Aerial Toll Houses? Yay or Nay.

Aerial Toll Houses? Yay or Nay?

  • Yes

  • No


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Shieldmaiden4Christ

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Wouldn't it be easier to do a search, and find the last 351434396 train wrecks, that contain the words "toll house" in the thread title? ;)







*gets the popcorn ready*

But it's more fun this way. I'm just doing a poll.
 
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Shieldmaiden4Christ

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As far as I know Seraphim Rose wrote about Toll Houses in the book Life after death which I donated to the local library.

Yep. I'm curious if people agree with the book or not.

There doesn't need to be debate, I'm just curious what a divide would be like in a Yes/No poll.
 
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jckstraw72

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Fr. Seraphim is only one of the many, many Saints, elders, and theologians who have written about or spoken about the toll houses. There's also Elder Paisios, Elder Porphyrios, Elder Cleopa, Elder Ephraim, St. Justin Popovich, St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Fr. Artemy Vladimirov, Met. Hierotheos Vlachos, Constantine Cavarnos, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc ......
 
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tapi

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Fr. Thomas Hopko said:
My opinion, to sum it up, is that it (The aerial toll houses) is a very classical traditional Orthodox allegorical teaching that began to be too literally interpreted, and therefore got deviated in various ways, so that you get to the point where a guy like Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo) just about denies the doctrine totally and claims that praying for the dead is just an act of love and whatever happens when you die, you die and that’s it.

I honestly believe that is not the traditional teaching. The traditional teaching is that you have to enter into the presence of Christ and be purified and delivered and forgiven whatever sins you are hanging on to. The allegory is that these are named, the point being that the more we are purified before we die, the better off we are. When a person does die, we who are still alive on earth pray for them that they would be making it through, so to speak, that their death would be a purification from their sin, that they would accept the risen Christ and they would accept his grace and his forgiveness, and that they would enter into Paradise.

I think it is very wrong, personally, to put some kind of time frame on this, or to think about it in terms of earth time, or to think about it in terms of earth/space. I don’t think it has anything at all to do with time or space. It is simply a spiritual, poetical, allegorical way of speaking about the last temptations that strike a person when they are passing through the process of dying. That is how I understand it.

Food for thought
 
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To be honest, I find the whole concept of the toll houses TERRIFYINGLY AWFUL to even contemplate for a minute, but as I read "The Soul After Death," I must say that Father Seraphim Rose does lay out quote after quote and story after story of the Fathers and saints laying out the concept of the toll houses in some form. St. Gregory the Dialogist, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. Macarius the Great, St. Anthony, St. Athanasius, and a host of other people either speaking that there will be several stages of judgment in the aerial realm or something about demons tempting and testing at checkpoints or some kind of demonic testing and trials with the saints and angels on our side, our sins unconfessed shown against us, on and on.

Trust me, I don't want to believe in this stuff. It paralyzes me with FEAR and trembling to even talk about it. And I must say that this stuff makes me focus way more on God's wrath, my sins, fear, sadness, and misery than it does on God's mercy. But how do we reconcile what the Fathers and great saints say on it with the idea of them not existing?

I'd love to talk more about this, but I notice on most Orthodox message boards this being a HOT-BUTTON issue. Father Seraphim Rose is a tough guy to discuss online. His backers and supporters fight for him with a ferocity and passion that gets them so riled up and angry if you're not a fan of his that I notice people IM each other if they disagree with him rather than ignite the ire!


Short answer: No.

Long answer: NOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
 
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jckstraw72

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jckstraw72

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I'd love to talk more about this, but I notice on most Orthodox message boards this being a HOT-BUTTON issue. Father Seraphim Rose is a tough guy to discuss online. His backers and supporters fight for him with a ferocity and passion that gets them so riled up and angry if you're not a fan of his that I notice people IM each other if they disagree with him rather than ignite the ire!

interesting POV - i've always found it to be his detractors who get more worked up
 
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