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

class="calibre1">have attained the highest ranks in the governing or ecclesiastical

hierarchy, and who are consequently perfectly assured that no one

will dare to contradict their assertion, and that if anyone does

contradict it they will hear nothing of the contradiction. These

men have, for the most part, through the intoxication of power, so

lost the right idea of what that Christianity is in the name of

which they hold their position that what is Christian in

Christianity presents itself to them as heresy, while everything

in the Old and New Testaments which can be distorted into an

antichristian and heathen meaning they regard as the foundation of

Christianity. In support of their assertion that Christianity is

not opposed to the use of force, these men usually, with the

greatest audacity, bring together all the most obscure passages

from the Old and New Testaments, interpreting them in the most

unchristian way—the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, of Simon

the Sorcerer, etc. They quote all those sayings of Christ’s which

can possibly be interpreted as justification of cruelty: the

expulsion from the Temple; “It shall be more tolerable for the

land of Sodom than for this city,” etc., etc. According to these

people’s notions, a Christian government is not in the least bound

to be guided by the spirit of peace, forgiveness of injuries, and

love for enemies.

 

To refute such an assertion is useless, because the very

people who make this assertion refute themselves, or, rather,

renounce Christ, inventing a Christianity and a Christ of their

own in the place of him in whose name the Church itself exists, as

well as their office in it. If all men were to learn that the

Church professes to believe in a Christ of punishment and warfare,

not of forgiveness, no one would believe in the Church and it

could not prove to anyone what it is trying to prove.

 

The second, somewhat less gross, form of argument consists in

declaring that, though Christ did indeed preach that we should

turn the left cheek, and give the cloak also, and this is the

highest moral duty, yet that there are wicked men in the world,

and if these wicked men mere not restrained by force, the whole

world and all good men would come to ruin through them. This

argument I found for the first time in John Chrysostom, and I slow

how he is mistaken in my book “What I believe.”

 

This argument is ill grounded, because if we allow ourselves to

regard any men as intrinsically wicked men, then in the first

place we annul, by so doing, the whole idea of the Christian

teaching, according to which we are all equals and brothers, as

sons of one father in heaven. Secondly, it is ill founded,

because even if to use force against wicked men had been permitted

by God, since it is impossible to find a perfect and unfailing

distinction by which one could positively know the wicked from the

good, so it would come to all individual men and societies of men

mutually regarding each other as wicked men, as is the case now.

Thirdly, even if it were possible to distinguish the wicked from

the good unfailingly, even then it would be impossible to kill or

injure or shut up in prison these wicked men, because there would

be no one in a Christian society to carry out such punishment,

since every Christian, as a Christian, has been commanded to use

no force against the wicked.

 

The third kind of answer, still more subtle than the preceding,

consists in asserting that though the command of nonresistance to

evil by force is binding on the Christian when the evil is

directed against himself personally, it ceases to be binding when

the evil is directed against his neighbors, and that then the

Christian is not only not bound to fulfill the commandment, but is

even bound to act in opposition to it in defense of his neighbors,

and to use force against transgressors by force. This assertion

is an absolute assumption, and one cannot find in all Christ’s

teaching any confirmation of such an argument. Such an argument

is not only a limitation, but a direct contradiction and negation

of the commandment. If every man has the right to have recourse

to force in face of a danger threatening an other, the question of

the use of force is reduced to a question of the definition of

danger for another. If my private judgment is to decide the

question of what is danger for another, there is no occasion for

the use of force which could not be justified on the ground of

danger threatening some other man. They killed and burnt witches,

they killed aristocrats and girondists, they killed their enemies

because those who were in authority regarded them as dangerous for

the people.

 

If this important limitation, which fundamentally undermines the

whole value of the commandment, had entered into Christ’s meaning,

there must have been mention of it somewhere. This restriction is

made nowhere in our Saviour’s life or preaching. On the contrary,

warning is given precisely against this treacherous and scandalous

restriction which nullifies the commandment. The error and

impossibility of such a limitation is shown in the Gospel with

special clearness in the account of the judgment of Caiaphas, who

makes precisely this distinction. He acknowledged that it was

wrong to punish the innocent Jesus, but he saw in him a source of

danger not for himself, but for the whole people, and therefore he

said: It is better for one man to die, that the whole people

perish not. And the erroneousness of such a limitation is still

more clearly expressed in the words spoken to Peter when he tried

to resist by force evil directed against Jesus (Matt. xxvi. 52).

Peter was not defending himself, but his beloved and heavenly

Master. And Christ at once reproved him for this, saying, that he

who takes up the sword shall perish by the sword.

 

Besides, apologies for violence used against one’s neighbor in

defense of another neighbor from greater violence are always

untrustworthy, because when force is used against one who has not

yet carried out his evil intent, I can never know which would be

greater—the evil of my act of violence or of the act I want to

prevent. We kill the criminal that society may be rid of him, and

we never know whether the criminal of to-day would not have been a

changed man tomorrow, and whether our punishment of him is not

useless cruelty. We shut up the dangerous—as we think—member of

society, but the next day this man might cease to be dangerous and

his imprisonment might be for nothing. I see that a man I know to

be a ruffian is pursuing a young girl. I have a gun in my hand—I

kill the ruffian and save the girl. But the death or the wounding

of the ruffian has positively taken place, while what would have

happened if this had not been I cannot know. And what an immense

mass of evil must result, and indeed does result, from allowing

men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen. Ninety-nine per cent of the evil of the world is founded on this

reasoning—from the Inquisition to dynamite bombs, and the

executions or punishments of tens of thousands of political

criminals.

 

A fourth, still more refined, reply to the question, What ought to

be the Christian’s attitude to Christ’s command of nonresistance

to evil by force? consists in declaring that they do not deny the

command of nonresisting evil, but recognize it; but they only do

not ascribe to this command the special exclusive value attached

to it by sectarians. To regard this command as the indispensable

condition of Christian life, as Garrison, Ballou, Dymond, the

Quakers, the Mennonites and the Shakers do now, and as the

Moravian brothers, the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Bogomilites,

and the Paulicians did in the past, is a one-sided heresy. This

command has neither more nor less value than all the other

commands, and the man who through weakness transgresses any

command whatever, the command of nonresistance included, does not

cease to be a Christian if he hold the true faith. This is a very

skillful device, and many people who wish to be deceived are

easily deceived by it. The device consists in reducing a direct

conscious denial of a command to a casual breach of it. But one

need only compare the attitude of the teachers of the Church to

this and to other commands which they really do recognize, to be

convinced that their attitude to this is completely different from

their attitude to other duties.

 

The command against fornication they do really recognize, and

consequently they do not admit that in any case fornication can

cease to be wrong. The Church preachers never point out cases in

which the command against fornication can be broken, and always

teach that we must avoid seductions which lead to temptation to

fornication. But not so with the command of nonresistance. All

church preachers recognize cases in which that command can be

broken, and teach the people accordingly. And they not only do

not teach teat we should avoid temptations to break it, chief of

which is the military oath, but they themselves administer it.

The preachers of the Church never in any other case advocate the

breaking of any other commandment. But in connection with the

commandment of nonresistance they openly teach that we must not

understand it too literally, but that there are conditions and

circumstances in which we must do the direct opposite, that is, go

to law, fight, punish. So that occasions for fulfilling the

commandment of nonresistance to evil by force are taught for the

most part as occasions for not fulfilling it. The fulfillment of

this command, they say, is very difficult and pertains only to

perfection. And how can it not be difficult, when the breach of

it is not only not forbidden, but law courts, prisons, cannons,

guns, armies, and wars are under the immediate sanction of the

Church? It cannot be true, then, that this command is recognized

by the preachers of the Church as on a level with other commands.

 

The preachers of the Church clearly, do not recognize it; only not

daring to acknowledge this, they try to conceal their not

recognizing it.

 

So much for the fourth reply.

 

The fifth kind of answer, which is the subtlest, the most often

used, and the most effective, consists in avoiding answering, in

making believe that this question is one which has long ago been

decided perfectly clearly and satisfactorily, and that it is not

worth while to talk about it. This method of reply is employed by

all the more or less cultivated religious writers, that is to say,

those who feel the laws of Christ binding for themselves. Knowing

that the contradiction existing between the teaching of Christ

which we profess with our lips and the whole order of our lives

cannot be removed by words, and that touching upon it can only

make it more obvious, they, with more or less ingenuity, evade it,

pretending that the question of reconciling Christianity with the

use of force has been decided already, or does not exist at all.

 

[Footnote: I only know one work which differs somewhat from

this general definition, and that is not a criticism in the

precise meaning of the word, but an article treating of the

same subject and having my book in view. I mean the pamphlet

of Mr. Troizky (published at Kazan), “A Sermon for the

People.” The author obviously accepts Christ’s teaching in

its true meaning. He says that the prohibition of resistance

to evil by force means exactly what it does