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The Kingdom of God Is Within You
The Kingdom of God Is Within You" is Leo Tolstoy's magnum opus of philosophy and religious thought. The book is cited by Mahatma Gandhi as one of the chief influences in the development of his philosophy of non-violence. Tolstoy takes the reader to the heart of the message of Jesus Christ, laying aside the common dogmas of the church in favor of a literal understanding of Christ's teachings. This brings his philosophy to one of strict non-violence and a complete overhaul of the structures of modern society. The work is a masterpiece in the realm of Christianity.
354 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1893
About the author
Leo Tolstoy
7,633 books25.5k followersLev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
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June 7, 2011
What does a nation established in Christ’s principles look like?
Does it wage war?
Does it maintain a standing army?
Does it manufacture nuclear weapons? Landmines? Assault rifles? Hand guns?
Does it torture people?
Waterboard people?
Imprison people?
Are there poor people in a Christian nation?
Are there rich people in a Christian nation?
Does a women die from hunger in a Christian nation?
Does she die from preventable disease?
Does anyone aspire to wealth in a Christian nation?
Does anyone aspire to power?
When you give these questions anything more than cursory thought, they’re troubling questions indeed. Leo Tolstoy (of War and Peace fame) found himself struggling with these questions at the end of the 19th century as the nations of Europe rattled sabers and amassed massive armies in the lead-up to the first world war. Germany, Russia, France, and England all considered themselves Christian nations, yet each rallied for war, ready to murder each other by the millions against the direct prohibition of their God.
Today the governor of Texas organizes public prayer for rain while also supporting the death penalty. A presidential candidate accentuate the words “under God,” while swearing allegiance not to that God but to a nation. With a cross pinned to his lapel, a politician fights to cut funding for services to the sick and to the poor. In this midst of this, the hard analysis that Tolstoy puts forth about what it truly means to be a Christian nation is more important than ever.
In imagining a Christian society, Tolstoy looks not to Deuteronomy or Leviticus whose strict legalism lends itself to the loophole-seeking of the Pharisees, but to the Sermon on the Mount. He looks to Jesus’s commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.” Rather than a legal code, Jesus commandments were appeals to the heart, statements that awoken men’s consciences to the suffering that they were causing one another so that they may truly repent of this injustice. This is the revelation of Truth, the opening of blind eyes.
To live in this Truth is not just to speak it, but to have it guide every action. This is easy enough when dealing with our families and sometimes even our neighbors. We can forgive insults, respond to hatred with love, and exhibit great generosity with our loved ones. Yet, as we expand outwards to social action, Christ’s true challenge becomes apparent. Referring to the opening questions, do I feel that there is a difference between Christ’s response and the practical response?
The great hypocrisy of war-mongering Christians deeply disturbed Tolstoy in his day, and it should likewise both every Christian of conscience today. Do we only follow Christ’s teaching in the small and convenient actions, the street-corner preaching and public acts of generosity that make us feel self-righteous, or do we follow it when it’s difficult?
It is not difficult to wave a picture of an aborted fetus in front of a Planned Parenthood building. It is difficult to provided a pregnant mother with the social and financial support she needs to continue the pregnancy. Which do we do?
It is not difficult for an American to preach an end to human rights abuses in Iran. It is difficult for an American to take a stand against torture carried out by our own government. Which do we do?
It is not difficult to wear TOMS shoes and Falling Whistles necklaces. It is difficult to quit your job at the corporation that profits from the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. Which do we do?
Tolstoy’s thesis is that a veneer of Christianity does not make either a person or a nation Christian. It is the integration of Christ’s principles into every individual action in my life and the refusal to cooperate with anything that is counter to those principles.
It’s a bold proposition, indeed. When Mohandas Gandhi read The Kingdom of God Is Within You while he was in South Africa, it helped inspire his first Satyagraha campaign against the abuses of the British. What revolution is in store for America is we too could take this message to heart?
What happens when Christian consumers refuse to support businesses that exploit their workers, but support worker cooperatives instead?
What happens when Christian juries refuses to condemn drug addicts to jail, but open drug treatment programs instead?
What happens when Christian men and women refuse to join the military, but join interfaith groups to build bridges of understanding instead?
These are the questions that Tolstoy asks and they’re deeply challenging for those who prefer a convenient Christianity that asks nothing of its followers except a Sunday lip service and a cross hung around the neck. Christ’s Truth was revolutionary and he was hung on a cross between two revolutionaries for it. What happens when Christians take up that revolutionary charge today?
Does it wage war?
Does it maintain a standing army?
Does it manufacture nuclear weapons? Landmines? Assault rifles? Hand guns?
Does it torture people?
Waterboard people?
Imprison people?
Are there poor people in a Christian nation?
Are there rich people in a Christian nation?
Does a women die from hunger in a Christian nation?
Does she die from preventable disease?
Does anyone aspire to wealth in a Christian nation?
Does anyone aspire to power?
When you give these questions anything more than cursory thought, they’re troubling questions indeed. Leo Tolstoy (of War and Peace fame) found himself struggling with these questions at the end of the 19th century as the nations of Europe rattled sabers and amassed massive armies in the lead-up to the first world war. Germany, Russia, France, and England all considered themselves Christian nations, yet each rallied for war, ready to murder each other by the millions against the direct prohibition of their God.
Today the governor of Texas organizes public prayer for rain while also supporting the death penalty. A presidential candidate accentuate the words “under God,” while swearing allegiance not to that God but to a nation. With a cross pinned to his lapel, a politician fights to cut funding for services to the sick and to the poor. In this midst of this, the hard analysis that Tolstoy puts forth about what it truly means to be a Christian nation is more important than ever.
In imagining a Christian society, Tolstoy looks not to Deuteronomy or Leviticus whose strict legalism lends itself to the loophole-seeking of the Pharisees, but to the Sermon on the Mount. He looks to Jesus’s commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.” Rather than a legal code, Jesus commandments were appeals to the heart, statements that awoken men’s consciences to the suffering that they were causing one another so that they may truly repent of this injustice. This is the revelation of Truth, the opening of blind eyes.
To live in this Truth is not just to speak it, but to have it guide every action. This is easy enough when dealing with our families and sometimes even our neighbors. We can forgive insults, respond to hatred with love, and exhibit great generosity with our loved ones. Yet, as we expand outwards to social action, Christ’s true challenge becomes apparent. Referring to the opening questions, do I feel that there is a difference between Christ’s response and the practical response?
The great hypocrisy of war-mongering Christians deeply disturbed Tolstoy in his day, and it should likewise both every Christian of conscience today. Do we only follow Christ’s teaching in the small and convenient actions, the street-corner preaching and public acts of generosity that make us feel self-righteous, or do we follow it when it’s difficult?
It is not difficult to wave a picture of an aborted fetus in front of a Planned Parenthood building. It is difficult to provided a pregnant mother with the social and financial support she needs to continue the pregnancy. Which do we do?
It is not difficult for an American to preach an end to human rights abuses in Iran. It is difficult for an American to take a stand against torture carried out by our own government. Which do we do?
It is not difficult to wear TOMS shoes and Falling Whistles necklaces. It is difficult to quit your job at the corporation that profits from the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. Which do we do?
Tolstoy’s thesis is that a veneer of Christianity does not make either a person or a nation Christian. It is the integration of Christ’s principles into every individual action in my life and the refusal to cooperate with anything that is counter to those principles.
It’s a bold proposition, indeed. When Mohandas Gandhi read The Kingdom of God Is Within You while he was in South Africa, it helped inspire his first Satyagraha campaign against the abuses of the British. What revolution is in store for America is we too could take this message to heart?
What happens when Christian consumers refuse to support businesses that exploit their workers, but support worker cooperatives instead?
What happens when Christian juries refuses to condemn drug addicts to jail, but open drug treatment programs instead?
What happens when Christian men and women refuse to join the military, but join interfaith groups to build bridges of understanding instead?
These are the questions that Tolstoy asks and they’re deeply challenging for those who prefer a convenient Christianity that asks nothing of its followers except a Sunday lip service and a cross hung around the neck. Christ’s Truth was revolutionary and he was hung on a cross between two revolutionaries for it. What happens when Christians take up that revolutionary charge today?
June 19, 2007
Mhatma Ghandi said of this book, "Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You overwhelmed me. It left an abiding impression on me. Before the independent thinking, profound morality and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given me...seemed to pale into insignificance." This was lovingly written in the cover of the book when I picked it out of pile of books destined for recycling, where the hard covers would be ripped off and the pages put through the recycling bin. I could not toss this book. My brother (a professor of English studies) pointed out to me the geneology of its publication, how ever year of its reissuing was during a massive era of change (World War II and the civil rights movement.). I do love this book. I am a slow reader. It will be a slow arduous journey through this book, but I am certain it will be worth it.
Want to read
September 29, 2013Things your ordinary citizen thinks when he hears "Leo Tolstoy":
-Some damncommie Russian
-Yeah, I think I heard some of them literary people mention him. Whatever. Speaking of literature, I need to go buy new Dan Brown.
-That dude who wrote that long-ass book about war or something no one ever really finished. LBR, they all use Cliffnotes for book reports.
-The one who wrote that famous tragic forbidden love story between a married woman and a hot officer. I've seen the movie(s) (KK is my homegurl!), but then I opened the book and it was full of some guy talking about peasants and shit. It was a bore. The movie was much better.
-A very important Russian writer. I've tried reading some of his work, but it's not for me.
Things I wish more people would know about Leo Tolstoy:
-He was an anarchist
-He might have been Christian, but he was not a fan of the way Church has been interpreting the religion. Thus, this book was born.
-One day, a young lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi read this book.
Onto the Part 2
(FLAG AWAY!)
-Some damn
-Yeah, I think I heard some of them literary people mention him. Whatever. Speaking of literature, I need to go buy new Dan Brown.
-That dude who wrote that long-ass book about war or something no one ever really finished. LBR, they all use Cliffnotes for book reports.
-The one who wrote that famous tragic forbidden love story between a married woman and a hot officer. I've seen the movie(s) (KK is my homegurl!), but then I opened the book and it was full of some guy talking about peasants and shit. It was a bore. The movie was much better.
-A very important Russian writer. I've tried reading some of his work, but it's not for me.
Things I wish more people would know about Leo Tolstoy:
-He was an anarchist
-He might have been Christian, but he was not a fan of the way Church has been interpreting the religion. Thus, this book was born.
-One day, a young lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi read this book.
Onto the Part 2
(FLAG AWAY!)
August 13, 2007
this is an amazing book. i'm not a religious person and i can't say i believe in god, but this book sort of made me believe in jesus. not the supernatural aspects of him, but in his philosophy. tolstoy rips into the Church and gives no quarter, saying that the clergy are no better than gangsters. his elucidation of the profound madness involved when "christians" march off to war made me jump out of my chair and say, "yes!" read this book.
April 22, 2015
I have read two of Tolstoy's other masterpieces in "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." For all the brilliant prose in these two works of penultimate genius, to really understand the heart of the novelist writing about his society, these essays lend powerful insight. The essays begin as Tolstoy rides a train with soldiers sent to beat Russian peasants who have lodged a complaint against a rich landowner bent upon cutting down a forest, with which serfs had always enjoyed common rights, for the profit in the timber. After a judge's unjust verdict in favor of the landowner, after the serfs send packing the men who appeared to cut their timber, the landowner requests government troops to enforce the unjust verdict by beating the serfs to death with rods packed onboard the train. Tolstoy examines this great chain of injustice from the rich landowner's arrogance and greed, to the government judge's feeble acquiesence to power, to the soldiers' blind obedience to administer the famished serfs' inhumane punishment and asks why any of this must play out as it does. How often has this great chain of injustice perpetuated itself upon humanity? Does this chain not define and insitutionalize the greatest instances of inhumanity in the course of history? Tolstoy asks earnestly why each of the players in the administration of this injustice just doesn't try to make a true "moral effort." Why doesn't the rich landowner recognize his own arrogance and greed and duty to the serfs? Why doesn't the government intercede and stand up to the landowner's will to power? Why don't the soldiers refuse to administer mindlessly this injustice? Why must famished, diseased and half-dead peasants be beaten to death as they simply try to survive? Who wins in this oft repeated scenario? Not a dead soul. Tolstoy's argument is that we have the ethical wherewithal at every level to stand-up to such injustice and he makes the argument as a wealthy Russian landowner, former soldier and provincial adminsitrator with great influence upon the tsar. In other words he is fully qualified by virtue of experience to argue this case and he makes it with a profundity and simplicity which is inspiring. "There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth." Tolstoy's thesis is that the Power to do this exists within every person and that it is the divine responsibility of each of us to exercise this power for the good and happiness of humanity. Tolstoy sees a threefold relationship of man to truth: "Some truths have been so assimilated by them that they become the unconscious basis of action, others are just only on the point of being revealed and a third class, though not yet assimilated by him, have been revealed to him with sufficient clearness to force him to decide either to recognize them or refuse to recognize them." Tolstoy urges mankind simply to make a moral effort and he advises that the happiness open to mankind is available only if and when we do so. Why don't we make more of a moral effort? There is great wisdom in this work which I urge you, despite the daunting title, to read as it is wisdom from a century and a half ago, that no generation of humanity may need more than our own right now.
December 31, 2010
I think this book has a lot of great merits, yet I cannot rate something such as this higher when it has so strange a premise:
Tolstoy postulates that Christ didn't live, that we don't need a living Savior, and that Christianity is two-thirds deception, and then he says that the principles which Christ taught are going to save the world.
It's a remarkable example of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
If there is any reason to live the gospel of Christ at all, it is because Christ lived, and that what he taught is so completely non-fiction that we ought to spend our entire lives developing faith and understanding in it.
Tolstoy had a penchant for rejecting everyone and everything. From my limited impression of his work, there's not a thing in the world he accepted other than his own--and self-proclaimed as ever insufficient--perspective on truth.
Now, all that being said, I think his application of Christian virtues is beautiful. He gives strong encouragement to his reader to chose to live the gospel "right now," to recognize that all of the accomplishments of man can and are washed away in the blink of an eye, and to focus on developing compassion.
The book also was one of Gandhi's most influential sources for the development of Non-Violence, and when you read this book you will notice the massive foundation it laid for Gandhi.
It was not well-received when it was written--being banned by Russia and, when Germany printed it, it never sold very heavily--and I believe that was because of the fact that he let go of Christ's hand in his writing in order to have more room to hold onto Christ's lesson scrolls, but it's definitely worth the read if you have the time.
You can listen to it on MP3 for free on Librivox.org, and the reading is pretty good:
http://librivox.org/the-kingdom-of-go...
Tolstoy postulates that Christ didn't live, that we don't need a living Savior, and that Christianity is two-thirds deception, and then he says that the principles which Christ taught are going to save the world.
It's a remarkable example of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
If there is any reason to live the gospel of Christ at all, it is because Christ lived, and that what he taught is so completely non-fiction that we ought to spend our entire lives developing faith and understanding in it.
Tolstoy had a penchant for rejecting everyone and everything. From my limited impression of his work, there's not a thing in the world he accepted other than his own--and self-proclaimed as ever insufficient--perspective on truth.
Now, all that being said, I think his application of Christian virtues is beautiful. He gives strong encouragement to his reader to chose to live the gospel "right now," to recognize that all of the accomplishments of man can and are washed away in the blink of an eye, and to focus on developing compassion.
The book also was one of Gandhi's most influential sources for the development of Non-Violence, and when you read this book you will notice the massive foundation it laid for Gandhi.
It was not well-received when it was written--being banned by Russia and, when Germany printed it, it never sold very heavily--and I believe that was because of the fact that he let go of Christ's hand in his writing in order to have more room to hold onto Christ's lesson scrolls, but it's definitely worth the read if you have the time.
You can listen to it on MP3 for free on Librivox.org, and the reading is pretty good:
http://librivox.org/the-kingdom-of-go...
November 18, 2018
My dad and I read this book together. We both really liked it, and we had good conversations about it. In many places, Tolstoy writes the very idea that I would write about Christianity and about non-violent resistance, about Christian anarchy (a phrase he doesn't use, of course), about hypocrisy, about the degradation of our "civilization." The book is a little long, but Tolstoy lays out his argument and builds upon it until the end. The last chapter provides concrete examples of his day to illustrate his point, but he refers to books and to other people who believe in non-resistance to evil by force, and supports his claims and ideas very well with various types of evidence.
Tolstoy didn't convince me of anything, but he confirmed my beliefs and opinions. If I wasn't sure how I felt, he probably would have convinced me. He is very persuasive, and his ideas are laid out logically. He does attack the other side because he's Tolstoy and looks like a "modern"-day Moses on the cover of this edition, but he does so eloquently and doesn't come off, at least not to me, as some brash person who knows he's wrong bashing the other side because he has no personal evidence.
The sad irony of Tolstoy's book is that everything got worse when he predicted it would get better. He thought the wars of the nineteenth century were horrific...he died before World War I, so he didn't "get" to see how bad it became. With his comments on society and the treatment of the worker and the poor and the violence and the war and soldier/police brutality, he didn't see the worst. Or maybe he did. Things always look better in the past than they do in the present.
I highly recommend this book. It's enlightening and educational. If you're unsure how you feel about non-resistance, or if you know how you feel in a vague way, this is a good book for you.
Note: Tolstoy doesn't hold back, and his book was censored for a reason. Soldiers and police officers would be particularly vulnerable to take offense (as would Tzars, but I don't think there are too many of them hanging around anymore).
Tolstoy didn't convince me of anything, but he confirmed my beliefs and opinions. If I wasn't sure how I felt, he probably would have convinced me. He is very persuasive, and his ideas are laid out logically. He does attack the other side because he's Tolstoy and looks like a "modern"-day Moses on the cover of this edition, but he does so eloquently and doesn't come off, at least not to me, as some brash person who knows he's wrong bashing the other side because he has no personal evidence.
The sad irony of Tolstoy's book is that everything got worse when he predicted it would get better. He thought the wars of the nineteenth century were horrific...he died before World War I, so he didn't "get" to see how bad it became. With his comments on society and the treatment of the worker and the poor and the violence and the war and soldier/police brutality, he didn't see the worst. Or maybe he did. Things always look better in the past than they do in the present.
I highly recommend this book. It's enlightening and educational. If you're unsure how you feel about non-resistance, or if you know how you feel in a vague way, this is a good book for you.
Note: Tolstoy doesn't hold back, and his book was censored for a reason. Soldiers and police officers would be particularly vulnerable to take offense (as would Tzars, but I don't think there are too many of them hanging around anymore).
June 27, 2013
Tolstoy is my favorite writer.
'The Kingdom of God Is Within You' is a book that heavily influenced Gandhi in his epic battle for justice and compassion within and, then, against the British Empire.
It is not what you might think though. It is heavily censorious of prevailing assumptions in Christianity as they were practiced in the 18th century.
Tolstoy is a radical and allows Christians no wriggle room. You are either a believer and follow the spirit and teachings of Jesus or you are not. It is only in living by the teachings that one becomes a Christian. He gives very little attention to any Christologies. What one may believe about the afterlife has very little sway here.
His main criticism of religion is that it might actually serve as an obfuscation and hinder one in ascertaining the real message and value of Jesus' teachings. Religion might prevent Jesus from coming into one's life. Christ is what most people want; a simple affirmation. But, to Tolstoy, belief requires more.
Hence, a point of view: no Jesus, no Christ.
'The Kingdom of God Is Within You' is a book that heavily influenced Gandhi in his epic battle for justice and compassion within and, then, against the British Empire.
It is not what you might think though. It is heavily censorious of prevailing assumptions in Christianity as they were practiced in the 18th century.
Tolstoy is a radical and allows Christians no wriggle room. You are either a believer and follow the spirit and teachings of Jesus or you are not. It is only in living by the teachings that one becomes a Christian. He gives very little attention to any Christologies. What one may believe about the afterlife has very little sway here.
His main criticism of religion is that it might actually serve as an obfuscation and hinder one in ascertaining the real message and value of Jesus' teachings. Religion might prevent Jesus from coming into one's life. Christ is what most people want; a simple affirmation. But, to Tolstoy, belief requires more.
Hence, a point of view: no Jesus, no Christ.
April 19, 2014
The book one may want to keep next to the Holy Bible at home. A book that one may not just 'read' but absorb, assimilate and learn to the core till he transforms himself into a wholly new being. Amazing read; probably the book to deserve the first place in my library.
Tolstoy in his own words: (selected passages)
"Not to speak of all the other contradictions between modern life and the conscience, the permanently armed conditions of Europe together with its profession of Christianity is alone enough to drive any man to despair, to doubt of the sanity of mankind, and to terminate an existence in this senseless and brutal world. This contradiction, which is a quintessence of all the other contradictions, is so terrible that to live and to take part in it is only possible if one does not think of it-if one is able to forget it."
"They (Governments) pretend to support temperance societies, while they are living principally on the drunkenness of the people; and pretend to encourage education, when their whole strength is based on ignorance; and to support constitutional freedom, when their strength rests on the absence of freedom; and to be anxious for the improvement of the condition of the working classes, when their very existence depends on their oppression; and to support Christianity, when Christianity destroys all government."
(More on this please visit http://kevmcn.wordpress.com/2014/04/1...
Tolstoy in his own words: (selected passages)
"Not to speak of all the other contradictions between modern life and the conscience, the permanently armed conditions of Europe together with its profession of Christianity is alone enough to drive any man to despair, to doubt of the sanity of mankind, and to terminate an existence in this senseless and brutal world. This contradiction, which is a quintessence of all the other contradictions, is so terrible that to live and to take part in it is only possible if one does not think of it-if one is able to forget it."
"They (Governments) pretend to support temperance societies, while they are living principally on the drunkenness of the people; and pretend to encourage education, when their whole strength is based on ignorance; and to support constitutional freedom, when their strength rests on the absence of freedom; and to be anxious for the improvement of the condition of the working classes, when their very existence depends on their oppression; and to support Christianity, when Christianity destroys all government."
(More on this please visit http://kevmcn.wordpress.com/2014/04/1...
January 9, 2019
This book contains quite an admixture of positives and negatives. This review will attempt to disentangle some of the most significant.
The good: This book is polemic done well, stirring and appealing to the noblest human sentiments. Tolstoy is keen to impress his readers with the contradiction between the coercion at the base of the social order (of his time and ours) and the light of the Christian way. His insistence that Christ really did mean what he said is refreshing, given how much effort has been put forward over centuries to attenuate his sharper rhetoric and turn Christianity into a comfortable moralism. Though Tolstoy allows defenders of the present world order to have their say, he also smolders with the injustices inflicted on the wretched of the earth, and he is quite clear in his conviction that this universal edifice of states, armies, laws, wealth, and wars is hostile to God and destined to perish, not through bloody retribution but compassion and meekness. There is, indeed, something reminiscent in this of the spirit of the primitive Church at its best, standing athwart the principalities and powers and dethroning them by submissive love and truth.
The bad: Tolstoy’s conviction that the world was on the verge of a tremendous interior Christianization now seems hopelessly naive. The war he feared came to pass, and recurred, and it has if anything heightened the coercive power of states and institutions of wealth. The twentieth century was not only brutal, but in most places saw the further alienation of spirituality from public life, with attempts at reintegration turning inward and eroding within a generation or descending into vulgar partisanship. Moreover, relatively few today need maintain power by mass execution, torture, and the draft, which Tolstoy assumed to be critical bricks in the dam against anarchy; genuine dependency on governments has deepened, and public opinion has proved pliable in most circumstances, easily shaped and manipulated by oligarchs and politicians. This understandable failure of foresight is not the only thing that undermines his thesis; his Marcionist approach to Christ and Christianity is likewise problematic. For some even now, Tolstoy’s reductionism may seem attractive—keep Christ’s prophetic idealism, drop the encrustations of dogma and the Church’s own complicity in the status quo. But it strains credulity to assert, as Tolstoy does, that the same apostles who faithfully preserved the Sermon on the Mount misunderstood it completely. Simply because this great discourse is key to the Gospel message does not mean it can be ripped from its context of tradition and sacred community without some measure of loss and distortion. One could note some other issues that mar the work in less significant ways: the volume reads like an excessively long tract, and Tolstoy’s understanding of Christian history is trite, sometimes inaccurate, and Whiggish. For all that…
Conclusion: It has its failings, and these are not small, but The Kingdom of God Is Within You remains worth reading and, to a considerable extent, topical. The poor are still with us, and there remain many to do the bidding of the rich and powerful. We may long be on the border of Tolstoy’s quiet revolution, and yet not cross it. Tolstoy’s concluding chapter, the best in the book and the main reason I give it four stars, raises the question of how ordinary, decent Christian people could be complicit in the violence exhibited by states on other human beings; his answers include regard for one’s own advantage, the intoxications of power and prestige, the dilution of guilt through mass participation, and indoctrination through churches and other institutions. Tolstoy’s trust in human freedom and the snowball transformation of public opinion may be misplaced, but he recognizes at least that as long as we fail to look within and take apart the stories we tell ourselves to justify inhumanity, and apply the same standards to our institutions, the blindness of the god of this world is upon us.
The good: This book is polemic done well, stirring and appealing to the noblest human sentiments. Tolstoy is keen to impress his readers with the contradiction between the coercion at the base of the social order (of his time and ours) and the light of the Christian way. His insistence that Christ really did mean what he said is refreshing, given how much effort has been put forward over centuries to attenuate his sharper rhetoric and turn Christianity into a comfortable moralism. Though Tolstoy allows defenders of the present world order to have their say, he also smolders with the injustices inflicted on the wretched of the earth, and he is quite clear in his conviction that this universal edifice of states, armies, laws, wealth, and wars is hostile to God and destined to perish, not through bloody retribution but compassion and meekness. There is, indeed, something reminiscent in this of the spirit of the primitive Church at its best, standing athwart the principalities and powers and dethroning them by submissive love and truth.
The bad: Tolstoy’s conviction that the world was on the verge of a tremendous interior Christianization now seems hopelessly naive. The war he feared came to pass, and recurred, and it has if anything heightened the coercive power of states and institutions of wealth. The twentieth century was not only brutal, but in most places saw the further alienation of spirituality from public life, with attempts at reintegration turning inward and eroding within a generation or descending into vulgar partisanship. Moreover, relatively few today need maintain power by mass execution, torture, and the draft, which Tolstoy assumed to be critical bricks in the dam against anarchy; genuine dependency on governments has deepened, and public opinion has proved pliable in most circumstances, easily shaped and manipulated by oligarchs and politicians. This understandable failure of foresight is not the only thing that undermines his thesis; his Marcionist approach to Christ and Christianity is likewise problematic. For some even now, Tolstoy’s reductionism may seem attractive—keep Christ’s prophetic idealism, drop the encrustations of dogma and the Church’s own complicity in the status quo. But it strains credulity to assert, as Tolstoy does, that the same apostles who faithfully preserved the Sermon on the Mount misunderstood it completely. Simply because this great discourse is key to the Gospel message does not mean it can be ripped from its context of tradition and sacred community without some measure of loss and distortion. One could note some other issues that mar the work in less significant ways: the volume reads like an excessively long tract, and Tolstoy’s understanding of Christian history is trite, sometimes inaccurate, and Whiggish. For all that…
Conclusion: It has its failings, and these are not small, but The Kingdom of God Is Within You remains worth reading and, to a considerable extent, topical. The poor are still with us, and there remain many to do the bidding of the rich and powerful. We may long be on the border of Tolstoy’s quiet revolution, and yet not cross it. Tolstoy’s concluding chapter, the best in the book and the main reason I give it four stars, raises the question of how ordinary, decent Christian people could be complicit in the violence exhibited by states on other human beings; his answers include regard for one’s own advantage, the intoxications of power and prestige, the dilution of guilt through mass participation, and indoctrination through churches and other institutions. Tolstoy’s trust in human freedom and the snowball transformation of public opinion may be misplaced, but he recognizes at least that as long as we fail to look within and take apart the stories we tell ourselves to justify inhumanity, and apply the same standards to our institutions, the blindness of the god of this world is upon us.
December 13, 2016
Reader beware: Leo Tolstoy is no joke. The Kingdom of God is Within You is a scathing critique of the present evil age, just as applicable now as it was when Tolstoy wrote in the late 1800's. Don't come to this book as you might come to War & Peace, expecting a shrill of literary beauty, or you will most certainly be disappointed. This is hard, cold argument, the kind you might expect if you were listening to Tolstoy lecture and persuade a disobedient child, only the child in view here is humanity and our disobedience is the blind allegiance we give to the temporal powers who enslave and rule people by violence and threat of force. The only hope of a better way, Tolstoy argues, is found in the teaching and spirit of Jesus--in particular the nonviolent resistance to evil he spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount. Tolstoy hammers home this point from almost every imaginable angle, and his arguments leave no room for indifference. Make no mistake about it, this book will leave you reeling long after you put it down.
July 30, 2018
Working on review. Seriously. 😉
September 7, 2015
It's been almost a month since i finished this book, and i still think about it every day. It has greatly impressed and inspired me. I am not good at writing reviews, especially about great books, that's why i have been putting it off. But it deserves some praise from my side, since it's the best book i've read this year.
I love Tolstoy's honest and raw way of writing and arguing. His vision on non-resistence to evil which is present throughout the whole book, is wonderfully radical and inspiring.
He saw and clearly argued that the church got Jesus' message all wrong.
I did not agree with everything. For example, he claims that believing the things of the bible that go against science is merely supersition and a way of the church leaders to gain power over people. I think there are things in life that cannot be explained by science, but whose existence we cannot deny.
Not agreeing with everything, for me, is not a hindrance in learning from and being changed for the better by a book and this is a great example of that.
I particularly loved this part:
-------------------------------
The essence of every religious teaching does not consist in the desire to express the forces of Nature symbolically, or in the fear of them, or in the demand for the miraculous, or in the external forms of its manifestation, as the men of science imagine. The essence of religion lies in the property of men prophetically to foresee and point out the path of life, over which humanity must travel, in a new definition of the meaning of life, from which also results a new, the whole future activity of humanity.
This property of foreseeing the path on which humanity must travel is in a greater or lesser degree common to all men, but there have always, at all times, been men, in whom this quality has been manifested with particular force, and these men expressed clearly and precisely what was dimly felt by all men, and established a new comprehension of life, from which resulted an entirely new activity, for hundreds and thousands of years.
We know three such conceptions of life: two of them humanity has already outlived, and the third is the one through which we are now passing in Christianity. There are three, and only three, such conceptions, not because we have arbitrarily united all kinds of life-conceptions into these three, but because the acts of men always have for their base one of these three life-conceptions, because we cannot understand life in any other way than by one of these three means.
The three life-conceptions are these: the first — the personal, or animal; the second — the social, or the pagan; and the third — the universal, or the divine.
According to the first life-conception, man’s life is contained in nothing but his personality; the aim of his life is the gratification of the will of this personality. According to the second life-conception, man’s life is not contained in his personality alone, but in the aggregate and sequence of personalities — in the tribe, the family, the race, the state; the aim of life consists in the gratification of the will of this aggregate of personalities. According to the third life-conception, man’s life is contained neither in his personality, nor in the aggregate and sequence of personalities, but in the beginning and source of life, in God.
These three life-conceptions serve as the foundation of all past and present religions.
The savage recognizes life only in himself, in his personal desires. The good of his life is centred in himself alone. The highest good for him is the greatest gratification of his lust. The prime mover of his life is his personal enjoyment. His religion consists in appeasing the divinity in his favor, and in the worship of imaginary personalities of gods, who live only for personal ends.
A pagan, a social man, no longer recognizes life in himself alone, but in the aggregate of personalities — in the tribe, the family, the race, the state — and sacrifices his personal good for these aggregates. The prime mover of his life is glory. His religion consists in the glorification of the heads of unions — of eponyms, ancestors, kings, and in the worship of gods, the exclusive protectors of his family, his race, his nation, his state. [The unity of this life-conception is not impaired by the fact that so many various forms of life, as that of the tribe, the family, the race, the state, and even the life of humanity, according to the theoretical speculations of the positivists, are based on this social, or pagan, life-conception. All these various forms of life are based on the same concept that the life of the personality is not a sufficient aim of life and that the meaning of life can be found only in the aggregate of personalities.]
The man with the divine life-conception no longer recognizes life to consist in his personality, or in the aggregate of personalities (in the family, the race, the people, the country, or the state), but in the source of the everlasting, immortal life, in God; and to do God’s will he sacrifices his personal and domestic and social good. The prime mover of his religion is love. And his religion is the worship in deed and in truth of the beginning of everything, of God.
The whole historical life of humanity is nothing but a gradual transition from the personal, the animal life-conception, to the social, and from the social to the divine. The whole history of the ancient nations, which lasted for thousands of years and which came to a conclusion with the history of Rome, is the history of the substitution of the social and the political life-conception for the animal, the personal. The whole history since the time of imperial Rome and the appearance of Christianity has been the history of the substitution of the divine life-conception for the political, and we are passing through it even now.
---------------------------------------
I love his optimism in this view. He believes we as humanity are at a turning point; things will gradually change for the better, society will pass into a state where there are no ruling powers, violence and force no longer exist, a society based on mutual aid, and all our actions will spring from love and the realization we are all brothers and sisters.
It's a beautiful idea. But i can't help wondering if he would have written the same thing after the two world wars. And if his argument for non-resistence to evil would still stand when he learned of the demonic ISIS.
It doesn't mean i disagree or think him naieve. I just wish i could find a version of his philosophy that could actually be realized in a world like this. I strongly agree that violence is never the answer. But turning the other cheek would never have worked to stop Hitler. Right?
I love Tolstoy's honest and raw way of writing and arguing. His vision on non-resistence to evil which is present throughout the whole book, is wonderfully radical and inspiring.
He saw and clearly argued that the church got Jesus' message all wrong.
I did not agree with everything. For example, he claims that believing the things of the bible that go against science is merely supersition and a way of the church leaders to gain power over people. I think there are things in life that cannot be explained by science, but whose existence we cannot deny.
Not agreeing with everything, for me, is not a hindrance in learning from and being changed for the better by a book and this is a great example of that.
I particularly loved this part:
-------------------------------
The essence of every religious teaching does not consist in the desire to express the forces of Nature symbolically, or in the fear of them, or in the demand for the miraculous, or in the external forms of its manifestation, as the men of science imagine. The essence of religion lies in the property of men prophetically to foresee and point out the path of life, over which humanity must travel, in a new definition of the meaning of life, from which also results a new, the whole future activity of humanity.
This property of foreseeing the path on which humanity must travel is in a greater or lesser degree common to all men, but there have always, at all times, been men, in whom this quality has been manifested with particular force, and these men expressed clearly and precisely what was dimly felt by all men, and established a new comprehension of life, from which resulted an entirely new activity, for hundreds and thousands of years.
We know three such conceptions of life: two of them humanity has already outlived, and the third is the one through which we are now passing in Christianity. There are three, and only three, such conceptions, not because we have arbitrarily united all kinds of life-conceptions into these three, but because the acts of men always have for their base one of these three life-conceptions, because we cannot understand life in any other way than by one of these three means.
The three life-conceptions are these: the first — the personal, or animal; the second — the social, or the pagan; and the third — the universal, or the divine.
According to the first life-conception, man’s life is contained in nothing but his personality; the aim of his life is the gratification of the will of this personality. According to the second life-conception, man’s life is not contained in his personality alone, but in the aggregate and sequence of personalities — in the tribe, the family, the race, the state; the aim of life consists in the gratification of the will of this aggregate of personalities. According to the third life-conception, man’s life is contained neither in his personality, nor in the aggregate and sequence of personalities, but in the beginning and source of life, in God.
These three life-conceptions serve as the foundation of all past and present religions.
The savage recognizes life only in himself, in his personal desires. The good of his life is centred in himself alone. The highest good for him is the greatest gratification of his lust. The prime mover of his life is his personal enjoyment. His religion consists in appeasing the divinity in his favor, and in the worship of imaginary personalities of gods, who live only for personal ends.
A pagan, a social man, no longer recognizes life in himself alone, but in the aggregate of personalities — in the tribe, the family, the race, the state — and sacrifices his personal good for these aggregates. The prime mover of his life is glory. His religion consists in the glorification of the heads of unions — of eponyms, ancestors, kings, and in the worship of gods, the exclusive protectors of his family, his race, his nation, his state. [The unity of this life-conception is not impaired by the fact that so many various forms of life, as that of the tribe, the family, the race, the state, and even the life of humanity, according to the theoretical speculations of the positivists, are based on this social, or pagan, life-conception. All these various forms of life are based on the same concept that the life of the personality is not a sufficient aim of life and that the meaning of life can be found only in the aggregate of personalities.]
The man with the divine life-conception no longer recognizes life to consist in his personality, or in the aggregate of personalities (in the family, the race, the people, the country, or the state), but in the source of the everlasting, immortal life, in God; and to do God’s will he sacrifices his personal and domestic and social good. The prime mover of his religion is love. And his religion is the worship in deed and in truth of the beginning of everything, of God.
The whole historical life of humanity is nothing but a gradual transition from the personal, the animal life-conception, to the social, and from the social to the divine. The whole history of the ancient nations, which lasted for thousands of years and which came to a conclusion with the history of Rome, is the history of the substitution of the social and the political life-conception for the animal, the personal. The whole history since the time of imperial Rome and the appearance of Christianity has been the history of the substitution of the divine life-conception for the political, and we are passing through it even now.
---------------------------------------
I love his optimism in this view. He believes we as humanity are at a turning point; things will gradually change for the better, society will pass into a state where there are no ruling powers, violence and force no longer exist, a society based on mutual aid, and all our actions will spring from love and the realization we are all brothers and sisters.
It's a beautiful idea. But i can't help wondering if he would have written the same thing after the two world wars. And if his argument for non-resistence to evil would still stand when he learned of the demonic ISIS.
It doesn't mean i disagree or think him naieve. I just wish i could find a version of his philosophy that could actually be realized in a world like this. I strongly agree that violence is never the answer. But turning the other cheek would never have worked to stop Hitler. Right?
August 11, 2012
"The Kingdom of God is Within You" is at once flawed and necessary, a critical look at how human institutions have interpreted (or misinterpreted) the Gospel message.
In it, Tolstoy focuses on what's perhaps Jesus' most often overlooked statement--the admonishment to offer no resistance to evil. It's an admirable task, to take a clear look at a statement that many pretend is blurry, to simplify a message that is complicated in spite of its clarity. And Tolstoy's passion and originality make for an unforgettable read, even as his sweeping generalizations make it easy to put down in frustration.
He claims, for instance, that there are only three ways to view life--the animal, the pagan, and the divine. In the former, one is only looking for fulfillment of one's own desires; most societies recognize this as potentially harmful, and set out laws so as to corral the human animal. But, as Tolstoy puts it, this still leads to allegiance to "the tribe, the family, the clan, the nation," and that ultimately leads to conflict. The answer, as he sees it, is for human society to keep evolving towards the divine ideal set down in the Gospels, wherein one treats everyone well, regardless of (and even in spite of) their past behavior.
In looking at the middle level--that of human society--Tolstoy latches on to something Chairman Mao would later express far more cynically: political power ultimately rests on force. Laws that aren't enforced are basically just suggestions, so no matter how noble-minded the government, or how good its intentions, it ultimately must either use or threaten violence--the very word "enforcement" acknowledges this. So, for instance, pacifists who are waiting for governments to renounce the use of war will be waiting forever. As Tolstoy points out, "One might as well suggest to merchants and bankers that they should sell nothing for a greater price than they gave for it, should undertake the distribution of wealth for no profit, and should abolish money, as it would thus be rendered unnecessary." For war is but the extreme end of an ill-defined spectrum of force that starts at a much lower level, that of police and criminals; no government will (or can) ever give that up, so once one acknowledges and buys into the implicit relationship between political power and force, the question of its upper limit is a matter of quibbling. As Tolstoy mentions, only the weaker nations will suggest with a straight face that international matters should always be subject to arbitration. The stronger countries have nothing to gain by limiting themselves, and no one to compel them to do so.
Tolstoy uses Jesus' words amply. He points out that many believe that Jesus' teachings "can have no other significance than the one they attribute to it." But that only adds to the irony elsewhere, when he suggests that Jesus' words against resistance should be used as an excuse to stop paying taxes. Jesus was quite clearly of a different mindset, and said "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's" to those who asked whether it was lawful to pay taxes. The point's pretty simple, and it's one Tolstoy completely ignores: the government literally makes the money in the first place, so if the government wants part of their money back, that's their business.
Elsewhere, too, Tolstoy's generalizations invite argument, not agreement. "We do know by prolonged experience that neither enemies nor criminals have been successfully suppressed by force," he says, obviously speaking without the benefit of World War II as a historical example, although one ends up surprised that he didn't make more reference to Napoleon's defeat, a topic which he obviously covered at far greater length elsewhere. A better argument, perhaps, would rely on the moral consequences to the victors, rather than the physical outcomes. (Perhaps the best illustration of this, oddly enough, was near the end of "Return of the Jedi," where Luke finds himself transformed by the mere act of resisting the Emperor.) It's hard to claim that resistance is wrong because it doesn't work; there are those who will always argue that it does. The bigger issue, perhaps, is that it makes you similar to what you're resisting.
Tolstoy's long-winded. He departs from the Gospel message in at least one key regard. He relies on evidence for some assertions but also makes plenty of unsupported allegations and blanket generalizations. (Some of these do seem oddly timeless and apropos of our current age, as for instance when he says that scientists see Christianity "as a religion which has outlived its age" and that "[t]he significance of the Gospel is hidden from believers by the Church, from unbelievers by Science.") Yet the many areas where he amplifies Jesus' teachings make for a thought-provoking read that also might cause some soul searching, whatever one's religious or political persuasion.
In it, Tolstoy focuses on what's perhaps Jesus' most often overlooked statement--the admonishment to offer no resistance to evil. It's an admirable task, to take a clear look at a statement that many pretend is blurry, to simplify a message that is complicated in spite of its clarity. And Tolstoy's passion and originality make for an unforgettable read, even as his sweeping generalizations make it easy to put down in frustration.
He claims, for instance, that there are only three ways to view life--the animal, the pagan, and the divine. In the former, one is only looking for fulfillment of one's own desires; most societies recognize this as potentially harmful, and set out laws so as to corral the human animal. But, as Tolstoy puts it, this still leads to allegiance to "the tribe, the family, the clan, the nation," and that ultimately leads to conflict. The answer, as he sees it, is for human society to keep evolving towards the divine ideal set down in the Gospels, wherein one treats everyone well, regardless of (and even in spite of) their past behavior.
In looking at the middle level--that of human society--Tolstoy latches on to something Chairman Mao would later express far more cynically: political power ultimately rests on force. Laws that aren't enforced are basically just suggestions, so no matter how noble-minded the government, or how good its intentions, it ultimately must either use or threaten violence--the very word "enforcement" acknowledges this. So, for instance, pacifists who are waiting for governments to renounce the use of war will be waiting forever. As Tolstoy points out, "One might as well suggest to merchants and bankers that they should sell nothing for a greater price than they gave for it, should undertake the distribution of wealth for no profit, and should abolish money, as it would thus be rendered unnecessary." For war is but the extreme end of an ill-defined spectrum of force that starts at a much lower level, that of police and criminals; no government will (or can) ever give that up, so once one acknowledges and buys into the implicit relationship between political power and force, the question of its upper limit is a matter of quibbling. As Tolstoy mentions, only the weaker nations will suggest with a straight face that international matters should always be subject to arbitration. The stronger countries have nothing to gain by limiting themselves, and no one to compel them to do so.
Tolstoy uses Jesus' words amply. He points out that many believe that Jesus' teachings "can have no other significance than the one they attribute to it." But that only adds to the irony elsewhere, when he suggests that Jesus' words against resistance should be used as an excuse to stop paying taxes. Jesus was quite clearly of a different mindset, and said "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's" to those who asked whether it was lawful to pay taxes. The point's pretty simple, and it's one Tolstoy completely ignores: the government literally makes the money in the first place, so if the government wants part of their money back, that's their business.
Elsewhere, too, Tolstoy's generalizations invite argument, not agreement. "We do know by prolonged experience that neither enemies nor criminals have been successfully suppressed by force," he says, obviously speaking without the benefit of World War II as a historical example, although one ends up surprised that he didn't make more reference to Napoleon's defeat, a topic which he obviously covered at far greater length elsewhere. A better argument, perhaps, would rely on the moral consequences to the victors, rather than the physical outcomes. (Perhaps the best illustration of this, oddly enough, was near the end of "Return of the Jedi," where Luke finds himself transformed by the mere act of resisting the Emperor.) It's hard to claim that resistance is wrong because it doesn't work; there are those who will always argue that it does. The bigger issue, perhaps, is that it makes you similar to what you're resisting.
Tolstoy's long-winded. He departs from the Gospel message in at least one key regard. He relies on evidence for some assertions but also makes plenty of unsupported allegations and blanket generalizations. (Some of these do seem oddly timeless and apropos of our current age, as for instance when he says that scientists see Christianity "as a religion which has outlived its age" and that "[t]he significance of the Gospel is hidden from believers by the Church, from unbelievers by Science.") Yet the many areas where he amplifies Jesus' teachings make for a thought-provoking read that also might cause some soul searching, whatever one's religious or political persuasion.
August 24, 2012
you will feel yourself better and more truth-loving after having read this.
"We are all brothers—and yet every morning a brother or a sister must empty the bedroom slops for me. We are all brothers, but every morning I must have a cigar, a sweetmeat, an ice, and such things, which my brothers and sisters have been wasting their health in manufacturing, and I enjoy these things and demand them. We are all brothers, yet I live by working in a bank, or mercantile house, or shop at making all goods dearer for my brothers. We are all brothers, but I live on a salary paid me for prosecuting, judging, and condemning the thief or the prostitute whose existence the whole tenor of my life tends to bring about, and who I know ought not to be punished but reformed. We are all brothers, but I live on the salary I gain by collecting taxes from needy laborers to be spent on the luxuries of the rich and idle. We are all brothers, but I take a stipend for preaching a false Christian religion, which I do not myself believe in, and which only serve's to hinder men from understanding true Christianity. I take a stipend as priest or bishop for deceiving men in the matter of the greatest importance to them. We are all brothers, but I will not give the poor the benefit of my educational, medical, or literary labors except for money. We are all brothers, yet I take a salary for being ready to commit murder, for teaching men to murder, or making firearms, gunpowder, or fortifications."
"We are all brothers—and yet every morning a brother or a sister must empty the bedroom slops for me. We are all brothers, but every morning I must have a cigar, a sweetmeat, an ice, and such things, which my brothers and sisters have been wasting their health in manufacturing, and I enjoy these things and demand them. We are all brothers, yet I live by working in a bank, or mercantile house, or shop at making all goods dearer for my brothers. We are all brothers, but I live on a salary paid me for prosecuting, judging, and condemning the thief or the prostitute whose existence the whole tenor of my life tends to bring about, and who I know ought not to be punished but reformed. We are all brothers, but I live on the salary I gain by collecting taxes from needy laborers to be spent on the luxuries of the rich and idle. We are all brothers, but I take a stipend for preaching a false Christian religion, which I do not myself believe in, and which only serve's to hinder men from understanding true Christianity. I take a stipend as priest or bishop for deceiving men in the matter of the greatest importance to them. We are all brothers, but I will not give the poor the benefit of my educational, medical, or literary labors except for money. We are all brothers, yet I take a salary for being ready to commit murder, for teaching men to murder, or making firearms, gunpowder, or fortifications."
October 31, 2023
This ground-breaking discussion of the principals of nonviolence exerted a powerful influence on the 20th century and beyond. Written as an extension of his book, “What I Believe”, Tolstoy answers his critics and extends his political and philosophical arguments. He details his awakening to the Quaker movement as well as his correspondence with the son of William Lloyd Garrison, who tells him of his father’s work to emancipate enslaved people through non-resistance. Tolstoy develops his political and spiritual arguments through their input and addresses the wider significance of non-violence against repressive regimes.
It is satisfying that Gandhi was able to tell Tolstoy of his profound influence on him before Tolstoy’s death and let him know about the great work he had begun as a result. Martin Luther King Jr. was inspired in turn by Gandhi. The seeds were planted. This book’s core logic starts a chain reaction of insight and inspiration that echoes through us today.
It is satisfying that Gandhi was able to tell Tolstoy of his profound influence on him before Tolstoy’s death and let him know about the great work he had begun as a result. Martin Luther King Jr. was inspired in turn by Gandhi. The seeds were planted. This book’s core logic starts a chain reaction of insight and inspiration that echoes through us today.
August 30, 2020
A sincere deconstruction of the great hypocrisies of modern society that has exponentially increased human suffering. Nothing escapes the critical and thorough reflections of Tolstoi. What's left is whether we are as individuals ready to shed the familiar warmth and safety provided by the ignorance of our hypocrisies and embrace the unknown path forward.
September 9, 2009
Never mind the cover. This book is amazing!
One of the most important books I've ever read...
Read the description; I think it's pretty right on.
If you've ever called yourself a Christian, this is a must read. If you think Christians are misguided or even dangerous, you should read this book. If you like certain aspects of Christianity but think that organized religion is a crock, you should read this book. If you think war is a necessary evil, read this book. If you think Gandhi was on to something, you should read this book. If you consider yourself an anarchist, you should read this book. If you think anarchists are ridiculous, you should read this book. If you haven't read this book, you should read this book.
One of the most important books I've ever read...
Read the description; I think it's pretty right on.
If you've ever called yourself a Christian, this is a must read. If you think Christians are misguided or even dangerous, you should read this book. If you like certain aspects of Christianity but think that organized religion is a crock, you should read this book. If you think war is a necessary evil, read this book. If you think Gandhi was on to something, you should read this book. If you consider yourself an anarchist, you should read this book. If you think anarchists are ridiculous, you should read this book. If you haven't read this book, you should read this book.
October 16, 2017
Beautiful, challenging philosophy from Tolstoy in his final years. His central premise is the importance of aspiring to be truly Christian even as we live in a world controlled by corrupt governments and religions. In Tolstoy's perfect world, nations would disband all governments, courts, militaries, and even the concept of nationhood itself, as all of these entities contribute to division and conflict - inherently un-Christian realities. But it is not the concept of this perfect world that differentiates Tolstoy from other great philosophers. It is his claim about how to build such a world: Every individual must recognize for herself what is true [i.e. Christian] and what is false. This act of recognition presents the greatest challenge to Christians living in the modern world as governments and religions effectively obscure our understanding of Christ's teaching.
"The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man." (p. 368)
"The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man." (p. 368)
June 15, 2012
In this book, Tolstoy uses Jesus' Sermon on the Mount to makes a brave, impassioned argument for pacifism and the abolishment of all governments. He makes some great points, but his argument is utterly lacking in nuance. For example, the Bible commands us not to lie, but polite society would undoubtedly break down if, every time we said "nice to see you" to someone, we had to stop a moment and ascertain whether such was indeed actually the case. We can also reasonably assume that "turning the other cheek" wasn't meant to apply in the event you come face-to-face with a serial killer who wants to make you his next victim; and we can suppose that "Thou shalt not kill" goes out the window if you have a chance to take out a terrorist about to detonate a nuclear weapon. However, for Tolstoy, every Biblical imperative is rendered in complete black and white, and there is no such thing as mitigating circumstances regarding their implementation. Jesus' words were certainly the ideal by which to live, but, in the case of the terrorist, who do you apply the golden rule to--the murderer or the potential victims? Because, obviously, if you were the terrorist, you would want something completely different than if you were the victim. Tolstoy would say that, in such case, "do unto others" applies to the terrorist, and we, as a society, would best try to just absorb the damage as best we could. Tolstoy believes that there should be no government, no prisons, and no law enforcement of any kind, because such would violate Christ's call for us to be forgiving. But the idea of forgiveness doesn't always necessitate freedom from punishment, and forgiveness was never put forth as a licence to act with impunity. I think you can forgive someone for crashing into your car and yet still expect them to pay for the damages. Tolstoy argues that, through non-violent resistance, we can bring about heaven on earth (thus the title of the book, "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You"). But Tolstoy is taking this verse out of context, and, in reality, humanity has little hope for true world peace until Christ returns. That's not to say we shouldn't try, and Tolstoy's book best serves as a wake-up call to remind us of our duty to our fellow man.
Then there's the presentation of the book itself, which is badly in need of a good editor (as noted in the introduction by the translator, who states that Tolstoy was much more careful about structuring his novels than his non-fiction works) and, in the case of my copy, a much better proofreader. It's fatally repetitive and a complete slog to get through, but parts of it are rewarding enough to make it worthwhile--though just barely so.
Then there's the presentation of the book itself, which is badly in need of a good editor (as noted in the introduction by the translator, who states that Tolstoy was much more careful about structuring his novels than his non-fiction works) and, in the case of my copy, a much better proofreader. It's fatally repetitive and a complete slog to get through, but parts of it are rewarding enough to make it worthwhile--though just barely so.
February 1, 2018
If Dostoevsky triggered the awakening of my consciousness...Somehow Tolstoy put words into it with this sublime book. Dostoevsky's philosophies enabled my mind to plunge deeper into the depths of my soul, the wisdom was attained yet it was difficult to articulate it into words, not until I came across this book, The Kingdom Of God Is Within You by Tolstoy. It reflects Tolstoy's belief that a society of peace, harmony and love is possible and only in our midst, if only we could learn to live in Jesus' teaching--nonresistance to evil by force--of TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK, of FORGIVENESS, which even in today's world, plagued with wars, greed, utter chaos, is apparently very much absent. In reality, it looks like Tolstoy fails to convey this simple and yet profound message during his time and up until now. Most people will perhaps just shrug their shoulders and move on upon reading the book and fail to see the penetrating light that the book gives. Not knowing fully that this book will enable them to awaken their consciousness thereby allowing them to see the way to life's true purpose. Nonresistance, non judgment are in simple word..FORGIVENESS..Often associated with weakness yet it is a true sign of strength. Through this, you open yourself to the Divine and instead of separating yourself from HIM, you include yourself to the Divine Whole and align yourself to the true universal destiny....Perhaps, resistance and violence that result to more sufferings, are also part of the Great Design since it is only through suffering, when we are on the brink of precipice, that we learn to change......
November 30, 2011
It's easier to go along with the flow of life than it is to stand firm on eternal truths and thus to oppose political and religious paradigms. Sure enough Tolstoy can find dozens of ways to state his case that Christianity is good and organized religion is not. And every way is relevent and true. Church complicity with worldly authorities, ready to support the violence of war and the oppression of the weak is quite at odds with the messages of Jesus Christ himself.
Read this (p. 317): "...it is madness to remain under the roof of a building which cannot support its weight, and that we must leave it. And indeed it is difficult to imagine a position more wretched than that of the Christian world today, with its nations armed against one another, with its constantly increasing taxation to maintain its armies, with the hatred of the working class for the rich ever growing more intense, with Damocles sword of war hanging over the heads of all, ready every instant to fall sooner or later."
Whew! And this was written in 1894!
Read this (p. 317): "...it is madness to remain under the roof of a building which cannot support its weight, and that we must leave it. And indeed it is difficult to imagine a position more wretched than that of the Christian world today, with its nations armed against one another, with its constantly increasing taxation to maintain its armies, with the hatred of the working class for the rich ever growing more intense, with Damocles sword of war hanging over the heads of all, ready every instant to fall sooner or later."
Whew! And this was written in 1894!
August 30, 2010
Tolstoy's radical take on Christianity may not sound so radical at first: he insists on a rigid adherence to the specific verbal instructions of Jesus as described in the Gospels. The sermon on the mount, in particular, is afforded special emphasis as a sort of new set of commandments. This is, notably, the sermon in which Jesus instructs us to turn the other cheek and be forgiving and loving of one another. These teachings, he writes, constitute the body of Christianity- they define what it means to be a follower of Christ.
For Tolstoy, this naturally raises questions on the social & political levels. If we are to love one another universally, how can we reconcile this with state obligations that would have us go to war? What are we to do about the imprisoning, torture and killing of evildoers? Is it truly a Christian society that relies on the widespread exploitation and deprivation of lower classes? Jesus's vision is a radical one that aims to unite all peoples in love as equals- so how close are we to this, after two millennia of rule of so-called "christian nations?"
Tolstoy sees an inherent contradiction between Christ's teachings and the function of the state as a largely repressive, violent institution. His doctrine also calls into question the focus on superstition and supernatural dogma of the established churches. Nothing like the church, he argues, appears in Jesus's direct teachings, with all its earthly powers and authority.
Living at the turn of the 20th century in Russia, Tolstoy saw the writing on the walls: he repeatedly calls for reason and unity in the face of the mad building-up of war machines that lead toward inevitable massacre. He foresaw at least World War One, and makes other prescient remarks essentially about mutually assured destruction. This is the real focus of his work, to ask why as a species we seem hellbent on self-destruction and why we all willingly work together to enact the hateful, mad schemes of our imposed rulers, to the deprivation of ourselves and our neighbors. The way out of this blood-soaked labyrinth is his "Christian conception of life."
The heart of his theory concerns human motivation. He outlines a rough sort of history / anthropology moving between the pagan conception of life, through to the state conception and then to the Christian. Importantly, he identifies a link between our spiritual / metaphysical beliefs, and our behavior as a whole.
Rational self-interest, the latest holy cow of enshrined state philosophy, is in Tolstoy's argument both the mode of the state conception of life ("I will do what's best for me and my family") and the critical link in the chains that keep us fettered to mass suffering. As long as we look out for number one, we can never mount a meaningful resistance to this maltreatment, for to step out of line as a solitary soul risks much while accomplishing little (for the self, that is.) Directing all of us to focus on ourselves rather than our collective interest is the ultimate "divide and conquer" that drives a wedge between everyone.
Tolstoy's "Christian conception of life", by contrast, places adherence to a Godly ideal above all else: the love of every fellow human. Now if this is our deepest motive, above all petty self-interest, we should have no problem suffering and even dying in order to serve this higher spiritual vision of human potential. Tolstoy means total radical non-compliance with the state, especially forced conscription, while maintaining nonviolence and accepting the punishments that the rulers of this earthly realm may dish out. Sounds an awful lot like the early Christians who were persecuted by the Romans- even Jesus himself, killed for challenging the authorities of his time.
I believe that Tolstoy is onto something very important here. Rational self-interest has been studied extensively in game theory and economics. It can be mathematically (and experimentally) shown in the "prisoner's dilemma" that it doesn't always lead to the best possible outcome- and in fact causes us to figuratively shoot ourselves in the foot. Hofstadter's notion of "hyperrationality" was one attempt to get out of this self-imposed trap; I think Tolstoy is dealing with exactly the same questions.
Altogether, this was a very interesting and powerful polemic, and I was extremely excited to finally find an author who seems to take the same understanding of Christianity as I have. Tolstoy lacks economic theory, and as a result seems to see wars as a result of the petty vanities and disagreements between our rules. Perhaps true in his time, but I am inclined to think war has always been an economic device. Nevertheless, he was a remarkably visionary author and reads as a voice of sanity crying out in the wilderness, as his era slipped inexorably toward the yawning pit of global catastrophe.
For Tolstoy, this naturally raises questions on the social & political levels. If we are to love one another universally, how can we reconcile this with state obligations that would have us go to war? What are we to do about the imprisoning, torture and killing of evildoers? Is it truly a Christian society that relies on the widespread exploitation and deprivation of lower classes? Jesus's vision is a radical one that aims to unite all peoples in love as equals- so how close are we to this, after two millennia of rule of so-called "christian nations?"
Tolstoy sees an inherent contradiction between Christ's teachings and the function of the state as a largely repressive, violent institution. His doctrine also calls into question the focus on superstition and supernatural dogma of the established churches. Nothing like the church, he argues, appears in Jesus's direct teachings, with all its earthly powers and authority.
Living at the turn of the 20th century in Russia, Tolstoy saw the writing on the walls: he repeatedly calls for reason and unity in the face of the mad building-up of war machines that lead toward inevitable massacre. He foresaw at least World War One, and makes other prescient remarks essentially about mutually assured destruction. This is the real focus of his work, to ask why as a species we seem hellbent on self-destruction and why we all willingly work together to enact the hateful, mad schemes of our imposed rulers, to the deprivation of ourselves and our neighbors. The way out of this blood-soaked labyrinth is his "Christian conception of life."
The heart of his theory concerns human motivation. He outlines a rough sort of history / anthropology moving between the pagan conception of life, through to the state conception and then to the Christian. Importantly, he identifies a link between our spiritual / metaphysical beliefs, and our behavior as a whole.
Rational self-interest, the latest holy cow of enshrined state philosophy, is in Tolstoy's argument both the mode of the state conception of life ("I will do what's best for me and my family") and the critical link in the chains that keep us fettered to mass suffering. As long as we look out for number one, we can never mount a meaningful resistance to this maltreatment, for to step out of line as a solitary soul risks much while accomplishing little (for the self, that is.) Directing all of us to focus on ourselves rather than our collective interest is the ultimate "divide and conquer" that drives a wedge between everyone.
Tolstoy's "Christian conception of life", by contrast, places adherence to a Godly ideal above all else: the love of every fellow human. Now if this is our deepest motive, above all petty self-interest, we should have no problem suffering and even dying in order to serve this higher spiritual vision of human potential. Tolstoy means total radical non-compliance with the state, especially forced conscription, while maintaining nonviolence and accepting the punishments that the rulers of this earthly realm may dish out. Sounds an awful lot like the early Christians who were persecuted by the Romans- even Jesus himself, killed for challenging the authorities of his time.
I believe that Tolstoy is onto something very important here. Rational self-interest has been studied extensively in game theory and economics. It can be mathematically (and experimentally) shown in the "prisoner's dilemma" that it doesn't always lead to the best possible outcome- and in fact causes us to figuratively shoot ourselves in the foot. Hofstadter's notion of "hyperrationality" was one attempt to get out of this self-imposed trap; I think Tolstoy is dealing with exactly the same questions.
Altogether, this was a very interesting and powerful polemic, and I was extremely excited to finally find an author who seems to take the same understanding of Christianity as I have. Tolstoy lacks economic theory, and as a result seems to see wars as a result of the petty vanities and disagreements between our rules. Perhaps true in his time, but I am inclined to think war has always been an economic device. Nevertheless, he was a remarkably visionary author and reads as a voice of sanity crying out in the wilderness, as his era slipped inexorably toward the yawning pit of global catastrophe.
December 29, 2022
"La pregunta que cabe hacerse es: ¿cómo resolver los conflictos que surgen entre los hombres, cuando unos consideran que el mal es aquello que otros consideran el bien, y al revés? No sirve como respuesta la afirmación de que el mal es aquello que yo considero como tal, a pesar de que mi enemigo lo considere bien. Existen, pues, dos posibles soluciones a esta cuestión: o encontramos un criterio fiable e irrefutable de lo que es el mal, o no resistimos a éste con la violencia. La primera solución se ha intentado aplicar desde el principio de los tiempos, y, como es sabido, nunca ha dado resultados favorables. La segunda solución -no resistir con la violencia a aquello que consideramos como el mal hasta que encontremos un criterio único que lo determine - es la que nos propuso Jesucristo". ▪️ Lev Tolstói sufrió una terrible crisis espiritual que le llevó a reflexionar y concentrar sus escritos alrededor de las cuestiones morales y religiosas que más le preocupaban. De esa época en concreto surge esta obra, un compendio de pensamientos y argumentaciones acerca del Cristianismo y de la doctrina de la no resistencia al mal con la violencia. Para Tolstói la verdadera enseñanza de Cristo reside en el Sermón de la Montaña, en el amor al prójimo, la humildad, la compasión y sobretodo en la resistencia pacífica que pensadores como Ghandi también llevaron a cabo en su lucha. No está de acuerdo con los ritos y la fe que propugna la institución de la Iglesia y tampoco está de acuerdo con aquellos hombres de ciencia que imaginan el Cristianismo solo como una serie de sucesos milagrosos y paranormales. Para él, la religión es una guía en la historia de la humanidad. Una forma de estudiar el pasado y de enfrentarse al futuro: el espíritu de los pueblos y de la humanidad. Para el autor existen tres fases: El yo individual y animal, el Yo social (en el que estaríamos ahora inmersos) y el Yo universal y divino. Este último lo entiende no como un sentimiento de humanidad total si no como una vuelta a la misma individualidad desde la que se ama fraternalmente al resto de personas y a Dios. Una especie de Yo despojado de sí mismo en el que se ha tomado conciencia de Dios y por tanto, del Amor. Crítico con el Servicio Militar Obligatorio de la época, crítico con la contradicción de propugnan unos valores cristianos que no se respetan en las Guerras ni en el día a día, crítico también con toda institución estatal. Para Lev Tolstói el Cristianismo no consiste solo en creer o no creer si no en transformar la vida de uno del todo, de principio a fin. Me ha encantado el libro sobretodo por la forma en que expone ideas y las rebate, considero este un mecanismo muy útil para hacer pensar al mismo lector y ayudarle a argumentar su pensamiento. Respecto a lo expuesto, yo siempre he confiado firmemente en la necesidad que tenemos los humanos de crear cultura y de sostener nuestros pensamientos. Quisiera creer también con la misma fuerza que lo hace Tolstói en que todo hombre experimenta en el transcurso de su vida un momento de despertar donde la contradicción de su propia conciencia con su vida no es capaz de sostenerse. Comparto muchas cosas con el pensar de este escritor pero quizás en lo que más me encuentro es en esa forma de entender que aquellos que sufren o incluso que más alejados están de amar al resto (ya sea por violencia o por cualquier otro motivo) son los que a la vez, más cerca están de arrepentirse algún día. 🌹
June 22, 2023
"لدى الناس قابلية للقيام بأعمال تناقض قناعتهم وضمائرهم دون أن يروا ذالك"
يدور الكتاب حول "عدم مقاومة الشر بالعنف" باعتبارها من المبادئ الأساسية لموعظة الجبل، التي يجب أن يؤمن بها كل مسيحي ويوضح التناقض الواضح في دولة "مسيحية" تؤمن بالسلم ولكنها قائمة على العنف، وكنيسة تدعوا للمسيحية ولكنها داعمة للحروب مباركة لها.
يوضح التعارض البارز بين ما يُؤمن به المسيحي والقوانين التي تجبره الدولة على اتباعها؛ عن طريق سلسلة من الترهيب، الرشوة، تخدير الشعب والجندية التي توجه اغلب الأحيان لترهيب الشعب نفسه أو نهب الشعوب الأخرى.
موضحاً أن الحلول الثورية التي تؤدي إلى تغير نظام بنظام أخر غير مجدية؛ لأن النظام الأخر لم ينال إعجاب الجميع وبالتالي سيحتاج إلى نفس أساليب الترهيب والتخدير، وإن الحل الوحيد يكمن في اتباع المسيحية ورفض ومقاومة أي شكل من أشكال الدولة المضادة لها، مع تحمل كل أشكال العذاب المتوقعة في سبيل ذالك بسلمية تامة.
يدور الكتاب حول "عدم مقاومة الشر بالعنف" باعتبارها من المبادئ الأساسية لموعظة الجبل، التي يجب أن يؤمن بها كل مسيحي ويوضح التناقض الواضح في دولة "مسيحية" تؤمن بالسلم ولكنها قائمة على العنف، وكنيسة تدعوا للمسيحية ولكنها داعمة للحروب مباركة لها.
يوضح التعارض البارز بين ما يُؤمن به المسيحي والقوانين التي تجبره الدولة على اتباعها؛ عن طريق سلسلة من الترهيب، الرشوة، تخدير الشعب والجندية التي توجه اغلب الأحيان لترهيب الشعب نفسه أو نهب الشعوب الأخرى.
موضحاً أن الحلول الثورية التي تؤدي إلى تغير نظام بنظام أخر غير مجدية؛ لأن النظام الأخر لم ينال إعجاب الجميع وبالتالي سيحتاج إلى نفس أساليب الترهيب والتخدير، وإن الحل الوحيد يكمن في اتباع المسيحية ورفض ومقاومة أي شكل من أشكال الدولة المضادة لها، مع تحمل كل أشكال العذاب المتوقعة في سبيل ذالك بسلمية تامة.
April 7, 2008
I have considered this since I read it probably 6 years ago to be my favorite book, or at least the book that has challenged me the most. It's as powerful of a testament to Christian nonviolence as I imagine has ever been written. Probably it's most well-known claim to fame is that Gandhi cites it as the book that influenced him most in his life, even though he was a devout Hindu.
September 2, 2022
Mohandas Gandhi wrote in his autobiography that Tolstoy's book "overwhelmed" him, and "left an abiding impression". Gandhi listed Tolstoy's book as one of the three most important modern influences in his life.
1-10 Takeaways:
1) Tolstoy shuddered at the idea of nation states taxing Christians to fund wars. "We are dying of hunger so as to secure the means of killing each other.” For Tolstoy, military conflict could not square with Christian thought (Tolstoy gave preference to the Sermon on the Mount rather than Deuteronomy or Leviticus). For example, a young boy in Sunday School is taught to love his enemies. And, if another boy strikes him, he is taught to not strike back but to reform him with love. Except, when that boy becomes a man and is forced to join the military, he will not love his enemy but instead run him through with a bayonet. "I think if it is a good thing for a boy to love his enemy, it is good for a grown-up man.” Instead of violence, Tolstoy taught "not to resist evil" by way of force (nonviolent protests/civil disobedience - Gandhi/MLK).
“Satan can never be driven out by Satan. Error can never be corrected by error, and evil cannot be vanquished by evil.”
2) Tolstoy taught that the great Truth ("love one another as I have loved you") was more important than any legal code. Legal code, Tolstoy warned, fostered state reliance/allegiance. Reliance/allegiance to the state was antithetical to Christian living seeing how the state not only had a monopoly on violence but a reliance on violence. For Christians in situations much larger than themselves, where violence is expected, Tolstoy taught: "There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth." The Truth being the need to love one another like Jesus loves us.
3) As an Anarchist, Tolstoy was unapologetic in his condemnation of the State as it perpetuated anti-Christian forces and conditions. "They (Governments) pretend to support temperance societies, while they are living principally on the drunkenness of the people; and pretend to encourage education, when their whole strength is based on ignorance; and to support constitutional freedom, when their strength rests on the absence of freedom; and to be anxious for the improvement of the condition of the working classes, when their very existence depends on their oppression; and to support Christianity, when Christianity destroys all government."
4) Tolstoy posited that all humans were to progress through three stages in life: Personal/Animal->Social/Pagan ->Universal/Divine. In the first two stages, human allegiance to their personal comforts or state laws would require some level of violence; but, in the third stage, humans were supposed to exercise moral courage and "sacrifice [their] personal and domestic and social good." Radically loving people is incredibly uncomfortable and so most Christians rationalize violence and selfishness as prudence and practicality. “[...most men do not try] to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth.”
1-10 Questions:
1) I've asked this question before but why is there a US Secretary of War but not a US secretary of Peace? (Tolstoy essentially answered this by pointing out that the State would dismantle the need for its existence if it aggressively pursued peace).
1-10 Takeaways:
1) Tolstoy shuddered at the idea of nation states taxing Christians to fund wars. "We are dying of hunger so as to secure the means of killing each other.” For Tolstoy, military conflict could not square with Christian thought (Tolstoy gave preference to the Sermon on the Mount rather than Deuteronomy or Leviticus). For example, a young boy in Sunday School is taught to love his enemies. And, if another boy strikes him, he is taught to not strike back but to reform him with love. Except, when that boy becomes a man and is forced to join the military, he will not love his enemy but instead run him through with a bayonet. "I think if it is a good thing for a boy to love his enemy, it is good for a grown-up man.” Instead of violence, Tolstoy taught "not to resist evil" by way of force (nonviolent protests/civil disobedience - Gandhi/MLK).
“Satan can never be driven out by Satan. Error can never be corrected by error, and evil cannot be vanquished by evil.”
2) Tolstoy taught that the great Truth ("love one another as I have loved you") was more important than any legal code. Legal code, Tolstoy warned, fostered state reliance/allegiance. Reliance/allegiance to the state was antithetical to Christian living seeing how the state not only had a monopoly on violence but a reliance on violence. For Christians in situations much larger than themselves, where violence is expected, Tolstoy taught: "There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth." The Truth being the need to love one another like Jesus loves us.
3) As an Anarchist, Tolstoy was unapologetic in his condemnation of the State as it perpetuated anti-Christian forces and conditions. "They (Governments) pretend to support temperance societies, while they are living principally on the drunkenness of the people; and pretend to encourage education, when their whole strength is based on ignorance; and to support constitutional freedom, when their strength rests on the absence of freedom; and to be anxious for the improvement of the condition of the working classes, when their very existence depends on their oppression; and to support Christianity, when Christianity destroys all government."
4) Tolstoy posited that all humans were to progress through three stages in life: Personal/Animal->Social/Pagan ->Universal/Divine. In the first two stages, human allegiance to their personal comforts or state laws would require some level of violence; but, in the third stage, humans were supposed to exercise moral courage and "sacrifice [their] personal and domestic and social good." Radically loving people is incredibly uncomfortable and so most Christians rationalize violence and selfishness as prudence and practicality. “[...most men do not try] to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth.”
1-10 Questions:
1) I've asked this question before but why is there a US Secretary of War but not a US secretary of Peace? (Tolstoy essentially answered this by pointing out that the State would dismantle the need for its existence if it aggressively pursued peace).
February 16, 2017
Tolstoy calls on all people to live by the Law of Jesus, primarily set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. For Tolstoy, living like this is what it means to be a Christian. Early on he makes it clear he has no love for the rest of the New Testament outside the Gospels. He finds the whole idea of sin and salvation by grace as really part of the problem. Thus, his view of being a Christian is quite different than the traditional view as he simply says - live like Jesus.
Of course, this begs the question - why should I live like Jesus? He was executed as a criminal and in the very same text where we find the Sermon on the Mount, we find him saying all kinds of crazy things. It makes me think of Lewis' famous argument that Jesus is either lunatic, liar or lord. Tolstoy takes Jesus as a teacher, arguing that we follow Jesus because he taught truth. But how do we separate the truth of what he taught, which Tolstoy likes, from the error?
That said, Tolstoy's work is extremely challenging. Too many Christians explain away some of Jesus' more challenging statements. Tolstoy will have none of this. For Tolstoy, when Jesus says love your enemies or forgive those who persecute you, he meant it. At one point Tolstoy asks why Christians have no problem literally accepting other parts of the sermon on the mount (such as the call to not look at a woman lustfully) but then explain away the nonviolent parts.
His critique of the church for its near unquestioning support of the state at times made me forget he was writing in 1890s Russia and not 2000s America.
So Tolstoy is challenging in this book. The problem is, other writers are equally challenging without sacrificing the rest of the Christian tradition. You can find people who put forth this radical ethic of following Jesus along with orthodox theology from the church fathers on to people like John Howard Yoder.
Finally, Tolstoy seems way too optimistic about human nature than he should be. In the 200s AD Origen wrote Against Celsus, replying to the criticisms of one of the great Roman writers. Celsus said that if everybody became like Christians, laying aside the sword, no one would be left to defend the empire. Tolstoy, like Origen, provides an answer to this question. For Tolstoy, if everyone became lived like Jesus the world would be at peace. Further, Tolstoy believes this will inevitably happen, he has a sort of postmillenial vibe at points, with the idea the world will get better and better. But does the reality of human sin and depravity allow such optimism? Tolstoy wrote at the end of the 19th century, leading into the bloodiest century humanity has known. The reality of human corruption makes it clear to me that we cannot hope everyone will simply live like Jesus.
Now, traditional Christianity, with trust in the indwelling and work of the Holy Spirit, can hope for these future things. But it is a bit more complex then humans simply living it; we need help.
Overall, I recommend this book as a classic of Christian ethics, despite the many shortcomings I see. I look at it this way: most Christians have no problem lifting up Calvin as a model of Christian orthodoxy despite his ethical failings (such as his role in the execution of Servetus) so why can't we lift up a Christian ethic despite its other theological failings?
Of course, this begs the question - why should I live like Jesus? He was executed as a criminal and in the very same text where we find the Sermon on the Mount, we find him saying all kinds of crazy things. It makes me think of Lewis' famous argument that Jesus is either lunatic, liar or lord. Tolstoy takes Jesus as a teacher, arguing that we follow Jesus because he taught truth. But how do we separate the truth of what he taught, which Tolstoy likes, from the error?
That said, Tolstoy's work is extremely challenging. Too many Christians explain away some of Jesus' more challenging statements. Tolstoy will have none of this. For Tolstoy, when Jesus says love your enemies or forgive those who persecute you, he meant it. At one point Tolstoy asks why Christians have no problem literally accepting other parts of the sermon on the mount (such as the call to not look at a woman lustfully) but then explain away the nonviolent parts.
His critique of the church for its near unquestioning support of the state at times made me forget he was writing in 1890s Russia and not 2000s America.
So Tolstoy is challenging in this book. The problem is, other writers are equally challenging without sacrificing the rest of the Christian tradition. You can find people who put forth this radical ethic of following Jesus along with orthodox theology from the church fathers on to people like John Howard Yoder.
Finally, Tolstoy seems way too optimistic about human nature than he should be. In the 200s AD Origen wrote Against Celsus, replying to the criticisms of one of the great Roman writers. Celsus said that if everybody became like Christians, laying aside the sword, no one would be left to defend the empire. Tolstoy, like Origen, provides an answer to this question. For Tolstoy, if everyone became lived like Jesus the world would be at peace. Further, Tolstoy believes this will inevitably happen, he has a sort of postmillenial vibe at points, with the idea the world will get better and better. But does the reality of human sin and depravity allow such optimism? Tolstoy wrote at the end of the 19th century, leading into the bloodiest century humanity has known. The reality of human corruption makes it clear to me that we cannot hope everyone will simply live like Jesus.
Now, traditional Christianity, with trust in the indwelling and work of the Holy Spirit, can hope for these future things. But it is a bit more complex then humans simply living it; we need help.
Overall, I recommend this book as a classic of Christian ethics, despite the many shortcomings I see. I look at it this way: most Christians have no problem lifting up Calvin as a model of Christian orthodoxy despite his ethical failings (such as his role in the execution of Servetus) so why can't we lift up a Christian ethic despite its other theological failings?
April 9, 2022
*4.5 Stars*
This is the one book that gives all the relevance to Tolstoy's later carrer, which was lacking in terms of profoundness and arguments that would fiercely dismantle the current order of things.
Because it would be less effective to just express his solution to the main issue,
Because if your aim is to truly exert change upon the *entire* humanity, It is necessary to gather nuanced feedback, knowledge, arguments of *each* social class, major thinker, etc, and then dismantle them one by one… in convincing ways.. to the point that they , *each*, fully share the wrongness of their ways…
Reading this, and everything Tolstoy has written in his later carreer will add more knowledge of his beautiful proposal for humanity. No wonder even Martin Luther King has been inspired by this work. I have felt the chains that covered my soul lose their grip the more I advanced in its pages; my arms felt more comfortable, Tolstoy's words gave me a new fiery will to free myself from this mental cage so ingrained in me by society;
The way the world functions makes us depressed without really knowing why. We are brought to live lives contrary to the lives conforming to our intrinsic personality… and as we judge our situation to be irremediable, we find ourselves carrying out to follow paths that we judge necessary; we believe it is a part of life to be endured with resilience.
What is the meaning of it?
When Tolstoy decides to exert his cries for all humanity, he is so saddened by our internal situation; he looks at us with pity, the knowledge that we are about to commit an act which we feel so unlike ourselves, but which ´society’ considers so common and necessary.
What is the meaning of it?
By chronicling to us historical situations relating the way in which the great social changes took place, the same solution persists:
The system against our conscience is only unchanging because we ourselves support it.
We need more actions similar to what this book did, following the Christian life, which serves as first act for one bee of the human race to fly and leave its toxic net, so other bees will follow, and so is the same for society.
This work starts by myself.
But my true love for this book comes from a very personnal case. I am in a some what same situation.
I am aware that my current professional career makes me depressed; but my fear of failing/being unable to know what awaits me if i choose another that i think i might like… scares me.
Tolstoy sees conditions such as mine as, being in a house that catches fire; and hid in a corner of the house when there is an exit door. And because I don't know where this door leads, I remain stuck in my fatal destiny to burn under the flames.
‘If we must be afraid let us be afraid of what is really alarming, and not what we imagine as alarming’
He is aware how scary he is to perform it, but after Tolstoy's thousands of illuminating words, after this book, I feel a much stronger will within me to pursue my true dreams; and that's what I'm about to do now with more truthfulness, that this voice and path is the only one that has the potential to make me happy, to pursue my aspiration as a writer. I love Tolstoy.
-The Kingdom of God is within You by Leo Tolstoy: 9/10
This is the one book that gives all the relevance to Tolstoy's later carrer, which was lacking in terms of profoundness and arguments that would fiercely dismantle the current order of things.
Because it would be less effective to just express his solution to the main issue,
Because if your aim is to truly exert change upon the *entire* humanity, It is necessary to gather nuanced feedback, knowledge, arguments of *each* social class, major thinker, etc, and then dismantle them one by one… in convincing ways.. to the point that they , *each*, fully share the wrongness of their ways…
Reading this, and everything Tolstoy has written in his later carreer will add more knowledge of his beautiful proposal for humanity. No wonder even Martin Luther King has been inspired by this work. I have felt the chains that covered my soul lose their grip the more I advanced in its pages; my arms felt more comfortable, Tolstoy's words gave me a new fiery will to free myself from this mental cage so ingrained in me by society;
The way the world functions makes us depressed without really knowing why. We are brought to live lives contrary to the lives conforming to our intrinsic personality… and as we judge our situation to be irremediable, we find ourselves carrying out to follow paths that we judge necessary; we believe it is a part of life to be endured with resilience.
What is the meaning of it?
When Tolstoy decides to exert his cries for all humanity, he is so saddened by our internal situation; he looks at us with pity, the knowledge that we are about to commit an act which we feel so unlike ourselves, but which ´society’ considers so common and necessary.
What is the meaning of it?
By chronicling to us historical situations relating the way in which the great social changes took place, the same solution persists:
The system against our conscience is only unchanging because we ourselves support it.
We need more actions similar to what this book did, following the Christian life, which serves as first act for one bee of the human race to fly and leave its toxic net, so other bees will follow, and so is the same for society.
This work starts by myself.
But my true love for this book comes from a very personnal case. I am in a some what same situation.
I am aware that my current professional career makes me depressed; but my fear of failing/being unable to know what awaits me if i choose another that i think i might like… scares me.
Tolstoy sees conditions such as mine as, being in a house that catches fire; and hid in a corner of the house when there is an exit door. And because I don't know where this door leads, I remain stuck in my fatal destiny to burn under the flames.
‘If we must be afraid let us be afraid of what is really alarming, and not what we imagine as alarming’
He is aware how scary he is to perform it, but after Tolstoy's thousands of illuminating words, after this book, I feel a much stronger will within me to pursue my true dreams; and that's what I'm about to do now with more truthfulness, that this voice and path is the only one that has the potential to make me happy, to pursue my aspiration as a writer. I love Tolstoy.
-The Kingdom of God is within You by Leo Tolstoy: 9/10
April 12, 2009
A great and terrible book, from Tolstoy the man who bought you War and Peace and Christian Anarchism.
This was the book that directly inspired Gandhi to begin his non violent resistance movement, and for that reason alone it is worth reading. It is very inspiring, if anything it suffers from being too impassioned. It is a direct call for individuals to take personal responsibility for their actions. A very simple idea, but Tolstoy illustrates the power of it exceedingly well, his call centres on it being a Christian moral imperative, but I think it's easy to follow his arguments as an atheist.
His arguments are very perhaps too well illustrated, and become tragic in light of latter communist developments in Russia. Despite coming for an imperialist extremity the arguments are still uncomfortably appropriate for today's society, we have exported the peasant class, but we all have the unpleasant knowledge that families are enslaved across the world in growing us bananas and coffee, and in making our clothes and knick knacks. It is a knowledge we would rather not have. It is a responsibility we would rather not possess, but as Tolstoy beautifully argues the most damaging evil we can perpetrate is a hypocritical defence of these atrocities.
An important read.
It can be read on-line here: http://www.kingdomnow.org/withinyou.html
This was the book that directly inspired Gandhi to begin his non violent resistance movement, and for that reason alone it is worth reading. It is very inspiring, if anything it suffers from being too impassioned. It is a direct call for individuals to take personal responsibility for their actions. A very simple idea, but Tolstoy illustrates the power of it exceedingly well, his call centres on it being a Christian moral imperative, but I think it's easy to follow his arguments as an atheist.
His arguments are very perhaps too well illustrated, and become tragic in light of latter communist developments in Russia. Despite coming for an imperialist extremity the arguments are still uncomfortably appropriate for today's society, we have exported the peasant class, but we all have the unpleasant knowledge that families are enslaved across the world in growing us bananas and coffee, and in making our clothes and knick knacks. It is a knowledge we would rather not have. It is a responsibility we would rather not possess, but as Tolstoy beautifully argues the most damaging evil we can perpetrate is a hypocritical defence of these atrocities.
An important read.
It can be read on-line here: http://www.kingdomnow.org/withinyou.html
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