Post by Duško on Jun 5, 2019 20:24:56 GMT -5
Fr Seraphim Rose: Seeking the realization of Christian “ideals” in this world is idolatry; it is of the Antichrist
(excerpts taken from link below)
The alternative to “total war” would seem to be “total peace;” but what does such a “peace” imply? You say, “we must try as best we can to work for the eventual abolition” of war; and that is indeed what “total peace” must be: abolition of war. Not the kind of peace men have known before this, but an entirely new and “permanent” peace.
Such a goal, of course, is quite comprehensible to the modern mentality; modern political idealism, Marxist and “democratic” alike has long cherished it. But what of Christianity?—and I mean full uncompromising Christianity, not the humanist idealism that calls itself Christian. Is not Christianity supremely hostile to all forms of idealism, to all reduction of its quite “realistic” end and means to mere lofty ideas? Is the ideal of the “abolition of war” really different in kind from such other lofty aims as the “abolition” of disease, of suffering, of sin, of death? 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. Disease, suffering, sin, and death are an unavoidable part of the world we know as a result of the Fall. They can only be eliminated by a radical transformation of human nature, a transformation possible only in Christ and fully only after death.
I personally think that “total peace” is, at bottom, a utopian ideal; but the very fact that it seems practical today raises a profounder question. For, to my mind, the profoundest enemy of the Church today is not its obvious enemies—war, hatred, atheism, materialism, all the forces of the impersonal that lead to inhuman “collectivism,” tyranny and misery—these have been with us since the Fall, though to be sure they take an extreme form today. But the apostasy that has led to this obvious and extreme worldliness seems to me but the prelude to something much worse; and this is the chief subject of my letter.
Read his entire letter here:
orthodoxaustralia.org/2017/05/31/fr-seraphim-rose-seeking-the-realization-of-christian-ideals-in-this-world-is-idolatry-it-is-of-the-antichrist/
(excerpts taken from link below)
The alternative to “total war” would seem to be “total peace;” but what does such a “peace” imply? You say, “we must try as best we can to work for the eventual abolition” of war; and that is indeed what “total peace” must be: abolition of war. Not the kind of peace men have known before this, but an entirely new and “permanent” peace.
Such a goal, of course, is quite comprehensible to the modern mentality; modern political idealism, Marxist and “democratic” alike has long cherished it. But what of Christianity?—and I mean full uncompromising Christianity, not the humanist idealism that calls itself Christian. Is not Christianity supremely hostile to all forms of idealism, to all reduction of its quite “realistic” end and means to mere lofty ideas? Is the ideal of the “abolition of war” really different in kind from such other lofty aims as the “abolition” of disease, of suffering, of sin, of death? 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. Disease, suffering, sin, and death are an unavoidable part of the world we know as a result of the Fall. They can only be eliminated by a radical transformation of human nature, a transformation possible only in Christ and fully only after death.
I personally think that “total peace” is, at bottom, a utopian ideal; but the very fact that it seems practical today raises a profounder question. For, to my mind, the profoundest enemy of the Church today is not its obvious enemies—war, hatred, atheism, materialism, all the forces of the impersonal that lead to inhuman “collectivism,” tyranny and misery—these have been with us since the Fall, though to be sure they take an extreme form today. But the apostasy that has led to this obvious and extreme worldliness seems to me but the prelude to something much worse; and this is the chief subject of my letter.
Read his entire letter here:
orthodoxaustralia.org/2017/05/31/fr-seraphim-rose-seeking-the-realization-of-christian-ideals-in-this-world-is-idolatry-it-is-of-the-antichrist/