I wanted to return briefly to the character of Father Ferapont, because I believe that the recent discussion of Kyle Lake and the watchblog antagonists serves as a perfect modern-day illustration of what was going on in the monastery when Father Zossima died and Father Ferapont denounced him.
Father Zossima preached a message of love and selfless service, and lived it out in his daily life. For that he came to be highly respected in the community where he lived. Father Ferapont believed in strict keeping of the fasts and lived a life of brutal asceticism. He lived by himself, apart from the rest of the monastery. He seldom spoke with anyone on account of the rule of silence that he observed. He never said anything bad about Father Zossima while he was alive–at least not publicly–on account of the rule of silence. But when Father Zossima died, he felt no compunction about breaking his rule of silence to abuse the memory of the beloved elder, accusing him of gluttony and of being seduced by women because he did not keep the fasts as rigorously as Father Ferapont.
This is a lot like the spirit of Paul Proctor’s “critique” of Kyle Lake. Proctor did not speak up until after Kyle Lake died, and then he felt no compunction about abusing Lake’s ministry and memory. He accused him of leading his followers astray and teaching them to be seduced by love of the world, just as Father Ferapont accused Father Zossima of being seduced by sweets and ladies. He even went so far as to say that Kyle Lake’s death was a sign from God, a sign of His judgment against the emerging church. Father Ferapont did the same thing, joining the detractors of Father Zossima who said that the smell of decay coming from his corpse, which they believed to be “in excess of nature”, was a sign of God’s judgment against Father Zossima.
The Gospel is all about grace and acceptance for those who are not accepted by the world, but we love to complicate it and make it out to be all about rules and strict obedience to the law. This has been a problem throughout church history; even in the first century Jewish Christians wanted to impose the requirements of Jewish culture and tradition upon Gentiles who were coming to Christ at that time. It took a church council and a letter from Peter and James, the top leaders of the church at that time, to convince the church to accept Gentile believers without anything more than abstaining from meat sacrificed to idols (to cut their Jewish brothers some slack) and abstaining from sexual immorality (a legitimate spiritual discipline for which there are very good reasons).
Father Ferapont’s behavior at Father Zossima’s death is simply the continuation of an age-old tension between law and grace in the Christian life. This is a tension which is still alive and well even to this very day.
