Living like the Fathers

It is one of the rules of politeness at such "ecumenical" gatherings that the heterodox are not informed that the first prerequisite for studying the Fathers is to have the same faith as the Fathers of Orthodoxy.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Excellent intentions...

Unfortunately, but very significantly, the task of criticism today has been virtually identified with that of apology; the role of the critic is generally seen to be no more than that of explaining, for the uninstructed multitudes, the latest 'inspiration' of the 'creative genius.' Thus passive 'receptivity' takes the place of active intelligence, and ‘success' – the success of the 'genius' in expressing his intention, no matter what the nature of that intention – replaces excellence.
Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

The truthful historian

St. Gregory [of Tours] is an historian; but this does not mean a mere chronicler of bare facts, or the mythical 'objective observer' of so much modern scholarship who looks a things with the 'cold scrutiny' of the 'remote observer.' He had a point of view; he was always seeking a pattern in history; he had constantly before him what the modern scientist would call a 'model' into which he fitted the historical facts which he collected. In actual fact, all scientists and scholars act in this way, and any one who denies it only deceives himself and admits in effect that his 'model' of reality, his basis for interpreting facts, is unconscious, and therefore is much more capable of distorting reality than is the 'model' of a scholar who knows what his own basic beliefs and presuppositions are.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

True environmentalism

Only he who loves God can love the creation which comes from God. To love creation (or anything, for that matter) one must love it as it truly is; and since creation comes from God, one can only love it as from God and cannot help loving God thereby as well. Autonomous reason, however, by beeing out of contact with God, must also be out of contact with concrete reality (which is nothing else than created reality as given by God), and so can only look on things as ideally, as perfect…
Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose

Communism

…not merely a power-mad political regime, but an ideological-religious system whose aim is to overthrow and supplant all other systems, most of all Christianity. Communism is actually a very powerful heresy whose central thesis, if I’m not mistaken, is chiliasm or millennialism: history is to reach its culmination in an indefinite state of earthly blessedness, a perfected mankind living in perfect peace and harmony.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Balanced Orthodoxy

A well-balanced Orthodoxy can easily take any foreign influences that come and straighten them out, make them Orthodox; but a one-sided 'party-line' cuts itself off from the mainstream of Orthodoxy.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Confusion leading nowhere

Applicable to Christianity, I believe:

I am a student of Chinese philosophy, and it is my belief that I must rely upon the Chinese traditional viewpoint, rather than follow the newly invented and untraditional arguments of modern scholars. To do the latter would result in depriving Chinese philosophy of all criteria of meaning and value; it would end in a state of confusion leading nowhere.
Gi-ming Shein (Professor of Fr. Seraphim Rose)

"Modern Art" you say?

Man, in this art, is no longer even a caricature of himself; he is no longer portrayed in the throes of spiritual death, ravaged by the hideous Nihilism of our century that attacks, not just the body and soul, but the very idea and nature of man. No, all this has passed; the crisis is over; man is dead. The new art celebrates the birth of a new species, the creature of the lower depths, subhumanity.
Fr. Seraphim Rose

Agnosticism

It is decidedly wrong, then, to regard the modern Nihilist, in whatever guise he may appear as 'agnostic.' The 'death of God' has not simply happened to him as a kind of cosmic catastrophe, rather he has actively willed it – not directly, to be sure, but equally effectively by preferring something else to the true God.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Through the eyes of the great ape

If the Revolutionary goal "beyond Nihilism" is described in precisely contrary terms, and if Nihilists actually see it as a reign of "love," "peace," and "brotherhood," that is because Satan is the ape of God and even in denial must acknowledge the source of that denial, and--more to the present point--because men have been so changed by the practice of the Nihilist "virtues," and by acceptance of the Nihilist transformation of the world, that they actually begin to live in the Revolutionary Kingdom and to see everything as Satan sees it, as the contrary of what it is in the eyes of God.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Who will be man's next King?

The God hitherto so real and so present to Christian men cannot be disposed of overnight; so absolute a monarch can have no immediate successor. So it is that, at the present moment of man's spiritual history--a moment, admittedly, of crisis and transition--a dead God, a great void, stands at the center of man's faith.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Rx for nihilism

Nihilism is, most profoundly, a spiritual disorder, and it can be overcome only by spiritual means; and there has been no attempt whatever in the contemporary world to apply such means.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Azusa-poloosa

The Azusa Street Centennial gathering – one of the birthplaces of modern Pentecostalism – will attract Pentecostals and charismatic Christians worldwide on Apr. 25-29, 2006 to commemorate the 1906 Azusa Street revival.

I think I'll stick to celebrating The Nativity of Christ which is the birth of Christianity...
I refer you to The Pentecostal Movement - Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Whole Foods

The whole food of Christian Truth, however, is accessible only to faith; and the chief obstacle to such faith is not logic, as the facile modern view has it, but another and opposed faith. We have seen indeed, that logic cannot deny absolute truth without denying itself…
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

My securities...

…the only position that involves no logical contradictions is the affirmation of an absolute truth which underlies and secures all lesser truths; and this absolute truth can be attained by no relative, human means.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

The rebel cry...

Nihilist rebellion, like Christian faith, is an ultimate and irreducible spiritual attitude, having its source and its strength in itself—and of course, in the supernatural author of rebellion.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

The senseless world

… you are at a standstill because you have approached the mystery of existence with the mind, with questions and demands for explanations; whereas it can only be approached through prostration, humility, prayer—and acceptance. Accept all, take all into yourself—all that is given you. If you do not do this, if you shield yourself from one smallest bit of suffering so as to take refuge in the rational attitude of doubt, then the fault lies in yourself, and the world fails to make sense precisely because you, who look at it, make no sense. You are foul, and constantly contradict yourself, yet you expect to see the world pure, and making sense! … The saint, perhaps, who has gone through doubt and yet asked for more, and accepted it – he might be able to make “sense” of the world. But the saint is never a philosopher; he has given up merely trying to understand, and asks only to be given what is given him; he has accepted the world, and there is no longer any question of its making “sense” or not. It makes “sense,” but in no way that can be experienced in words; its “sense” must be lived, not spoken about. … We know existence is suffering, and we know that our God loves us and for this love suffered even more intensely than the greatest saint; we know this, and yet we presume to “doubt,” to offer our petty questioning of the “meaning” of it all. O vile man! Accept it and suffer more, and pray to God – pray for no object, for no cause, merely give your heartfelt prayers and tears to Him. He knows the “why” of it. He knows all.
Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

Vain pursuits

It is the great and invincible truth of Christianity that there is no annihilation; all Nihilism is in vain. God may be fought: that is one of the meanings of the modern age; but He may not be conquered, and He may not be escaped: His Kingdom shall endure eternally, and all who reject the call to His Kingdom must burn in the flames of Hell forever. ... It has, of course, been a primary intention of Nihilism to abolish Hell and the fear of Hell from men's minds, and no one can doubt their success; Hell has become, for most people today, a folly and a superstition, if not a "sadistic" fantasy. Even those who still believe in the Liberal "heaven" have no room in their universe for any kind of Hell.

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)

WCC: need I say more?

... Dr Kobia declared: “Together, as people of faith, we have faith in a better world.” ... Have Faith...


What Fr. Seraphim would say about this:
All of these ideals have enlisted the enthusiasm of some modern idealist or other, but it is quite clear to the Christian that they are secularizations and so perversions of genuine Christian hopes. They can be realized only in Christ, only in His Kingdom that is not of this world; when faith in Christ and hope in His Kingdom are wanting, when the attempt is made to realize Christian "ideals" in this world—then there is idolatry, the spirit of Antichrist.

The Church is in society because men are in society, but the end of the Church is the transformation of men, not society.

Our hope as Christians cannot be reduced to the abstract, but neither can it be reduced to the concrete; we believe and hope in a Kingdom no one living has ever seen, our faith and hope are totally impossible in the eyes of the world.

The future Kingdom has not been abandoned by modern Christians, but it has been so "toned down" that one wonders how strong the faith of Christians is. Particularly all the involvement of Christians in the projects of social idealism, seems to me a way of saying: "You, the worldly, are right. Our Kingdom 'not of this world' is so distant and we can't seem to get it across to you; so we will join you in building something we can actually see, something better than Christ and His Kingdom—a reign of peace, justice, brotherhood on earth." This is a "new Christianity," a refinement, it seems to me, of the Christianity of the "Grand Inquisitor" of Dostoyevsky.

Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose - Letter to Thomas Merton

Add another council to the list

Nicea 3?

...politics [might I add church governance?] that rejects Christian Truth must acknowledge "the people" as sovereign and understand authority as proceeding from below upwards, in a formally "egalitarian" society [church].

Fr. Seraphim (Rose)