- Aug 28, 2013
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Aerial Toll Houses. Yay or nay?
You can't be serious LOL...well, maybe you are..
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*
As far as I know Seraphim Rose wrote about Toll Houses in the book Life after death which I donated to the local library.
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.
a better poll would be: how many Saints who behold the face of God say yay, and how many nay?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: NOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Unfortunately, I cannot poll them.
hahaha, yes, not literally --- but we have their books and their hymns and prayers and their icons to show us their yay or nay!
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!
I'm teasing of course.
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