On Polemics

[a (partial) review of the work “Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future” by Seraphim Rose.]

Cover of the Book

“How absurd is it that Metropolitan George Khodr said: ‘it is Christ alone who is received as light when grace visits a Brahmin or Muslim reading his own scriptures’?”
— Seraphim Rose

“A man who is a good and true Christian should realise that truth belongs to his Lord, wherever it may be found, and should gather and acknowledge it even in pagan literature”
— Saint Augustine

The work starts with some general criticisms. It is against ecumenism, against syncretism, and against protestantism. It seems the work starts off very good, for our sentiments are the same! But then it is against Roman Catholicism (in general), and against Masonry (in general). We will not stand for this. But now is not the time to defend these things. What is important is that the author has openly laid out his sentiments and dispositions, and this is quite commendable. Let us begin with the content of the book.

Arabic depiction of Metatron

The first chapter (‘Do We Have The Same God That Non-Christians Have?’) can be summarised in the following words: “The Christians do not have the same God as the (modern, not ancient) Jews and the Muslims do, because the Christians have the Son of God and the Jews and Muslims do not have him, but have only the Father.” We certainly agree that the Father and the Son always go together, and that a tradition that misses the one or the other in its conception of God is incomplete. But we disagree in that the Jews and Muslims do not have a conception of the Son of God next to the Father.
To start with the Jews, they assuredly have both the Son of God, and also the Holy Spirit. The first of these two the Kabbalists (“Kaballah” just means ‘tradition’, for it is the inner tradition of Judaism) often call ‘Metatron’, the second of these two they call ‘Shekhinah’. Metatron is called ‘Prince of the Universe’, just as Christ is called ‘King of the Universe’ or ‘Pantocrator’. In the Maaseh Merkabah Metatron is called ‘the lesser YHWH’ because in Hebrew the name ‘Metatron’ is numerically equivalent to the name of God ‘Shaddai’ (God Almighty, referring to the Judging aspect of God (cf. “the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all Judgement to the Son)). It is ‘lesser’ because in function Justice is lower than Mercy, in the same way that Christ says “the Father is greater than I” (as is detailed in this blogpost). In the Talmud it is described how a famous Jewish heretic named Elisha ben Abuyah saw Metatron sitting in Paradise and exclaimed ‘there are indeed two powers in heaven!’, and so he failed to grasp the essential unity of God and was declared heretical. It is also said that Enoch was an ‘incarnation’ of Metatron, or that he was ‘transformed’ into Metatron when he was taken up into heaven. Furthermore the Jews say that Metatron is the most perfect ’emanation’ of God, and this language reminds us of the language of the Credo (“genitum non factum”). Even the Muslims record that the Jews venerated the Son of God, as is said in Surah 9:30: “The Jews say, “Uzair (another name for Metatron) is the Son of God”. But enough has been said of the Jews, let us move on to the Muslims.
The Muslims speak of the “Light of Muhammed”, which God ‘created’ (we put ‘created’ between quotation marks, because properly speaking ‘creation’ only refers to creation ‘ex nihilo’, and as only this Light was made out of nothing, and all other things out of this Light, the two senses of ‘creation’ have very little in common (as is also said in this blogpost)) as the first thing, and from which and for whom subsequently the whole world and everything in it was created. The parallels are obvious, for in Colossians we read: “who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creatures: because in him were created all things (…), through him and for him all were created.” And in many hadith we read something along the lines of this: “I have created the world and its inhabitants to demonstrate your honour and status. And if it were not for you, O Muhammad, I would not have created the world.” The Prophet also states: “I was a Prophet when Adam was between soul and body”. Furthermore it is said that God is the unmanifested Light, while Muhammad is the manifested Light. And again, the Son is called Light, and the “image of the invisible (unmanifested) God”. Enough of the Muslims has been said too, I think.
So we see how both the Jews and Muslims believe in the Son of God, and also an incarnation of Him. That this is not the same specific historical instance should be of no importance to the one who can look beyond mere historical matters, i.e. the one who can understand metaphysical matters. Sadly, in our time, all too often are all things reduced to ‘history’. Both the Marxists and Liberals, and even many Christians today believe that ‘history’ is the ultimate matter, the defining principle, and that we are at its peak. It is good that Rose criticises these ideas, but he should be careful not to fall into the same error. For he seems to ascribe a too great importance to a historical event, and almost forgets that all historical events only gain significance by being reflections of timeless metaphysical ‘events’. But let us continue to the next chapter.

Kali standing on Shiva

The second chapter (‘The Power of the Pagan Gods: The Assault upon Christianity’) can be summarised as follows: “A woman is raised Catholic, becomes Hindu for 20 years, but luckily comes back to Orthodoxy after, and will describe to you all the terrors of her 20 years in Hinduism”. Let us look into the horrors and heresies she describes.
First of all she says she was highly attracted to Hinduism because it had no conception of ‘original sin’. This is a very widespread misconception, and I’m glad to remove it once and for all. ‘Original sin’ refers to the fact that man is removed from his original state in Paradise, not by any conscious decision of his own in this life, but due to the effects of the actions of the first humans, who fell from their state of grace by their own choice. This is clearly described in the Bible. But the Hindus too, say that humanity has fallen from its original state. It speaks most elaborately about the passing of the Satya Yuga, or ‘Golden Age’, and how we now, because of this fall, live in the Kali Yuga, or ‘Dark Age’. The people living in the Dark Age are affected by this condition of living in this age, yet had no choice in it! Wow, sure does seem like Hinduism has no concept of original sin or the fallen state of man.
Secondly she says that she was attracted to Hinduism because it had no conception of ‘eternal hell’. This is once more false, firstly because the Christian conception of ‘eternal hell’ should really be called ‘perpetual hell’ (as it says in the Greek ‘aionian’, which means perpetual, or relating to an ‘aion’, an age, a cycle (cf. in saecula saeculorum) or a ‘world’) and secondly because the Hindu conception of Hell (or ‘hells’, the multiple levels of Hell, as for example also described in the Divine Comedy (which was called ‘the Summa Theologicae in verse’, indicating its perfect orthodoxy)) is precisely that of being perpetual, i.e. lasting as long as the ‘world’ (or ‘aion’) does!
Thirdly the woman in question was attracted to Hinduism because it told her that pain was ultimately not real, that it was just ‘maya’, or illusion. This is another all too common misconception, Hinduism does not say that ‘Maya’ is absolute unreality, but rather that is is not absolute reality. A Christian would also say that the world is real, but not the ultimate reality, because that title is reserved for God. The woman pretends as if Hinduism declares that the world “has no real existence”, but rather Hinduism declares that it “has no real independent existence”. A Christian would say that nothing has its “raison d’etre” in itself, except for God.
Fourthly she found Hinduism attractive because it declared that Man is perfectible. But does Christianity not say the same? Does Jesus not say: “Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect”? Does Saint Athanasius not say “God became man, so that man might become God”? We will let the quotes speak for themselves.
Fifthly she liked Hinduism because it had no doctrines, because everything was practical, because faith was not necessary, because there were no mysteries, no obligatory rites, and so on. All we will say about this, is that it is clear that she had a purely ‘westernised’ teacher, and that she had no experience with actual, orthodox Hinduism, which is full of all these things.
After this she speaks about how ‘psychic (pseudo-spiritual) experiences’ are bad and very deceiving, and that Eastern Orthodoxy even has a word for these experiences, namely ‘prelest’. We wholeheartedly agree here (and the fact that Eastern Orthodoxy has a specific word for this even indicates the perfect orthodoxy of that tradition). But when she says that Hinduism is full of these kinds of things, we wholeheartedly disagree. One of the great Hindu teachers, Adi Shankara, expressly states the necessity of disregarding all psychic powers. He says that one should never try to achieve them, and that if somehow one achieves them (accidentally, for example by reaching a certain spiritual state) one should never use them, and that they are only obstacles on the path to enlightenment, because they are mere phenomena and thus not absolutely real, and that it would be foolish to attach any worth to them. What is funny to us is how the woman first scolds Hinduism for its doctrine that phenomena are not real, and then scolds it for its practice of attaching great value to phenomena! Hinduism must be a contradictory mess in the mind of this woman.
Now there follows a whole tirade about how Hindus value Pride and how Christians value Humility, and about how “what Christians believe to be evil, Hindus believe to be good, and conversely, what Hindus believe to be evil, Christians believe to be good” (sic). This statement that Hinduism and Christianity share no common morality or goals is so absurd that it barely merits being mentioned. The woman says that this is true because Hindus want to become God and Christians don’t want to become God. Let us purify this idiocy by mentioning the words of Saint Athanasius (as quoted in the Catholic Catechism) once more: “the Son of God became Man, so that we might become God.”
The woman goes on to describe the Hindu goddess Kali as ‘pure Evil’ and ‘literally Satan’. We don’t see how a goddess mostly renowned for slaying demons (asuras) and thieves who kill priests (brahmins) can be pure evil, but perhaps we are just ignorant of what the woman calls the “secret doctrine” of the Hindus, which one can never find in print because it is only orally transmitted. (To understand the symbolism of death present in the symbolism of the goddess Kali, see this blogpost)
She follows this up by describing how Hinduism is based on ‘evolution’. Anyone familiar with the Hindu doctrine of the Yugas knows this to be false. It would even be more accurate to say that Hinduism is based on ‘devolution’, i.e. the progression from the Golden Age to the current age, the Dark Age.
What is most stunning about this whole chapter is how Rose (speaking via the woman in the article) exclusively attacks those Hindus which are entirely ‘Westernised’, i.e. those who have been rejected in the East and which have come to the West to ‘evangelise’ (which, by the way, is something entirely foreign to Hinduism), e.g. Vivekananda and Fakirs who do cute little tricks (which only impress western minds). Rose never encounters Hinduism on its own grounds, never discusses its great teachers, never its enormous scriptures. He tries to find the lowest expression of the tradition that he can find, and then pretends that that is all there is to it! Why does he do this? Why does he mention the Bhagavad Gita, but not quote a single passage from it? Why does he mention some western ‘guru’ from California, but not any of the great teachers of Hinduism, such as Adi Shankara?
About his reasons, we have drawn our conclusions, but we will leave the reader to draw his own.

The so-called “Rope Trick”, one of the little tricks fakirs would often perform for Western audiences

Chapter three can be ignored, but for form we will shortly discuss it. It is a story about some fakir doing some kind of (psychic) trick. We need only remind the reader of what we have said above about the authoritative teachers of Hinduism disregarding all attachment to “psychic powers”. Strangely enough, this is something Rose should have known (or perhaps did know, but chose not to mention), seeing as he studied the works of Rene Guenon during his ‘spiritual journey’, who described in detail the doctrines of Hinduism, including this little fact about the ‘rejection of powers’.

A Hindu ‘Vimana’, a flying chariot or abode, which some believe to be ancient depictions of UFO’s

We will not discuss any of the chapters that follow these three, because there is very little in them for us to criticise. Rose speaks of syncretic movements (Christian Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, Charismatic Revival, etc) and UFO’s and aliens (who are, according to him, demons), and we believe him to be mostly right on these matters. The reader is advised to thoroughly read and study these chapters, so that he may safeguard himself against the heresies and dangers Rose speaks against.

Let us then finish our writing. “Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future” is above all a polemical work. There is in principle nothing wrong with polemics, but in practice it becomes wrong when directed against the wrong things. It is always good to polemicise against falsehoods. The question is merely: quid est falsitas? Does Rose really believe what he writes? Or does he have some ulterior motive? We suspect the latter.

Nevertheless, “Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future” is a good work, and we advise you to read it. Keep in mind its polemical nature, and you will avoid being deceived by its (potential) traps.