Lazar Puhalo has gone to the opposite extreme

 The Synod of the Russian Church abroad confirmed that toll-houses is a part of the Holy Tradition, while purgatory isn't

"Fearing, as is natural for an Orthodox person, the possibility of an Western or other non-Orthodox influence, Dcn Lazar Puhalo has gone to the opposite extreme and contradicts a number of teachings which have long been accepted in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Thus for example, fearing lest the teaching concerning the "Toll-Stations" be likened to the Latin Doctrine of Purgatory, he leaves almost no place for what in Orthodox dogmatic theology is referred to as the "particular judgment", after which the soul experiences a foretaste of the blessedness or the eternal torment which awaits it after the resurrection.

The state of the soul after death Dcn Lazar Puhalo represents as its utter inability to function in any way whatsoever other than with the assistance of the body (p.7). As he understands the matter, after its departure from the body, the soul finds itself in a state of mute and blind repose. "An active, intellectual life or functioning of the soul alone could never be conceived in either Old or New Testament thought. For the soul to function, its restoration with the body as the 'whole person' would be absolutely necessary" (p.9). "…Without the body, the soul… is not even a person, but only something 'of ' a person… the soul without the body cannot speak, nor remember, nor discern, nor think, nor be roused, nor see… " (p.23)..."

The Holy Synod stated, that Puhalo's concept of the soul separated from the body does not correspond in the least to the Orthodox concept