Talk:Aerial toll house

• It bears a very vague resemblance to early Christian apocryphal works like the Ascension of Isaiah where one has to know the passwords to give to the angelic guardians to gain access to the seven heavens. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.239.152.174 (talk) 05:22, 29 March 2010 (UTC) Reply

Those who keep revising this article to speak of a "cult" of Fr. Seraphim Rose, "most" theologians, etc. (can you provide us a listing of all Orthodox theologians who've ever spoken on this subject, ancient and modern, so we can do the tally for ourselves???)--all of this is blatently POV, designed to make this article a rant AGANINT the toll-house theory. Personally, I'm an agnostic, myself; I don't care whether this theory is "true" or not. However, as a former Orthodox Christian who spent ten years studying this issue, I can tell you that there are theologians in the church (including several saints) who do speak of them as though they did exist, including recent saints such as Theophan the Recluse and Ignaty Brianchaninov. The way this article was worded before your revisions, it was neutral on the subject, or at least as neutral as can be--it presented both sides of the controversy, gave equal billing to each, and endeavored to leave it to the reader to decide which side he or she believed. The way you have worded it now reads simply like a rant against the toll-houses, and that is unacceptable on Wikipedia. If these edits keep continuing, I will take this to a higher authority. Nothing "personal", here; simply an effort to keep blatently POV commentary out of Wikipedia. - Ecjmartin (talk) 10:13, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Reply

This article is very clearly biased towards those who support the toll houses. There is almost no discussion about the criticism of the toll-houses and what is there is immediately "rebuffed" by other quotes. For example, Puhalo's section is immediately followed by a description of St. Anthony's Monastery's *The Soul After Death,* a book that has been spoken out against and is definitely not the nail in the coffin of the discussion. The toll-houses are EXTREMELY controversial and only actually supported by a small minority of Orthodox Christians in practice, but this article would make it seem like it was a far bigger issue and that far more people support the doctrine than actually do. Aqua817 (talk) 12:46, 21 May 2021 (UTC) Reply

@Aqua817: I have had a hard time finding RS criticising the toll houses. Maybe it means that this doctrine is widely supported. Do you have any RS which criticise the toll houses? Veverve (talk) 13:31, 21 May 2021 (UTC) Reply

I strongly doubt that Seraphim Rose is the only proponent of this idea. Mandaeism has a very similar concept (matarta). Eastern Orthodox Christianity has historically been in intensive contact with Gnostic movements for many centuries. Take for instance Palamism and Paulicianism. The latter is not strictly Eastern Orthodox, but it did originate in the region. Nebulousquasar (talk) 15:27, 8 November 2021 (UTC) Reply

@veverve I know this will sound flippant but i genuinely don't mean it like that, but a genuinely big issue is on the whole priests and other clergy who will be writing RS against toll houses think the concept is so weird it's not even worth discussing. Unfortunately this leads to a dearth of sources. Aqua817 (talk) 15:31, 15 December 2022 (UTC) Reply

it really feels this article is set up under a false premise. it's not a particularly controversial teaching. the controversy is very recent and mainly exists in the US. myself personally, growing up in the orthodox church in the US, it was not presented as something controversial or different from other teachings of the church 2600:4040:7CD4:AE00:2FA2:CC88:3BE:A31B (talk) 05:31, 26 April 2023 (UTC) Reply

Do you have a WP:RS that states this? Veverve (talk) 12:43, 26 April 2023 (UTC) Reply

Many of the people cited, such as Seraphim Rose or ROCOR, are people and groups who represent points of views specific to America and not necessarily views of all Eastern Orthodox Churches. It might be useful to find Russian or Greek sources Oceanfire23 (talk) 22:47, 18 April 2026 (UTC) Reply