The Kingdom of God Is Within You - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best non fiction books of all time txt) 📗

another, the more the doctrine was distorted from its

original meaning, aid the more incomprehensible it became.

 

Thus it was from the earliest times, and so it went on, constantly

increasing, till it reached in our day the logical climax of the

dogmas of transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope, or

of the bishops, or of Scripture, and of requiring a blind faith

rendered incomprehensible and utterly meaningless, not in God, but

in Christ, not in a doctrine, but in a person, as in Catholicism,

or in persons, as in Greek Orthodoxy, or in a book, as in

Protestantism. The more widely Christianity was diffused, and the

greater the number of people unprepared for it who were brought

under its sway, the less it was understood, the more absolutely

was its infallibility insisted on, and the less possible it became

to understand the true meaning of the doctrine. In the times of

Constantine the whole interpretation of the doctrine had been

already reduced to a R�SUM�—supported by the temporal authority—

of the disputes that had taken place in the Council—to a creed

which reckoned off—I believe in so and so, and so and so, and so

and so to the end—to one holy, Apostolic Church, which means the

infallibility of those persons who call themselves the Church. So

that it all amounts to a man no longer believing in God nor

Christ, as they are revealed to him, but believing in what the

Church orders him to believe in.

 

But the Church is holy; the Church was founded by Christ. God

could not leave men to interpret his teaching at random—therefore

he founded the Church. All those statements are so utterly untrue

and unfounded that one is ashamed to refute them. Nowhere nor in

anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that

God or Christ founded anything like what Churchmen understand by

the Church. In the Gospels there is a warning against the Church,

as it is an external authority, a warning most clear and obvious

in the passage where it is said that Christ’s followers should

“call no man master.” But nowhere is anything said of the

foundation of what Churchmen call the Church.

 

The word church is used twice in the Gospels—once in the sense of

an assembly of men to decide a dispute, the other time in

connection with the obscure utterance about a stone—Peter, and

the gates of hell. From these two passages in which the word

church is used, in the signification merely of an assembly, has

been deduced all that we now understand by the Church.

 

But Christ could not have founded the Church, that is, what we now

understand by that word. For nothing like the idea of the Church

as we know it now, with its sacraments, miracles, and above all

its claim to infallibility, is to be found either in Christ’s

words or in the ideas of the men of that time.

 

The fact that men called what was formed afterward by the same

word as Christ used for something totally different, does not give

them the right to assert that Christ founded the one, true Church.

 

Besides, if Christ had really founded such an institution as the

Church for the foundation of all his teaching and the whole faith,

he would certainly have described this institution clearly and

definitely, and would have given the only true Church, besides

tales of miracles, which are used to support every kind of

superstition, some tokens so unmistakable that no doubt of its

genuineness could ever have arisen. But nothing of the sort was

done by him. And there have been and still are different

institutions, each calling itself the true Church.

 

The Catholic catechism says: “L’�glise est la soci�t� des fid�les

�tablie par notre Seigneur J�sus Christ, r�pandue sur toute la

terre et soumise � l’authorit� des pasteurs l�gitimes,

principalement notre Saint P�re le Pape,” [see Footnote]

understanding by the words “pasteurs l�gitimes” an association of

men having the Pope at its head, and consisting of certain

individuals bound together by a certain organization.

 

[Footnote: “The Church is the society of the faithful,

established by our Lord Jesus Christ, spread over the

whole earth, and subject to the authority of its lawful

pastors, and chief of them our Holy Father the Pope.”

 

The Greek Orthodox catechism says: “The Church is a society

founded upon earth by Jesus Christ, which is united into one

whole, by one divine doctrine and by sacraments, under the rule

and guidance of a priesthood appointed by God,” meaning by the

“priesthood appointed by God” the Greek Orthodox priesthood,

consisting of certain individuals who happen to be in such or such

positions.

 

The Lutheran catechism says: “The Church is holy Christianity, or

the collection of all believers under Christ, their head, to whom

the Holy Ghost through the Gospels and sacraments promises,

communicates, and administers heavenly salvation,” meaning that

the Catholic Church is lost in error, and that the true means of

salvation is in Lutheranism.

 

For Catholics the Church of God coincides with the Roman

priesthood and the Pope. For the Greek Orthodox believer the

Church of God coincides with the establishment and priesthood of

Russia. [See Footnote]

 

[Footnote: Homyakov’s definition of the Church, which

was received with some favor among Russians, does not

improve matters, if we are to agree with Homyakov in

considering the Greek Orthodox Church as the one true

Church. Homyakov asserts that a church is a collection

of men (all without distinction of clergy and laymen)

united together by love, and that only to men united by

love is the truth revealed (let us love each other, that

in the unity of thought, etc.), and that such a church

is the church which, in the first place, recognizes the

Nicene Creed, and in the second place does not, after

the division of the churches, recognize the popes and

new dogmas. But with such a definition of the church,

there is still more difficulty in reconciling, as

Homyakov tries to do, the church united by love with

the church that recognizes the Nicene Creed and the

doctrine of Photius. So that Homyakov’s assertion that

this church, united by love, and consequently holy,

is the same church as the Greek Orthodox priesthood

profess faith in, is even more arbitrary than the

assertions of the Catholics or the Orthodox. If we

admit the idea of a church in the sense Homyakov

gives to it—that is, a body of men bound together

by love and truth—then all that any man can predicate

in regard to this body, if such an one exists, is

its love and truth, but there can be no outer signs

by which one could reckon oneself or another as a

member of this holy body, nor by which one could put

anyone outside it; so that no institution having

an external existence can correspond to this idea.

 

For Lutherans the Church of God coincides with a body of men who

recognize the authority of the Bible and Luther’s catechism.

 

Ordinarily, when speaking of the rise of Christianity, men

belonging to one of the existing churches use the word church in

the singular, as though there were and had been only one church.

But this is absolutely incorrect. The Church, as an institution

which asserted that it possessed infallible truth, did not make

its appearance singly; there were at least two churches directly

this claim was made.

 

While believers were agreed among themselves and the body was one,

it had no need to declare itself as a church. It was only when

believers were split up into opposing parties, renouncing one

another, that it seemed necessary to each party to confirm their

own truth by ascribing to themselves infallibility. The

conception of one church only arose when there were two sides

divided and disputing, who each called the other side heresy, and

recognized their own side only as the infallible church.

 

If we knew that there was a church which decided in the year 51 to

receive the uncircumcised, it is only so because there was another

church—of the Judaists—who decided to keep the uncircumcised

out.

 

If there is a Catholic Church now which asserts its own

infallibility, that is only because there are churches—Greco-Russian, Old Orthodox, and Lutheran—each asserting its own

infallibility and denying that of all other churches. So that the

one Church is only a fantastic imagination which has not the least

trace of reality about it.

 

As a real historical fact there has existed, and still exist,

several bodies of men, each asserting that it is the one Church,

founded by Christ, and that all the others who call themselves

churches are only sects and heresies.

 

The catechisms of the churches of the most world-wide influence—

the Catholic, the Old Orthodox, and the Lutheran—openly assert

this.

 

In the Catholic catechism it is said: “Quels sont ceux qui sont

hors de l’�glise? Les infid�les, les h�r�tiques, les

schismatiques.” [Footnote: “Who are those who are outside the

Church? Infidels, heretics, and schismatics.”] The so-called

Greek Orthodox are regarded as schismatics, the Lutherans as

heretics; so that according to the Catholic catechism the only

people in the Church are Catholics.

 

In the so-called Orthodox catechism it is said: By the one

Christian Church is understood the Orthodox, which remains fully

in accord with the Universal Church. As for the Roman Church and

other sects (the Lutherans and the rest they do not even dignify

by the name of church), they cannot be included in the one true

Church, since they have themselves separated from it.

 

According to this definition the Catholics and Lutherans are

outside the Church, and there are only Orthodox in the Church.

 

The Lutheran catechism says: “Die wahre kirche wird darein

erkannt, dass in ihr das Wort Gottes lauter und rein ohne

Menschenzus�tze gelehrt and die Sacramente treu nach Christi

Einsetzung gewahret werden.” [Footnote: “The true Church will be

known by the Word of God being studied clear and unmixed with

man’s additions and the sacraments being maintained faithful to

Christ’s teaching.”

 

According to this definition all those who have added anything to

the teaching of Christ and the apostles, as the Catholic and Greek

churches have done, are outside the Church. And in the Church

there are only Protestants.

 

The Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost has been transmitted

without a break in their priesthood. The Orthodox assert that the

same Holy Ghost has been transmitted without a break in their

priesthood. The Arians asserted that the Holy Ghost was

transmitted in their priesthood (they asserted this with just as

much right as the churches in authority now). The Protestants of

every kind—Lutherans, Reformed Church, Presbyterians, Methodists,

Swedenborgians, Mormons—assert that the Holy Ghost is only

present in their communities. If the Catholics assert that the

Holy Ghost, at the time of the division of the Church into Arian

and Greek, left the Church that fell away and remained in the one

true Church, with precisely the same right the Protestants of

every denomination can assert that at the time of the separation

of their Church from the Catholic the Holy Ghost left the Catholic

and passed into the Church they professed. And this is just what

they do.

 

Every church traces its creed through an uninterrupted

transmission from Christ and the Apostles. And truly every

Christian creed that has been derived from Christ must have come

down to the present generation through a certain transmission.

But that does not prove that it alone of all that has been

transmuted, excluding all the rest, can be the sole truth,

admitting of no doubt.

 

Every branch in a tree comes from the root in unbroken connection;

but the fact that each branch comes from the one root, does not