I. I. Voloshin
The Canonization by the Moscow Patriarchate of Archbishop Luke of Crimea (Voino-Yasenetsky) as a Sign of the Times
“I have traveled quite a distance, seen devout people in the midst of the world and in monasteries. These people are extremely rare nowadays, and even then with very little knowledge, and some with confused concepts, and that is because tar is poured into the honey, i.e., they read the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, but do not abandon the counterfeit saints of the dark West. And the Russian proverb comes true: a barrel of honey, but a spoonful of tar. Throw it all out! True spiritual knowledge and spiritual guides have become scarce. Some understand things no worse than our brethren, — yet their teaching is somehow unenlightened, they walk all around, but do not hit the door, — as if playing blind man’s buff.”
— St. Ignatius Brianchaninov
The Lord called His disciples friends (John 15:14-15). They were deemed worthy of this because they accepted and strived in every way to keep His divine words, as He Himself promised: “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free” (John 8:31). It is evident that outside of freedom in the Truth, in the words of God, is the slavery of lies. Through the acceptance of the Divine Teaching, the Apostles and all true believers in Christ at all times become one with the Divine Word. The Apostle Paul testified to the fullness of this unity thus: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20), and “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).
Thus, according to the proverb “tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are,” through Christ’s saints we come to know their Divine Friend Himself. Their teaching is not properly their own, but Christ’s teaching.
First and foremost, this applies to the rank of hierarchs, the direct continuers of the Apostles’ work—the work of spreading and keeping Christ’s Doctrine. “Where the Bishop is, there is the Church,” teaches Christ’s Bishop Ignatius Theophorus.
It is clear: if a bishop spreads a teaching alien to Church Tradition, then in the True Church he will inevitably be rejected. If, however, the church community recognizes such a person as its “friend,” then there can only be a false church. By a conciliar decision of the church community to honor a bishop as a saint, certainty is expressed in the identity of this bishop’s teaching with the teaching of Christ. After canonization, the works of the hierarch are regarded by the Church as patristic[1]. That is, the works of the recently canonized Stalin Prize laureate Archbishop Luka (Voino-Yasenetsky) by the Ukrainian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate are placed by the church consciousness of the MP on the same level with the writings of Basil the Great, Gregory Palamas, and other teachers of the Church… Let us see, then, what the teaching of Archbishop Luka Voino-Yasenetsky (1877–1961), the spiritual mentor and teacher of the MP, corresponds to.
Let us turn to his main church work, published repeatedly and exclusively with laudatory commentaries in recent years: “Spirit, Soul, Body.” The subject of this work is anthropology, including questions of the creation of the world and its nature. This rather extensive work, created by the archbishop in his mature years, in 1945–47, can be perceived as the quintessence of the author’s worldview. What are its main features?
1. Authorities
It is natural for any church person to rely in their views on the teaching of the Church, on the teaching of the Holy Fathers. Our knowledge needs Revelation not only regarding strictly divine questions, but true knowledge about creation is also possible only as a revelation of the Holy Spirit. What can be said about that knowledge which is called “scientific”? Here is what St. Ignatius Brianchaninov says about this:
“Sciences are the fruit of our fall, — the acquisition and preservation of impressions and knowledge accumulated by humans during the life of the fallen reason. Scholarship is the lamp of the old man, a lamp by which ‘the gloom of darkness is reserved forever.’ The Redeemer returned to humans that Lamp which was granted to them at creation by the Creator, which they lost at their fall. This Lamp is the Holy Spirit, He is the Spirit of Truth, teaches every truth, searches the depths of God, reveals and explains secrets, grants even material knowledge when they are needed for the spiritual benefit of man. To the scientist who wishes to learn spiritual wisdom, the apostle commands: ‘If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise’ (1 Cor. 3:18). Exactly! Scholarship is not properly wisdom, but only an opinion of wisdom. The knowledge of the Truth, which is revealed to humans by the Lord, access to which is only by faith, which is inaccessible to the fallen human reason, — is replaced in scholarship by guesses, assumptions. The wisdom of this world, in which many pagans and godless people occupy a place of honor, is directly opposite, in its very beginnings, to spiritual, Divine wisdom. One cannot be a follower of both together; one must necessarily renounce the other. Fallen man is a ‘lie,’ i.e., a mode of thought, a collection of concepts and knowledge that are false, having only the appearance of reason, but in their essence — a staggering, delirium, raving of the mind struck by the mortal ulcer of sin and the fall. This malady of the mind is especially fully revealed in philosophical sciences…”[2]
Archbishop Luka’s work, as we shall see, is precisely the staggering, delirium, raving of the mind struck by the mortal ulcer of sin and the fall….
Regarding human nature, much has been said by many Holy Fathers. In antiquity, St. Gregory of Nyssa concluded the labors of his brother, St. Basil the Great, with the treatise “On the Making of Man.” All the Holy Fathers who wrote about asceticism revealed the properties of our “spirit, soul, and body” known through their experience. In times close to us, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov set forth the Orthodox teaching on this issue in his “Word on Man.” This last, unfinished work of his was published only in our time, and could not have been accessible to Archbishop Luka, but in many other works — “Word on Death,” “Word on Various States of Human Nature in Relation to Good and Evil,” etc. — the saint sets forth the church teaching on this subject with his characteristic Orthodox definiteness. So Archbishop Luka had something to lean upon in his writings. But he does not do this. In order to understand who his authorities are, whom he trusts, it is enough to cite the bibliography of his work:
- The Bible
- Philokalia, vol. 1
- Lives of the Saints
- Ch. Richet – Treatise on Metapsychics
- N. Kotik – Emanation of Psychophysical Energy
- C. du Prel – Philosophy of Mysticism
- Maudsley – Physiology and Pathology of Mind
- I. P. Pavlov – Human Physiology
- Fechner – Nanna
- Svedberg – Energy Degeneration
- Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis
- Mach – History of Mechanics
- I. Kant – Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Rosenkranz)
- Plotinus – Enneads
- Bergson – Creative Evolution
All these works are used by Archbishop Luka not in a critical, but exclusively in a positive sense. This list is enough to understand: before us is a work expressing not even so much a natural-scientific, but a false-mystical, occult worldview.
As is known, all heresies are “read out” of Holy Scripture when it is read not in the light of the spiritual reason of the Holy Fathers, but by the false flicker of one’s own carnal philosophizing. Archbishop Luka’s work is speckled with quotes from the Bible. And then it is written that about these same truths “testifies also the philosophy of Fichte and Lotze, the great deep-mindedness of Leibniz…”
As we will see further, the author does not stop even at direct blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, whom he places on the same level with demonic spirits…
2. The “Spirituality” of the Post-Christian Era
Generally speaking, analyzing Archbishop Luka’s work, assuming it to be even to some extent Orthodox, is somehow even awkward. Orthodoxy is the living chain of Church Tradition, while Archbishop Luka’s work represents his own fabrications, having essentially nothing in common with this tradition. His worldview was formed in the pre-revolutionary era, under the influence of democratic populist ideas, and the materialistic views he assimilated in his youth essentially remained unchanged, unrepented[3]. His work, alas, perfectly confirms the above-cited words of St. Ignatius: “One cannot be a follower of both [wisdoms] together; one must necessarily renounce one.” And Archbishop Luka resolutely rejects the wisdom of the Fathers, yet at the same time, unlike “classical” materialists, sincerely considers himself Orthodox…
However, even regarding scientific views, his work does not withstand any criticism. His speculations are based on the fact that he tries to present energy as something immaterial: “But one cannot, of course, say that due to its corpuscular structure it [electricity] ceased to be energy and became something material,” he writes in the first chapter, “What conclusions can we draw from the current state of natural science.” Physical energy in all its forms is completely material; having attributed to it the property of immateriality, only one step remains to be taken—and to obtain a pantheistic view of the world. And Voino-Yasenetsky takes it:
“…If even electricity cannot be called matter, but must undoubtedly be considered energy into which particles of matter having a definite mass and physical properties [?] can pass and be generated by it (an electric field), do we not have the right to assume that in time such forms of existence of matter (or rather, of energy) will be discovered which, for their properties, with even much greater grounds than electricity, should be called semi-material? And the concept of ‘semi-material’ itself contains an acknowledgment of the existence of the ‘immaterial’? Where is the basis for denying the legitimacy of our faith and confidence in the existence of purely spiritual energy, which we consider primary and the progenitor of all physical forms of energy, and through them of matter itself? …By the energy of love poured out by the all-good will of God, by the Word of God, a beginning is given to all other forms of energy, which in turn generated first particles of matter, and then through them the entire material world.”
In the Holy Fathers we often encounter the term “Divine energy.” It means God’s actions, His properties, known by us in His creation. The mercy of God, His magnificence, justice, pre-eminence, and so on—this is what is meant here by “energies.” In established scientific terminology, however, energy is one of the forms of existence of matter. Ignorance of Patristic Writings, misunderstanding of patristic terms leads Archbishop Luka to the now widespread occult worldview, when the Deity, the Creator, is equated with creation: He is viewed merely as another form of energy. That is, the world by its very nature is the Deity, which constitutes the essence of pantheism.
Further, Voino-Yasenetsky writes that “in another direction [?] the poured-out love of God created also the entire spiritual world, the world of rational angelic beings, the human mind and the entire world of spiritual psychic phenomena.” Such a view, as we will see below, leads to a complete mixing of both grace-filled and purely demonic “spiritual” phenomena.
In Chapter 3, the author again sets forth his view on creation:
“All-creating and all-absorbing [!?], endless stream of spiritual energy of Divine love the universe was created… Eternal matter does not exist, as there is generally no matter [!]… What prevents us from taking the final step and recognizing the existence of a completely immaterial, spiritual energy and considering it the primary form, progenitor and source of all forms of physical energy?”
What “prevents” an Orthodox person here is the Church’s teaching on the creation of the world by the Lord out of nothing. For Archbishop Luka nothing prevents believing, together with pagans, that the world was created from the deity… But despite the fact that “eternal matter does not exist,” a couple of pages later we read: “From eternity [!] innumerable stars and planets rush in world space… In the whirlwinds of centuries-old movements, innumerable star worlds are destroyed and newly arise, and the great process of evolution takes place, the highest movement in the entire universe… There is no rest even in death.”
Generally, a most characteristic feature of Voino-Yasenetsky’s work is the mixing and indiscrimination of basic religious categories. In him the boundaries between created and Uncreated are blurred; there is no teaching on qualitatively different forms of the world’s existence before and after the fall; the usual patristic division into infra-natural, natural (after the fall) and supernatural states of man—or, what is the same, carnal, psychical and spiritual—is absent; there is no distinction whatsoever between the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the Orthodox Church and non-church “spirituality”; the latter is the basis of current super-ecumenism. Finally, he completely lacks any mention of man’s main activity after the fall—repentance. This indiscrimination directly leads to the main task of apostasy: the apologia of deification of man (anthropotheism), to the assertion of the essentially single nature of fallen man and the Deity. This precisely constitutes the pathos of the “spirituality” of the modern world, assimilated by “official Orthodoxy,” to which the Moscow Patriarchate belongs. Having consciously become part of the world that “loves its own,” it realizes and recognizes Archbishop Luka as “its saint”…
3. Apologia of Occultism
a. “Spirit in Nature”
A significant part of the work “Spirit, Soul, Body” consists of episodes from Sacred History and the lives of saints mixed with paranormal phenomena. From an Orthodox standpoint, the latter are demonic. Thus, in Chapter 3, “Brain and Spirit,” the mutual greeting of St. Sergius of Radonezh and Stephen of Perm, who were located several versts apart from each other, is described first, along with cases of clairvoyance and telepathy from Richet’s book. Archbishop Luka seriously considers metapsychology (now called “parapsychology”) as a science and is completely satisfied with the explanation of all phenomena (both grace-filled and demonic) by Dr. Kotik: “Thought is an energy radiating outward… This energy, born in the brain, spreads to the extremities of the body… it is possible that all things emit some vibrating energy…” Turning again to Richet’s book, Voino-Yasenetsky writes: “Why not recognize, along with Richet, that at the base of telepathy and clairvoyance phenomena lie forces completely unknown to us in the current state of science, completely inexplicable, even strange, as he says? And fear undoubtedly takes hold of anyone who reads his big book.”
These phenomena were well known to the saints of the Orthodox Church; they understood their nature as the impact on people of the fallen spirits surrounding us. It is not by chance that the description of these phenomena, according to the author’s own testimony, inspires fear—the surest testimony of the presence of demons. But demons in connection with the phenomena under consideration are not mentioned at all in the book: “spiritual energy” is the cause of everything, so dear to current countless psychics (termed “sensitives” by Archbishop Luka). Descriptions of various cases of this kind occupy whole pages with the author… Their interpretations, however, lead to blasphemy:
“What, if not mighty spiritual energy, can this all-conquering force be called, which generated entire psychic epidemics in the Middle Ages, recklessly and irresistibly dragging hundreds of thousands of people into the Crusades!… In a quiet, sweet stream pours the mother’s love onto the child clinging to her breast, the passionate feeling of a spouse onto his deeply beloved wife… What is this if not the spiritual energy of love? ‘I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh’ (Joel 2:28).”
The prophecy about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit is interpreted as both natural and sinful (“passionate feelings”) manifestations of human life. Further, it is directly written again about “spiritual energy”: “Spiritual energy emanating from the Spirit of God, the energy of love moves all nature… All inorganic nature, the entire universe is penetrated by spiritual energy,” etc. Here in direct form is the teaching on “created grace,” on that “bioenergy” with which sorcerer-psychics “work”… Wishing to prove the pantheistic unity of the world, Voino-Yasenetsky sometimes writes completely strange things, such as, for example, that “an enzyme [!] has been discovered in some minerals which in its action (meaning minerals themselves) is analogous to sex hormones…”
Interestingly, despite the title “Spirit, Soul, Body,” the author does not give a clear formulation at the beginning of the work of what he understands by man’s “soul” and “spirit.” This leads to his speculations in this area resulting in the identity of the Spirit of God, the human spirit, and even the “spirit of matter” (which, however, as we have seen, “does not exist at all”):
“One must ponder the depth of the words of the long-suffering Job: ‘By His Spirit the heavens are adorned [magnificence of heaven].’ Great and deeply important is the relation between spirit and form. In material forms, the spirit inherent in matter is brightly reflected. And more than that, spirit creates forms. Spirit that is coarse and rigid already in the process of embryogenesis directs the development of somatic elements and creates coarse and repulsive forms reflecting it. Spirit that is pure and gentle creates for itself a dwelling full of beauty and tenderness. Remember Raphael’s Madonnas, Leonardo da Vinci’s La Gioconda [!].”
In this last quote we encounter yet another “indiscrimination” of Voino-Yasenetsky—aesthetic. As something absolutely spiritually beautiful he perceives Raphael’s sensual Madonnas painted from his mistresses, and Leonardo’s entirely demonic art…
Chapter 3 ends with an amusing statement about flowers and women: “One must have a very crude heart not to hear this voice of God sounding so clearly in the beauty of material forms of nature. Naturally, women especially love flowers, and this does credit to their hearts.”
b. Spirit of Plants and Animals
In Chapter 4, “The Spirit of Plants and Animals,” from the Old Testament prohibition to eat the blood of animals, the author draws a more than strange conclusion: “The blood of sacrificial animals is holy and sanctifies, because in it is the soul of the animal, the breath of the Holy Spirit.” If the Holy Spirit is in animals, why not worship them? This pagan worldview, naturally, immediately leads to sympathy for pagans: “Hindus and other peoples of Asia do not look at plants at all like Europeans do. They deeply recognize the spirituality of plants.” Well, once Europeans also worshipped garlic. It took the exploits of Christian martyrs to part with this “spirituality.” Now an Orthodox bishop (?) seems to regret this. And further we read: “Evening in a flowering meadow, the multitude of flowers turns to the sun, as if offering an evening prayer to it, and after its sunset quietly falls asleep, so that in the morning, having turned to the east, it can meet it again with a joyful morning prayer.” Now worship is already rendered to the sun…
And it is asserted again that physiological processes—in this case the germination of seeds after freezing—are determined by “spiritual energy”: “And such energy, of course, can only be spiritual energy, the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit.”
In Chapter 5, “The Soul of Animals and Man,” we have a multitude of statements about the soul and spirit, incomprehensibly where taken from by the author. Despite the fact that, as mentioned earlier, he has no definitions of these terms. Here, for example, is a list of “acts of consciousness”: “They are caused by: 1. Perceptions of sense organs; 2. Organic sensations of our body; 3. Perceptions from our transcendental being; 4. Perceptions from the higher spiritual world; 5. Influences of our spirit.” While it is completely unclear how item 3 differs from item 5, the most frightening thing here is item 4. In contrast to the church teaching that we are surrounded by a “lower” spiritual world, a world of fallen spirits striving to seduce and deceive us with all kinds of “perceptions,” Voino-Yasenetsky considers the spiritual world to be exclusively “higher.” And we see, as already mentioned, blind trust in these “higher” perceptions of mediums-sensitives and clairvoyants. And a few pages later we read: “Defining above what causes the act of consciousness, we spoke of perceptions from the higher spiritual world. At the same time, we mean the impacts on the human spirit of the Spirit of God and the spirit of Satan.”
Let us recall the Orthodox teaching on the body, soul, and spirit. St. Ignatius in the “Word on Man” writes:
“The body is a garment and, at the same time, an instrument of the soul. ‘The soul is surrounded and clothed by the members of the body’—so said Venerable Macarius the Great. ‘The soul,’ says St. John of Damascus, ‘acts through the organic body, communicates to it life, growth, feeling, and the power of generation.’ ‘It uses the body as an instrument.’ “
The word “spirit” is used by the Holy Fathers, as a rule, in relation to any being having a finer nature than our body: to the human soul, or to an Angel, or to a demon. Calling the soul “spirit,” this word is also used in relation to the animal’s soul. Sometimes, however, examining the properties of the human soul in more detail, they speak of the human spirit, implying the higher manifestations of the soul that allow man to unite with God. If the lower aspects of our soul (vivification of the body) make us akin to animals, then spirit in the latter sense is an exclusively human attribute. Before the fall, our created spirit was enlivened by the Spirit of God, the sensual part of the soul freely subordinated to it, which in turn gave life to the body, which was much more refined, immortal, and not subject to the power of the elements. The fall perverted our composition, rebellion against God led to the death of our spirit, to the mutual war of all the components of our nature, made us slaves of the prince of darkness…
And here is what Voino-Yasenetsky writes: “Both the animal and man consist of spirit, soul, and body.” Further, he does give a definition of the animal soul: “This is a complex of organic and sensory perceptions, thoughts and feelings, traces of memories united by self-consciousness [!?] (mind in higher animals) or only (in lower animals) a complex of organic sensations.” This definition is purely materialistic, denying the separate essential existence of the soul. All materialists think this way: the brain produces thoughts, emotions, etc., and in this sense they also speak of the “soul” as their aggregate. It is also unclear why the higher capacity of self-consciousness for man is attributed to lower animals… But Archbishop Luka supplements this view with his own notion that “there are people—cattle, people—grass, there are also people—angels. The first differ little from cattle, for their spirituality is very low, and the latter approach disembodied spirits who have neither body nor soul [!].” And further: “The spirit is immortal, which… can exist without connection with body and soul… Let those accustomed to the idea of the immortality of the soul not be confused by our words about the immortality of the spirit.” Then follows a series of quotes from the Bible (in Russian) where spirit is mentioned in the sense not of the higher part, but of the entire soul. For example: “And her spirit returned” (Luke 8:55). From them, a strange conclusion is drawn that “those elements of psychic activity [!] which are connected with the life of the body are mortal: feelings and thought processes inextricably linked with the activity of the brain.” But! — “The spirit of animals, of course, must be immortal, for it also has its beginning in the Spirit of God, the immortal Spirit.”
These fabrications, based neither on scientific data nor on the teaching of the Church, lead the author to a completely unintelligible conclusion: “We know the deepest essence of our being not by the mind, but by the spirit. Self-consciousness (remember, lower animals also possess it) is a function of the spirit, not of the mind. The action of the grace of God granted to us by God is known by us not through the spirit of this world [!??], but through our spirit granted to us by God.” In church tradition, the spirit of this world is called, as is known, the devil. In this case, we are once again dealing with a pagan view. “Pagans believed that the human soul constitutes a particle of the Deity. A false and very dangerous thought, as containing blasphemy!”—warns St. Ignatius in his “Word on Man.” He cites the statement of Venerable John of Damascus:
“God created the nature contemplated by the mind, that is, Angels and all heavenly ranks, whose nature is undoubtedly rational and disembodied, that is, disembodied in comparison with coarse matter. For the Deity alone in the proper sense is immaterial and incorporeal. Furthermore, God also created the sensory nature, that is, heaven, earth, and everything between them… But it was necessary for a being to appear, mixed from these two natures, which would show the greater wisdom and generosity of the Creator toward both…”
How far this clarity and definiteness, this healthy teaching of the Church, is from the murky and heretical statements of Archbishop Luka!
The work “Spirit, Soul, Body” convincingly proves that without reliance on patristic interpretation, by one’s own carnal philosophizing, all kinds of heresies and blasphemies are read out of Holy Scripture. Based seemingly on Holy Scripture, the author comes to the conclusion that “by the action of God, even the transfer of one person’s spirit to another is possible. ‘The spirit of Elijah rested on Elisha’ (2 Kings 2:15); ‘I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and will put it upon them’ (Num. 11:17).”
Here, as we see, the figurative expressions so characteristic of the Bible are interpreted in a literal sense, which fully opens the way to metempsychosis (the doctrine of the transmigration of souls). It is unclear why Archbishop Luka does not cite yet another evangelical quote, beloved by occultists, with the help of which they “prove” the possibility of the transmigration of souls: “And if you are willing to receive it, he [John the Baptist] is Elijah who is to come” (Matt. 11:14).
Having finally dealt with human “spirituality,” the author proceeds to the “spirituality” of animals. Recognizing it as lower than that of man, he makes another amazing discovery: “The degree of spirituality in animals is lower the lower they stand on the zoological ladder of perfection. An exception to this rule is love in birds. In parallel with this, one can to a certain extent put the fact that higher forms of love and religiosity are often discovered by simple, uneducated people.”
c. “Spirit is Not Unconditionally Connected with Soul and Body”
Finally, we reach Chapter 6, which opens by its very title something completely unknown in Orthodoxy: “Spirit is Not Unconditionally Connected with Soul and Body”! In it we finally fall into the realm of the apologia of occultism, which, as is known, is based on the blurring and speculating of the terms “spirit,” “spirituality” and their derivatives. Here, first, is a “compliment” to psychotherapy—a “science” which in our apostate times has “replaced” spiritual knowledge and the practice of spiritual guidance of antiquity. “Psychotherapy… is a generally accepted method of treating many diseases that often gives wonderful results,” asserts the archbishop. And, somewhat unexpectedly, the following paragraph narrates the “miracles” of Lourdes, which the Orthodox archbishop perceives as completely Divine and true! And Lourdes itself he calls a “holy city”! Having finished describing the healings in Lourdes (let us recall that this “holy city” is the center of the spread of the blasphemous dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Its glorification began with the apparition of a phantom in female form stating: “I am the immaculate conception”), the archbishop adds: “We could cite many similar healings upon the opening of the relics of Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, from the lives of St. Pitirim of Tambov and many other saints.” Complete indiscrimination of spirits!
Further and worse: the archbishop turns to the experience of spiritualist sessions! Here is how St. Ignatius sets forth the church view on this phenomenon (which in his time was called magnetism) in the work “Word on Sensory and Spiritual Vision of Spirits”:
“In our time many allow themselves to enter into communication with fallen spirits through magnetism, and fallen spirits usually appear in the form of bright angels, seduce and deceive with various interesting tales, mixing truth with falsehood—they always cause extreme mental and even mental disorder. The use of magnetism is the realm of sorcery… without any attention to the decree of God, without carefully checking whether it is pleasing to God, whether what is undertaken is in accordance with the will of God, the frivolous investigator of the mysterious blindly entrusts himself to the action of magnetism, without any precaution enters into communication with spirits, believes them and entrusts himself, acts under their guidance. What is this if not apostasy from God?”
Well, but Archbishop Luka’s work intensely propagandizes this apostasy from God! As he writes, “I cannot refrain from citing a few facts of materialization out of the multitude of them…” That is, the professor of medicine and Orthodox (?) bishop takes demonic phantoms for actual “materialization!” But even more frightening and blasphemous is what follows: “What, if not the materialization of spirit, can explain the appearance of Elijah and Moses to the Lord Jesus at His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor? And the appearance of angels in human form?” If Voino-Yasenetsky had acquainted himself at least with the already cited works of St. Ignatius or other Teachers of the Church, he would have known that the possibility of the sensory vision of spirits is a consequence not of some unknown to the Fathers, but known to spiritualists “materialization,” but is the “opening of eyes.” As for the prophet Elijah, his body is quite material: he did not die, but was taken with his body to heaven until the Second Coming… Interestingly, the author cites terrible biblical prohibitions against spiritualist “experiments”: “Do not turn to mediums and do not seek out necromancers, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 19:31); “There shall not be found among you anyone who… practices divination, or a fortune-teller, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a necromancer” (Deut. 18:10-11). But Archbishop Luka, obviously, believes that the scientific-looking setting of spiritualist “experiments” makes God’s commandment optional for him. Descriptions of these phenomena of demonic phantoms are given in abundance in the book; entire pages are devoted to them. Under an Orthodox signboard, a real advertisement of a purely satanic form of evil is presented!
And again: along with cases of phantom apparitions to ordinary people, cases of “exteriorization” are spoken of. “They can be found in abundance in the lives of saints.” Next, a case from the life of the Catholic “saint” Alphonsus Liguori is cited, who fell into a trance in his cell and allegedly was simultaneously with Pope Clement XIV! In the next paragraph is a case of the appearance of Elder Ambrose (or rather, as the Church explains such cases—an Angel taking the form of a saint) to a lost peasant woman. So Voino-Yasenetsky’s work is literally speckled, to the joy of ecumenists and super-ecumenists, with acknowledgements of the consubstantiality of phenomena generated by demonic delusions and the Holy Spirit!
Further, it comes to hypnosis, also perceived by the archbishop as a positive phenomenon. And, finally: “What is improbable,” the author asks, “in the fact that the enlightened spirit of the saints fully and always possesses those transcendental abilities which in ordinary people manifest only in a state of somnambulism?” Such is the archbishop’s concept of holiness: it is super-somnambulism! Of course, such “saints” can be people of any faith or even atheists!
d. “Transcendental Spiritual Abilities”
The logical continuation of the previous chapter is Chapter 7, “Transcendental Spiritual Abilities.” In its first paragraph, the evangelical episode of the healing of the woman with an issue of blood who touched the Saviour’s garments is retold, and immediately following it—in the second paragraph—a telepathic experiment is described. A complete analogy is drawn between these phenomena:
“The facts are completely indisputable, it has been undoubtedly established by observations on mediums [nowadays—psychics] that from a medium in a trance… but sometimes even in a normal state, emanates… a part of his motor force. This exteriorization explains the amazing spiritualist phenomena of movement, even flight of various objects [‘poltergeists’], knockings, automatic writing of a self-moving pen… When the spiritualist session ends, during which heavy objects were moved, the medium feels great exhaustion, for muscular force emanated from him. The Lord Jesus Christ felt that power had gone out of Him that healed the woman with an issue of blood. These are facts of the same order [!!!]… facts of the transcendental order.”
Is it worth it after this for members of the Moscow Patriarchate to be indignant at modern sorcerers, psychics and hypnotists who happen to cite this evangelical episode as proof of the divine origin of their demonic “gift”?! Now the latter are defended by the “patristic writings” of “Saint Luka”! And again—entire pages promoting the phenomena of demons. Including “prophetic dreams,” which the Church categorically forbids paying attention to, and experiments…
d. “Transcendental Spiritual Abilities” (continued)
…drug addicts—it remains to advise the modern elders of the Moscow Patriarchate, relying on the writings of “Saint Luka,” to read and practice Castaneda! And, of course, how could we not reach metempsychosis: “The philosopher Plotinus in the Enneads says: ‘But in time, towards the end of life, other memories appear from earlier periods of existence… for, freeing itself from the body, it (the soul) remembers what it did not remember here.’ “
e. “On the Inner Man”
Chapter 8—”On the Inner Man”—is devoted to “theoretical” explanations of the aforementioned experiences. And here again, a complete ignorance of the Orthodox teaching on these subjects is revealed. The archbishop asks, for example: “Why not admit that… spiritual energy, the energy of love, sympathy and antipathy can act outside of time and space…?” As St. Ignatius repeatedly wrote in his works, based on the unanimous teaching of the ancient Fathers of the Church, only the Absolute, Uncreated Spirit—God—can act “outside of time and space.” Created beings, including created spirits, depend on both time and space.
The darkness and unenlightened nature of Archbishop Luka’s views are also expressed in his perplexity regarding the phenomena of clairvoyance, premonitions, and foreknowledge. He boldly interprets Holy Scripture again: ” ‘I sleep, but my heart is awake’ (Song of Sol. 5:2). This is a very deep word. The heart is the organ of higher cognition, the organ of communion with God and with the entire transcendental world. And it never sleeps…” Alas, in sinners, the spiritual heart sleeps a deep sleep, or has died altogether in mortal sins. The Holy Fathers refer the words of Holy Scripture to those who have been vouchsafed, for great ascetic labors, the gift of mental-cardiac prayer that never ceases.
And again—a lengthy quote from Leibniz, in particular: “Almost all people, even the least sensitive, have a capacity for cognition other than cognition through the five senses. The higher a person’s spirituality, the more brightly expressed is this capacity of higher cognition. Under certain conditions, and in people of the highest degree of sensitivity, it manifests itself with extraordinary force in clairvoyance, premonition, and prophetic foreknowledge in an unknown and mysterious sixth sense, by which they learn much about people from things belonging to them. We have cited many facts of super-cognition…” As we can see, throughout the entire book there is nothing about the necessity of knowing and keeping the true faith, but clearly demonic “revelations” are revered as super-cognition. Analogies between somnambulists and saints are given again, and regarding the importance of solitude for spiritual life, it is said: “Christian and Buddhist anchorites understood and deeply appreciated this, striving to drown out all external impressions by life in the desert, constant self-absorption and prayer, to subdue the flesh to the spirit by fasting and vigil, even by standing on a pillar.”
As authorities in the field of “transcendental life of the spirit,” the Orthodox archbishop features “ancient Indian sages and Greek philosophers… Plotinus, Porphyry… In the Middle Ages, Paracelsus, van Helmont, Campanella [! the creator of utopian communism] wrote about the same things… I. Kant, unattainable in depth of thought, Swedenborg.”
Thus, whether Buddhist meditation, philosophical fabrications, or demonic somnambulism, they all equally lead to the fact that “when the passions and lusts of the flesh weaken and fade away, when its forces weaken and the brilliance and noise of this world dim for us, then ‘let us put off the former conduct of the old man, which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in righteousness and holiness of truth’ (Eph. 4:22–24). The ‘new man’ in these words of Paul is, of course, the same as the inner… Then we even become partakers of the Divine nature according to the word of the Apostle Peter (2 Pet. 1:4).” And again, not a word about the Orthodox faith, nor about the True Church necessary for such “clothing in the new man,” who is, of course, Christ, and not the “inner man” of the old Adam, as Voino-Yasenetsky believes…
e. “Immortality”
Finally, the last chapter, “Immortality,” brings us back to the materialistic picture of an evolving world. “It is impossible to admit that all innumerable star worlds were only grandiose masses of dead matter, that the world of living beings breaks off at man, this first step of spiritual development. What prevents admitting that celestial bodies serve as a habitation for innumerable living rational beings, higher forms of intellectuality?”—asks Archbishop Luka. His worldview, as we have seen before, is materialistic in essence, merely incorporating Christian images to which the archbishop ascribes a completely un-Orthodox meaning. “Spirituality” for him is merely a more refined form of matter. Despite the fact that in Chapter 3 of his book the archbishop asserts: “Eternal matter does not exist, as there is generally no matter,” in Chapter 9 he writes: “If matter and energy are completely indestructible [i.e., matter and energy are divine by nature, since only God is indestructible] in its physical forms, then spiritual energy, or in other words, the spirit of man and of all living things, must certainly be subject to this law. Thus, immortality is a necessary postulate of our mind.”
Interestingly, what follows is: “The Lord Jesus Christ directly testified about human immortality: ‘Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die’ (John 11:26). ‘He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life’ (John 5:24).” It would seem, how could it be clearer: eternal life is a consequence of accepting the true faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, meaning it is by no means unconditional! But all mentions of faith pass by the archbishop’s consciousness, and further on he “proves” with other quotes from Holy Scripture the occult idea that “man is only the first step of spirituality”…
Such “proofs” lead to quite amusing statements like: “And the blazing, incandescent masses of huge stars can be inhabited by fiery seraphim and cherubim (‘Who makes His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire’ — Ps. 104:4).” In this same chapter, we finally find a definition of the human spirit: “Spirit is the sum of our soul and that part of it which lies outside the boundaries of our consciousness.” We can try to express this mathematically. The soul X consists of part A located within the boundaries of consciousness, plus part B located outside these boundaries: X=A+B. Then the spirit Y=X+B=A+2B!
Voino-Yasenetsky’s worldview is akin to Gnosticism. For him, the soul is more perfect than the body, and the spirit, in his understanding, is altogether a part of the deity: “Simply speaking, the human spirit is free, ‘the wind blows where it wishes…’, while its lower, sensual soul obeys the laws of causality.” There you have it: a quote from the Gospel (John 3:8) referring to the Holy Spirit is directly attributed to the human spirit, which is created, therefore limited, and therefore by no means removed from the law of causality!
The Orthodox Church teaches us that “man is a God-created temple of the Deity in soul and body.”[4] The ultimate goal of our salvation is the fullness of God’s indwelling in our unified spiritual-(or psychical-) bodily composition, violently destroyed by sin, united in the fullness of the nature of the New Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, who sat down at the right hand of God the Father in all the fullness of our human nature. But such is not the view of Archbishop Luka: “The immortal spirit of the first [righteous ones], enlightened and powerfully strengthened after liberation from the body, receives the possibility of boundless development in the direction of goodness and Divine love, in constant communion with God and all disembodied powers.” So the body is viewed as an evil principle hindering development in the direction of goodness. How is this different from Bogomilism or Khlystism?
Further, Voino-Yasenetsky, being familiar with the Church’s teaching on the resurrection of bodies, has to speak about it, but this teaching as if stands in his consciousness separately from the view he has assimilated about a more perfect state of the “disembodied” spirit: “Eternal life will not be only the life of a spirit freed from body and soul, but life in the new Jerusalem…” The book ends with an assertion about the resurrection of animals.
4. Archbishop Luka and the “Mystery” of the Moscow Patriarchate
In Russia, people are more Orthodox by the feeling of the heart than by intellectual conviction.
…Lies can have only momentary triumphs… nothing can be taken permanently by a lie… it does not strengthen, but weakens and brings down the cause it serves. This is a great truth of the greatest importance! It must be inscribed in letters of gold! It must be known and known by everyone who wants to govern himself correctly, especially who wants to govern people and public affairs correctly… Why does it happen sometimes that people put themselves in a false position and act to the detriment of themselves and everyone? From accepting and assimilating false thoughts and concepts, from acting from the realm of the man-destroying lie. The entire history of humanity proves this with striking facts. Oh, if only there would develop in us in Russia a correct notion of the holy Truth that is majestic and beneficial for the temporal and eternal life of humans! Oh, if all activity, both private and public, flowed from this Divine source!
— St. Ignatius Brianchaninov
Archbishop Luka—Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky—lived a long and humanely very worthy life. Born in 1877, he spent his childhood and youth in Kyiv, where his first vague religious impressions manifested themselves. Then came a fascination with the populist ideas of progress and “service to the people,” as a result of which, contrary to his inclination and talent for painting, the young man entered the medical faculty of Kyiv University. During the Russo-Japanese War, he served in an infirmary in Transbaikalia. Here he met a nurse named Anna and married her. Then followed self-sacrificing service as a doctor and the beginning of a scientific career.
World War I with its hardships awakened half-forgotten childhood religious impressions, and the young doctor began to regularly attend church. In 1917, he became the chief surgeon of the Tashkent City Hospital. Two years later, he unexpectedly fell ill with tuberculosis, and his wife died, leaving 4 children… Reading the Psalter over the deceased, Valentin Feliksovich perceived with particular acuity the words: “He makes the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children.” He brought a neighbor, a childless lonely woman, into the house to raise and educate his children. He himself saw in the tragic circumstances the providence of God for himself and in 1921 became a priest. In 1923, he took monastic vows and soon became Bishop of Tashkent and Turkestan. He did not accept Renovationism. Until the end of his days, he did not abandon his medical activity, specializing in the field of purulent surgery. How many people owe him their lives and health! For his “Essays on Purulent Surgery,” he received the Stalin Prize. When presenting it, Stalin, who destroyed millions of Christians, decided to joke: “Professor, when you open up human bodies, where do you see the soul?” To which he received the reply: “I, Comrade Stalin, have never found a conscience during dissections either!” A venerable elder, Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea, he died at the age of 84.
A wonderful life, had it not been for the times: frightening and tragic, requiring of Russian Christians what had been lost by the absolute majority of them: the adamant unity of their faith, the fullness of the Christian worldview. As Fr. Seraphim Rose expressed it in our days: one can be a Christian either in everything, or you will not be one at all. If you read Archbishop Luka’s sermons, you might think they were not written by the author of “Spirit, Soul, Body”! They are sustained in the church tradition, with abundant citation of the Church Fathers.[5] But, as we see, when he tries to express his view on nature and the universe, they turn out to be entirely non-Christian, and quotes from Holy Scripture look at best inappropriate in the general context, and at worst—blasphemous. At the same time, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his faith, his religious feeling. Such a syncretic religious consciousness, compiled from completely heterogeneous “pieces,” was to a greater or lesser extent, alas, a most characteristic phenomenon of both that time and, even more so, the present time.
As can be seen from Voino-Yasenetsky’s biography, the views on life of the future bishop—artistic, gifted, and susceptible to influences—were formed from the spontaneous materialism of the democratic, populist movement, and Tolstoyism also had an influence on him. And the fascination with spiritualism and other demonic practices at the beginning of the century was just as widespread as horoscopes and belief in the “biofield” are now. As Sasha Chorny wrote at the time:
And from morning until late at night, Everyone, from tots to crones, Immersing their eyes in pages, Tease the spirit with the unusual…
So by the time he consciously took an interest in Orthodoxy, the tablets of his heart were inscribed with the teaching of the “spirit of this world.” The state of spiritual enlightenment in Orthodoxy itself had long since ceased to be such that there would be someone to explain to the young man that the views he had assimilated were alien and hostile to Christianity. Thus his main life’s work looks like a palimpsest, on which texts of Holy Scripture were attempted to be written over a heretical text. Here and there some letters or words may even coincide, but the overall impression is monstrous.[6]
Voino-Yasenetsky was obviously repelled from Renovationism in its crude form most likely by his aesthetic sense. But against a more refined Renovationism—Sergianism, “canonical” and “not rejecting dogmas,” as GPU agents explained to bishops and priests during interrogations—he lacked the immunity that can only be given by a taste for true Patristic Orthodoxy. Being in the church of Metropolitan Sergius allowed him to preserve the split consciousness that had become habitual. One is reminded of a wonderful creature—the chameleon, which is capable of looking forward with one eye and backward with the other. But for a man this is impossible; it is impossible to have a spiritual mind and not reject the scholarship of this world.
Scholarship, left to itself, is self-delusion, is demonic deception, is knowledge full of lies and putting the scientist in a false relationship to himself and to everything. Scholarship is an abomination and madness before God; it is possession by demons. Its blindness it proclaims to be the most satisfactory knowledge, and thus makes blindness unhealable, and the fall preserved by it an inalienable possession… Philosophers and artists were the greatest champions of idolatry and enemies of true knowledge of God. Upon the establishment of the Christian faith in the world, scholarship gave birth to innumerable heresies and tried to subvert the Holy Faith through them… And in our time, scholarship returns pagans who have accepted Christianity back to paganism and, rejecting Christianity, introduces idolatry and service to Satan once again, changing forms for the more convenient deception of humanity…[7]
What we are accustomed to call “Sergianism” is indeed a new form that does not directly reject Christianity, but mixes it with philosophizing according to the elements of the world; it is the newest form of deception. Its most striking current feature—ecumenism and super-ecumenism—is only a particular detail, as we have seen from Archbishop Luka’s work (written when ecumenism was still known to very few, and super-ecumenism as such did not yet exist), thoroughly imbued with their ideas. And how much St. Ignatius’s words justified themselves on him—that carnal philosophizing puts a scientist in a false relation to himself and to everything, forcing him to be a chameleon also in the sense of constantly changing color—can be seen from the following statements:
The German people, considered a Christian people for over a thousand years, who gave birth to Luther, Goethe, Kant and Hegel, Helmholtz and Virchow, showed the whole world, the brother-nations in Christ and non-Christian nations, an unprecedentedly terrible face of a barbarian… how can we now preach the Gospel of love and brotherhood to people who do not know Christ, but see the devilish face of a German counting himself a Christian[8]?
We all know how great his [Patriarch Alexy Simansky’s] activity was in the postwar years, how he strove to unite the Orthodox Church and the Armenian and Anglican Churches…. Patriotism in its highest form is active love for the Motherland, one of the many forms of love; and love is the fulfillment of the entire law. Lacking patriotism were those archpastors and pastors who abandoned their Motherland and their flocks in the years of the greatest upheavals and sufferings, and made church schisms in Sremski Karlovci, in Paris and Munich, in North America[9].
They [the peace champions] and the World Council are a huge force opposing the warmongers. And another great force is, as already recognized by the whole world, the deeply honest policy pursued by the representatives of the USSR in the UN… There are already martyrs for the truth of protesting against the preparing war, youths and girls languishing in prisons. All this is the invincible force of truth. With a lie, this vile dishonor of man, and with atomic bombs, one might perhaps drown the truth in blood for a time, but it cannot be destroyed, for truth is from God and therefore immortal. For “God is not mocked” (Gal. 6:7) And the lie is from the ancient serpent whose head our Lord Jesus Christ crushed[10].
…What is our genuine attitude toward our Government, toward our new state system? First of all, we, the Russian clergy, live in complete peace with our Government. We have no grounds for hostility against the government, for it has granted complete freedom to the Church and does not interfere in its internal affairs. We are, of course, completely alien to materialism, which constitutes the ideological basis of communism, but this does not prevent us from seeing all that is good, full of great social truth, that our new state system has given us, and with a pure heart greeting it[11].
These extracts could be continued for a long time…
Who is not speaking and writing now about the Second Coming, about the end of the world! Not only the orthodox, but even people far from any faith feel something universal and gloomy hanging over our world. But after all, few think about why the horrors of the Apocalypse are inevitable, why, according to the Savior’s words, in the last times people will experience affliction such as has not been from the beginning of the world (Matt. 24:21). Will the All-Good Lord be the Source of these troubles?
Let us recall the first terrible event in human history: behold, on the still young and beautiful earth lies already the breathless body of young and beautiful Abel, flooded with his smoking blood crying out to heaven. Yes, he fell by the hand of his brother, but was not this movement a reflection and logical consequence of the fact that his and our parent boldly stretched out his hand to lawlessness? He stretched it out because he accepted from the seducer a false thought that tore him away from God and distorted his entire view of the world. Then was fulfilled, and until the last times will be fulfilled, the truth expressed in the words of St. Ignatius: False thoughts are washed in streams of blood—and the thought was not cleaned by this ablution! It is terrible to stain a thought with a lie: human blood is powerless to wash away these fierce stains.[12]
False was the blasphemous thought about the equality of the Creator and the creature, which made Adam turn his hands away from prayerful upliftment to God, the true Source of bliss and life, and stretch them out to the created tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This thought gave birth to the terrible evil of carnal philosophizing, which “banishes” God from the universe, striving to “kill” Him. Cain completed what his father began: if the word of God can be broken while seeking lawless enjoyment, then why can one not stretch out a hand to destroy the one who hinders this enjoyment, whose very existence grieves my heart perverted by a lie? In sorrow, our forefather contemplated the terrible picture that was like a mirror: in the image of the material murder of his son, he saw the realization of his spiritual attempt to “kill” the All-Good God…
To heal the ulcer inflicted by the devil on humanity, to wash it from the blood innumerably shed throughout human history, a Divine ablution was needed. As the saint continues: For such an ablution, humanity needed the blood of the God-Man. It received this blood, washed in it, was cleansed! Held by the hand of faith, it came out into the light of true knowledge of God and self-knowledge—came out there from the deep, dark abyss of carnal, falsely named reason. But alas! — This reason calls man back into the abyss—and man hearkens to the murderous call!..
Individual human souls hearken to this call, alas, entire communities hearken to it as well, degenerating from church communities into “synagogues of Satan.” A thousand years ago, for millions of admirers of the Pope, the name “Christians” they adopted became a lie; in our time we are losing the ability to distinguish those who have the true faith by the name “Orthodox.”
The mystery of lawlessness with its abomination of desolation standing where it ought not, is revealed to us in the construction of the system of “world orthodoxy.” Its most numerous part is the Moscow Patriarchate, which, alas, is perceived by the majority of our fellow citizens as the genuine Russian Orthodox Church. It has the name and appearance of a Church, but keeps not the Truth, but “vanities and falsehoods, not having known the Lord,” having abandoned the Patristic experience. It is precisely it, and not obvious sinners and godless people who do not lay claim to the name of Christ’s disciples, that gives birth to all the horrors of the Apocalypse, already existing spiritually within it. And such phenomena as recognizing as saints those whose teaching has nothing in common with Holy Tradition is a terrible sign of the Last Judgment inevitably being brought closer by ourselves. Because it speaks of the degeneration of the Christian Church into the church of Antichrist.
[1] Here and everywhere below, bold italics are by the author of the article.
[2] St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, Letters.
[3] By the actual meaning of the word raskayanie, pokayanie [repentance]: “change of mind,” that is, changing the false, prelest [deluded] picture of the world outside of Orthodox teaching to true knowledge about the world and about oneself.
[4] St. Ignatius, Word on Man, Ch. “Definition of Man.”
[5] Although even in them, inaccurate, blurred formulations are encountered. For example, in the Word on the Liturgy on the 2nd day of Pascha, it says: “The Holy Apostle Paul calls the Lord Jesus Christ the brightness of the Father… If the Lord Jesus Christ is called the brightness of the glory of the Father, this undoubtedly means that He always existed, was always inherent in the Father and consubstantial with Him, for the Divine brightness always emanated from the substance of the Holy Trinity, and our Lord Jesus Christ was this Brightness.” Further the author continues: “…look what ardent love for the Motherland has ignited in the hearts of all Russian people! Is this not a light? Yes, this is the light of Christ!” (Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate [ZhMP], 1945, no. 6).
[6] I use this word not in an abusive, but in a definitive sense. A monster, a chimera is an unnatural combination of alien parts into some fantastic “unity” devoid of life.
[7] St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, Word on Man, Chapter “Idolatry.”
[8] Archbishop Luka, “The Bloody Gloom of Fascism” // ZhMP, 1943, no. 4.
[9] Archbishop Luka, “From Responses to the Second Award of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor” // ZhMP, 1952, no. 12.
[10] Archbishop Luka, “Reflections on Truth and Lies” // ZhMP, 1951, no. 5. (One cannot cease to be amazed again and again at this conscious blindness: how can one write all this, knowing perfectly well that hundreds of thousands of innocents are rotting in the GULAG, compared to which any European prison is paradise!).
[11] Archbishop Luka, “The Lord Has Called Us to Peace” // ZhMP, 1948, no. 1.
[12] St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, Letters.