I don't want to spoil it but what from Holy Apostles have you'd thought's bad? The pamphlet's like $3.50. You'll like it and you'd probably find that much money in your couch cushions! Lotsa scholorship and patristics using many sources from Augustine's time and the Fathers he contradicted before him.
What Books Are You Reading?
Well, here's a few things which are said on the Dormition Skete webpage that I take issue with:
Met. Cyprian of Fili is an "ecumenist heretic"
ROCOR has "fallen under its own anathema of 1983 and has since slid further and further into the universalist and sergianist bosom of the apostate churches"
Obviously being a member of ROCOR (and being someone who has almost the same ecclesiology as Met. Cyprian), this doesn't make me want to run right out and buy more of their materials.
My wife and I use the New Testament published by the Holy Apostles Convent, and my wife and I have about 8-10 other books they publish, about half of which I've read. Most of the stuff is very good; some of it is exceptionally good (like the book on the Holy Theotokos). However, in anything related to ROCOR or members of ROCOR (especially someone like Fr. Seraphim), I would be hesitant and wary of what they have to say. I assumed that the pamphlet was a rebuttal (if perhaps indirect) to Fr. Seraphim's book on the subject. I've read rebuttal's of Fr. Seraphim's work before (by Puhalo, Azkoul, and others) and have generally found them to be lacking in Christian love (among other things), which is the opposite of what I'm looking for: hence the reason I asked for more information
Also reading too many books at once
I'm reading:
The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture, by James Billington. This is fascinating, but I can't seem to finish it.
Unseen Warfare, edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and by Theophan the Recluse.
The Search for the Twelve Apostles, by Wm. McBirnie. I'm reading this for an online course I'm taking.
The Vindication of Tradition, by Jaroslav Pelikan. Just starting it.
I'm fixing to read Fr. Seraphim Rose's book about Augustine, but I need to finish the current stuff first.
BTW, The Bros. Karamazov is my all-time favorite book.
-Xenia
Azkoul Rose
You can call him Father Michael. it's written back when he's ROCOR. the pamphlet's not a refute but the other side. Good to show the history of considering Augustine blessed and the why's and detailing his heresies. It 's very good Many convert accept Father Seraphim as infalliable and never read the other views. (not saying you) Many of his enemies're weak in arguments but this's not anti-Rose but another view done very well. Smart to read.
Nihilism
I'm just finishing Fr. Seraphim Rose's book on Nihilism, which I know some of you read recently.
On page 99, he talks about hell. "[God] offers, even to those in Hell, His Love which is torment to those who have not prepared themselves to receive it. Many, we know, are tested and purified in those flames and made fit by them to dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven..."
Is he talking about the hell an unbeliever may experience on earth, or the literal hell one may "go to" after death? If the latter, doesn't this amount to a belief in purgatory?
Uh oh! This is an issue that has been hotly debated on some internet lists. Certain patristic texts and hymns seem to say that a very small number of people who are judged as being unworthy of heaven at the particular judgment can still possibly get to heaven before the final judgment. Fr. Seraphim says in his book The Soul After Death: "In the Orthodox doctrine [as opposed to the Latins], on the other hand, which Saint Mark teaches, the faithful who have died with small sins unconfessed, or who have not brought forth fruits of repentance for sins they have confessed, are cleansed of these sins either in the trial of death itself with its fear, or after death, when they are confined (but not permanently) in hell, by the prayers and Liturgies of the Church and good deeds performed for them by the faithful." (p. 198)