N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
THE OLD AND THE NEW
TESTAMENT
IN THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS
OF L. TOLSTOY *
(1912 - #54)
About Lev Tolstoy they have written very
much, [too much]. It is indicative perhaps of a fastidious desire
to say something new about him. Yet all the same it mustneeds be
acknowledged, that the religious consciousness of L. Tolstoy
has not been subjected to sufficiently extensive an investigation.
It was in essence considered of little value, independent of the
utilitarian points of view, [from its usefulness for the aims of
the liberal-radicals or the conservative-reactionaries]. Some with
their utilitarian-tactical aims have praised L. Tolstoy, as
a true Christian, while others, frequently from just the same sort
of utilitarian-tactical aims have anathematised him, as being a
servant of the Anti Christ. In such instances, Tolstoy is employed
as a means for their own ends, and by this they have given insult
to the genius of the man. His memory following his death, and his
very death itself have been transformed into utilitarian tools.
The life of L. Tolstoy, his searchings, his rebellious criticism
-- has the appearance of something great, of world significance;
it demands appreciation sub specie of eternal value, and
not the mere usefulness of the moment. We desire, that the religion
of L. Tolstoy be subjected to investigation irrespective of
considerations about Tolstoy from the ruling circles and irrespective
of the quarrel of the Russian Intelligentsia with the Church. We
do not want, as do many of the Intelligentsia, to avow L.
Tolstoy as a true Christian just because he was excommunicated from
the Church by the Holy Synod, nor on the same basis do we want to
see in Tolstoy [only] a servant of the devil. Of essential interest
to us, was whether L. Tolstoy was Christian, what was his
attitude towards Christ, and of what sort was the nature of his
religious consciousness? For us both clerical utilitarianism and
the utilitarianism of the Intelligentsia are alike alien to and
alike distort the understanding and the evaluation of the religious
consciousness of Tolstoy. From the extensive literature about
L. Tolstoy there mustneeds be noted the remarkable and very valuable
work of D. S. Merezhkovsky -- "L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky", in which
were essentially the first investigations of the religious element
and the religious consciousness of L. Tolstoy, dissecting
the paganism of Tolstoy. True, Merezhkovsky has too much employed
Tolstoy for the conveying of his own religious conceptualisation,
[but this has not hindered him from speaking the truth about the
religion of Tolstoy, which the more recent utilitarian-tactical
articles of Merezhkovsky do not supplant.] (And sometimes, what
he writes, reminds one of pamphlet form). The whole of the work
of Merezhkovsky remains (almost) the sole one for evaluating the
religion of Tolstoy. 1
First of all, it mustneeds
be said about L. Tolstoy, that he -- had genius as an artist
and genius as a person, but he did not have genius [nor even talent]
as a religious thinker. For him there was no gift of expression
in word, bespoken by its own religious life, of his religious searching.
Within him stormed the religious element, but it was not for the
verbal. The genius of religious experiencings, when without talent,
are (often) banal religious thoughts! Every attempt of Tolstoy to
express in word, to make logical his religious element, has begotten
only [banal,] dull thoughts. Essentially the Tolstoy of the first
period, before the turnaround, and the Tolstoy of the second period,
after the turnaround, -- are one and the same Tolstoy. The worldview
of the young Tolstoy was [banal] (mediocre), he wanted totally "to
be, like everyone". The difference is but in this, that in the first
period the "everyone" -- is the fashionable worldly society, and
in the second period the "everyone" -- is the peasantry, the toiling
people. And over the course of all his life and banal of thought,
Tolstoy wanted to become assimilated either into the fashionable
people or into the peasantry, yet not only was he not like everyone,
but he was like no one, for he was unique, he was a genius. And
always to this genius, the religion of the Logos and the philosophy
of the Logos were foreign, always his religious element remained
non-verbal, not expressible in word, in consciousness. L. Tolstoy
is exceptionally original and a genius, but still he was (close
to banality) also limited. In this, what demands notice is the antinomic
in Tolstoy.
On one side, L. Tolstoy
strikes one by his organic belonging to high society, by his exclusive
belonging to the nobleman’s way of life. In his work, "Childhood,
Boyhood and Youth", there are disclosed the formative sources upon
L. Tolstoy, his social haughtiness, his ideal of man comme il
faut. This was the leavening in Tolstoy. Up through the period
of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" it is evident, how close
to his nature was the high-society tablature of ranks, the habits
and biases of that social world, how he knew all the ins and outs
of that particular world, and how difficult it seemed for him to
surmount this element. He thirsted to go off from his social circle
to nature ("The Cossacks"), as being a man too much caught up in
this circle. In Tolstoy there is sensed all the oppressiveness of
high society, of the nobility’s lifestyle, and all the power also
of the vital law of the pull and attraction to the soil. In him
there is nothing up in the air nor frivolous. He wants to be a wanderer
and cannot become it until the final days of his life, chained down
to his family, to his birth, to his manor-house, to his circle.
On the other side is that Tolstoy, with an unprecedented power of
negation and genius, and he rises up against the "world", not only
in the narrow, but also in the broad sense of the word, against
the godlessness and nihilism not only of all the nobility’s society,
but also of all the "cultural" society. His mutinous critique passes
over into a negation of all history, of all culture. He, -- from
his childhood years is permeated by social vanity and convention,
worshipping an ideal of "comme il fault" and "to be, like
everyone", -- he did not know the mercy in the lie of the knout
under which society lives, in the breakdown of the protections from
all its conventions. Through Tolstoy’s negation the nobility, the
worldly high society, had to move on, had to be cleansed. Tolstoy’s
negation remains a great truth for this society. But here still
is the Tolstoy antinomy. On the one side, one is struck by the peculiar
materialism of Tolstoy, his apology for living life, his exclusive
preoccupation with the life of the bodily emotion of soul and the
alienness of spirit from his life. This materialism in life is sensed
not only in his artistic creativity, where he reveals with an exceptional
gift of genius his penetration into the primal elements of life,
in the animate and vegetative processes of life, 2 but likewise also in his religio-moral preaching.
L. Tolstoy preaches an exalted, moralistic materialism, an animal-vegetative
happiness, as the realisation of the supreme, the Divine law of
life. When he speaks about the happy life, there is not a single
sound from him, that would hint at the spiritual life. There is
only the soulific, the soul-bodily. And in this indeed Tolstoy renders
himself an adherent of an extreme spirituality, he denies the flesh,
he preaches asceticism. His religio-moral teachings seem something
unprecedented and impossible, an exaltedly-moralistic and ascetic
materialism, something on the order of a spiritualistic beastliness.
His consciousness is occupied and delimited by the soulific-bodily
plane of being and cannot break forth into the kingdom of spirit.
And still more the Tolstoy
antinomy. L. Tolstoy always and in everything strikes one
by his sobriety, rationality, practicality, utilitarianism, the
absence of poetry and dreaminess, with a lack of understanding of
beauty and a lack of love, passing over into a persecution of beauty.
But this non-poetic, soberly-utilitarian persecutor of beauty was
one of the greatest artists of the world; in the denial of beauty
he has left us works of eternal beauty. Aesthetic barbarity and
crudeness are united with artistic genius. No less antinomic is
this also, that L. Tolstoy was an extreme individualist, anti-social
so much, that he never understood the social forms of struggle with
evil and the social forms of the creative building up of life and
of culture. He denied history, and this anti-social individualist
did not have a sense of personhood, essentially he denied personhood,
and everything remained within this element of the race. We see
further, that with the absence of the sense and consciousness of
person, there was connected the deep-rooted peculiarities of his
world-approach and his world-consciousness. (He was close to Buddhism).
The extreme individualist in "War and Peace" with delight showed
the world the childish diaper, smelly in its green and yellow, and
he discovered, that the self-consciousness of person has not surmounted
in him even the natal element. And is not this antinomic, that he
negates the world and the world’s values with a singular audacity
and radicalism -- this one who is all so chained down to the immanent
world and cannot even in his imaginings propose himself a different
world? Is it not antinomic, that a man, passionate and angry over
a time when they had conducted a search of him on his property,
going into a fit of rage and demanding that they report this matter
to the sovereign, that he should be given a public apology, otherwise
threatening to quit Russia forever, -- is it not antinomic that
this man preached vegetarianism, and the less-bloody ideal of non-resistance
to evil? Is it not antinomic, that a Russian to the marrow of his
bones, with a national peasant-lordly face, is it not antinomic
that he should preach an Anglo-Saxon religiosity alien to the Russian
people? This genius of a man all his life sought the meaning of
life, he thought about death, he knew not satisfaction, but all
the same he was almost bereft of the sense and consciousness of
the transcendent, he was delimited by the horizon of the immanent
world. And finally, the most telling Tolstoy antinomy: a preacher
of Christianity, concerned exclusively with the Gospel and the teaching
of Christ, he was [before this] a stranger to the religion of Christ,
[how little one could be a stranger -- after the appearance of Christ],
and yet he was bereft of any sense of the Person of Christ. This
is the striking and incomprehensible antinomy in L. Tolstoy,
upon which insufficient attention has been turned; it is a mystery
of the genius of his person, the mystery of his fate, which cannot
fully be solved. The hypnosis of the Tolstoy simplicity, his almost
Biblical style reveals this antinomic aspect, it creates the illusion
of wholeness and clarity. L. Tolstoy was fated to play a great
role in the religious rebirth of Russia and all the world: with
the power of genius he turned contemporary people back again to
religion and to the religious meaning of life, he traced out for
it the crisis of historical Christianity, he -- was a weak and incapable
religious thinker, in that his mindset and consciousness were alien
to the mysteries of the religion of Christ, and he -- was a rationalist.
This rationalist, this preacher of a rational-utilitarian felicity,
demanded folly from the Christian world in the name of the consequent
fulfilling of the teaching and commandments of Christ, and he compelled
the Christian world to be pensive over its own un-Christian and
hypocritical life filled with lies. He -- was a strange enemy of
Christianity but also a precursor of Christian renewal. Upon the
genius of person and life of L. Tolstoy there lies the seal of some
sort of special mission.
______________________
Lev Tolstoy’s
world-sense and world-consciousness [is outside the Christian and
pre-Christian during all the periods of his life. This mustneeds
decidedly be stated, irrespective of any utilitarian considerations.
His great genius obliges, first of all, that about him there be
spoken essentially the truth.] (is more Buddhist, than it is Christian.
It can likewise be said, that) for Lev Tolstoy everything was in
the Old Testament, [in paganism,] in the Hypostasis of the Father.
The religion of Tolstoy -- is not a new Christianity, it is an Old
Testament and pre-Christian religion, precluding the Christian revelation
about person, the revelation about the Second Hypostasis, the Hypostasis
of the Son. For L. Tolstoy the self-consciousness of person
is as strange, as it would be strange for a man of a pre-Christian
epoch. He does not sense the uniqueness and unrepeatability of every
person and the eternal mystery of their destiny. For him only the
world soul exists, and not the separate person, he lives in the
element of the human race, and not in the consciousness of the person.
The racial element, the natural soul of the world was revealed in
the Old Testament and in paganism, and with these was connected
the religion of the pre-Christian revelation of the Hypostasis of
the Father. But with the Christian revelation of the Hypostasis
of the Son, of the Logos, of Person-ness, there is connected the
self-consciousness of the person and its eternal destiny. Every
person religiously dwells in the mystical atmosphere of the Hypostasis
of the Son, of Christ, of Person-ness. Prior to Christ, in the deep
and religious sense of the word, there is not yet person-ness. Person-ness
ultimately is conscious of itself only in the religion of Christ.
The tragedy of personal destiny is known only by the Christian epoch.
L. Tolstoy is not at all aware of the Christian problem of the person,
he does not see the person, for him the person sinks away into the
natural soul of the world. And therefore too he neither senses nor
sees the Person of Christ. For one who does not see any sort of
person, that one also does not see the Person of Christ, since in
Christ truly, in His Filial Hypostasis as Son, every person dwelleth
and knoweth oneself. The very consciousness of the person is bound
up with the Logos, and not with the soul of the world. For
L. Tolstoy there is no Logos, and therefore there is for him no
person-ness, for him -- there is only the individual. And in this
context all are mere individuals, not knowing the Logos, they know
not the person, their individualism is impersonal, and it dwells
within the natural soul of the world. We see, how foreign the Logos
was for Tolstoy, how foreign Christ was for him, he was not the
enemy of Christ the Logos within the Christian epoch, he is simply
blind and deaf, he is as it were in a pre-Christian epoch. L. Tolstoy
-- is cosmic, he is entirely within the soul of the world, in created
nature, he penetrates into the depth of its element, the primordial
elements. In this is the power of Tolstoy as artist, an extraordinary
power. And how distinct he is from Dostoevsky, who was anthropologic,
who was entirely within the Logos, who attained to self-knowledge
of person and its fate at the extreme limits, in sickness. With
the anthropologicism of Dostoevsky, with his strained feel for the
person and its tragedy, is connected his extraordinary feeling for
the Person of Christ, his almost ecstatic love for the Person of
Christ. With Dostoevsky there was an intimate relationship to Christ,
with Tolstoy there was no sort of relationship to Christ, to Christ
Himself. For Tolstoy there exists not Christ, but only the teachings
of Christ, the commandments of Christ. The pagan Goethe sensed Christ
[rather] more intimately, and [far] better did he perceive the Person
of Christ, than did Tolstoy. The Person of Christ is obscured for
L. Tolstoy as something impersonal, elemental, general. He hears
the commandments of Christ, but he does not hear Christ Himself.
He fails to understand, that the uniquely important is Christ Himself,
and what saves is only His mysteried closeness to us. The Christian
revelation about the Person of Christ and about every person is
foreign, is alien to him. He accepts Christianity impersonally,
abstractly, without Christ, as it were without a face to it.
L. Tolstoy, like
no one ever before, thirsted to fulfill to the very end the will
of the Father. All his life he was tormented by a burning thirst
to fulfill the law of life of the Master, thus in his life glorifying
Him. (He had a troubling sense of guilt and a troubling thirst for
truth.) Such a thirst for the fulfilling of the commandments, the
(moral) law, is not to be met with in anyone, except Tolstoy. This
was something primary, and engrained in him. (He demanded the fulfilling
of the Sermon on the Mount.) And L. Tolstoy believed, as no
one hitherto ever did, that by the will of God it was easy to fulfill
totally, he did not want to acknowledge the difficulty of fulfilling
the commandments. Man himself, with his own powers, should and can
fulfill the will of God. This is an easy fulfilling, and it bestows
happiness and felicity. The commandment, the law of life is fulfilled
exclusively in the relationship of man to the Father, in the religious
atmosphere of the Fatherly Hypostasis. L. Tolstoy wants to fulfill
the will of God not through the Son, he does not know the Son and
has need of nothing in the Son. The religious atmosphere of sonship
to God, of filiation, of the Son’s Hypostasis, is not necessary
to Tolstoy for fulfilling the will of the Father: he himself, he
himself fulfills the will of the Father, he himself is able to.
Tolstoy regards it immoral, when they avow it possible to fulfill
the will of the Father only through the Son, the Redeemer and Saviour,
he reacts with repugnance towards the idea of redemption and salvation,
i.e. he reacts with repugnance not towards Jesus of Nazareth, but
towards Christ the Logos, Who didst offer Himself in sacrifice for
the sins of the world. The religion of L. Tolstoy wants to
know only the Father and it does not want to know the Son; the Son
hinders him to fulfill by his own powers the law of the Father.
L. Tolstoy consequently confesses a religion of law, an Old Testament
religion. The religion of grace, the New Testament religion is alien
and unknown to him. Tolstoy is moreso a Buddhist, than he is a Christian.
Buddhism is a religion of self-salvation, just as is the religion
of Tolstoy. Buddhism does not know the person-aspect of God, the
person-aspect of the Saviour and the person-aspect of the saved.
Buddhism is a religion of compassion, and not love. Many tend to
say, that Tolstoy was a true Christian, and they contrast him against
the false and hypocritical Christians, with which the world is filled.
But the existence of false and hypocritical Christians, working
deeds of hatred in place of deeds of love, (how very much so,) but
this does not justify the misuse of words, or a play on words [to
imply falsehood]. It is impossible to term someone a Christian,
for whom the very idea of redemption, the very need of the Saviour,
is foreign and repugnant, i.e. for whom the very idea of Christ
is alien and repugnant. Suchlike an hostility to the idea of redemption,
suchlike a flailing at it, the Christian world has never yet known.
In L Tolstoy the Old Testament religion of law rose up against
the New Testament religion of grace, against the mystery of redemption.
L. Tolstoy wanted to transform Christianity into a religion of rules,
of law, of moral commandments, i.e. into a religion that is Old
Testament and pre-Christian, not knowing grace, into a religion
not only not knowing redemption, but also not thirsting for redemption,
as even the pagan world had thirsted for it during its final days.
Tolstoy says, that it would be better, if Christianity had not existed
as the religion of redemption and salvation, that it then would
be easier to fulfill the will of the Father. All religions, in his
opinion, are better than the religion of Christ -- the Son of God,
since they all teach, how to live, they gives laws, rules, commandments;
the religion of salvation, however, transfers everything from man
to the Saviour and to the mystery of redemption. L. Tolstoy hates
the churchly dogmas since what he wants is a religion of self-salvation,
as being the solely moral, the solely fulfilling of the will of
the Father, of His law; these dogmas however speak about salvation
through the Saviour, through His redemptive sacrifice. For Tolstoy
the solely-salvific commandments of Christ are fulfilled by man
through his own powers. These commandments are also the will of
the Father. Christ Himself, however, had spoken concerning Himself:
"I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" -- for Tolstoy this is altogether
unnecessary, he wants not only to dispense with Christ the Saviour,
he also considers it immoral to have any recourse to the Saviour,
any sort of assist in fulfilling the will of the Father. For him
the Son does not exist, there exists only the Father, i.e. he finds
everything of significance in the Old Testament and does not know
the New Testament.
It seems easy
for L. Tolstoy to fulfill totally, by his own powers, the
law of the Father, because he does not sense nor know sin and evil.
He does not know the irrational element of evil, and therefore redemption
is unnecessary for him, and he does not want to know the Redeemer.
Tolstoy looks upon evil rationalistically, in the manner of Socrates,
and in evil he sees only the lack of knowledge, only an insufficiency
of rational awareness, almost a misapprehension; he denies the unfathomable
and irrational mystery of evil, connected with the unfathomable
and irrational mystery of freedom. One who is conscious of the law
of the good, according to Tolstoy, already under the effect of this
consciousness alone would want to fulfill it. Evil is wrought but
by the lack of this consciousness. Evil is rooted not in the irrational
will and not in irrational freedom, but in the absence of rational
consciousness, in ignorance. It is impossible to do evil, if thou
knowest, what suchlike be the good. Human nature is essentially
good and unsinning, and it does evil only through ignorance of the
law. The good is rational. Tolstoy especially emphasises
this. Evil is done out of stupidity, there is no deliberate consideration
to do evil, for only the good leads to the bliss in life, to happiness.
It is apparent, that Tolstoy looks upon good and evil just like
Socrates looked at it, i.e. rationalistically, identifying the good
with the rational, and evil with the non-rational. The rational
consciousness of the law, bestown by the Father, leads to the ultimate
triumph of the good and the elimination of evil. This comes about
easily and happily, and is done through man’s own powers. L. Tolstoy,
like no one ever before, rails at evil and the falsity of life and
he calls for a moral maximalism, for the immediate and ultimate
realisation of good in all. But his moral maximalism in regard to
life is also particularly bound up with an ignoring of evil. With
naivete, and with the hypnotic effect of the genius lodged within
him, he does not want to know the power of evil, the difficulty
of its overcoming, the irrational tragedy connected with it. To
the superficial glance it might seem, that L. Tolstoy in particular
better than others saw the evil of life, and that deeper than others
he exposed it. But this is a mistaken perspective. Tolstoy did see,
that people fail to fulfill the law of the Father, sent them in
life, and to him people appeared walking in darkness, since they
live by the law of the world, and not by the law of the Father,
Whom they know not; people seemed to him irrational and foolish.
But the evil he did not see at all. If he had viewed evil and gotten
at its mystery, he would then never have said, that it is easy to
totally fulfill the will of the Father by the natural capacities
of man, that the good can be victorious without the redemption of
evil. Tolstoy did not see sin, sin was for him but ignorance, only
a weakness of the rational awareness of the law of the Father. He
did not know sin, nor did he know redemption. From his naive ignoring
of sin and evil there issues forth also the Tolstoyan denial of
the burdens of universal history, Tolstoy’s maximalism. Here we
again come back to what was said at the beginning. L. Tolstoy
did not see evil and sin, because he does not see the aspect of
person. The consciousness of evil and sin is connected with the
consciousness of person, and the selfness of the person is perceived
in connection with the consciousness of evil and sin, in connection
with the opposing of the person by natural elements, by the setting
of limits. The absence of personal self-consciousness in Tolstoy
is also in him the absence of consciousness of evil and sin. He
does not know the tragedy of person -- the tragedy of evil and sin.
Evil is unconquered by the consciousness, by the reason, it is situated
unfathomably deep within man. Human nature is not good, but is rather
a fallen nature, and human reason -- is a fallen reason. There is
need for the mystery of redemption, in order for evil to be conquered.
But with Tolstoy there was some sort of a naturalistic optimism.
L.
Tolstoy, rebelling against the whole of society, against all culture,
arrived at an extreme optimism, at a denial of the corruptness and
sinfulness of nature. Tolstoy believes, that God Himself makes real
the good in the world and that only one should not oppose His will.
Everything natural -- is good. In this Tolstoy comes close to Jean
Jacques Rousseau and to the teachings of the XVIII Century about
the natural condition as being both good and divine. Resist not
evil, and the good itself wilt be realised without thine action,
it will be a natural condition, in which directly will be realised
the Divine will, the utmost law of life, which also is God. (There
will be the immediate intervention of God.) 3 The teaching of L. Tolstoy about God is a
peculiar form of pantheism, for which there does not exist person-ness
in God, just as there does not exist person-ness in man nor in general
is there any sort of person-ness. For Tolstoy God is not a being,
but rather a law, diffused through everything as a divine principle.
Thus for him there does not exist a personal God, just as there
does not exist any personal immortality. His pantheistic consciousness
does not permit of the existence of two worlds -- the world of nature,
immanent, and a world of the Divine, transcendent. Such a pantheistic
consciousness presupposes that the good, i.e. the Divine law of
life, is to be realised by a naturo-immanent path, without grace,
without the emergence of the transcendent into this world. Tolstoy’s
pantheism confuses God with the soul of the world. But his pantheism
is not consistent and at times it assumes an hint of Deism. The
God indeed, which gives the law of life, a commandment, but bestows
neither grace nor help, is the dead God of Deism. With Tolstoy there
is a mighty sense of God, but a weak consciousness of God, he dwelt
primitively with the Fatherly Hypostasis, but without the Logos.
Just as L. Tolstoy believes in the blessedness of the natural
condition and in the realisation of good by natural powers, wherein
the Divine will actualises itself, so also he believes in the singular
inerrancy of the natural reason. He does not see the fallenness
of reason. Reason is for him sinless. He does not know, that initially
it is reason, which is fallen away from the Divine Reason, and it
is reason, which becomes co-united with the Divine Reason. Tolstoy
adheres to a naive, naturalistic rationalism. He always appeals
to reason, to the intellectual principle, and not to the will, not
to freedom. In the rationalism of Tolstoy, at times very coarse,
is expressed this faith in the blissful natural condition, in the
goodness of nature and the natural. Tolstoy’s rationalism and naturalism
are incapable of explaining the deviating away from the rational
and natural condition, and indeed human life is full of these deviations,
and they beget that evil and falseness of life, which Tolstoy so
mightily rails against. Why has mankind fallen away from the good
natural condition and the rational law of life, governing this condition?
It means, that there was some sort of a falling away, a fall into
sin. Tolstoy says: all evil is from this, that people walk in darkness,
that they do not know the Divine law of life. But from whence is
this darkness and ignorance? We inevitably come to the irrationality
of evil as an utmost mystery -- the mystery of freedom. In Tolstoy’s
world-feeling there is something in common with the world-feeling
of Rozanov, both likewise not knowing evil, not seeing the countenance,
likewise believing in the felicitude of the natural, likewise dwelling
in the Father’s Hypostasis and in the soul of the world, in the
Old Testament and paganism. And indeed both L. Tolstoy and V. Rozanov,
despite all their differences, are identically opposed to the religion
of the Son, the religion of redemption.
It is unnecessary in detail and
systematically to expound the teachings of L. Tolstoy in order to
vouch for the correctness of my characterisation. The teachings
of L. Tolstoy are quite well known to all. But usually books are
read with preconceptions, and people tend to see in them, that which
they want to see, and they do not see, that which they do not want
to see. Therefore, I shall present nonetheless a series of the clearest
places, supportive of my views on Tolstoy. I take my citations first
of all from a basic religio-philosophic tract of Tolstoy, entitled
"In What is my Faith?". "It has always seemed strange to me, why
did Christ, in future knowing that the fulfillment of his teachings
would be impossible by the sole powers of man, give such clear and
rational laws, relating directly to each individual man? Reading
these rules, it has always seemed to me, that they relate directly
to me, and from me alone do they demand fulfilling". 4 "Christ says: "I find, that the manner of providing
for your lives is very foolish and hard. I offer ye something altogether
other". 5 "It is innate to human nature to do that, what is
the better. And every teaching about the life of people is only
a teaching about that, what is the better for people. If it be shown
to people, what is the better for them to do, then how indeed can
they say, that they want to do that, what is the better, but they
cannot? People cannot do only that, what is the worse, and cannot
not be able to do that, what is the better". 6 "As soon as one (a man) makes a judgement, then
he is aware of himself as rational, and being aware of himself as
rational, he cannot but recognise, what is reasonable, and that
what is unreasonable. Reason commands nothing; it only illumines".
7 "Only a false positing about something, that it
is what actually it is not, or that it is not what actually it is,
can lead people to such a strange denial of the fulfillment of that,
which by their own avowal, bestows them good. The false positing,
leading up to this, and it is, is what is called a dogmatic christian
faith, -- that very thing, which from childhood all those confessing
a churchly christian faith learn by rote variously according to
their orthodox, catholic or protestant catechisms". 8 "It is asserted, that the dead continue to be alive.
And in that the dead are no wise able to affirm that they have died,
nor that they are alive, since a stone cannot affirm whether, that
it can or cannot speak, this absence of the negative then is accepted
as a proof and it is affirmed that people, who have died, have not
died. And moreover with great solemnity and credulity it is affirmed
that, after Christ I should believe in Him and therein a man is
freed from sin, i.e. that for a man after Christ it is unnecessary
further by reason to illumine his life and choose that, what is
the better for him. For him it is necessary to believe only, that
Christ has redeemed him from sin, and therein he is perfectly sinless,
i.e. perfectly fine. According to this teaching people ought to
imagine, that within them the reason is powerless and that consequently
also they are sinless, i.e. they are unable to make mistakes". 9 "That, which according to their teaching is called
true life, is a personal life, blessed, sinless and eternal, i.e.
one suchlike, as no one has ever known nor ever will". 10 "Adam before me did transgress, i.e. did err
(italics mine)". 11 L. Tolstoy says, that according to the teaching
of the Christian Church "a life true and sinless -- is in faith,
i.e. in the imagination, i.e. is insanity (italics mine)".
And a few lines further on he adds concerning the churchly teaching:
"this is indeed sheer madness". 12 "The churchly teaching has given a basic meaning
to the life of people in this regard, that man has a right to a
blessed life, and that this blessedness is to be attained not by
the powers of man, but by something external, and this world-concept
has become basic to all our scientific disciplines and philosophies".
13 "The reason, that which illumines our life and leads
us to change our courses of action, is not an illusion, and this
is something impossible to deny. The following out of reason
for the attainment of good -- in this always has been the teaching
of all the true teachers of mankind, and in this is the teaching
of Christ, (italics mine) and it is in this, i.e. reason, and
it is no way possible to deny by reason". 14 "Both before and after Christ people said the same
thing: that in man there lives a divine light, come down from heaven,
and this light is reason, -- and that it alone it is necessary to
serve and in it alone to seek the good". 15 "The people all heard, all understood, but it merely
went past their ears then, that the teacher was speaking only about
this, that people mustneeds make their own happiness here by themselves,
upon this courtyard, on which they had come down, but they imagined
for themselves, that this courtyard is but a temporary lodging,
and there would be a real one there somewhere". 16 "No one can render help, if they cannot help themselves.
It is of no help even for themselves. Do not merely wait for something,
either from heaven or from earth, and by yourselves cease destroying
yourselves". 17 "In order to understand the teachings of Christ,
it is necessary first of all to be in control of oneself, to have
changed-about one’s mind". 18 "About personal resurrection in the flesh He never
spoke". 19 "The concept of the personal future life has come
down to us not from the hebrew teaching and not from the teachings
of Christ. It has entered into the churchly teachings completely
along the way. However strange it may seem, it is impossible not
to say it, that the belief in a personal future life is a very
low and vulgar positing, based on the confusing of sleep with death
and it is innate to all savage peoples (italics mine)". 20 "Christ contrasts to the personal life not life
beyond the grave, but the life in common, connected with the life
present, past and future of all mankind". 21 "The whole teaching of Christ is in this, that His
disciples, having understood the illusion of personal life, then
renounced it and carried it over into the life of all mankind, into
the life of the Son of Man. The teaching about the immortality of
personal life not only does not call for the renunciation of one’s
own personal life, but it forever intensifies this personal aspect...
Life is life, and it is necessary to make the best use possible
of it. To live for oneself alone in unreasonable. And therefore
ever since then there are people, that seek for the goals of live
outside themselves: they live for their offspring, for the people,
for mankind, for everything that will not die with the personal
life". 22 "If a man does not take hold of that which saves
him, then this means but that a man understands not his situation".
23 "Faith proceeds only from an awareness of one’s
own situation. Faith is created only in the rational consciousness
of that what is best to do, when situated in a certain position".24 "It would be terrible to say, but if the teachings
of Christ were not altogether the same thing with the churchly teachings,
which grew out of them, then those of old, from whom are those now
called christians, would have been quite closer to the teaching
of Christ, i.e. to the rational teaching about the good life, than
they are now. For them there would not have been hidden away the
moral teachings of the prophets of all mankind". 25 "Christ says, that it is a credible worldly consideration
not to be concerned about the life of the world... It is impossible
not to see, that the position of the disciples of Christ ought already
to be the better, because that the disciples of Christ, doing everything
good, would not incite hatred in people". 26 Christ teaches in particular this, how to deliver
us from our misfortunes and how to live happily". 27 Calculating out the conditions of happiness, Tolstoy
is unable to find nearly a single condition, connected with the
spiritual life, everything is connected with the material, the animal-vegetative
life, like physical work, health, etc. "It is not necessary to be
a martyr in the name of Christ, for Christ does not teach this.
He teaches, that one should cease to torment oneself in the name
of the false teachings of the world... Christ teaches people
not to do stupidities (italics mine). In this consists the most
simple and admissible for all meaning in the teachings of Christ...
Do not do stupidities and thou wilt be the better for it". 28 "Christ... teaches us not to do that, which is
the worse, but rather that, which is the better for us here, in
this life".29 "The rift between the teaching about life and the
explanation of life began with the preaching of Paul, not knowing
the ethical teaching expressed in the Gospel of Matthew, and preaching
instead a strange Christ with a metaphysico-kabbalistic theory".
30 "Everything, necessary for the pseudo-christian
-- are mysteries. But the believer himself does not make the mystery,
and over him others work it". 31 "The concept about law, undoubtedly by reason and
through inner awareness obligatory for all, yet to such a degree
lost in our society, that the existence of the hebrew nation’s law,
defining all their life, which was obligatory not through compulsion,
but through the inner consciousness of each, -- is regarded an exceptional
thing characteristic of the hebrew nation alone". 32 "I believe, that the fulfilling of this teaching
(of Christ) is easy and an happy thing". 33
I shall
offer yet more characteristic places from the writings of Tolstoy.
"Thus: the "Lord be merciful to me, a sinner", I now am not at all
fond of, since this prayer is egoistic, a prayer of personal weakness
and therefore of no usefulness". 34 "I very much want to help you, -- he writes to
M. A. Sopots’ko, -- in this weighty and dangerous situation, in
which you find yourself. I speak as regards your wish to hypnotise
yourself into the churchly faith. This is very dangerous, since
with this hypnotising there is lost the most valuable thing,
that there is in man -- his reason (italics mine)". 35 "It is impossible without punishment to allow into
your faith something non-rational, something not justifiable by
reason. The reason is given from above, in order to guide us. If
we are deaf to it, this will not go unpunished. And the loss
of reason is a most terrible loss (italics mine)". 36 "The Gospel miracles cannot have happened, since
they transgress the laws of this reason, amidst which we understand
life, the miracles are unnecessary, since in them no one can be
convinced. In those wild and superstitious surroundings, in which
Christ lived and worked, there cannot but have accumulated traditions
about miracles, just as they have not ceased and even in our own
time accumulate readily in the superstitious settings of the people".37 "You ask me about theosophy. This teaching has quite
interested me, but regrettably, it allows for the miraculous, and
the least allowance of the miraculous still deprives religion of
that simplicity and clarity, which are unique of a true attitude
to God and neighbour. And since in this teaching there can be much
that is very good, as in the teachings of the mystics, as in spiritism
even, but it is necessary to be cautious of it. The chief thing,
I think, is that those people, for whom the miraculous is needful,
do not understand fully the true, the simple christian teaching".
38 "For this however, in that man should know what
is wanted of him by That One, Who sent him into the world, -- He
set into him reason, by means of which man always, if he precisely
wants this, can know the will of God, i.e. that which is wanted
of him by That One, Who sent him into the world... If we however
cleave to that, what reason informs us, then we shall all become
united, since reason is the same for everyone, and only reason unites
people and does not hinder the manifestation, innate for people,
of love one for another".39 "Reason is older and more credible than all the
writings and traditions, it was there already, when there was not
yet any sort of traditions nor writings and it is given each of
us straight from God. The words of the Gospel concerning this, are
that all sins are forgiven, but not only is it not a blasphemy against
the Holy Spirit, in my opinion, to refer directly to the affirmation
of this, that for reason it is not necessary to believe. Actually,
if we believe not by reason, which is given us from God, then in
whom indeed is there to believe? How possibly can there be those
people, who want us to find the wherewithal to believe that, which
is inconsistent with reason, as given by God?" 40 "Concerning one’s inner perfecting it is impossible
to pray for it, since that it was given to us then, what was needful
for our perfecting, and it is both unnecessary and impossible to
supplement anything to this". 41 "To beseech God and dwell in thought on the means,
whereby to become perfected, should only be then, when there are
present some sort of hindrances to this matter, and we ourselves
have not the abilities to deal with it". 42 "We here, in this world, are as though in a lodging
inn, in which the owner has arranged everything that we as travelers
precisely would need, and has gone off himself, having left instructions,
how we ought to conduct ourselves in this temporal shelter. Only
to fulfill that, which is prescribed for us. Thus also in our spiritual
world -- everything needful for us is given, and the task is only
for us to do it".43 "There is no more immoral and harmful a teaching,
than that man is incapable to be perfected by his own powers". 44 "The wrong and absurd concept, that human reason
by its own powers cannot come nigh to the truth, is the result of
such dreadful indeed a superstition, as also is this, whereby without
help from outside man cannot come nigh to the fulfilling of the
will of God. The essence of the superstition is in this, that the
full and perfect truth should be revealed by God himself... Man
ceases to believe in the sole means of the understanding of truth
-- by the powers of his own reason".45 "Except by the reason, no sort of truth can enter
into the soul of man".46 "The rational and the moral always co-incide".
47 "Faith in a communicating with the souls of the
dead is to such an extent, yet it goes without saying, that for
me it is completely unnecessary, to such a degree it infringes upon
everything, based on reason, my world-outlook, so that if I were
to hear voices of spirits or catch sight of apparitions, I would
have recourse to a psychiatrist, imploring his help for my obvious
brain disorder". 48 "Ye say, -- writes L.N. to the priest S.K., --
that since man is a person, then also God likewise is Person. It
seems to me, that the consciousness by man of himself as person
is a consciousness by man of his limitedness. Every limitation however
is incompatible with the concept of God. If then it be granted,
that God is Person, then the essential consequence of this would
be, as this also always occurred in the primordial religions, a
matter of ascribing human attributes to God... Such an understanding
of God as Person, and suchlike His law, expressed in some sort of
book, is completely impossible for me". 49 It would be possible still to cite more places
from the works of L. Tolstoy in support of my view on the
religion of Tolstoy, but of this enough.
It is evident,
that the religion of Lev Tolstoy is a religion of self-salvation,
a salvation solely by human powers. This religion therefore has
no need of the Saviour, it does not know the Hypostasis of the Son.
L. Tolstoy wants to be saved on the strength of his own personal
merits, and not in the redemptive power of the bloody sacrifice,
offered by the Son of God for the sins of the world. The arrogance
of L. Tolstoy is in this, that he has no need of the help
of the grace of God in fulfilling the will of God. Rooted innate
in L. Tolstoy is that he has no need of redemption, since he does
not know sin, he does not see the undefeatability of evil by the
natural pathway. He has no need of the Redeemer and Saviour and
he is a stranger, like no one else, to the religion of redemption
and salvation. He considers the idea of redemption as the chief
obstacle for implementing the law of the Father-Owner. Christ, as
the Saviour and Redeemer, as "the Way, the Truth, and the Life",
not only is unnecessary, but also interferes with the fulfilling
of the commandments, which Tolstoy considers Christian. L. Tolstoy
understands the New Testament as law, as commandment, as a codex
of the Father-Owner, i.e. he understands it, as one might the Old
Testament.50 He still does not know this mystery of the New
Testament, that in the Hypostasis of the Son, in Christ, there is
already neither law nor being subject under law, but rather there
is grace and freedom. L. Tolstoy, as one dwelling exclusively upon
the Fatherly Hypostasis, in the Old Testament and in paganism, never
could grasp this mystery, that there are not commandments of Christ,
nor teachings of Christ, but rather Christ Himself, and in His mysteried
Person is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life". The religion of Christ
is the teaching about Christ, not only the teaching of Christ. The
teaching about Christ, i.e. the religion of Christ, for L.
Tolstoy always was folly, and he related to it like a pagan. And
here we come nigh to another, no less evident side of the religion
of L. Tolstoy. This -- is a religion within the limits of
reason, a rationalistic religion, repudiating anything mystical,
all mystery, all miracles, as contrary to reason, as folly. This
rational religion is close to rationalistic Protestantism, to Kant
and to Harnack. Tolstoy -- is a crude rationalist in regard to dogma,
and his critique of dogmas is on an elementary-judgemental level.
With the air of the vanquisher he repudiates the dogma of the Tri-uneness
of God, on this simple basis, that 1 cannot equivolate 3. He says
straight out, that the religion of Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer
and Saviour, is lunacy. He is an implacable foe of the miraculous
and the mysteried. He repudiates the very idea of revelation as
being nonsense. It is almost incredible, that such a genius of an
artist and a genius of a man, of such a religious nature, was in
the grip of so crude and elementary a rationalism, so demonically-possessed
by rational-judgement. It is downright monstrous, that such a giant
as L. Tolstoy, has reduced Christianity down to this, that
Christ teaches us not do stupid things, and teaches happiness on
earth. The genius of the religious nature of L. Tolstoy sets
itself into the moulds of an elementary level rational-judgement
and an elementary level utilitarianism. As religious person -- this
is a dumb of speech genius, not endowed with the gift of the Word.
And the incomprehensible mystery of his person is connected with
this, that with all his existence he dwells on the Hypostasis of
the Father and in the soul of the world, outside the Son’s Hypostasis,
outside the Logos. L. Tolstoy was not only of a religious nature,
all his life parched with a religious thirst, but he also was of
a mystical nature in a particular sense. There is this mysticism
in "War and Peace", in the "Cossacks", in his attitude to the primal
elements of life; there is this mysticism in his very life, in his
fate. But this mysticism never made encounter with the Logos, i.e.
it never could become actualised.51 In his mystical and religious life Tolstoy [never]
makes encounter with Christianity. [The un-Christian nature of Tolstoy
is artistically dissected by Merezhkovsky. But that which Merezhkovsky
wanted to say regarding Tolstoy, likewise remains outside the Logos,
and the Christian question about person was not posited by him.]
[It is very easy to
confuse the asceticism of Tolstoy with Christian asceticism.] They
have often said, that as regards his moral asceticism L. Tolstoy
was flesh from flesh and blood from blood right out of Christian
history. Some have said this in defense of Tolstoy, while others
have held him guilty of this. [But it mustneeds be said, that the
asceticism of L. Tolstoy has very little in common with Christian
asceticism] (This is only partly true). If one consider Christian
asceticism in its mystical essence, then he never was such as regards
his preaching of ordinary life, of simplification, of down-going.
Christian asceticism always has in view an endlessly rich mystical
world, the highest degree of being. In the moral asceticism of Tolstoy
[there is nothing] (there is little) of the mystical, there is not
the riches of other worlds. How distinctly different is the asceticism
of that mendicant of God St. Francis from that of Tolstoy’s simplicity.
Franciscanism is beautiful in full, and in it is no semblance of
Tolstoy’s moralism. From St. Francis was born the beauty of the
early Renaissance. Poverty was for him a Beautiful Lady. With Tolstoy
there was no Beautiful Lady. He preached ordinary life in the name
of a greater happiness, a more felicitous arrangement of life upon
earth. [The idea of a Messianic feast was foreign to him, one which
mystically brought enthusiasm to the Christian ascetic.] The moral
asceticism of L. Tolstoy -- this is a populist asceticism,
so characteristic for Russia. With us there has taken shape an unique
type of asceticism, not a mystical asceticism, but rather a populist
asceticism, an asceticism in the name of the good of the people
upon the earth. This is an asceticism to be met with in its baronial
form, as becoming a nobleman, and in its Intelligentsia form, of
the Populist-Intelligentsia. This asceticism customarily is connected
with a persecution against beauty, against metaphysics and mysticism,
as against an impermissible and immoral luxury. This asceticism
religiously leads to iconoclasm, to a denial of the symbolic in
the cultus. L. Tolstoy was an iconoclast. Icon-veneration and all
the symbolics of the cultus connected with it seemed an immoral
and unallowable luxury, transgressing his moral-ascetic consciousness.
L. Tolstoy would not grant, that there exists a sacral elegance
and a sacral richness. To the artist of genius it seemed the beauty
of an immoral luxury, and a richness, unbecoming the Master-Lord
of life. The Master-Lord of life gave the law of the good, and only
the good is of value, only the good is divine. The Master-Lord has
not placed before mankind and the world an ideal image of beauty
as a supreme value of being. Beauty therefore -- is from evil, from
the Father is only the moral law. L. Tolstoy -- is a persecutor
of beauty in the name of good. He affirms an exclusive overcoming
by good not only over beauty, but also over truth. In the name of
an exclusionary good he denies not only aesthetics, but also metaphysics
and mysticism as ways of the comprehension of truth. Both beauty
and truth are a luxury, a richness. The feasting of aesthetics and
the feasting of metaphysics are forbidden by the Master-Lord of
life. It is necessary to live by the simple law of good, to live
by an exclusionary morality. Moralism has never yet been taken to
such extreme limits, as it was with Tolstoy. Moralism became terrifying,
making one suffocate. Beauty and truth are no less divine, than
is good, they are no less -- of value. The good does not take priority
over truth and beauty, beauty and truth are no less close to God,
to the Primal Cause, than is the good. An exclusionary, an abstract
moralism, taken to extreme limits, presents a question about this,
that there might too be a demonic good, a good destructive of being,
a lessening of the level of being. If there can be a demonic beauty
and a demonic knowledge, then there can be also a demonic good.
Christianity, taken in its mystical depths, not only does not deny
beauty, but it is conscious of an invisible new beauty, and not
only does it not deny gnosis, but it is conscious of a supreme gnosis.
Rationalists and positivists are too hasty to deny beauty and gnosis,
and often they do this in the name of a fanciful good. The moralism
of a fanciful good. The moralism of L. Tolstoy is bound up
with his religion of self-salvation, with a denial of the ontological
meaning of redemption. But the ascetic moralism of Tolstoy is only
one side of him turned towards the impoverishment and crush of being,
while another side of him is turned towards a new world, and it
is boldly that he denies evil.
___________________________
In Tolstoy’s moralism
there is a stagnantly-conservative principle and there is a revolutionary-rebellious
principle. With an unprecedented power and radicalism L. Tolstoy
rose up against the hypocrisy of the quasi-Christian society, against
the lies of a quasi-Christian sovereignty. With genius he exposed
the monstrous untruth and deadness of the state official Christianity,
he set a mirror before the pretense and deadness of Christian society,
and with a prick of conscience he forced people to be shocked. As
a religious critic and as a seeker, L. Tolstoy will always remain
great and dear. But the strength of Tolstoy in the matter of religious
renewal [exclusively] (chiefly) is with a negative criticism. He
has done immeasurably much for the awakening from religious slumber,
but not for the deepening of religious consciousness. It is necessary
however to remember, that L. Tolstoy with his searchings and
criticism was dealing with a society either openly atheistic, or
hypocritically and feigningly Christian, or simply indifferent.
It was impossible religously to do harm to this society, it was
already altogether damaged. And it was the deadeningly-ordinary
and ritually-external Orthodoxy that he was to disquiet, and to
excite usefully and well so. L. Tolstoy was quite the partisan and
a most extreme anarchist-idealist, such as only the history of human
thought knows the likes of. To refute Tolstoy’s anarchism is very
easy, for in this anarchism is combined extreme rationalism with
genuine folly. But Tolstoy’s anarchistic revolt was necessary for
the world. The "Christian" world before this had become isolated
in its basics, which the irrational need for such a revolt was to
show. I think, that Tolstoy’s anarchism in particular, and it was
essentially inconsistent -- had a cleansing effect, and its significance
was tremendous. Tolstoy’s anarchistic revolt denotes the crisis
of historical Christianity, carried over into the life of the Church.
This revolt is an harbinger of the coming Christian renewal. And
it remains for us a mystery, rationally inconceivable, why the matter
of Christian renewal involved a man, alien to Christianity, quite
caught up in the Old Testament and the pre-Christian elements. The
final fate of Tolstoy remains a mystery, known only to God. It is
not for us to judge. It was L. Tolstoy himself that excommunicated
himself from the Church, and before this fact pales the fact of
his excommunication by the Russian Holy Synod. [We ought directly
and openly to say, that L. Tolstoy has nothing in common with
the Christian consciousness, that the "Christianity" invented by
him has nothing in common with that genuine Christianity, for which
in the Church of Christ has been preserved immutably the image of
Christ.] (The excommunication of L. Tolstoy is repugnant because,
that they excommunicated one who most of all acted for the awakening
of religious awareness in Russia). [But] We cannot venture to say
anything about the final mystery of his ultimate attitudes towards
the Church and what transpired with him at the hour of death. As
regards mankind we however know, that by his criticism, by his searchings,
by his life, L. Tolstoy shook up a world, religiously asleep and
moribund. Several generations of Russian people have passed through
Tolstoy, have grown up under his influence, and God grant that this
influence not be identified with "Tolstoyism" -- a phenomenon very
limited. Without Tolstoy’s criticism and without Tolstoy’s searchings
we would have been worse off and would have slept later. Without
L. Tolstoy there would not have been put forward so acutely the
question about the vital, and not merely rhetorical significance
of Christianity. The Old Testament truth of Tolstoy was necessary
for the inveterate falsehood of the Christian world. We know moreover,
that without L. Tolstoy Russia itself would be unthinkable and that
Russia cannot disclaim him. We love Lev Tolstoy, like we do our
native-land. It was our grandfathers, it was our land in "War and
Peace". He is for us -- richness and magnificence, though he was
not fond of riches and elegance. The life of L. Tolstoy --
is a fact of genius in the life of Russia. And everything of genius
-- is providential. [Still not so long ago] The "withdrawal" of
L. Tolstoy excited the whole of Russia and all the world. This was
a "withdrawal" of genius. This was the finish of Tolstoy’s anarchist
revolt. Before his death L. Tolstoy became a wanderer, he
was torn away from the soil, to which he was fettered by all the
burden of life. At the end of his life the great old man returned
to mysticism, the mystical notes resound strongly and drown out
his rationalism. He prepared himself for his final turnabout.
Nikolai Berdyaev
[1912]
(1944 unpublished redraft)
© 2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos
(1912 - 54 - en)
VETKHII I NOVII ZAVET V RELIGIOZNOM
SOZNANII L. TOLSTOGO. Originally published in L. Tolstoy
anthology, "O religii L’va Tolstogo" ("Concerning the Religion of
Lev Tolstoy"), Moscow, publisher Put’, 1912, p. 172-195.
(Tolstoy anthology republished by YMCA Press in 1978).
Revised text redraft from uncompleted 1944 project of Berdyaev’s
revision and republication of articles forms the basis of the 1989
YMCA Press Volume 3 of Berdiaev Collected Works, "Tipy religioznoi
mysli v Rossii" ("Types of Religious Thought in Russia"), Paris,
1989, p. 119-144. 1944 Revision: [bracketed text]
is 1944 deletions from original; (parenthesis text)
is 1944 new inclusions to original.
Original unrevised article may be found in Volume 2 of Moscow
1994 Liga edition of anthology of Berdyaev’s works, "Nikolai
Berdyaev: philosophia, tvorchestva, kul’tury, i iskusstva",
p. 461-483.
*
Translator Note: The heavily [bracketed] and (parenthesised) article
text here reflects a 1944 uncompleted project of revision and republication
by Berdyaev of certain of his articles. These 1944 redrafts and
collection of articles forms the basis of the 1989 YMCA Press Volume
3 of Berdyaev’s Collected Works, "Tipy relioznoi mysli v Rossii"
("Types of Religious Thought in Russia").
(sic) [brackets] = 1944 text deletions
(parentheses) = 1944 new inclusions
1
A psychological appraisal of Tolstoy can likewise be found in the
book of L. Shestov, "The Idea of the Good in the Teachings
of Graf Tolstoy and Fr. Nietzsche".
2
Merezhkovsky even called L. Tolstoy a "seer of the flesh". In this
is [great] truth, although the expression itself bears traces of
the delimited schema of Merezhkovsky. I would prefer to say, that
Tolstoy was a seer of the soulific-bodily sphere of being.
3
(The teaching of Tolstoy about non-resistance to evil by force --
is more profound, than is customarily thought. Christians live according
to the laws of the world, and not by the law of God, and they arrange
their affairs in the world such that, as though God did not exist.
Against this twofold manner of reckoning Tolstoy rose up and demanded
the fulfilling of the law of God.) -- Footnote. 1944.
4
Vide: "In What is my Faith" {"V chem moya vera"}, Posadnik, 1906,
p. 13.
5
Ibid., p. 75. 6
Ibid., p. 88.
7
Ibid., p. 89. 8
Ibid., p. 89.
9
Ibid., p. 91-92. 10
Ibid., p. 92.
11
Ibid., p. 92. 12
Ibid., p. 93.
13
Ibid., p. 94. 14
Ibid., p. 97.
15
Ibid., p. 98. 16
Ibid., p. 102.
17
Ibid., p. 103. 18
Ibid., p. 104.
19
Ibid., p. 112. 20
Ibid., p. 115.
21
Ibid., p. 118. 22
Ibid., p. 125.
23
Ibid., p. 125. 24
Ibid., p. 132.
25
Ibid., p. 135. 26
Ibid., p. 140.
27
Ibid., p. 142. 28
Ibid., p. 150.
29
Ibid., p. 152. 30
Ibid., p. 168.
31
Ibid., p. 169. 32
Ibid., p. 178.
33
Ibid., p. 186.
34
Vide: "Letters of L. N. Tolstoy", tom I, p. 193.
35
Ibid., p. 240. 36
Ibid., p. 246.
37
Ibid., p. 288. 38
Ibid., p. 327.
39
Vide: "Letters of L. N. Tolstoy", tom II, p.188.
40
Ibid., p. 190. 41
Ibid., p. 191.
42
Ibid., p. 197. 43
Ibid., p. 198.
44
Ibid., p. 199. 45
Ibid., p. 200.
46
Ibid., p. 201. 47
Ibid., p. 205.
48
Ibid., p. 215. 49
Ibid., p. 264.
50
L. Tolstoy understands the law itself differently, than does Judaism,
for which he had no love, although for him this is first of all
a commandment of love. N. B. -- Footnote. 1944.
51
In the religious characterisation of L. Tolstoy, I made insufficient
use of his book, "About Life"{"O zhizni"}, the finest of his religio-moral
books, in which there is the mystical tonality. But in it also is
expressed the anti-personalism of L. Tolstoy. N.B. --
Footnote. 1944.
Permission granted for non-commercial distribution
© 2000 by translator Fr. S. Janos
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