Sunday, May 20, 2007
THE RELGION OF THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO FR. SERAPHIM ROSE
Many would-be prophets, observing the spiritual receptivity of modern man, have forseen a coming "Age of the Spirit." This age, being actually the time of the "New Christianity" and the reign of Antichrist, was to be discussed in Part Five, the last section of Eugene's[Eugene Rose, subsequently Fr. Seraphim Rose] book. Eugene noted how a new imminent unity was being sought to replace the unity of God and His creation in the "old view." This new unity, he said, appears in many guises, the world-state, ecumenism, the "transcendent unity of religions," etc.--all inheritors of the "universalism" of the Enlightenment. It is seen in evolutionism, including that of the Roman Catholic thinker Teilhard de Chardin, who predicted the absorption of highly "evolved" beings into one cosmic mind. Even more alarmingly, Eugene saw it in the contemporary Roman Church itself. He perceived the emerging "New Christianity" as a kind of "Religion of Humanity," which watered down the traditional Christian confession of absolute truth in order to unite mankind under the banner of earthly "brotherhood." (Hieromonk Damascene, FATHER SERAPHIM ROSE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS, p. 148)
Fr. Seraphim didn't complete the book referred to in this quote. Instead he developed various chapters of it into separate books. His story is a St. Augustine-style search for God who he ultimately finds in Russian Orthodoxy. I am particularly surprised to find Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon, and Ananda Coomaraswamy among those who fed his search. I think he was referring to the social gospel that has been preached from our pulpits for decades.
