Fr Seraphim Rose Quotes

Christ is the only exit from this world; all other exits-sexual rapture, political utopia, economic independence-are but blind alleys in which rot the corpses of the many who have tried them

It is essential to realise, that, while we make efforts to live the Christian life today, the world which have formed in our spoiled times, demands soul, both in the everyday life and in the religion, and can be called totalitarian.

It is later than you think.

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; the logic that sets itself up against the Christian Revelation is merely the servant of another “revelation,” of a false “absolute truth”: namely Nihilism. In

The more you are in suffering and difficulties and are “desperate” for God, the more He is going to come to your aid, reveal Who He is and show you the way to get out. This is why it is not spectacular things like miracles that we should look for. We know from the story of St. Nicetas related earlier that this is the worst possible approach and leads to deception. The right approach is found in the heart which tries to humble itself and simply knows that it is suffering, and that there somehow exists a higher truth which not only can help this suffering, but can bring it into a totally different dimension. This passing from suffering to transcendent reality reflects the life of Christ, Who went to His suffering on the Cross, endured the most horrible and shameful type of death, and then, totally to the consternation of His own disciples, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sent His Holy Spirit and began the whole history of His Church.

The Liberal still speaks, at least on formal occasions, of “eternal verities,” of “faith,” of “human dignity,” of man’s “high calling” or his “unquenchable spirit,” even of “Christian civilization”; but it is quite clear that these words no longer mean what they once meant. No Liberal takes them with entire seriousness; they are in fact metaphors, ornaments of language that are meant to evoke an emotional, not an intellectual, response—a response largely conditioned by long usage, with the attendant memory of a time when such words actually had a positive and serious meaning.

This axiom has a corollary: the absolute cannot be attained by means of the relative. That is to say, the first principles of any system of knowledge cannot be arrived at through the means of that knowledge itself, but must be given in advance; they are the object, not of scientific demonstration, but of faith.

In the 1970s, the Russian Orthodox hieromonk Fr. Seraphim Rose famously said that he believed that there was a spirit in the Charismatic movement (which was then having a small impact in a handful of places in Orthodoxy), but that he believed that it was not the Holy Spirit. That is, he suggested that its origins were demonic: The “charismatic” texts themselves make it quite clear that what is involved in these experiences—when they are genuine and not merely the product of suggestion—is not merely the development of some mediumistic ability, but actual possession by a spirit. These people would seem to be correct in calling themselves “spirit-filled”—but it is certainly not the Holy Spirit with which they are filled! (Fr. Seraphim Rose, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, 157)

Let not us, who would be Christians, expect anything else from it than to be crucified. For to be Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example — and warning — to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection. If we would rise with Christ, we must first be humbled with Him — even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world. And we must be crucified outwardly, in the eyes of the world; for Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world, and the world cannot bear it, even a single representative of it, even for a single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist, now or at any time. No wonder then, that it is hard to be a Christian — it is not hard, it is impossible. No one can knowingly accept a way of life which, the more truly it is lived, lead the more surely to one’s own destruction. And that is why we constantly rebel, try to make life easier, try to be half-Christian, try to make the best of both worlds We must ultimately choose — our felicity lies in one world or the other, not in both. God give us the strength to pursue the path to crucifixion; there is no other way to be Christian.

There has been destruction on a wide scale before, and there have been men who have gloried in destruction; but never until our own time have there been a doctrine and a plan of destruction, never before has the mind of man so contorted itself as to find an apology for this most obvious work of Satan, and to set up a program for its accomplishment.

The first principles of any system of knowledge cannot be arrived at through the means of that knowledge itself, but must be given in advance; they are the object, not of scientific demonstration, but of faith. We have discussed, in an earlier chapter, the universality of faith, seeing it as underlying all human activity and knowledge.

Science is, by its nature, knowledge of the particular, and metaphysics is knowledge of what underlies the particular and is presupposed by it.