Something struck me about modern "seekers" who are dissatisfied with mainstream atheistic materialism, and want something not just better, but a real answer to the questions of life and reality.
Often this search is self-sabotaged or hijacked by assumed constraints that make it impossible ever to find an answer; and one of these wrecking assumptions is that The Answer will be found in a "tradition": that is, a large group of many prestigious persons, an ancient group (believed to extend back centuries, perhaps millennia).
What too often seems to happen is that some seeker comes across an individual person, one Man, who interests them strongly, evokes a sympathy or empathic identification, "speaks to them" - but this one Man describes himself as speaking on-behalf-of and from a tradition.
And then the seeker finds that he is supposed to believe and affirm not just the particular person whose work, and perhaps life, has so inspired him; but a whole bunch of other people - perhaps in many times and places - and to say that the whole bunch of them are good, true, coherent, and worthy of obedience.
An example might clarify what I mean.
I became interested in and attracted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity via the specific and (to me) inspiring personage of the US monk Seraphim Rose 1934-1982. I read a good deal of Rose's work, thought about it, tried to understand it and tease out the implications...
Of course, as always (for me) I disagreed with much, thought much of it was wrong - nonetheless I was deeply impressed and attracted by aspects of the spirituality he described and lived.
But the next step is the killer, which is that Rose regarded himself as an ordinary and "orthodox" member of the Russian Orthodox church (overseas branch - he lived during the USSR era, and he knew mostly exiled Russians and their descendants), and a representative of Eastern Orthodoxy generally.
The Man Seraphim Rose affirmed a world-view that regarded The Man as of little significance, and The Group as primary.
So I was pretty much compelled to read and experience more widely, more generally - I was pushed into reading Seraphim Rose - not as A Man but as a representative of a domination/ church/ tradition - and it was that group (across many centuries, in many places) which mattered most.
I began with a fascination and sympathy for one Man, and I soon ended-up pushed towards pledging belief and obedience to a vast group of many people, of many nations, with several warring factions and schismatic groups.
My attention was diffused to many writers, many nations, many times, many disputes and schisms, many policies and actions...
In one sense I was supposed to join with a vast, ancient and extremely heterogeneous church - all of which I was supposed to approve in a general way (even bizarre perversions such as "stylites")...
But in another sense the almost-constant reality of internal disputes, (even warring schisms) meant that the actuality of what I "ought to do" was inevitably something much smaller, more local, and more modern.
In the end of the process, when rigorously pursued (so far as I could tell) most of Eastern Orthodoxy was too modernized, lax and corrupted to satisfy those who took Seraphim Rose seriously. So that there was just one specific monastic church, 300 miles away, in schism with the Moscow Patriarchate; that it was right and necessary for me to join, support, attend and obey.
In microcosm, I think this is pretty typical of a serious, rigorous, Christian seeker in the West of 2024.
We might be attracted to Christianity by the work or life of a particular person, alive or dead - and then there is that horrible realization that we are supposed to set aside what attracted us, and instead subordinate to a vast nebulous group...
A group that (to all appearances) includes all kinds of apparently unappealing and seemingly evil people, doing apparently stupid and terrible things, in all kinds of times and places, and with all sorts of (what look like) contradictions - and we are supposed (with solemn oaths) to pledge to all this...
Yet, the facts of 2024 in The West also mean that this big, messy, vision of a "universal church" will - if taken seriously - ultimately lead to some very small, very recently formed, very localized and minority (even within The Church) grouping of a handful of Christians.
What I draw from such experiences (of myself, and what I have observed in others) is that in our time and place, and when we are really serious about things: we ought to deal with individuals, not with groups - and stick with individuals.
Even though this contradicts what these same individuals advise and argue!
Thus, the engagement must be critical. The ideal relationship is not that of an apprentice to his Master, nor even a student to his teacher - but more like getting to know an older, more experienced and able friend.
It would (for instance) be better to stay-with Seraphim Rose - a specific individual that I benefited from reading - or whoever it might be; stay as long as there is benefit, and work to develop an intense and sustained relationship - in which you do not merely absorb the ideas, but engage creatively with the ideas...
Not in a submissive, obedience-orientated fashion; but kind of dialogue pursued in a free, positive and personal way, as between two mutually-respecting persons.
15 comments:
this describes my own experience so well (down to the specific person that started it, in the case of orthodoxy, Fr. Seraphim Rose - i think he is anyway the main gateway for it in the West, the patron saint of disaffected western men, as i heard him called once). i don't consider it necessarily wasted time, because no effort and no study is ever wasted, but i do sometimes wish i had gotten out of the mindset of trying to fit into a group sooner.
it struck me while reading it, too, that it's not even a single case for me - i can think of many other individuals that spoke to me personally, and that then, like a disease of the mind, i thought should be jumping points to whatever groups. i think deep down my intuition (and what i was really, in the end, doing) was to focus on the individuals and trying to shape the group-doctrine or whatever to them, but then i was weak and wated to embrace the groups/traditions/etc. and it never, never worked for me (in fact, most times it worked against me).
i am very glad that by the time i encountered your blog on mormonism i had given up on joining any group (which is what accords to my nature anyway), and i could just take the ideas on their own and integrate them into myself without feeling the need to belong to a group (and sometimes guilt for not being able to belong).
@Laeth - I didn't know (or hadn't noticed) that you knew Seraphim Rose's work. He wasn't by any means the first Christian influence on me - but he dominated through much of 2010-2011 especially, including when I was writing Thought Prison.
BTW the comment about the one church in the UK is literally true. I was strongly advised from a couple of sources that it was The Place and I ought to go there as often as possible for as long as possible (which was, in practice, never).
I attended an Orthodox Church about 20 miles way a few times, and officially became a catechumen - but this kind of irregular attendance at (multilingual) services was utterly ineffectual at building a group spiritual life. I felt as if I was acting in a foreign play, I didn't know anybody, the church members were mostly recent immigrants from several places, the Western people were upper class professionals of the same type and spirituality as encountered at any other church, and the priests did not strike me as any more holy than anybody else.
It was an exercise in self-delusion and pretence, presumably because (as all the strict Orthodox writers affirm) this church only Works in an Orthodox society with an anointed monarch - and there are no such places in the world - so I gave it up with some regret but considerable relief.
@Bruce,
I don't think I've mentioned him before in any post. I discovered him in 2018, read most of his books and articles, and his biography (which I still regard as a great book and will probably read it again). But by the time I started the blog I had already moved on from trying to be orthodox, which happened after they closed the church in 2020.
Your experience is much the same as mine, although other than my then girlfriend now wife, I was the only non-slav in the church, and it was a ten minute walk from where I lived - which back then I took as a sign, but maybe the sign was for me to see for myself that I didn't fit in. although I never became a catechumen, since for the year and a half I attended every week the priest more or less tried to get me back to Catholicism (even though I wasn't baptized in Catholicism either and had only been a christian for a year or so at that point). maybe it was because the church was in a borrowed building from the roman church, I don't know, but now I think it was probably for the best. but in any case, I was always eager to ask him theological questions of the deepest kind and he more or less dismissed them and me as unimportant. the only thing he seemed to like to talk about was the ancientness of the liturgy itself.
I would have likely kept at it if not for the birdemic changing everything. Although for a long time I still tried to make sense of orthodox theology for myself, but it was a losing battle for many reasons, including the fact that I didn't fit in the church at all.
Fr. Seraphim Rose was, and continues to be, a very important influence for me. Orthodoxy remains for me the most noble and appealing form of Christianity. Nowhere else -- in my experience -- is the _reality_ of spiritual matters taken so seriously. Perhaps I have been luckier than Bruce and Laeth in that my experience at the parish level has reinforced those impressions as far as the seriousness of many of the parishioners, the quality of the priest, etc.
I second Laeth's evaluation of the Fr. Damascene Christensen's Life of Seraphim Rose as a "Great Book". It truly is a notable achievement along the lines of such biographies as Boswell's Johnson or Froude's Carlyle.
@Daniel - I haven't re-read it lately, but the Damascene biog of Seraphim Rose made a big impact on me too, and I often quoted and referenced it in the earlier years of this blog: https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=damascene
BTW - I would rather that SR was more often called *Brother* Seraphim Rose, in the sense that he was a monk who was not ordained priest (hieromonk) until late in his life, and then only reluctantly (from obedience, not desire). I suppose it is a matter of formality and convention to emphasize that we died a priest, but it is probably best to think of him as a "lay brother" in Western terms.
That's very true. Even at the time, Rose perceived -- correctly -- that he was being pressured into becoming a priest so that the church hierarchy could exert more control over him and Platina. If I recall correctly, the Bishop in question even pressured Rose and Herman to sign over the property title to the Bishop himself or to ROCOR. I forget how it was resolved.
Viewing the whole thing in terms of the following Biblical principle -- "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God" -- and speaking for myself and what I got out of Rose's life, one of the very salutary and helpful lessons was to see how he masterfully navigated the difficult path between his personal freedom as a Christian and his efforts to be obedient to the church. Indeed, I continue to see that as an extremely important and _relevant_ lesson for us today, as his life represents what I would see as one successful "answer" to the problem of how to live within the church while carving one's own unique path.
His own spiritual mentor -- St. John Maximovich -- is in fact another similar example, in that St. John was something of a fool for Christ who managed to both become a bishop in the church while simultaneously being reviled and hounded by the central church hierarchy and bureaucracy.
I guess whether one views these cases as positive examples of how remaining subject to the hierarchy became a means of their greater sanctification or examples of how great men were hindered and could have been even greater, is in large part of matter of how one views the question under consideration in this post and similar articles by Bruce about Romantic vs. Institutionalized Christianity.
@Daniel F - Interesting stuff.
I suppose the situation keeps changing. The apparently very mixed history of Platina since the death of Seraphim Rose, its change of jurisdictions - more than once I think, the disgrace of the Abbot Fr Herman for (what sounds like) gross sexual misconduct - all this stands in stark contrast to the example of Seraphim Rose.
A letter of SR's made a big impression on me (which I've mentioned on the blog several times) when he said that the tradition was irrevocably broken in 1917 when the Tsar was deposed, then murdered. Since then (SR said - I paraphrase from memory) there was no safe path of obedience - and spiritual fathers ought now not to be served "blindly" (as in the past) but should instead be regarded as teachers, whose teaching requires discernment from the pupil.
I brooded on this for a long time, and eventually felt that its implication was that the church was no longer a primary means to salvation, but individual discernment was - indeed, I later realized that such discernment actually and always is primary (whether acknowledged or not).
Such a Christian life is always pursued within human society, and that society may include a church which may be Orthodox - and may indeed be a monk's life. But at the heart there must be discernment, and that fact needs to be acknowledged.
@Daniel, Bruce,
very interesting discussion. it's really making me want to read the book again.
wrt the 'brother' versus 'father' Seraphim question. what i recall was that brother Seraphim didn't think he was suited to be father Seraphim and resisted it for a while. but then the brother grew, indeed, into a father - and turned from his earlier zealotry into a larger and, more god-like, understanding and way of being. at this point he also abandoned his 'double negative' writing projects (from which only the section on nihilism remains), and focused more on positive projects, and not just written ones. but to me, now (and probably even then), this is more a testament to Seraphim's genius and ability to better himself through circumstances, than of the hierarchy working in transforming people. in short, it wasn't his obedience to the authority of the church itself, but rather his obedience to his own convictions, that allowed him to grow into something even larger (a saint, many say, and i'm convinced it is the case as well).
@Laeth - Maybe, but that wasn't my interpretation.
I noticed because I was interested by the contrast with the modern Roman Catholic monasticism, which is almost wholly of priests, and lay brothers seem to be regarded as second rate.
The Orthodox idea (or ideal) seems to be that lay brothers (and un-ordained hermits, even more so) are *the real deal*, and the hieromonks (and perhaps Bishops) therefore a kind of "necessary evil"! I don't understand why, maybe it was simply because of the worldly distractions of their duties, but I came across instances of sniping/ eye-rolling against hieromonks.
The relative unimportance of Holy Communion (Divine Liturgy) for the Orthodox is, presumably at the root of it. It seems that some of the great saints of the "desert" went without communion for years, even decades perhaps - although (I think) frequently participating in liturgies of various kinds.
By contrast, in recent centuries and until not many decades ago, Roman Catholicism (and indeed Anglo Catholicism - of which I have some experience) became built around the Mass, as frequently as possible (and daily for monks). A plentiful supply of priests was therefore vital.
What is interesting to someone from the British Isles, is that all these were features of what gets called Celtic Christianity. Celtic Christianity (which was the organization and practice in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Western and Northern England - seems simply to be an Eastern Orthodox organization and emphasis which persisted in the far West of the Bishop of Rome's dominion.
I intend to reread it as well. One possible approach that may make it a bit more interesting is to read the updated version (or, if you have read the updated version, then to read the first version). There are supposed to be a number of important differences between these two versions: I have heard that the updated version, aside from providing additional information and anecdotes of Rose, actually _downplayed_ some of the more spiritual interpretations that were presented in the original version, such as the scene of Rose's death. I don't know if these claims are true, but I think it will be a worthwhile project to experience each version and compare them. The original version is titled "Not of This World" (1993); the revised version is titled "Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works" (2010).
As Bruce is probably aware, Fr. Damascene Christensen is also the author of a large tome on the connection between Christianity and the Chinese concept of The Dao (The Way). Rose had originally been on a path to becoming a scholar of ancient Chinese philosophy prior to is encounter with Orthodoxy, and he read and translated classical Chinese works. He even said that the conception of man in ancient Chinese philosophy was the most noble he had encountered prior to learning about Orthodoxy. Christensen, through Rose's influence, also studied extensively in Chinese philosophy resulting in his producing his large work “Christ, the Eternal Tao".
As far as Rose as priest versus lay monk, I would agree that his path was originally that of the purity of the non-ordained struggler, but I do think he grew into his role as priest. To me, it is now inconceivable to think of him outside of his priesthood: Photos of him baptizing converts in the streams and lakes near Platina show him at his most joyful.
As Bruce says, many of the most important Orthodox witnesses were lay monks, with ancient examples like St. Maximus the Confessor, and modern ones such as St. Paisios of the Holy Mountain.
In terms of liturgy and communion, these things are central to Orthodoxy, although there are certainly many examples of those who went for years or decades partaking only seldom. (Most famously, perhaps, St. Mary of Egypt, who was said to have communed only a single time in her several decades of Christian life.)
@Daniel F -
Yes, I have read about the differences between the two biographies, and I'm not sure what was the motivation.
"the connection between Christianity and the Chinese concept of The Dao (The Way)"
As you may have gathered, if you read this blog much, I now regard this as a profound error! - and one to which modern Westerners are especially prone. Resurrection - incarnation, the self raised to divinity) is pretty close to being the opposite destination from the various descriptions of "Eastern" spirituality/ religion - whether these are Hindu, Buddhist, Taoism or whatever - all of which tend to assimilate the self into a discarnate divine.
And there is indeed a significant strand of this *directionality* in Orthodox mysticism (eg. the Hesychast tradition) - although with a distinction between communion of the personal with God (Orthodoxy), versus loss of the self and assimilation with the impersonal divine (the Eastern religions).
BTW - I don't know if you noticed that I host a back-up mirror version of The Apocalypse by Archbishop Averky - which I was pleased to do at the request of the author of a superb web site you probably know well: https://startingontheroyalpath.blogspot.com/
@Daniel, Bruce,
I remember I chose the updated version after having read Fr. Damascene's explanation (though now I can't really remember why). But I'll check it again to see if it warrants reading the earlier version.
I also read, and highly appreciated Christ the Eternal Tao, especially the 'new testament tao te ching' - which is the initial, poetic part, as I remember. I enjoyed much less so, and to Bruce's point, the theological/metaphysical elaboration.
my own point of view is that philosophical taoism is as far from Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu (which are among my primary influences) as Christianity is from the Bible and the Gospels (especially Mark and John). I just don't see the oneness and absolutism there as apparently everyone else did and does - much like conventional christian theology, it's read back into the primary texts, and then it's hard for everyone else to not read them that way. to me, all that seems to be borrowings from their neighbors down south - Hinduism, or more specifically, vedanta. and also if we go beyond the texts and put them into context with the larger chinese civilization of the time (prior to buddhism), which was always very focused on the human and the personal (i distinguish these because the personal, for the ancient chinese, goes for everything that exists, not just humans) - and quite unlike Hindu civilization.
I think the extent to which orthodoxy is independent from the hierarchy is also not as simple or as radical - since Constantinople, and then Russia, stood as great empires, whereas in the West the Roman Church had to pick up some of those roles, to bring back some semblance of order, then of course overstepping its boundaries. but in any case, other than St. Anthony of Egypt, which is a very old case, I was never very drawn to the examples I found of 'lay brothers' and hermits and so forth. I remember enjoying, for example, The Way of the Pilgrim but also thinking that much of his search was just a dire need of a wife!
@Laeth - My impression of Taoism - the spiritual activity, rather than any particular personage - is that it was/is an attempt to revert to Barfield's Original Participation - to the primal (early childhood) state of immersive and essentially passive spirituality.
I find this appealing! But I think it is delusory. It can't be done and the attempt leads (for example) to some of the worst aspects of the sixties counter-culture.
@Bruce
i agree that taoism is indeed that, or at least part of it is - the other part is verbose nonsense about oneness (which also goes well with new agery). i find neither side of it appealing for different reasons. what i am interested in, and to the point of this post, is precisely specific, individual people, like Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.
Thank you both for the exchange.
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