"Unquestionably an Orthodox Father"

Fr. Seraphim Rose on St. Augustine, the Orthodox West, and "Latin Captivity"

Disclaimer- As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases

Prior to my conversion, I was able to read a pdf version of the book Fr. Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works by Hieromonk Damascene. The book itself was highly informative and inspirational, so much so that I actually drove three hours from my home in California to visit St. Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina to venerate his relics. Like many young male converts, I owe my conversion partly to Fr. Seraphim, whom I do believe is a saint and that the Church will officially glorify him in my lifetime.

One thought I constantly had while reading Seraphim’s story was how similar his life was to that of St. Augustine. Both men lost faith in Christ in their youth, experimented with different schools and philosophies of their time, only to eventually return to the Faith and become some of the Church’s greatest defenders. Damascene himself makes this comparison in describing Seraphim’s (Eugene’s) inspiration from reading the works of Rene Guenon:

“Guénon, who believed that an intellectual elite was needed to restore true metaphysical knowledge to the West, could hardly help Eugene overcome his elitism. Since his approach was exclusively intellectual, his teachings were incapable of morally regenerating Eugene, of releasing him from his hell and of opening to him the fullness of the truth he sought. Guénon was, however, the first one to set him on the path toward this truth, showing him the way of true philosophy. It could be said that Guénon’s works were to Eugene what the written exhortations of Cicero had been to the young Augustine, who said that by these exhortations he had been ‘strongly roused, and kindled, and inflamed to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace not this or that sect, but wisdom itself whatever it were.”’ (Damascene, pg. 99)

When one reads the whole of Damascene’s work, one finds that this was not purely a coincidence. Indeed, Seraphim Rose not only looked to Augustine as a model for his own life as an Orthodox Christian, but also actively defended him against unfair criticism.

One immediate example of Seraphim’s relationship with the Western father was through what is arguably Augustine’s most famous work, that being The Confessions. Damascene notes the following:

Every year during Great Lent, Fr. Seraphim tried to reread the whole of Blessed Augustine’s Confessions (bold in place of italics in original text), and every year he would weep at Augustine’s profound repentance. From the portions he underlined in the book, it is clear that Fr. Seraphim saw his own life in the story of Blessed Augustine’s conversion from sin and rebellion to faith. In many passages the similarities are striking, as if it were Fr. Seraphim and not Augustine who was writing about his past. (pg. 585)

St. Augustine was essentially a spiritual mirror that Rose could see his own reflection in, a kindred soul who faced similar struggles that Rose once did. I personally hope to replicate this discipline one day. The Confessions is a staple of Christian spiritual literature, an everlasting well that Christians of all ages have continued to draw from, and its a perfect work to read from during the time of healing and repentance that is Great Lent.

However, Seraphim Rose’s admiration for Augustine was not just limited to appreciating his voluminous literature. Rather, Seraphim Rose also took it upon himself to defend the great saint from unfair and even slanderous criticism made against him by modernist Orthodox. Seraphim Rose always stressed Orthodoxy’s “Royal Path” as a virtuous golden mean between two extremes: On the one hand, the ecumenists who subverted Orthodox dogma and teaching in favor of compromise, but on the other hand, those Orthodox who displayed the disease of “super correctness” as Rose put it. Rose was heavily criticized by a faction of the Russian Church Abroad (called the “Boston school” by Rose) who engaged in deceptive tactics to force their views on the larger Church. One of these was a frenzied witch hunt for any hint of Western errors in the writings of established Orthodox Fathers:

“In order to have its own views prevail in the Russian Church Abroad, the new faction did not stop at ‘open letters,’ but began to systematically undermine the authority of the most respected Orthodox teachers of recent centuries. Its chief weapon in this, noted Fr. Seraphim, ‘is the recent academic fashion of looking everywhere for ‘Western influence’ in our theological texts.’ Most of the recent teachers, from St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain down to Archbishop Averky, were accused of being under this influence, of being ‘scholastics.’ The theologians of the party were giving people to believe that they knew more about Orthodox theology than St. Nektarios of Pentapolis, St. John of Kronstadt (who talked about the ‘merits’ of Christ), Archbishop John (who commissioned a service to be written to the Western Holy Father, Blessed Augustine), and the Optina Elders. ‘Such presumption,’ wrote Fr. Seraphim, ‘can only do harm to the real cause of renewing Orthodox life by drawing from the fresh springs of Orthodox tradition.’’’’(pg. 669).

Indeed, according to Rose, such an assumption would logically lead to a place of absurdity that any Orthodox formed in the teachings of the Fathers would realize is unthinkable:

‘“As Fr. Seraphim realized, the alarm over ‘Western influence’ was based upon a half-truth. ‘‘Fr. Michael Pomazansky,’’ he wrote, ‘‘and other good theologians will readily admit that there were such ‘Western influences’ in the theological texts of the latter period of the Russian (and Greek) history — but they also emphasize that these influences were external ones which never touched the heart of Orthodox doctrine. To say otherwise is to admit that Orthodoxy was lost (!) in these last centuries, and only now are young ‘theologians’... ‘finding’ again the Orthodoxy of the Fathers.... If such theological giants as Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, Bishop Theophan the Recluse, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, Archbishop Averky of Jordanville, Fr. Michael Pomazansky, and in general the theology taught in our seminaries for the last century and more, are not really ‘Orthodox’ at all — then we are in a very dangerous condition…’”’ (pg. 669).

In other words, the zealots’ logic would require some of Orthodoxy’s greatest saints and teachers to be discarded over supposed stains of Western “error” in their writings. This is why Rose argued that these “Neo-traditionalists” were just the other side of the same coin as the ecumenists: both groups severed themselves from the roots of the Faith, preferring their own speculations to the sound teachings of the Holy Fathers (pg. 670).

This cutting themselves off at the roots was best represented in the attacks leveled by the zealots against St. Augustine. Reflecting on an article written by this group criticizing Augustine, Rose remarked that this attack would, by its own reasoning, also have to be applied to great saints like Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, the great Orthodox teachers of the nineteenth and twentieth century, and the entirety of the fifth Ecumenical Council: “‘The universal tradition of the Orthodox Church,” he wrote, “accepts Blessed Augustine as a Holy Father, albeit with a [theological] flaw — very much like St. Gregory of Nyssa in the East.”’ (pg. 672). To slander St. Augustine is, by extension, to slander Holy Orthodoxy.

Even though Seraphim Rose recognized that Augustine made mistakes in some of his teachings, he also stressed that Augustine’s piety and zeal for the Faith should be looked to as a prime example for Orthodox Christians:

‘‘“In particular, Fr. Seraphim saw in the unwarranted ‘Orthodox’ attack on Blessed Augustine a sign of the externalism that will lead to acceptance of Antichrist. Augustine’s ‘overly logical’ doctrines, of which Fr. Seraphim himself said he was ‘no great admirer,’ were only the external, intellectual aspect of a man whose heart was clearly Orthodox. As Fr. Seraphim wrote in a letter, “‘The one main lovable and Orthodox thing about him is his Orthodox feeling, piety, love for Christ, which comes out so strongly in his non-dogmatic works like his Confessions (the Russian Fathers also love the Soliloquies). To destroy Augustine, as today’s critics are trying to do, is to help to destroy also this piety and love for Christ... I myself fear the cold hearts of the ‘intellectually correct’ much more than any errors you might find in Augustine…’”’ (pg. 1055)

One of Rose’s greatest concerns with modern Orthodox was the fear that they would turn the Faith into a matter of the head rather than that of the heart (pg. 1155). The example above is symptomatic of this condition. To focus only on the intellectual side of the Faith or one of its saints is to create a sort of spiritual tunnel vision that ignores Orthodoxy’s deeply personal core. Damascene quotes Rose making this exact point elsewhere in the book: Truth itself is a Person, the Person of Christ, and not just a set of abstract principles (pg. 144). Forget this notion, and you forget Christ too.

In order to correct the “one-sidedness” that he saw prevailing in these discussions, Seraphim Rose later produced an essay that would eventually be published posthumously as a separate book called The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church (pg. 1155-1156). You may purchase it here (paid link). Rose pointed out places were Augustine erred, but he also stressed the reality that Augustine was an Orthodox father, with even those theologians who combated Latin errors holding the saint in high regard (pg. 1158). Rose further notes:

“‘‘He is one with the simple Orthodox faithful, as well as with all the Holy Fathers of East and West who, whatever their various failings and differences in theoretical points of doctrine, had a single deeply Christian heart and soul. It is this that makes him unquestionably an Orthodox Father and creates an impassable abyss between him and all his heterodox ‘disciples’ of later centuries — but makes him kin to all those who are clinging to true Christianity, Holy Orthodoxy in our own days.”’’ (pg. 1158).

In other words, St. Augustine is not a foolish western theologian who has to be discarded. He is a saint. In fact, he’s one of the greatest saints of the Church, and central to Orthodox who are striving to live out the Faith in our times. To point out where Augustine- or any saint for that matter- made mistakes is one thing. But it is highly imprudent and dangerous to suggest that a saint be thrown out of the calendar so that one’s particular version of what Orthodoxy should be can prevail. That is not the Faith, but rather, one’s sloppily constructed version of it.

Seraphim Rose didn’t limit himself to defending St. Augustine from unjust criticism, but the Western tradition as a whole. Taking inspiration from the work of St. John Maximovitch, Seraphim Rose worked to bring the treasures of ancient, Western Orthodoxy to the modern Church. Here are a few (though definitely not all) examples:

• Rose’s publication The Orthodox World had a life St. John Cassian, published in an issue in 1969. Cassian is credited with bringing early Christian monasticism to the West (pg. 897)

• In April of 1975, Seraphim Rose collected resources on Western saints in the library of the University of California at Berkeley, where he found a Latin version of St. Gregory Tours’s Vita Patrum (pg. 897)

• Rose translated and published in The Orthodox World the original life of St. Gregory of Tours by Abbot Odo (pg. 904)

Not only this, but Fr. Seraphim also stood in opposition to the “Latin Captivity” theory that was, and still is, pushed by certain Orthodox academics. Damascene quotes a letter from Rose writing to a priest on this idea:

‘“This points you in the direction of a kind of Protestantism, by placing a gap in the Orthodox theological tradition which only your group manages to span by skipping the interval of the ‘Latin captivity’ and getting back to the ‘original sources.’... The very notion of ‘Latin captivity’ is played up by Fr. Alexander Schmemann and his colleagues precisely with the aim of destroying the idea of the continuity of Orthodox tradition throughout the centuries. DO NOT FALL INTO THAT TRAP! There are great theologians of the past several centuries who used expressions one might like to see improved; but that does not mean that they are in ‘Latin captivity’ or should be discredited. They just do not use these expressions in the same context as the Latins, and therefore the issue is not a very important one.”’’ (pg. 670).

Orthodox theologians who use Latin terminology are not “caving in” to the heterodox, nor are they diluting the Faith. To write off centuries of theology is not to “return to the sources”, but instead to shamelessly promote an artificial Orthodoxy, a cheap knock off in contrast to the immaculate religion our Fathers defended, confessed, and endured martyrdom for. We are the “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church”; we do not just embrace the Eastern tradition and pay lip service to the West when convenient. Instead, we embrace the whole consensus of the Fathers, and that includes the West, and by extension, its greatest champion in the early Church, that being St. Augustine.

Upon reading this book, I am convinced that many of Rose’s self declared “followers” have either not read his works, or only read the parts they want to. I cannot count how many times I have heard these types of Orthodox shower praises on Rose for his writings on evolution, modernity, ecumenism, etc, and yet they continue to spew out the same vitriolic garbage about Augustine being somehow “lesser than” when compared to other Fathers. This is not only foreign to the Orthodox tradition, but is also a great harm to the witness of our Faith.

The Western confessions- despite their errors- have done well in putting St. Augustine on his proper pedestal. We Orthodox would be right to do the same. If we want to honor the legacy of Fr. Seraphim Rose, St. John Maximovitch, and Fr. Michael Pomazanksy, we must therefore honor the legacy of St. Augustine.

I end with a quote from St. John Maximovitch:

“Never, never, never let anyone tell you that, in order to be Orthodox, you must be Eastern. The west was fully Orthodox for a thousand years, and her venerable liturgy is far older than any of her heresies.”

May Fr. Seraphim Rose and St. Augustine pray for us.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner