The Seraphinians

Book excerpt: Devotees of Fr. Cherubim (Jones) Demand his Immediate Canonization and Full Recognition as "Equal to the Heirophants" Adamant devotees of Fr. Cherubim (Jones) demand immediate canonization and full recognition as "Equal to the Heirophants". They have stepped beside their usual tactics of demanding canonization whether or not Fr. Cherubim should be canonized, and demanding that any problems be swept under the carpet, to insist that he be called, "Equal to the Heirophants." Much of the work in his wake was consolidated in the book, Christ the Eternal Doubt. Our devotee explained, "Blessed Cherubim Jones saw more than anything the spiritual toxicity of postmodernism. And he sensed, perhaps even more than he realized, that the proper rebuttal to postmodernism is to reconstruct modernism: indeed, there are powerful modernist currents in his thought even when he seems to condemn all Western trends. The great grandfather of modernism was René DesCartes, and Blessed Cherubim Jones uncovered layer after layer of this philosopher whose very name means 'Born Again' and whose Meditations put doubt on a pedestal and said, in essence, 'Doubt what you can; what remains after doubt is unshakable.' And Λογος or Logos is interchangeable, one might almost say homoousios, with logic and with doubt." And to quench the ills of the postmodern world, Blessed Cherubim Jones mined a vein that would come together in the classic Christ the Eternal Doubt. Fr. Cherubim has left a considerable wake; the tip of the iceberg is in his contribution to a wave of commited Evangelicals deciding that being Orthodox is an indispensible aid to pursuing their cottage industry of reconstructing the ancient Church. The sycophant excitedly commented, "Yes; there was an article on this phenomenon in The Onion Dome. It was a bit like that article in The Onion, um, what was it... there was a woman, a strong woman, who overcame years of childhood abuse to become a successful porn star. And this is nothing next to what happened when he was the only fashionable Orthodoxy the communist East could listen to." Fr. Cherubim was indeed very concerned that his version of the Fathers be adhered to. He pointed out that many Church Fathers, in giving the theology of the created world, absolutely denied that matter was made from atoms and molecules, but insisted that science properly interpreted proves that matter was made from the four elements: "earth, air, fire, and water." And he drew a line in the sand here, and most of his Cherubinian devotees are extraordinarily suspicious about whether you can be Orthodox and believe anything like modern atheistic chemistry. There is some slight controversy surrounding Fr. Cherubim's teaching on the phantom tollbooth. His position, as carried forth by others, is that practically every major element of The Phantom Tollbooth is already in the Fathers and is attested in quite ancient liturgy. Consequently, many argue, the book The Phantom Tollbooth is no mere imaginative children's tale, but an entirely literal factual account describing life beyond the mundane. But as much as Fr. Cherubim tried to break free of Western tendencies, the concensus among non-Cherubinians that part of his spiritual ambiance and a legacy among Cherubinians is, in the words of one striking television commercial, "wacky wild, Kool-Aid style!"