Confession
by Leo Tolstoy
XV
How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack of
learning! Those statements in the creeds which to me were evident
absurdities, for them contained nothing false; they could accept
them and could believe in the truth — the truth I believed in.
Only to me, unhappy man, was it clear that with truth falsehood
was interwoven by finest threads, and that I could not accept it
in that form.
So I lived for about three years. At first, when I was only
slightly associated with truth as a catechumen and was only
scenting out what seemed to me clearest, these encounters struck
me less. When I did not understand anything, I said, "It is
my fault, I am sinful"; but the more I became imbued with
the truths I was learning, the more they became the basis of my
life, the more oppressive and the more painful became these
encounters and the sharper became the line between what I do not
understand because I am not able to understand it, and what
cannot be understood except by lying to oneself.
In spite of my doubts and sufferings I still clung to the
Orthodox Church. But questions of life arose which had to be
decided; and the decision of these questions by the Church —
contrary to the very bases of the belief by which I lived —
obliged me at last to renounce communion with Orthodoxy as
impossible. These questions were: first the relation of the
Orthodox Eastern Church to other Churches — to the Catholics and
to the so-called sectarians. At that time, in consequence of my
interest in religion, I came into touch with believers of various
faiths: Catholics, protestants, Old-Believers, Molokans [10], and
others. And I met among them many men of lofty morals who were
truly religious. I wished to be a brother to them. And what
happened? That teaching which promised to unite all in one faith
and love — that very teaching, in the person of its best
representatives, told me that these men were all living a lie;
that what gave them their power of life was a temptation of the
devil; and that we alone possess the only possible truth. And I
saw that all who do not profess an identical faith with
themselves are considered by the Orthodox to be heretics, just as
the Catholics and others consider the Orthodox to be heretics.
And i saw that the Orthodox (though they try to hide this) regard
with hostility all who do not express their faith by the same
external symbols and words as themselves; and this is naturally
so; first, because the assertion that you are in falsehood and I
am in truth, is the most cruel thing one man can say to another;
and secondly, because a man loving his children and brothers
cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his
children and brothers to a false belief. And that hostility is
increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology.
And to me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it
became self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it
ought to produce.
Note 10. A sect that rejects sacraments and ritual.
This offence is so obvious to us educated people who have
lived in countries where various religions are professed and have
seen the contempt, self-assurance, and invincible contradiction
with which Catholics behave to the Orthodox Greeks and to the
Protestants, and the Orthodox to Catholics and Protestants, and
the Protestants to the two others, and the similar attitude of
Old- Believers, Pashkovites (Russian Evangelicals), Shakers, and
all religions — that the very obviousness of the temptation at
first perplexes us. One says to oneself: it is impossible that it
is so simple and that people do not see that if two assertions
are mutually contradictory, then neither of them has the sole
truth which faith should possess. There is something else here,
there must be some explanation. I thought there was, and sought
that explanation and read all I could on the subject, and
consulted all whom I could. And no one gave me any explanation,
except the one which causes the Sumsky Hussars to consider the
Sumsky Hussars the best regiment in the world, and the Yellow
Uhlans to consider that the best regiment in the world is the
Yellow Uhlans. The ecclesiastics of all the different creeds,
through their best representatives, told me nothing but that they
believed themselves to have the truth and the others to be in
error, and that all they could do was to pray for them. I went to
archimandrites, bishops, elders, monks of the strictest orders,
and asked them; but none of them made any attempt to explain the
matter to me except one man, who explained it all and explained
it so that I never asked any one any more about it. I said that
for every unbeliever turning to a belief (and all our young
generation are in a position to do so) the question that presents
itself first is, why is truth not in Lutheranism nor in
Catholicism, but in Orthodoxy? Educated in the high school he
cannot help knowing what the peasants do not know — that the
Protestants and Catholics equally affirm that their faith is the
only true one. Historical evidence, twisted by each religion in
its own favour, is insufficient. Is it not possible, said I, to
understand the teaching in a loftier way, so that from its height
the differences should disappear, as they do for one who believes
truly? Can we not go further along a path like the one we are
following with the Old-Believers? They emphasize the fact that
they have a differently shaped cross and different alleluias and
a different procession round the altar. We reply: You believe in
the Nicene Creed, in the seven sacraments, and so do we. Let us
hold to that, and in other matters do as you pease. We have
united with them by placing the essentials of faith above the
unessentials. Now with the Catholics can we not say: You believe
in so and so and in so and so, which are the chief things, and as
for the Filioque clause and the Pope — do as you please. Can we
not say the same to the Protestants, uniting with them in what is
most important?
My interlocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such
conceptions would bring reproach o the spiritual authorities for
deserting the faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a
schism; and the vocation of the spiritual authorities is to
safeguard in all its purity the Greco-Russian Orthodox faith
inherited from our forefathers.
And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith, the power of
life; and they are seeking the best way to fulfil in the eyes of
men certain human obligations. and fulfilling these human affairs
they fulfil them in a human way. However much they may talk of
their pity for their erring brethren, and of addressing prayers
for them to the throne of the Almighty — to carry out human
purposes violence is necessary, and it has always been applied
and is and will be applied. If of two religions each considers
itself true and the other false, then men desiring to attract
others to the truth will preach their own doctrine. And if a
false teaching is preached to the inexperienced sons of their
Church — which as the truth — then that Church cannot but burn
the books and remove the man who is misleading its sons. What is
to be done with a sectarian — burning, in the opinion of the
Orthodox, with the fire of false doctrine — who in the most
important affair of life, in faith, misleads the sons of the
Church? What can be done with him except to cut off his head or
to incarcerate him? Under the Tsar Alexis Mikhaylovich people
were burned at the stake, that is to say, the severest method of
punishment of the time was applied, and in our day also the
severest method of punishment is applied — detention in solitary
confinement. [11]
Note 11. At the time this was written capital punishment
was considered to be abolished in Russia. —A.M.
The second relation of the Church to a question of life was
with regard to war and executions.
At that time Russia was at war. And Russians, in the name of
Christian love, began to kill their fellow men. It was impossible
not to think about this, and not to see that killing is an evil
repugnant to the first principles of any faith. Yet prayers were
said in the churches for the success of our arms, and the
teachers of the Faith acknowledged killing to be an act resulting
from the Faith. And besides the murders during the war, I saw,
during the disturbances which followed the war, Church
dignitaries and teachers and monks of the lesser and stricter
orders who approved the killing of helpless, erring youths. And I
took note of all that is done by men who profess Christianity,
and I was horrified.
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