| 19. Медведева Л. Прииде кротость на ны./Знамя. 1988. 20. Порш Т. Жало смерти./Русское возрождение. 1988. 21. Потапов В. Исследования о клинической смерти./Русское возрождение. 1988. 22. Рогожин П. И. Существует ли загробная жизнь. Сан-Франциско, 1968. 23. Солженицын А. И. Раковый корпус. Собр. соч. Т. 2. Изд-во Посев, 1969. 24. Трубецкой Е. Смысл жизни. Берлин: изд-во Лев, 1922. 25. Епископ Феофан Затворник . Мысли на каждый день года. Джорданвилль: изд-во Свято-Троицкого монастыря, 1982. 26. Епископ Феофан Затворник . Письма./Надежда, 1985–1986. 27. Откровенные рассказы странника. Париж: ИМКА-Пресс, 1948. НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ 1. Green Celia. Out of body experiences. Ballentine books. N.Y.I 975. 2. Kubler-Ross E. Dr. Death does not exist. The Coevolution Quarterly. Summer. 1977. 3. Kubler-Ross E. Dr. On death and dying. MacMillan Publishing Co. N. Y. 1969. 4. Kubler-Ross E. Dr. Articles and Lectures. 5. La Haye. Life in the afterlife. Tindale. Wheaton. Illions. 1980. 6. Malz Betty. My glimps of eternity. Croosen books. Waco. Texas. 1977. 7. Maximovitch John Archbishop. Life after Death. Ortodox World. N 4 1971. 8. Moody Raymond A. Junior. Dr. Life after Life. Bantam books. 19767 9. Moody Raymond A. Junior. Dr. Reflections on Life after Life. Bantam books. 1983. 10. Osis and Haraldson. Doctors. At the hour of death. Avon books. N. Y. 1976. 11. Rawlings Maurice. Beyong the death door. Thomas Nelson Inc. Nashville. 1978. 12. Rawlings Maurice Dr. Before death comes. Sheldon Press. London. 1980. 13. Ritchie George. Dr. Return from tomorrow. Fleming H. Revell Co. Old Taspan. New Jersey. 1978. 14. Rose S. Fr. The Soul after death. St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. 1982. 15. Saborn Michael B. Dr. Recollections of Death. Corgi books. 1982. 16. Vastian E. A. Dr. Spiritual aspects of the care of cancer patients. CaA Cancer Journal. Vol. 36, N 2. 1986. 17. Went Evans. The Tibetan book of death. Oxford Univercity Press. 1960. 18. Young Karl Custav. Memories, Dreams and Reflections. |
| Pondering on the fact that Christ wrote nothing, I am often prepared to acknowledge a certain providential quality in it. Because of this fact, approaching Holy Scripture from outside the Church can be logically carried to absurdity. This has virtually already been done by Rationalism, which, on the basis of Protestantism, has shown that there are no obstacles to the complete distortion of the Gospel and its replacement with one’s own inventions. Moreover, reason left to itself will not stop at the abolition of the very books of Holy Scripture. Indeed, what is the basis for recognizing these or other books as Holy Scripture and genuine Apostolic works? There can only be one answer to this question: our recognition of certain books as Holy Scripture and authentic Apostolic works is based solely on faith in the Church and on trust in the authority of the Church. The books of Holy Scripture were written by the Apostles and entrusted to the custody of the Church. The Apostles, and particularly the Apostle Paul, even gave special proof of the genuineness of their Epistles, providing them with their own handwritten signature. The custodian of the authentic Epistles and all the Apostolic writings was the Church. Only she could judge the Apostolic value of her property. After all, the Church expressed in her decisions her teaching on the composition of Holy Scripture. Thus we must recognize as the New Testament precisely those twenty-seven well-known books which were recognized as the New Testament by the Church. Blessed Augustine said: “Ego uero Euangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae ecclesiae commouerat auctoritas.” “For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.” These words of Augustine express a great truth. If there is no Church, there will be no Holy Scripture either. Protestants and sectarians seemingly recognize and revere Holy Scripture; but does not their recognition hang in thin air? Let Protestants or sectarians completely and sincerely think out the question: why do we recognize exactly these books as Holy Scripture? To refer to one’s personal opinion is to refuse to give a reasonable answer. |
| Another Muscovite printer, a colleague of Ivan Fedorov, Peter Mstislavets, who fled with him to Lithuania, established himself in Vilno and organized the afterwards well known Vilnian press of Mamonich. The sojourn of the press in Striatin was remarkable, besides other publications, because of the issue of a new type of church book: this was the great Complete Liturgicon of 1604, which had been corrected in accordance with the Venetian Greek edition. Hence, with the production of this Liturgicon begins the history of the “correction” of the Russian liturgical books; here action was first taken to correct the books. The publishers explained what difficulty they had in choosing the original for the printed edition. The manuscript books did not agree with one another, and it was difficult to choose from among them that which, by rights, might be called the best. They had to turn to the Greek edition and make a new translation. The correction was done according to the Venetian edition. It is possible that the Venetian text of the Liturgicon preserved that form of the order of the liturgy which the famous liturgist and churchman Philotheos, Patriarch of Constantinople, gave it in the 14th century. The Striatin edition was in fact on the highest level. The explanatory directions first given in it for the actions of the celebrants have remained almost without alteration until the present day. Thus, a principle was established: instead of local manuscripts that did not agree with one another, the text of the Venetian Greek edition was to be given in the publication of liturgical books. When the work of publishing liturgical books developed in Kiev under metropolitans Job Boretsky and Peter Moghila in the first half of the 16th century, there were no variations in the choice of text: translating committees were organized, and books – horologia, the Octoechos, the sequential Psalter, the Lenten Triodion and the Pentecostarion, etc. – were reproduced according to the Greek printed edition. |
| During Fr. Seraphim’s lifetime, his books were known to a relatively small number of people in English-speaking countries. In the two decades following his death, however, his writings have had a worldwide impact. Translated into many languages – Russian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, French, Latvian, Polish, Italian, and Malayalam (South Indian) – they have changed countless lives with their sobering truth. In Russia during the Communist suppression of spiritual literature, his books Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future and The Soul After Death were secretly distributed in the form of typewritten manuscripts, becoming known to millions. With the cessation of religious persecumion, his books and articles have been published in Russia in mass quantities, and have been on sale everywhere – even at book-tables in the Moscow subway. When American Orthodox Christians go to Orthodox churches and monasteries in Russia, the first question they are often asked is, “Did you know Fr. Seraphim Rose?” Besides the two books just mentioned, Fr. Seraphim’s published works include God’s Revelation to the Human Heart; Heavenly Realm; Genesis, Creation and Early Man; Nihilism; and The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church. All of these books were published by the St. Herman Brotherhood after Fr. Seraphim’s repose, along with his one-thousand-page biography, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works. The Brotherhood is currently preparing for publication other books by Fr. Seraphim, including his collected lectures and his long-awaited Orthodox Survival Course. Today, Orthodox Christians in Russia and other Orthodox countries of Eastern Europe see this American from southern California, Fr. Seraphim, as pivotal to the restoration of traditional spiritual principles in their ravaged homelands. He is a light of hope in the face of their uncertain future. It is time now for more of his fellow Americans – who face perhaps even greater uncertainty – to hear his message and be awakened to the eternal Truth for which he lived and died. |
| Ward, Benedicta., trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Cistercian Studies Series, Vol. 59. Oxford: A.R. Mowbray & Co., 1975. Welch, Holmes. Taosism: The Parting of the Way. Revised ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1965. Wong, Eva. The Shambhala Guide to Taosism. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997. Wurmbrand, Richard. Tortured for Christ. Glendale, Calif: Diane Books, 1969. –. In God’s Underground. Glendale, Calif.: Diane Books, 1968. Reprint. New York: Bantam Books, 1977. TRANSLATIONS OF THE TAO TEH CHING Cheng, Man-jan. Lao Tzu: “My Words Are Very Easy to Understand”: Lectures on the Tao Teh Ching. Translated from the Chinese by Tam C. Gibbs. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1981. Ch’u Ta-kao, trans. and ed. Tao Te Ching. London: The Buddhist Society of London, 1937. Cleary, Thomas., trans. and ed. The Essential Tao. San Francisco: Harper, 1991. Feng, Gia-fu and Jane English, trans. Tao Te Ching. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1972. Fu Huisheng, trans. and ed. Lao Zi. China: Hunan Publishing House, 1992. Legge, James, trans. and ed. The Sacred Books of the East. Vol. 39. Oxford University Press, 1891. Reprinted as The Texts of Taoism, Part 1: The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu: The Writings of Chuang Tzu. New York: Dover Publications, 1962 . Lin Yutang, trans. and ed. The Wisdom of Laotse. New York: Random House, 1948. Mair, Victor H., trans. and ed. Tao Te Ching: The Classic Book of Integrity and the Way. New York: Bantam Books, 1990. Red Pine (Bill Porter), trans. and ed. Lao Tzu’s Taoteching. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1996. Ren Jiyu, trans. and ed. The Book of Lao Zi. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1993. Rose, Eugene [Fr. Seraphim], trans. Unpublished typescript of partial translation, made in conjunction with Gi-ming Shien. Includes translation of each Chinese character. Shien, Gi-ming, trans. Unpublished typescript and carbon copy of partial translation (chapters 1–2, 4–14, 15–16, 20–22, 24–25, 27–28, 34–35, 37– 45, 47, 50–52, 54–55,70–71). Collection of Fr. Seraphim Rose. |
| In reality, there was no “New Testament” when this statement was made. Even the Old Testament was still in the process of formulation, for the Jews did not decide upon a definitive list or canon of Old Testament books until after the rise of Christianity. As I studied further, I discovered that the early Christians used a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. This translation, which was begun in Alexandria, Egypt, in the third century B.C., contained an expanded canon which included a number of the so-called “deuterocanonical” (or “apocryphal”) books. Although there was some initial debate over these books, they were eventually received by Christians into the Old Testament canon. In reaction to the rise of Christianity, the Jews narrowed their canons and eventually excluded the deuterocanonical books-although they still regarded them as sacred. The modern Jewish canon was not rigidly fixed until the third century A.D. Interestingly, it is this later version of the Jewish canon of the Old Testament, rather than the canon of early Christianity, that is followed by most modern Protestants today. When the Apostles lived and wrote, there was no New Testament and no finalized Old Testament. The concept of “Scripture” was much less well-defined than I had envisioned. Photo: http://azbyka.ru EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITINGS The second big surprise came when I realized that the first complete listing of New Testament books as we have them today did not appear until over 300 years after the death and resurrection of Christ. (The first complete listing was given by St. Athanasius in his Paschal Letter in A.D. 367.) Imagine it! If the writing of the New Testament had been begun at the same time as the U.S. Constitution, we wouldn’t see a final product until the year 2076! The four Gospels were written from thirty to sixty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. In the interim, the Church relied on oral tradition-the accounts of eyewitnesses-as well as scattered pre-gospel documents (such as those quoted in 1 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Timothy 2:11-13) and written tradition. |
| Was Moses Really the Author of the Pentateuch? How should the Orthodox be? I would suggest, above all, not imposing grievous ties on oneself by confusing the stubbornness of Protestant fundamentalism with Patristic Tradition. For them, the authority of Scripture is based upon a literal interpretation of Revelation: God dictated these words to the great Prophet Moses, and therefore they are trustworthy. But for them, on the other hand, there is no such thing as Tradition. The average Orthodox reader of the Bible doesn’t think about questions such as the authorship or dating of individual books. The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch of Moses? Of course, the Prophet Moses wrote it – after all, that’s what it’s called, and that’s what Scripture and Tradition teaches. And whoever doesn’t agree is an impious atheist. But then this Orthodox reader might come up against arguments from the other side. He either rejects them out of hand, starting directly from the conclusions without bothering with the arguments, or… he considers them and agrees with some of it. Does this then mean Scripture and Tradition are unreliable? Some draw this conclusion. Let’s stop and think about it. Tradition is a difficult and diverse thing; in it one can find all kinds of different statements (for instance, about a flat earth, the sun revolving around the earth, and the marriages of hyenas with morays), but only some of them are in fact of doctrinal significance. The question of the authorship of Biblical books clearly is not one of them. But what about the name the “Pentateuch of Moses”? Doesn’t it indicate an author? Not necessarily. Thus, the Psalter bears the name of King David, but David definitely didn’t write Psalm 136, “By the waters of Babylon,” simply because he died long before the Babylonian captivity. It’s unlikely that Jonah, Ruth, and Job themselves wrote the books that bear their names. And the Prophet Samuel certainly didn’t write the two books bearing his name in the Hebrew tradition (First and Second Kings in ours [i.e., in the Septuagint]) simply because he died in the middle of the first book. |
| Irenaeus also valued other, non-Scriptural, Christian literature such as the letters of his former teacher Poly carp, or those of the martyr Ignatius, the popular allegory The Shepherd written by a Christian named Hermas, the traditions collected by Papias of Hierapolis, or the apologetic writings of Justin of Rome. But Irenaeus definitely did not welcome books which embodied the heretical views he thought were so harmful to people and dishonouring of the God of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. This being the case, it is sometimes hard for scholars to resist overstating his methods of dealing with opponents. We have already cited Pagels’s statement that Irenaeus resolved to ‘to hack down the forest of “apocryphal and illegitimate” writings’. Just how does she think Irenaeus undertook to accomplish his literary deforestation project? According to Pagels, ‘Irenaeus confronted the challenge... by demanding that believers destroy all those “innumerable secret and illegitimate writings” that his opponents were always invoking... ’ 93 Again, she calls attention to Irenaeus’ ‘instructions to congregations about which revelations to destroy and which to keep...’ 94 Censoring books would be bad enough. But ordering their destruction sounds positively barbaric! Based on this practice alone, it is easy to form a conception of Irenaeus as a cruel inquisitor willing to employ extreme measures to achieve and enforce theological uniformity. The only problem is, the charge isn’t true. Nowhere in the five books of Against Heresies does Irenaeus demand that anybody destroy any rival, holy books. Nor in his other surviving theological work, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, does he make any such demand. Without question, he would have preferred that heretical books should not exist, and that no Christian should ever have to read them – he clearly advocates that rank-and-file Christians avoid them (AH 5.20.2). But ordering their destruction – as if he had the authority to give such instructions to churches and expect them to be obeyed – is another matter. |
| Father George: Why is that? A. Grigoryan: Because while working there I discovered many problems that existed in the organization. I was 20 then, so I was in quite an adolescent and romantic state of mind. I was at the heart of the organization, a place that employs the most respected people, who directly manage the organization here in Russia. This is a like a town unto itself,inhabited by about 300 people, the elite of the organization. They are together 24 hours a day. Staying there exposed a different side of the organization to me. I saw with my own eyes that all weaknesses, passions, psychological and spiritual illnesses that people had before joining the organization were still there. I realized that there was no spiritual transformation. I also saw that indeed nothing human is alien to the elite, including hypocrisy, deception, anger, gossip, alcoholism and many other things. This made me look at the organization a bit more objectively. Secondly, while working in the Administrative Center, I had access to a very interesting library that had a section dedicated to various religions. Nobody was interested in it, except for the translators who worked with various materials and needed to know the terminology. That section had many very interesting books by Orthodox authors of early 20th century. For example, there were books by N.N. Glubovsky and various professors of Kiev, Kazan and Moscow Ecclesiastical Academies. There were also three volumes of the Explanatory Bible by A.P. Lopukhin. I saw serious Orthodox literature for the first time in my life. I was amazed, because, as you can imagine, people in all such pseudo-Christian organizations have a very low opinion of Orthodox faith and theology. Father George: I'm afraid they’ll remove these books from their library after watching our program ( laughs ). A. Grigoryan: Maybe they already did. So, I took these books and started reading them out of pure curiosity. The more I read, the more I was amazed at how profound, interesting and convincing these books were. |
| Despite these noble accomplishments, little formal attention was given to the development of programs for adult religious education and faith formation during this period. This was a critical failure that would have profound consequences. In the period after World War II, most Orthodox young adults who were born in this country were furthering their education and were in constant contact with other Americans of different religious backgrounds. Yet, most Orthodox young adults were sadly limited when it came to understanding and expressing their faith. Many had been taught to understand the church chiefly as an ethnic community. Few had developed a genuine appreciation of the doctrinal and ethical teachings of the Orthodox Church. Few heard sermons that they could truly understand. Fewer understood the meaning of the church " s ritual. Many church leaders appear to have ignored these facts. Yet, these difficult facts led some farsighted clergy to begin to pay more attention to the importance of adult religious education and worship. As a result, there was an increase in the number of books and pamphlets in English designed to provide explanation of the teachings, customs, and traditions of the Orthodox Church. It is interesting to note that Archbishop Michael of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese published his study entitled The Orthodox Church in 1952. About the same time, Metropolitan Antony (Bashir) of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese published his study entitled Studies in the Greek Orthodox Church. Father George Mastrantonis, a pioneer in the writing of books and pamphlets for American Orthodox readers, published his What Is the Eastern Orthodox Church? in 1956. Father Timothy Andrews in 1953 provided a comprehensive bibliography of the growing number of books and pamphlets. 225 This period saw the publication of a number of prayer books, often bilingual, that contained the text of the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, no less than four such bilingual versions of the liturgy appeared between 1948 and 1955. While three of these were prepared by parish priests, one was published by the seminary press in 1950 and received the official sanction of the archdiocese. In addition to these prayer books, a number of guides to the liturgical services began to appear. 226 |
|
|
