Chapter 3: CHRISTIANITY MISUNDERSTOOD BY BELIEVERS.
This entire chapter has a really powerful critique of the way Christianity is run and its effect on society. Tolstoy seeks to remake, or in some ways, unmake, the Christian religion. The first step is to separate the supernatural elements and strip them from Christianity completely.
The Christian teaching presents itself to the men of our world precisely as such a teaching, which has for a long time and in a most indubitable manner been known in its minutest details, and which cannot be comprehended in any other manner than it now is. Christianity is now understood by those who profess the church doctrines as a supernatural, miraculous revelation concerning everything which is given in the symbol of faith, and by those who do not believe, as an obsolete manifestation of humanity's need of believing in some thing supernatural, as a historical phenomenon, which is completely expressed in Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and which has no longer any vital meaning for us. For the believers the meaning of the teaching is concealed by the church, for unbelievers by science.
Belief in miracles and the supernatural elements of the religion help to keep the official churches propped up. They rely on the supernatural to have their followers support them as the "true" church. For Tolstoy, having lived in the upper classes in a post-Enlightenment world, the supernatural elements of the religion can't have any meaning and should be rejected out of hand. Just as Tolstoy's old enemy "science" directs people away from Christianity, the unbelievable elements of the religion drive people away or obscure what the doctrine is supposed to be about. The focus becomes on the crying saint icon (as in War and Peace for the "people of God") or Jesus ascending into heaven rather than what Jesus actually taught. Those who have been taught in a traditional church manner may wonder what the point of the religion is if it doesn't accept the key miracles that are usually considered the basis of orthodoxy. Tolstoy gives a somewhat abstract answer:
The fulfilment of the teaching is only in unceasing motion, — in the attainment of a higher and ever higher truth, and in an ever greater realization of the same in oneself by means of an ever increasing love, and outside of oneself by an ever greater realization of the kingdom of God.
As the title of the book suggests, the Kingdom of God is not something that Jesus will "come back" and literally bring about. Rather, Jesus's first (and only) coming began the process of bringing the kingdom through love, with the followers of Jesus bettering themselves and then the world around them and bringing the kingdom of God to earth. This process continues and isn't something that will come at once or suddenly (it is actually unlikely that for Tolstoy there will be a moment where you can say it is "here" but is probably an eternal movement that continues as long as humanity exists. A contradiction might exist in Tolstoy seeing no reason for the human race to continue and continuing the human species as an invalid reason for sex.)
Only by a series of misconceptions, blunders, one-sided explanations, corrected and supplemented by generations of men, was the meaning of the Christian teaching made more and more clear to men. The Christian world-conception affected the Jewish and the pagan conceptions, and the Jewish and pagan conceptions affected the Christian world-conception. And the Christian, as being vital, penetrated the reviving Jewish and pagan conceptions more and more, and stood forth more and more clearly, freeing itself from the false admixture, which was imposed upon it. Men came to comprehend the meaning better and better, and more and more realized it in life.
In this weird passage, we see that the somewhat baffling conception Tolstoy has of Jesus's role in religion. For him, clearly his teachings are of world-shattering importance and are/were unique. However, other conceptions of life borrowed from Christianity and, as Christianity (the correct version) progresses, it borrows from other forms of life. Jesus and his teachings are the answer, but Tolstoy is clearly committed to religious pluralism (which again raises the question as to why Tolstoy doesn't just jettison Christianity as a concept and instead rely on spreading non-violent teachings, despite their source. One wonders if this is because Christianity and holding Jesus's teaching as authoritative gives him a tradition and an authority to rest on, allowing him to circumvent many practical arguments). But to embrace this, one has to ditch the miraculous elements of the religion because they serve as authoritative elements to protect the churches.
The more obscure the comprehension of Christ's teaching was, the more miraculous elements were mixed in with it ; and the more miraculous elements were mixed in, the more did the teaching deviate from its meaning and become obscure; and the more it deviated from its meaning and became obscure, the more strongly it was necessary to assert one's infallibility, and the less did the teaching become comprehensible. We can see from the gospels, the Acts, the epistles, how from the earliest times the failure to comprehend the teaching called forth the necessity of proving its truth by means of the miraculous and the incomprehensible.
Even in the Bible itself, Tolstoy sees the need for unquestioned authority from the churches. Rejecting the historicity of the book of Acts and seeing it as a retcon attempt to give authority to the followers of Jesus was a view that was very common in the late 19th century and Tolstoy's view of the churches and the historical Jesus don't misalign with these views too much (without going too deeply into Jesus studies, the 19th century of Historical Jesus studies were driven by people who forced Jesus to obey their conception of life, in the 20th century, it became more common to contextualize and disassociate Jesus from the author's own conception of life). These miracle stories are power grabs, stories made up to justify religious doctrine and power. These miracle stories distract and counter the teachings of Jesus and in fact actually contradict them because of their use as a tool to wield power.
if Christ had really founded such an institution as the church, on which the whole doctrine and the whole faith are based, He would most likely have expressed this establishment in such definite and clear words, and would have given the one, true church, outside of the stories about the miracles, which are used in connection with every superstition, such signs as to leave no doubts concerning its authenticity; there is nothing of the kind, but there are now, as there have been, all kinds of institutions which, each of them, call themselves the one, true church.
This argument actually sounds very much like arguments made against a religion being "true" made by skeptics. If Christianity, the Christianity based on the miracles essential to orthodoxy, is "true", then surely God or Jesus would have made it much more obvious for those living today. In fact, for Tolstoy, because miracles are in themselves impossible for a modern person to believe, and just as importantly, every religious tradition comes with their own unbelievable miracles, Jesus would not have constructed his church or his religion around the miracles that the churches consider so important. The fact that the world is filled with different churches that claim to be the inheritance of the miracles proves that the miracles, which can't be true, cannot be the foundation of Christianity (and as the religious counterargument would depend on faith, the fact that there are many similar but different churches makes the claim to have faith nonsense, as it is impossible to tell where people should put their faith).
So long as the believers agreed among themselves, and the assembly was one, it had no need of asserting that it was the church. Only when the believers divided into opposite parties, which denied one another, did there appear the necessity for each side to assert its authenticity, ascribing infallibility to itself. The concept of the one church arose only from this, that, when two sides disagreed and quarrelled, each of them, calling the other a heresy, recognized only its own as the infallible church.
The rise of churches and the different powerful different institutions happened because disagreement arose and thus, rather than dealing with argumentation and the usual forms of division that happen in groups of people, the rising and differing churches each claimed that they were the authoritative churches from God and the other groups were heretics, which were met with violence because they, in the dominant church's view, opposed God.
As an actual, historical phenomenon there have existed only many assemblies of men, each of which has asserted that it is the one church, established by Christ, and that all the others, which call themselves churches, are heresies and schisms.
While Tolstoy (it seems rightly) critiques the protestants for doing the same things as the Orthodox and Catholics, this is a fairly protestant view of the church, with the church being something rather figurative and not a literal institution with real power given to it by Jesus. Thus, hundreds of sects fight for the same exclusionary claim, arguing that they are on the side of God, justifying violence and religious wars.
The Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost has uninterruptedly operated in their hierarchy; the Orthodox assert that the same Holy Ghost has operated in their hierarchy; the Arians asserted that the Holy Ghost operated in their hierarchy (this they asserted with as much right as the now ruling churches assert it); the Protestants of every description, Lutherans, Reformers, Presbyterians, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Mormons, assert that the Holy Ghost operates only in their assemblies.
And Tolstoy says "Nor could it be otherwise", with some version of "could not be otherwise" appears 10 times in Garnett's translation, further highlighting Tolstoy's belief of historical necessity and fatalism. These social and religious factors necessarily lead to violence and exclusion, just like governments necessarily lead to violence and social control. It is an essential part of the institutions and arguments over religious doctrine.
The whole discussion of the author (that Tolstoy critiques) reduces itself to this, that every opinion which is not in agreement with a code of dogmas professed by us at a given time is a heresy; but at a given time and in a given place people profess something, and this profession of something in some place cannot be a criterion of the truth.
The concept of heresy, of course, leads to conservatism and traditionalism, fighting any progress or differentiation of ideas, limiting thinking and conceptions of life. This rigid conception of truth that has been revealed through miracles and is safeguarded by a singular institution set out against other institutions that make some similar claims and all those who oppose the institution does not mesh with the idea of truth that Tolstoy believes Jesus shared.
The church is an assembly of men asserting that they are in possession of the indisputable truth.
Notice that truth, or at least people's conception of what is true, continues to move and progress. While the teaching itself occurred now two thousand year ago, it has been obscured and humanity wasn't entirely ready for it, so the teaching is only uncovered piece by piece throughout human history. This is a particularly surprising doctrine for Tolstoy to hold and seems to contradict some of his other beliefs in primitivism and simplicity, but at the same time, it is clear that he believes in the progress of knowledge, whether it be scientific, philosophic, or religious knowledge.
A disciple of Christ, whose teaching consists in an eternally greater and greater comprehension of the teaching and in a greater and greater fulfilment of it, in a motion toward perfection
The goal, no matter how seemingly impossible, is the strive towards perfection. For Tolstoy, a Christian cannot be satisfied but always must be moving forward on a personal level. And this is part of the fight against conservatism and traditionalism, which claims that things are fine the way they are and that preserving the institutions, and thus the religion, is most important. Instead, people should try to be more and more perfect, more and more non-resistant, and more and more loving (of course, this can lead to guilt in failure, which is a huge obstacle to happiness and something Tolstoy battled his entire life).
with good reason all, or nearly all. the Christian so-called sects have recognized the church to be that whore of whom Revelation prophesies; with good reason the history of the church is the history of the greatest cruelties and horrors.
While religious institutions no longer seem directly responsible for the majority of modern-day atrocities and viewing the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon is usually reserved for rightist conspiracy theorists (though taking the book of Revelation seriously is almost exclusively reserved to conservatives or conspiracy theorists in today's world), the history of the Christian churches is not one filled with love and kindness.
The churches have not only never united, but have always been one of the chief causes of the disunion of men, of the hatred of one another, of wars, slaughters, inquisitions, nights of St. Bartholomew, and so forth,
The division of doctrine, the conception of heresy, and the belief in a Jesus or God-descended church has lead to violence and thus as Tolstoy tries to re-set the Christian religion in a non-violent path, these aspects of the religion must be removed. And this starts with the ceremonies that affect the doctrines of the church and the belief systems of those who are born into these churches.
at the birth of a child, the clergy teaches that a prayer has to be read over the mother and the child, in order to purify them, since without this prayer the mother who has given birth to a child is accursed. For this purpose the priest takes the child in his hands in front of the representations of the saints, which the masses simply call gods, and pronounces exorcising words, and thus purifies the mother. Then it is impressed on the parents, and even demanded of them under threat of punishment in case of non-fulfilment, that the child shall be baptized, that is, dipped three times in water by the priest, in connection with which incomprehensible words are pronounced and even less comprehensible acts per formed, — the smearing of various parts of the body with oil, the shearing of the hair, and the blowing and spitting of the sponsors on the imaginary devil. All this is supposed to cleanse the child and make him a Christian.
This passage and similar ones throughout the book, such as the one below, are written rather satirically and from a distance, like the famous opera passages in War and Peace, the "making strange" aspect of Tolstoy's writing. The important critique is that the actions, like the actions of the opera actor/actress, have no meaning to those it is being performed to or with. Instead, they are observed simply out of tradition, with no reflection on what that tradition actually means. It is also heavily steeped in superstition and with ethics based on original sin and the infallibility of the church (you must go to the church to have it performed and they have convinced you that it must be performed and therefore the church has bred an understood reliance on the church, furthering their power).
(holidays are days on which Christ was born, though no one knows when that was, and circumcised, on which the Mother of God died, the cross was brought, the image was carried in, a saintly fool saw a vision, etc.,)
Garnett's language in this classic Tolstoyian parenthetical is a little stronger here, calling the fool a "lunatic", just as later, when discussing soldiers dressing up in a "fool's uniform", Garnett has them as "clowns". These traditional observations can have no meaning because they obviously are not based on facts but are rather based on lies called miracles, which are again distractions from Jesus's teachings. How can the observation of these rituals, festivals, or icons make one a better person moving closer to perfection? Of course they can't. They are formal rituals with no real meaning. This is the hypnotism of the masses performed by the churches.
the masses are carefully taught this theoretically, and, being hypnotized practically, with every means of solemnity, splendour, authority, and violence, are made to believe in this, and are jealously guarded against every endeavour to be freed from these savage superstitions.
The churches need these rituals, which heavily religious societies direct their calendars and lives around, just as they need violence to protect their place in the social order. If they can hypnotize the people into directing their lives around these rituals and holidays, then they control them without having to use outward violence. And you will notice that none of this has anything to do with Jesus or the non-resistant teachings of Jesus. In fact, Tolstoy believes, they are antithetical.
The Sermon on the Mount, or the symbol of faith: it is impossible to believe in both. And the churchmen have chosen the latter:
You cannot believe both in the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of the church. The Nicene Creed, with Tolstoy has nothing but contempt for, is a separator of people, and the church as an institution is a violent instrument of social control, completely opposed to the radical counter-culture of the teachings of Jesus.
a man who believes in the doctrine and the preaching of the church about the compatibility of executions and wars with Christianity, cannot believe in the brotherhood of men.
You either believe all people should be accepted together and should not be judged, or you believe that they should be separated and judged based on their religious beliefs and allegiances. Those in the churches have chosen the latter.
The masses move on in the consciousness of the moral, vital side of Christianity. And it is here that the church appears with its failure to support, and with its intensified inculcation of an obsolete paganism in its ossified form, with its tendency to push the masses back into that darkness, from which they are struggling with so much effort to get out.
Tolstoy is, perhaps unsurprisingly, optimistic about the will of the masses, who have somewhat of a "class consciousness" towards the brotherhood of man style of Christianity. The institutions on the other hand, press the masses down through their doctrines and stand in the way of moral progress. The masses struggle against this, and through this, work towards perfecting themselves and their world. The primary opponents of Jesus's teachings, as, you could argue, in the Gospels themselves, are not the atheists or nonbelievers, but rather the religious gatekeepers that refuse to loosen the grip of their political and social power, a power that is irrational and untenable.
we need but stop and think of the condition of any adult, not only cultured, but even simple, man of our time, who has filled himself with conceptions, which are in the air, from the fields of geology, physics, chemistry, cosmography, history, when he for the first time looks consciously at the beliefs, instilled in him in childhood and supported by the churches, that God created the world in six days ; that there was light before the sun ; that Noah stuck all the animals into his ark, and so forth ; that Jesus is the same God, the son, who created everything before this ; that this God descended upon earth for Adam's sin ; that He rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sits on the right of the Father, and will come in the clouds to judge the world, and so forth. All these propositions, which were worked out by the men of the fourth century and had a certain meaning for the men of that time, have no meaning for the men of the present. The men of our time may repeat these words with their lips, but they cannot believe
The basic teachings of the Biblical story and the religious gatekeepers can have no meaning to us in a modern day because they are the product of mindnumbing superstition. The answer cannot be to go back (though as we have seen, this has been somewhat tempting for Tolstoy, and politically, it is somewhat his answer) and disbelieve what we know about science and history, but instead we must go forward and deny the religious gatekeeping and superstition to focus on the teachings of Jesus. This of course is a radical re-conception of the way the Christian religion works for most people, as the stories of Noah and Adam are often seen as essential to understanding the Bible, and more importantly, even if those Old Testament stories are seen just as metaphors, the idea of Jesus's Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension are key doctrines in Orthodoxy Christianity, with even today, most groups that consider themselves Christian believing in them at least somewhat literally. But for Tolstoy, these are just distractions from the real teaching of Jesus, and more importantly, how churches maintain their control over people.
Persons who depart from the external expression of faith and who give expression to it are either directly punished or deprived of their rights; while persons who strictly adhere to the external forms of faith are rewarded and given rights.
Above all, churches, religions, and institutions breed conformity. Those who believe something different or reject the outward symbolic actions expected of them (think of the National Anthem and Pledge of Allegiance in our country) are shunned from society and divided, while those who unthinkingly do what is expected of them are rewarded. Forward-thinking and individuality are suppressed for collectivism and blind obedience. And this is the way the churches operate, and the belief in miracles and ahistorical ideas are used as demarcations to remove undesirables from society. And this brainwashing begins at birth.
The child is methodically deceived in the most important matter of life, and when the deception has so grown up with his life that it is difficult to tear it away, there is revealed to him the whole world of science and of reality, which can in no way harmonize with the beliefs instilled in him, and he is left to make the best he can out of these contradictions.
The contradiction between church and Jesus and institutions and non-violence are explored throughout the book, but just as those born into The Party in 1984 have their thinking and language so limited that they cannot think in conceptions that contradict the party's message, those born in heavily religious contexts can find their thinking so warped that they are unable to properly engage with ideas outside of their religious conception and find themselves left behind the progresses in science, history, and morality, clinging to an obsolete and violent way of life.
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