Where to Seek the Truth?

St. Alexis Toth’s best-known writing — a catechetical pamphlet in plain Rusyn that put the case for Orthodoxy in question-and-answer form — and the wider body of sermons, articles, letters, and diaries through which he carried the argument for the return into the immigrant colonies. This file treats the writings as artifacts of a movement: their form, their audience, and their function.

Tradition: Carpatho-Rusyn / American Orthodox

The Pamphlet

Among the writings Toth composed and distributed in his missionary work, the most influential was a catechetical pamphlet titled «Where to Seek the Truth?» (Kde iskati pravdu?). It was, in effect, a basic catechism of the Orthodox faith written for a specific audience and purpose: to persuade Greek Catholic Rusyns to consider, and to make, the return to Orthodoxy that Toth had made (ACROD, “St. Alexis Toth,” acrod.org; OrthoChristian, “St. Alexis, a Resolute Zealot for Orthodoxy” [Archimandrite Luke (Murianka)], orthochristian.com/86813.html). The work has been reprinted in English translation (Where to Seek the Truth?, available through the Internet Archive and in the collected editions of Toth’s writings), and it remains the single text most associated with his name.

Its form was deliberately popular. Toth used a question-and-answer structure — the ancient shape of the catechism — to make the material accessible to readers of little formal education. The questions were pitched at exactly the doubts and defenses of his audience: What do the words “schism” and “heretical” mean? Can we call the pope Christ’s successor? Did Christ, the Apostles, the Holy Fathers, or the Holy Councils teach or write anything about infallibility? What does the Unia consist of? (Archimandrite Luke (Murianka), “St. Alexis, a Resolute Zealot for Orthodoxy,” orthochristian.com/86813.html, listing these questions from Toth’s catechism). Each question opened onto a plain-spoken answer arguing the Orthodox case and the emptiness, as Toth saw it, of the Union’s guarantees.

The Style

What made Toth’s writings effective was not learning displayed but learning translated. Though he was a former seminary professor of canon law and church history, he wrote for miners and millhands in simple, understandable Rusyn, seasoned with sayings, proverbs, and humorous anecdotes drawn from the common life of his readers (Archimandrite Luke (Murianka), orthochristian.com/86813.html, noting that the saint’s articles and books “were written in a simple, understandable language for Rusyns, with the use of sayings and humorous anecdotes”). The effect was a controversial literature that did not read as controversy — a homely, witty, argumentative catechism that a laborer could follow and repeat.

This is the mark of the canonist turned missionary. The man who had run a chancery and taught seminarians chose, in America, to write down rather than up — to meet his people in their own idiom. It is one reason the writings traveled: a pamphlet in plain Rusyn, full of familiar proverbs, could be read aloud in a kitchen or a lodge hall and carry the argument for the return into colonies Toth himself would never visit (see Wilkes-Barre and the Parishes).

The Wider Corpus

Where to Seek the Truth? was the flagship, but Toth wrote a great deal more. His corpus includes sermons, articles (many published in the Rusyn-American and Russian-mission press), pastoral and polemical letters, and diaries — the last of which are the source of much of what we know of the Ireland encounter and the early days of the movement (see The Ireland Encounter). This body of material has been gathered and translated in the multi-volume collected edition of Toth’s Selected Letters, Articles, Papers & Sermons and drawn upon in the OCA hagiography (the collected writings published in translation, e.g. through Synaxis Press; Constance Tarasar, ed., Orthodox America 1794–1976, 1975, in which Toth’s autobiographical material was gathered). Together they make Toth one of the more fully documented figures of the early American mission — which is precisely why the source-critical caution about the Ireland scene matters: even a well-documented writer’s account of a private meeting remains single testimony (METHODOLOGY §3.5).

The Function of the Writings

The writings were an instrument of the movement, and they should be read as such rather than as detached theology. Their purpose was practical: to arm the Rusyn immigrant with reasons — reasons he could understand and defend to his neighbors and his former priest — for making the corporate return that Toth was organizing parish by parish. In this they extended the reach of a single missionary across a continent, and they gave the movement an intellectual as well as an emotional case, so that the return could be defended as true and not merely as a reaction to mistreatment (Herbel, Turning to Tradition, 2014, ch. on Toth, on the theological seriousness of Toth’s case). The substance of that case — his handling of infallibility, of “schism,” of the Unia — is the subject of the next file, where it is presented under the collection’s confessional-but-non-polemical discipline.

References

Toth, Alexis G. Where to Seek the Truth? (Kde iskati pravdu?). English translation available via the Internet Archive (archive.org/details/seekthetruth) and in the collected editions of Toth’s writings.
Selected Letters, Articles, Papers & Sermons of Saint Alexis Toth. Multi-volume collected edition (Synaxis Press) — the gathered corpus.
Archimandrite Luke (Murianka). “St. Alexis, a Resolute Zealot for Orthodoxy.” orthochristian.com/86813.html (also pravoslavie.ru/86813.html) — for the plain-Rusyn style, the sayings and humor, and the catechism’s questions.
American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. “St. Alexis Toth.” acrod.org — used as locator.
Tarasar, Constance J., ed. Orthodox America 1794–1976: Development of the Orthodox Church in America. Syosset, NY: OCA, 1975.
Herbel, D. Oliver. Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.