Dear Father Michael [Azkoul],<\/p>\n
Christ is in our midst!<\/p>\n
Thank you for your letter. I am frankly happy to see someone with your views on Blessed Augustine willing to do something besides hit him (and all of us who have any respect for him) over the head.<\/p>\n
You ask for cooperation on what seems to be a \u201cthorough study\u201d of Bl. Augustine. I really wonder about the value of such a study\u2014for someone who wishes to expose the source of \u201cWestern influence\u201d in Orthodox theology, this detailed analysis itself seems so terribly Western!<\/p>\n
If your attempt is to find our Augustine\u2019s real place in the Orthodox Church, I think your approach is all wrong. It assumes that \u201cwe moderns\u201d are the ones who can do this\u2014that we can \u201cknow better\u201d than anyone in the Orthodox past. I don\u2019t think so. I have a deep distrust of all of us who are writing on theological subjects today\u2014we are more under \u201cWestern influence\u201d than anyone before, and the less we are aware of it, the more obnoxious our \u201cWesternism\u201d becomes. Our whole cold, academic, and often disdainfiil approach to theology is so remote from the Fathers, so foreign to them. Let us admit this and try not to be so presumptuous (I speak for myself also).<\/p>\n
I have no time (and probably not the sources) to find out how much St. Photios.or St. Mark read of Bl. Augustine. I would suspect that St. Photios had read rather little apart from the texts under dispute, and St. Mark probably more (in fact, St. Mark can probably be shown to be under Augustine\u2019s \u201cinfluence\u201d in some way if you search hard enough!\u2014his disciple Gennadius, after all, was the translator of Thomas Aquinas into Greek). Undoubtedly their respect for Augustine was based on the general respect for him in the Church, especially in the West from the very beginning.<\/p>\n
And this brings up the only real question I think you might fruitfully research: what did the Western Church think of Blessed Augustine in the centuries when it was Orthodox? The West knew him as one of their own Fathers; it knew his writings well, including the disputes over them. What did the Western Fathers who were linked with the East think of him? We know St. Cassian\u2019s opinion\u2014he challenged (politely) Augustine\u2019s teaching on grace while accepting his authority on other questions. St. Vincent of Lerins\u2019 argument is more with the immoderate followers of Augustine. In neither case was there talk of \u201cheresy,\u201d or of someone who was totally un-Orthodox. St. Faustus of Lerins\u2014if anyone, he should be an enemy of Augustine, but the evidence seems to the contrary. St. Caesarius of Arles, St. Gregory the Great\u2014admirers of Augustine, while not following his exaggerations on grace. I don\u2019t mention some of the enthusiastic followers of Augustine.<\/p>\n
There is room for research here in Latin sources, but no research can overthrow the obvious fact (it seems to me)\u2014the Orthodox West accepted him as a Father. If he\u2019s really a \u201cheretic,\u201d then doesn\u2019t the whole West go down the drain with him? I\u2019m sure you can find enough signs of \u201cWestern mentality\u201d in Gregory the Great, for example, to disqualify him as a Father and Saint in the eyes of many of today\u2019s Orthodox scholars\u2014he also is accepted in the East on the basis of his general reputation in the West, and on the basis of his Dialogues (which I\u2019m sure a few would now question as having a right to be called an Orthodox book).<\/p>\n
I think the \u201cheresy hunt\u201d over Augustine reveals at least two major faults in todays Orthodox scholars who are pursuing it:<\/p>\n
1. A profound insecurity over their own Orthodoxy, born of the uncertainties of our times, the betrayal of ecumenism, and their own purely Western education. Here Augustine is a \u201cscapegoat\u201d\u2014hit him hard enough and it proves how Orthodox you yourself really are!<\/p>\n
2. An incipient sectarian consciousness\u2014in attacking Augustine so bitterly, one not only attacks the whole Orthodox West of the early centuries, but also a great many Orthodox thinkers of recent centuries and today. I could name you bishops in our Church who think like Augustine on a number of points\u2014are they, then, \u201cheretics\u201d too? I think some of our anti-Augustinians are coming close to this conclusion, and thus close to schism and the formation of an \u201cOrthodox\u201d sect that prides itself on the correctness of its intellectual views. A number of people have already left our Russian Church Abroad for the Mathewites after being infected with this consciousness (not just over the issue of Augustine\u2014the Mathewites are more pro-Augustine than anyone in our Church\u2014but over the whole idea of \u201cintellectual correctness\u201d as an ideal).<\/p>\n
I myself am no great admirer of Augustine\u2019s doctrines. He does indeed have that Western \u201csuper-logicalness\u201d which the Eastern Fathers don\u2019t have (the same \u201csuper-logicalness\u201d which the critics of Augustine today display so abundantly!). 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 the Confessions (the Russian Fathers also love the Soliloquies). To destroy Augustine, as today\u2019s critics are trying to do, is to help destroy also this piety and love for Christ\u2014these are too \u201csimple\u201d for today\u2019s intellectuals (even though they also claim to be \u201cpious\u201d in their own way). Today it is Augustine; tomorrow (and it\u2019s already begun) the attack will be on the \u201csimple\u201d bishops and priests of our Church. The anti-Augustine movement is a step towards schism and further disorders in the Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n
Let us assume that one\u2019s exegesis of Romans 5:12 is incorrect; that one believes like Augustine on the transmission of original sin; that one knows little of the difference between the \u201ctranscendent\u201d and the \u201ceconomic\u201d Trinity and sometimes confuses them. Can\u2019t one still be Orthodox? Does one have to shout so loudly one\u2019s \u201ccorrectness\u201d on such matters, and one\u2019s disdain (and this disdain is strongly felt!) for those who believe thus? In the history of the Church, opinions such as these which disagree with the consensus of the Church have not been a cause for heresy hunts. Recognizing our fallible human nature, the Fathers of the past have kept the best Orthodox views and left in silence such private views which have not tried to proclaim themselves the only Orthodox views.<\/p>\n
I myself fear the cold hearts of the \u201cintellectually correct\u201d much more than any errors you might find in Augustine. I sense in these cold hearts a preparation for the work of Antichrist (whose imitation of Christ must also extend to \u201ccorrect theology\u201d!); I feel in Augustine the love of Christ.<\/p>\n
Forgive me for my frankness, but I think you probably welcome it. I have spoken from the heart, and I hope you will not pass this letter around so it can be put in various \u201cfiles\u201d and picked apart for its undoubted shortcomings.<\/p>\n
May God preserve us all in His grace! Please pray for us.<\/p>\n
With love in Christ,
\nUnworthy Hieromonk Seraphim<\/p>\n
P.s. An important point I didn\u2019t specify in the letter above\u2014the extreme criticism of Augustine show such a lack of trust in the Orthodox Fathers and bishops of the past who accepted him as a Father (including the whole Orthodox West before the Schism). This lack of trust is a symptom of the coldness of heart of our times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Father Michael [Azkoul], Christ is in our midst! Thank you for your letter. I am frankly happy to see someone with your views on Blessed Augustine willing to do something besides hit him (and all of us who have any respect for him) over the head. You ask for cooperation on what seems to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}