In Fr. Seraphim Rose’s time, as well as today in 2024, many diverse and strongly held opinions exist when it comes to how we should regard Blessed Augustine of Hippo. In one extreme, some treat him as either the greatest father of the first millennium, as one can see in some western confessions and even by some Orthodox. In another extreme, some see him as the root source of a multitude of heresies, even explicitly or implicitly condemning him as a heretic.

The text of this recording is his full letter to Fr. Michael Azkoul written on June 13/26, 1981.

-BUY “The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church” by Fr. Seraphim Rose:

https://www.sainthermanmonastery.com/mobile/Product.aspx?ProductCode=blaug

-LISTEN to a fuller treatment of the Orthodox Church's understanding of Blessed Augustine according to Fr. Seraphim Rose:

https://youtu.be/1KT4APf8GFM

-READ this letter and others from Fr. Seraphim Rose:

https://thoughtsintrusive.wordpress.com/letters-of-fr-seraphim-rose-1961-1982/

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Fr. Seraphim writes:

If your attempt is to find our Augustine’s real place in the Orthodox Church, I think your approach is all wrong. It assumes that “we moderns” are the ones who can do this—that we can “know better” than anyone in the Orthodox past. I don’t think so. I have a deep distrust of all of us who are writing on theological subjects today—we are more under “Western influence” than anyone before, and the less we are aware of it, the more obnoxious our “Westernism” becomes. Our whole cold, academic, and often disdainful approach to theology is so remote from the Fathers, so foreign to them. Let us admit this and try not to be so presumptuous (I speak for myself also).

I myself am no great admirer of Augustine’s doctrines. He does indeed have that Western “super-logicalness” which the Eastern Fathers don’t have (the same “super-logicalness” which the critics of Augustine today display so abundantly!). The one main lovable and Orthodox thing about him is his Orthodox feeling, piety, love for Christ, which comes out so strongly in his non-dogmatic works like the Confessions (the Russian Fathers also love the Soliloquies).

I myself fear the cold hearts of the 'intellectually correct' much more than any errors you might find in Augustine. I sense in these cold hearts a preparation for the work of Antichrist (whose imitation of Christ must also extend to 'correct theology'); I feel in Augustine the love of Christ.

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