonym for the Greek- American Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration in Boston.
Finding the Boston monastery and its “super-correct” followers lacking in charity and
the true warmth of Orthodox piety, and quite rightly rejecting their views on other
subjects such as the soul after death, Fr. Seraphim over-reacted, in the present
reviewer’s opinion, by adopting the “liberal” position rejected by Boston.
Another factor that influenced his conversion to the liberal position on this matter was
the so-called “rebaptism” controversy. Boston, with the blessing of Metropolitan
Philaret, first-hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, had baptized several converts to
Orthodoxy who had been received into the Russian Church Abroad without baptism. Fr.
Seraphim considered this practice over-zealous and harmful (he himself had been
received from Protestantism by chrismation only).

Now since the “rebaptism” controversy started, as Fr. Damascene says, in England in
1976, and since the present reviewer was the first to be “rebaptised” there, it may not be
out of place for him to correct Fr. Damascene on certain points of fact in this
connection.

First, the English converts were not “rebaptised” since they had never received baptism
in any Orthodox jurisdiction (Anglican sprinkling is not baptism in any sense).
Secondly, in asking for baptism, they had not acted at the instigation of the Boston
monastery, but at the promptings of their own conscience; nor, contrary to what Fr.
Damascene writes, was Archbishop Nicodemus of Great Britain, who granted the
converts’ request, in any way influenced by Boston. Thirdly, neither Archbishop
Nicodemus nor the converts insisted that everyone else in a similar situation to theirs
should be baptized, or that they had been outside the Church before their baptism (for
they had previously been received into the ROCOR by confession). Now it may be that
Fr. Seraphim felt that he and others who had been received into the ROCOR by
“economy”, i.e. without baptism, would now be forced to accept “rebaptism”, which
would explain Fr. Damascene’s vehemence against the “rebaptism” in England.
However, we can only reaffirm that neither Archbishop Nicodemus nor the priest who
baptized us nor we ourselves had any such ideas.

What is true is that we asserted that when we moved from the Moscow Patriarchate to
the ROCOR, we moved from a heretical “church” into a true one, and that the
chrismation we received in the MP was graceless. This opinion Fr. Seraphim contested
on several grounds: (1) Hieromartyr Cyril of Kazan had accepted the sacraments of the
MP in 1934; (2) the ROCOR had not made any declaration on the subject, and (3) there
were still supposedly great confessors in the MP – for example, Fr. Demetrius Dudko.
Let us look briefly at each of these arguments.

1. Metropolitan Cyril expressed his opinion with great caution and admitted that he
might be being over-cautious. Moreover, he asserted – this is an important point always
passed over by the “liberal” tendency – that those who partook of the sacraments of the
MP knowing of its evil partook to their condemnation. In any case, Metropolitan Cyril’s
opinion was expressed in 1934, when the schism of the MP was incomplete, since both
sides still commemorated Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa. It is extremely unlikely that
Metropolitan Cyril would have continued to maintain what he admitted might be an
over-cautious position after the death of Metropolitan Peter and the completion of the
schism in October, 1937. Moreover, already in March, 1937 he wrote a letter in which,
while not expressly saying that the MP was graceless, he noted that it was
“renovationist in essence” and that enough time had passed for people to evaluate its
nature and leave it. And by his death in November, 1937, according to Catacomb
sources, he had come to full agreement with the “zealot” position of Metropolitan
Joseph of Petrograd on this point before they were shot together in Chimkent. Can there
be any doubt what his opinion would be now, when the MP has added, among many
other crimes, the “heresy of heresies”, ecumenism, to its original sin of sergianism?

2. It is true that the whole ROCOR Synod made no declaration on this subject. But
individual leaders did – and they were not speaking only for themselves. For example,
in his encyclical of 1928 Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev declared in the
name of his whole Synod that the leaders of the MP were schismatics and apostates.
This declaration was quoted by Metropolitan Philaret in his 1969 encyclical on the
American Metropolia, and in 1977 the same Metropolitan Philaret told the present
writer in the presence of witnesses that he should remain faithful to the anathema of the
Catacomb Church against the MP. Other members of the ROCOR Synod who adopted
this zealot position were Archbishop Averky of Jordanville, Archbishop Nicodemus of
Great Britain, Archbishop Anthony of Los Angeles, Archbishop Andrew of Rockland,
Protopresbyter Michael Polsky and Professor Andreyev, the last three of whom had all
been members of the Catacomb Church. Even Fr. Seraphim himself once compared the
sergianists and ecumenists to the iconoclasts, who were graceless heretics.
The position of the Catacomb confessors on this question is critical, since they knew the
MP at first-hand and were in the best position, canonically speaking, to judge it. Among
the martyr-hierarchs about whose zealot views there can be no doubt we can mention
Bishop Maximus of Serpukhov (who said that the Catacomb Church had formally
anathematized the MP), Archbishop Demetrius of Gdov, Metropolitan Joseph of
Petrograd, Archbishop Andrew of Ufa, Archbishop Theodore of Volokolamsk and the
four bishops who attended the Ust-Kut Council of 1937. Again, Fr. Ishmael
Rozhdestvensky, whose life was translated by Fr. Seraphim, forbade his spiritual
children even to look at churches of the MP.

3. Fr. Seraphim defended Fr. Demetrius out of a sense of deep compassion. Now
compassion, when purified, is a great virtue. But it should not be allowed to hinder
sober and dispassionate judgement, and there is no doubt that Fr. Seraphim allowed his
heart (“the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17.9)) to cloud his judgement
in this matter.
Let us consider the facts. Fr. Demetrius was a priest of the Soviet church who refused
the invitation of the Catacomb Church to join it. He was an ecumenist – he revered the
Pope and asked his blessing on his work, and those who published the English edition
of Our Hope told the present reviewer that they had had to edit out large amounts of
ecumenist material from the work. And he was a sergianist – under pressure from the
authorities, he once told a 15-year-old spiritual son of his to return to the Komsomol. In
1980 he publicly recanted of his anti-Soviet activities on Soviet television. When the
ROCOR first accepted parishes on Russian soil in 1990, he stubbornly refused to join it,
although there was now far less danger in doing so. And towards the end of his life (he
died in June, 2004) he became an ardent advocate of the canonization of – Stalin!
When speaking about Fr. Demetrius, Fr. Seraphim’s usual discernment seems to have
deserted him. Thus he wrote that Fr. Demetrius’ “fiery, urgent preaching hasn’t been
heard in Russia and probably the whole Orthodox world since the days of St. John of
Kronstadt” (p. 859) – an amazing exaggeration which placed Fr. Demetrius above
Patriarch Tikhon and other great preachers among the true martyrs and confessors of
Russia. Again, he often said that he was in the same Church as Fr. Demetrius, quoting
his words: “The unity of the Church at the present time consists in division” (p. 863), as
if to assert that the obvious division between the MP and the ROCOR either did not
exist or was of little significance.

When Fr. Demetrius “repented” before Soviet power in 1980, thereby fulfilling the
prediction of Metropolitan Philaret, who stated quite bluntly that he would fall because
he was not in the True Church, there was much talk about the danger of “gloating”. But
nobody gloated. Fr. Demetrius’ fall was clearly a matter of profound sorrow, not
triumphalism. But neither Fr. Demetrius nor anyone else was served by denying that it
was a fall – which is what many liberals tried to assert. The present reviewer heard from
a spiritual son of Fr. Demetrius, now a priest of the True Church inside Russia, that he
was never the same after his public recantation. And, as was noted above, in his later
years he actually became an ardent supporter of the worst aspect of the MP, its worship
of Stalin. For the fact is that his house was built on sand, the sand of Soviet
communism, and this alone is the reason why he fell (Matthew 7.27).

However much compassion he felt for Fr. Demetrius, Fr. Seraphim was wrong to hold
him up as a role model and “confessor”. First, because he did not belong to the True
Church and did not confess the True Faith (which is not to say, of course, that he did not
sometimes write good things). And secondly, because to glorify a priest of the Soviet
church, however courageous, is to undervalue the podvig of the true confessors of the
Catacomb Church. If it is possible to be a “martyr” and “confessor” while belonging to
a false church and confessing heresy, why should anyone take the trouble and undergo
the danger of joining the True Church? But many thousands, even millions, did just that,
preferring death to doing what Fr. Demetrius did; and we must recognize that their
position was not only canonically “correct”, but the only Christian way.

To take just one example: in the 1970s, at precisely the time that Fr. Demetrius was
preaching his fiery sermons, the Catacomb hierarch Gennadius (Sekach) was living near
Novy Afon in the Caucasus. The Soviet hierarch Ilia of Sukhumi (a KGB agent since
1962 and now “patriarch” of the official Georgian church), hearing of his whereabouts
through spies, offered Gennadius a comfortable place in the Soviet church organization.
Gennadius refused, saying that if he accepted the offer he “would lose everything”. Ilia
then denounced him to the KGB, who put him prison in Georgia and tortured him till
the blood flowed...
Gennadius was a true confessor – and Fr. Seraphim devoted a chapter to him in his book
Russia’s Catacomb Saints. But then why did he devote another chapter to Dudko, who
did everything Gennadius refused to do? How could they both be confessors?!
The present reviewer’s position may perhaps be criticized as being “over-logical” and
“super-correct”, demonstrating typically convert pride and lack of compassion.
Certainly, he can recognize many of the traits Fr. Seraphim identifies as being typical of
the convert mentality in himself. But God forbid that we should ever devalue the podvig
of the true confessors by glorifying false ones – that is not the path of true humility and
compassion. For let us make no mistake: if we glorify pseudo-confessors, we both
injure them (by confirming them in their heresy or schism), and may end up falling
away from the truth ourselves. Which is precisely what happened, tragically, to some of
Fr. Seraphim’s fellow strugglers after his repose...

Fr. Seraphim himself, in spite of his errors, remained in the True Church until his death,
and deserves to be remembered among the true confessors. Indeed, the present reviewer
believes that if he had lived to witness the ROCOR’s Anathema against Ecumenism in
1983, and the extraordinary pagan festivals of the ecumenists in Vancouver in 1983,
Assisi in 1986 and Canberra in 1991, not to mention the unias of the Orthodox
ecumenists with the Monophysites at Chambésy in 1990 and with the Roman Catholics
at Balamand in 1994, he would have returned to his earlier, more zealous position and
the common mind of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church on this question.
For there is only One Church, just as there is only one true confession of the Faith; and
all those who deny that fact, such as the present-day Moscow and Ecumenical
Patriarchates, have no part in that Faith and that Church, according to the sacred canons
and dogmas.

To recognize this in a humble and obedient spirit is not to be “super- correct” or