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Title: Church and State Author: Leo Tolstoy Date: 1882 Language: en Topics: church, the state, secularism, Christianity Source: Retrieved on 2nd April 2021 from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Church_and_State_(Tolstoy,_tr._Dole) Notes: Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
WHAT an extraordinary thing it is ! There are people who seem ready to
climb out of their skins for the sake of making others accept this, and
not that, form of revelation. They cannot rest till others have accepted
their form of revelation, and no other. They anathematize, persecute,
and kill whom they can of the dissentients. Other groups of people do
the same anathematize, persecute, and kill whom they can of the
dissentients. And others again do the same. So that they are all
anathematizing, persecuting, and killing demanding that every one should
believe as they do. And it results that there are hundreds of sects all
anathematizing, persecuting, and killing one another.
At first I was astonished that such an obvious absurdity such an evident
contradiction did not destroy religion itself. How can religious people
remain so deluded ? And really, viewed from the general, external point
of view it is incomprehensible, and proves irrefragably that every
religion is a fraud, and that the whole thing is superstition, as the
dominant philosophy of today declares. And looking at things from this
general point of view, I inevitably came to acknowledge that all
religion is a human fraud. But I could not help pausing at the
reflection that the very absurdity and obviousness of the fraud, and the
fact that nevertheless all humanity yields to it, indicates that this
fraud must rest on some basis that is not fraudulent. Otherwise we could
not let it deceive us it is too stupid. The very fact that all of
mankind that really lives a human life yields to this fraud, obliged me
to acknowledge the importance of the phenomena on which the fraud is
based. And in consequence of this reflection, I began to analyze the
Christian teaching, which, for all Christendom, supplies the basis of
this fraud.
That is what was apparent from the general point of view. But from the
individual point of view which shows us that each man (and I myself)
must, in order to live, always have a religion show him the meaning of
life the fact that violence is employed in questions of religion is yet
more amazing in its absurdity.
Indeed how can it, and why should it, concern any one to make somebody
else, not merely have the same religion as himself, but also profess it
in the same way as he does ? A man lives, and must, therefore, know why
he lives. He has established his relation to God ; he knows the very
truth of truths, and I know the very truth of truths. Our expression may
differ; the essence must be the same we are both of us men.
Then why should I what can induce me to oblige any one or demand of any
one absolutely to express his truth as I express it ?
I cannot compel a man to alter his religion either by violence or by
cunning or by fraud false miracles.
His religion is his life. How can I take from him his religion and give
him another ? It is like taking out his heart and putting another in its
place. I can only do that if his religion and mine are words, and are
not what gives him life ; if it is a wart and not a heart. Such a thing
is impossible also, because no man can deceive or compel another to
believe what he does not believe ; for if a man has adjusted his
relation toward God and knows that religion is the relation in which man
stands toward God he cannot desire to define another man’s relation to
God by means of force or fraud. That is impossible, but yet it is being
done, and has been done everywhere and always. That is to say, it can
never really be done, because it is in itself impossible ; but something
has been done, and is being done, that looks very much like it. What has
been, and is being done, is that some people impose on others a
counterfeit of religion and others accept this counterfeit this sham
religion.
Religion cannot be forced and cannot be accepted for the sake of
anything, force, fraud, or profit. Therefore what is so accepted is not
religion but a fraud. And this religious fraud is a long-established
condition of man’s life.
In what does this fraud consist, and on what is it based ? What induces
the deceivers to produce it ? and what makes it plausible to the
deceived ? I will not discuss the same phenomena in Brahminism,
Buddhism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism, though any one who has read
about those religions may see that the case has been the same in them as
in Christianity ; but I will speak only of the latter it being the
religion known, necessary, and dear to us. In Christianity, the whole
fraud is built up on the fantastic conception of a Church ; a conception
founded on nothing, and which as soon as we begin to study Christianity
amazes us by its unexpected and useless absurdity.
Of all the godless ideas and words there is none more godless than that
of a Church. There is no idea which has produced more evil, none more
inimical to Christ’s teaching, than the idea of a Church.
In reality the word ekklesia means an assembly and nothing more, and it
is so used in the Gospels. In the language of all modern nations the
word ekklesia (or the equivalent word “ church “) means a house for
prayer. Beyond that, the word has not progressed in any language,
notwithstanding the fifteen hundred years’ existence of the
Church-fraud. According to the definition given to the word by priests
(to whom the Church-fraud is necessary) it amounts to nothing else than
a preface which says : “ All that I am going to say is true, and if you
disbelieve I shall burn you, or denounce you, and do you all manner of
harm.” This conception is a soph- istry, needed for certain dialectical
purposes, and it has remained the possession of those to whom it is
necessary. Among the people, and not only among common people, but also
in society, among educated people, no such conception is held at all,
even though it is taught in the catechisms. Strange as it seems to
examine this definition, one has to do so because so many people
proclaim it seriously as something important, though it is absolutely
false. When people say that the Church is an assembly of the true
believers, nothing is really said (leaving aside the fantastic inclusion
of the dead) ; for if I assert that the choir is an assembly of all true
musicians, I have elucidated nothing unless I say what I mean by true
musicians. In theology we learn that true believers are those who follow
the teaching of the Church, i.e. belong to the Church.
Not to dwell on the fact that there are hundreds of such true Churches,
this definition tells us nothing, and at first seems as useless as the
definition of “choir “ as the assembly of true musicians. But then we
catch sight of the fox’s tail. The Church is true, and it is one, and in
it are pastors and flocks, and the pastors, ordained by God, teach this
true and only religion. So that it amounts to saying : “ By God, all
that we are going to say, is all real truth.” That is all. The whole
fraud lies in that, in the word and idea of a Church. And the meaning of
the fraud is merely that there are people who are beside themselves with
desire to teach their religion to other people.
And why are they so anxious to teach their religion to other people ? If
they had a real religion they would know that religion is the
understanding of life, the relation each man establishes to God, and
that consequently you cannot teach a religion, but only a counterfeit of
reUgion. But they want to teach. What for? The simplest reply would be
that the priest wants rolls and eggs, and the archbishop wants a palace,
fishpies, and a silk cassock. But this reply is insufficient. Such is no
doubt the inner, psychological motive for the deception, that which
maintains the fraud. But as it would be insufficient, when asking why
one man (an executioner) consents to kill another against whom he feels
no anger, to say that the executioner kills because he thereby gets
bread and brandy and a red shirt, so it is insufficient to say that the
metropolitan of Kief with his monks stuffs sacks with straw[1] and calls
them relics of the saints, merely to get thirty thousand rubles a year
income. The one act and the other is too terrible and too revolting to
human nature for so simple and rude an explanation to be sufficient.
Both the executioner and the metropolitan explaining their actions would
have a whole series of arguments based chiefly on historical tradition.
Men must be executed; executions have gone on since the world commenced.
If I don’t do it another will. I hope, by God’s grace, to do it better
than another would. So also the metropolitan would say : External
worship is necessary ; since the commencement of the world the relics of
the saints have been worshiped. People respect the relics in the Kief
Catacombs and pilgrims come here ; I, by God’s grace, hope to make the
most pious use of the money thus blasphemously obtained.
To understand the religious fraud it is necessary to go to its source
and origin.
We are speaking about what we know of Christianity. Turn to the
commencement of Christian doctrine in the Gospels and we find a teaching
which plainly excludes the external worship of God, condemning it ; and
which, with special clearness, positively repudiates mastership. But
from the time of Christ onward we find a deviation from these principles
laid down by Christ. This deviation begins from the times of the
Apostles and especially from that hankerer after mastership Paul. And
the farther Christianity goes the more it deviates, and the more it
adopts the methods of external worship and mastership which Christ had
so definitely condemned. But in the early times of Christianity the
conception of a Church was only employed to refer to all those who
shared the beliefs which I consider true.
That conception of the Church is quite correct if it does not include
those that make a verbal expression of religion instead of its
expression in the whole of life for religion cannot be expressed in
words.
The idea of a true Church was also used as an argument against
dissenters. But till the time of the Emperor Constantine and the Council
of Nicaea, the Church was only an idea.
Since the Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea the Church
becomes a reality, and a fraudulent reality, that fraud of metropolitans
with relics, and priests with the eucharist, Iberian Mothers of God,[2]
synods, etc., which so astonish and horrify us, and which are so odious
that they cannot be explained merely by the avarice of those that
perpetuate them. The fraud is ancient, and was not begun merely for the
profit of private individuals. No one would be such a monster of
iniquity as to be the first to perpetrate it, if that were the only
reason. The reasons which caused the thing to be done were evil : “ By
their fruits ye shall know them.” The root was evil hatred, pride,
enmity against Arius and others; and another yet greater evil, the
alliance of Christianity with power. Power, personified in the Emperor
Constantine, who, in the heathen conception of things, stood at the
summit of human greatness (he was enrolled among the gods), accepts
Christianity, gives an example to all the people, converts the people,
lends a helping hand against the heretics, and by means of the
Ecumenical Council establishes the one true Christian religion.
The Catholic Christian religion was established for all time. It was so
natural to yield to this deception that, to the present day, there are
people who believe in the saving efficacy of that assembly. Yet that was
the moment when a majority of Christians abandoned their religion. At
that turning the great majority of Christians entered the heathen path,
which they have followed ever since. Charlemagne and Vladimir[3]
continued in the same direction.
And the Church fraud continues till now. The fraud consists in this :
that the conversion of the powers-that-be to Christianity is necessary
for those that understand the letter, but not the spirit, of
Christianity ; but the acceptance of Christianity without the
abandonment of power is a satire on, and a perversion of, Christianity.
The sanctification of political power by Christianity is blasphemy ; it
is the negation of Christianity.
After fifteen hundred years of this blasphemous alliance of
pseudo-Christianity with the State, it needs a strong effort to free
oneself from all the complex sophistries by which, always and everywhere
(to please the authorities), the sanctity and righteousness of
State-power, and the possibility of its being Christian, has been
pleaded.
In truth, the words a “ Christian State “ resemble the words “ hot ice.”
The thing is either not a State using violence, or it is not Christian.
In order to understand this clearly we must forget all those fantastic
notions in which we have been carefully brought up, and must ask
plainly, what is the purpose of such historical and juridical science as
has been taught us ? Such sciences have no sound basis ; their purpose
is merely to supply a vindication for the use of violence.
Omitting the history of the Persians, the Medes, etc., let us take the
history of that government which first formed an alliance with
Christianity.
A robbers’ nest existed at Rome. It grew by robbery, violence, murders,
and it subdued nations. These robbers and their descendants, led by
their chieftains (whom they sometimes called Caesar, sometimes
Augustus), robbed and tormented nations to satisfy their desires. One of
the descendants of these robber-chiefs, Constantine (a reader of books
and a man satiated by an evil life), preferred certain Christian dogmas
to those of the old creeds : instead of offering human sacrifices he
preferred the mass ; instead of the worship of Apollo, Venus, and Zeus,
he preferred that of a single God with a son Christ. So he decreed that
this religion should be introduced among those that were under his
power.
No one said to him : “ The kings exercise authority among the nations,
but among you it shall not be so. Do not murder, do not commit adultery,
do not lay up riches, judge not, condemn not, resist not him that is
evil.”
But they said to him : “ You wish to be called a Christian and to
continue to be the chieftain of the robbers, to kill, burn, fight, lust,
execute, and live in luxury ? That can all be arranged.”
And they arranged a Christianity for him, and arranged it very smoothly,
better even than could have been expected. They foresaw that, reading
the Gospels, it might occur to him that all this (i.e. a Christian life)
is demanded and not the building of temples or worshiping in them. This
they foresaw, and they carefully devised such a Christianity for him as
would let him continue to live his old heathen life unembarrassed. On
the one hand Christ, God’s Son, only came to bring salvation to him and
to everybody. Christ having died, Constantine can live as he likes. More
even than that, one may repent and swallow a little bit of bread and
some wine, and that will bring salvation, and all will be forgiven.
But more even than that : they sanctify his robber-chieftainship, and
say that it proceeds from God, and they anoint him with holy oil. And
he, on his side, arranges for them the congress of priests that they
wish for, and orders them to say what each man’s relation to God should
be, and orders every one to repeat what they say.
And they all started repeating it, and were contented, and now this same
religion has existed for fifteen hundred years, and other robber-chiefs
have adopted it, and they have all been lubricated with holy oil, and
they were all, all ordained by God. If any scoundrel robs every one and
slays many people, they will oil him, and he will then be from God. In
Russia, Catharine II., the adulteress who killed her husband, was from
God ; so, in France, was Napoleon.
To balance matters the priests are not only from God, but are almost
gods, because the Holy Ghost sits inside them as well as inside the
Pope, and in our Synod with its commandant-officials.
And as soon as one of the anointed robber-chiefs wishes his own and
another folk to begin slaying each other, the priests immediately
prepare some holy water, sprinkle a cross (which Christ bore and on
which he died because he repudiated such robbers), take the cross and
bless the robber-chief in his work of slaughterng, hanging, and
destroying.[4]
And it all might have been well if only they had been able to agree
about it, and the anointed had not begun to call each other robbers,
which is what they really are, and the people had not begun to listen to
them and to cease to believe either in anointed people or in
depositaries of the Holy Ghost, and had not learned from them to call
them as they call each other, by their right names, i.e. robbers and
deceivers.
But we have only spoken of the robbers incidentally, because it was they
who led the deceivers astray. It is the deceivers, the
pseudo-Christians, that we have to consider. They became such by their
alliance with the robbers. It could not be otherwise. They turned from
the road when they consecrated the first ruler and assured him that he,
by his power, could help religion the religion of humility,
self-sacrifice, and the endurance of evil. All the history, not of the
imaginary, but of the real, Church, i.e. of the priests under the sway
of kings, is a series of useless efforts of these unfortunate priests to
preserve the truth of the teaching while preaching it by falsehood, and
while abandoning it in practice. The importance of the priesthood
depends entirely on the teaching it wishes to spread ; that teaching
speaks of humility, self-sacrifice, love, poverty ; but it is preached
by violence and wrong-doing.
In order that the priesthood should have something to teach and that
they should have disciples, they cannot get rid of the teaching. But in
order to whitewash themselves and justify their immoral alliance with
power, they have, by all the cunningest devices possible, to conceal the
essence of the teaching, and for this purpose they have to shift the
center of gravity from what is essential in the teaching to what is
external. And this is what is done by the priesthood this is the source
of the sham religion taught by the Church. The source is the alliance of
the priests (calling themselves the Church) with the powers-that-be,
i.e. with violence. The source of their desire to teach a religion to
others lies in the fact that true religion exposes them, and they want
to replace true religion by a fictitious religion arranged to justify
their deeds.
True religion may exist anywhere except where it is evidently false,
i.e. violent ; it cannot be a State religion.
True religion may exist in all the so-called sects and heresies, only it
surely cannot exist where it is joined to a State using violence.
Curiously enough the names “Orthodox-Greek,” “Catholic,” or “Protestant”
religion, as those words are commonly used, mean nothing but “religion
allied to power,” State religion and therefore false religion.
The idea of a Church as a union of many of the majority in one belief
and in nearness to the source of the teaching, was in the first two
centuries of Christianity merely one feeble external argument in favor
of the correctness of certain views. Paul said, “ I know from Christ
Himself.” Another said, “ I know from Luke.” And all said, “ We think
rightly, and the proof that we are right is that we are a big assembly,
ckklesia, the Church.” But only beginning with the Council of Niiaea,
organized by an emperor, does the Church become a plain and tangible
fraud practised by some of the people who professed this religion.
They began to say, “ It has pleased us and the Holy Ghost.” The “ Church
“ no longer meant merely a part of a weak argument, it meant power in
the hands of certain people. It allied itself with the rulers, and began
to act like the rulers. And all that united itself with power and
submitted to power, ceased to be a religion and became a fraud.
What does Christianity teach, understanding it as the teaching of any or
of all the churches ?
Examine it as you will, compound it or divide it, the Christian teaching
always falls with two sharply separated parts. There is the teaching of
dogmas : from the divine Son, the Holy Ghost, and the relationship of
these persons, to the eucharist with or without wine, and with leavened
or with unleavened bread ; and there is the moral teaching : of
humility, freedom from covetousness, purity of mind and body,
forgiveness, freedom from bondage, peacefulness. Much as the doctors of
the Church have labored to mix these two sides of the teachings, they
have never mingled, but like oil and water have always remained apart in
larger or smaller circles.
The difference of the two sides of the teaching is clear to every one,
and all can see the fruits of the one and of the other in the life of
men, and by these fruits can conclude which side is the more important,
and (if one may use the comparative form) more true. One looks at the
history of Christendom from this aspect, and one is horror-struck.
Without exception, from the very beginning and to the very end, till
to-day, look where one will, examine what dogma you like, from the dogma
of the divinity of Christ, to the manner of making the sign of the
cross,[5] and to the question of serving the communion with or without
wine, the fruit of mental labors to explain the dogmas has always been
envy, hatred, executions, banishments, slaughter of women and children,
burnings and tortures. Look on the other side, the moral teaching from
the going into the wilderness to commune with God, to the practice of
supplying food to those who are in prison ; the fruits of it are all our
conceptions of goodness, all that is joyful, comforting, and that serves
as a beacon to us in history
People before whose eyes the fruits of the one and other side of
Christianity were not yet evident, might be misled and could hardly help
being misled. And people might be misled who were sincerely drawn into
disputes about dogmas, not noticing that by such disputes they were
serving not God but the devil, not noticing that Christ said plainly
that He came to destroy all dogmas ; those also might be led astray who
had inherited a traditional belief in the importance of these dogmas,
and had received such a perverse mental training that they could not see
their mistake ; and again, those ignorant people might be led astray to
whom these dogmas seemed nothing but words or fantastic notions. But we
to whom the simple meaning of the Gospels repudiating all dogmas is
evident, we before whose eyes are the fruits of these dogmas in history,
cannot be so misled. History is for us a means even a mechanical means
of verifying the teaching.
Is the dogma of the Immaculate Conception necessary or not? What has
come of it? Hatred, abuse, irony. And did it bring any benefit? None at
all.
Was the teaching that the adulteress should not be sentenced necessary
or not ? What has come of it ? Thousands and thousands of times people
have been softened by that recollection.
Again, does everybody agree about any one of the dogmas ? No. Do people
agree that it is good to give to him that has need ? Yes, all agree.
But the one side, the dogmas about which every one disagrees, and which
no one requires is what the priesthood gave out, and still gives out,
under the name of religion ; while the other side, about which all can
agree, and which is necessary to all, and which saves people, is the
side which the priesthood, though they have not dared to reject it, have
also not dared to set forth as a teaching, for that teaching repudiates
them.
Religion is the meaning we give to our lives, it is that which gives
strength and direction to our life. Every one that lives finds such a
meaning, and lives on the basis of that meaning. If man finds no meaning
in life, he dies. In this search man uses all that the previous efforts
of humanity have supplied. And what humanity has reached we call
revelation. Revelation is what helps man to understand the meaning of
life.
Such is the relation in which man stands toward religion.
---
Note by the translator:
This article is prohibited in Russia, and, though written several years
ago, has never been printed in Russian.
I once asked Tolstoi about this article, in which it seemed to me that
the truth was told somewhat roughly and even harshly. He explained that
it was a rough draft of an article he had planned but had not brought
into satisfactory shape. After it had been put aside for some time, in
favor of other work, a friend borrowed it and took a copy, and it began
to circulate from hand to hand in written or hectographed form. Tolstoi
does not regret the publicity thus obtained for the article, as it
expresses something which he feels to be true and important.
A translation, made probably from an incorrect copy, or from the French,
has already appeared in English, but a retranslation is not the less
wanted on that account. A little book, professing to be by Count L.
Tolstoi, and entitled “ Vicious Pleasures “ (a title Tolstoi never used)
was published in London some years ago. It consisted of translations, or
perhaps I should rather say parodies, of five essays by Tolstoi. But, to
borrow from Macaulay, they were translated much as Bottom was in “
Midsummer Night’s Dream “ when he had an ass’s head on. In many places
it is impossible to make out what the essays mean. One does not even
know whether it is the Church or the State, or both, that are “ Vicious
Pleasures.”
The translator evidently had some qualms of conscience, for he concludes
his preface with the words : “ If fault be found with the present
translator for the manner in which he has reproduced Count Tolstoi’s
work in English, he would ask his critics to remember that he too, like
Kant, dearly loves his pipe.”
If that be really the explanation of the quality of the work, “ Vicious
Pleasures “ should be of value to the anti-tobacco league as a fearful
warning. Excepting for that purpose I doubt whether it can be of use to
any one.
The present version will, I hope, be found intelligible by those who
approach it with an open mind.
[1] The celebrated Catacombs of the Kief Monastery draw crowds of
pilgrims to worship the relics of the saints. It is said that a fire
once broke out in one of the chapels, and that those who hastened to
save the “ incorruptible body “ of one of the saints discovered that the
precious relic was merely a bag stuffed with straw. This is only a
specimen of many similar tales, some of which are true and others
invented. TR.
[2] The Iberian Mother of God is the most celebrated of the miraculous
ikons in Moscow. TR.
[3] Vladimir adopted Christianity A.D. 988. Many inhabitants of his
capital city, Kief, were disinclined to follow his example, so he “
acted vigorously” (as a Russian historian remarks), i.e. he had the
people driven into the Dniepr to be baptized. In other parts of his
dominions Christianity was spread among the unwilling heathen population
“ by fire and sword.” TR.
[4] In England the holy water is not used, but an archbishop draws up a
form of prayer for the success of the queen’s army, and a chaplain is
appointed to each regiment to teach the men Christianity. TR.
[5] One of the main points of divergence between the “ Old-believers”
and the “ Orthodox” Russian church was whether in making the sign of the
cross two fingers or three should be extended. TR.