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Religions 2016, 7(5), 59; doi:10.3390/rel7050059
Abstract:
In the last thirty years of his life, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated views on violence, the state, the church, and on how to improve the human condition. Since then, these “Christian anarchist” views have often been dismissed as utopian or naive, and, despite inspiring many activists and intellectuals, often forgotten or ignored. Some of those views and arguments, however, arguably remain apposite today—and can in some cases be applied to broader phenomena than those he identified. This article focuses on one of the aspects of his Christian anarchist thought: his anticlericalism. The first Section recounts the evolution of Tolstoy’s views on religion and the church, and briefly describes Tolstoy’s peculiar metaphysics. The second outlines his main charges against the church, discusses some common objections to it, and considers the continuing relevance of his anticlericalism. The third seeks to secularise his anticlerical arguments by applying them beyond the church, against secular preachers and institutions, and does so by reflecting on the quality of debate in the contemporary public sphere, on the hypocritical distance between the morality preached by secular “clerics” and their practice, and on the steady process of ossification and betrayal which befalls secular political ideals. The article thus contributes to the literature firstly by summarising, discussing and reflecting upon the anticlericalism of a famous writer who also espoused controversial religious and political views; secondly by succinctly outlining his idiosyncratic metaphysics, including his peculiar reinterpretation of traditional Christian referents; and thirdly by applying the arguments that informed his criticisms of the church to a broader variety of religious and secular secular institutions.
anticlericalism; Christian anarchism; political theology; religion and politics; secular institutions; Tolstoy
1. Introduction
2. Tolstoy’s Journey to Anticlericalism

2.1. Religion up to Anna Karenina
With regards to religion, arguably echoing Rousseau’s remarks on the importance of religion in fostering social cohesion, Tolstoy famously jotted down the following comment in his diary in March 1855:
Yesterday a conversation about divinity and faith inspired me with a great idea, a stupendous idea, to the realisation of which I feel capable of devoting my life. This idea is the founding of a new religion appropriate to the stage of development of mankind—the religion of Christ, but purged of beliefs and mysticism, a practical religion, not promising future bliss but giving bliss on earth. […] Consciously to work towards the union of mankind by religion is the basis of the idea I hope will absorb me.([30], p. 101)
2.2. Turning to Jesus
As the next subsection will elaborate in more detail, Tolstoy could therefore be classified as a deist. He effectively reduced religion to morality, and from its cosmology could only keep what he deemed to make rational sense. He thus took from Christianity the moral teaching and example of Jesus, but not the resurrection, the miracles, the virgin birth and so on. He furthermore studied the teaching of other religious traditions, and again could only understand what seemed rational in them—mostly their moral teaching. According to Tolstoy, “religions differ in their external forms but they are all alike in their fundamental principles,” which are:
that there is a God, the origin of all things; that in man dwells a spark from that Divine Origin, which man can increase or decrease in himself by his way of living; that to increase this divine spark man must suppress his passions and increase love in himself; and that the practical means to attain this result is to do to others as you would they should do to you.([32], pp. 271–72)
2.3. Tolstoy’s Metaphysics
Where does this understanding of faith leave reason? Tolstoy insists that “true faith is never irrational or incompatible with present-day knowledge”, that “the assertions of true faith, though they cannot be proved, never contain anything contrary to reason” ([32], p. 245). As Guseinov explains, Tolstoy sees “faith” as “the foundation and limit of reason”, as “that which bestows rationality on reason”, yet:
Faith in itself is rational. […] Reason exists above all to support faith. […] If it were not for faith, for the question of why and how one should live, and for the necessity to answer this question according to concrete conditions in the constantly changing world, then the general purpose of reason would be incomprehensible.([4], p. 92)
Reason helps make sense of the finite world and ultimately even justifies faith, whilst faith gives reason a purpose. In a similar vein, Tolstoy defines “revelation” as follows:
I call revelation that which opens out to us, when reason has reached its utmost limit, the contemplation of what is divine, that is, of truth that is superior to our reason. I call revelation that which gives an answer to the question, insoluble by reason, which brought me to despair and almost to suicide—the question: What meaning has my life? […] The answer must be such that though its essence may be incomprehensible in itself (as is the essence of God) all the deductions derived from its consequences should correspond to every command of reason, and the meaning it ascribes to my life should solve all my questions as to how to live.([44], p. 102)
What place and character does God then have in Tolstoy’s metaphysics, especially since it is impossible, according to Tolstoy, to grasp the infinite using reason within the finite world? In Tolstoy’s own translation of the Gospel, John the Baptist does say that: “God is a spirit; He cannot be measured and cannot be proved” ([31], p. 149). Nevertheless, further down, Tolstoy puts the following words in Jesus’ mouth:
Every man, though he realizes that he was conceived by a bodily father in his mother’s womb, is conscious also that he has within him a spirit that is free, intelligent, and independent of the body.
That eternal spirit proceeding from the infinite, is the origin of all and is what we call God.([31], pp. 267–68, [emphasis added])
2.4. Turning Away from the Church
3. Tolstoy’s Anticlericalism
3.1. Tolstoy’s Charges
In his short, caustic yet amusing “The Restoration of Hell” (1903), Tolstoy portrays a fictional conversation between Beelzebub and his little devils where these devils must gradually convince their boss that their cause is actually not lost even though Jesus’ clear and simple teaching should have rendered them unemployed for good. Beelzebub finds this very hard to believe, but one of the devils steadily explains how he invented “the Church” and thereby eventually restored their cherished Hell ([61], pp. 311–16). “What is ‘the Church’?” asks Beelzebub. The devil replies:
Well, when people tell lies and feel that they won’t be believed, they always call God to witness, and say: “By God, what I say is true!” That, in substance, is “the Church”, but with this peculiarity, that those who recognize themselves as being “the Church” become convinced that they cannot err, and so whatever nonsense they may utter they can never recant it. The Church is constituted in this way: Men assure themselves that their teacher, God, to ensure that the law he revealed to men should not be misinterpreted, has given power to certain men, who, with those to whom they transfer this power, can alone correctly interpret his teaching. So these men, who call themselves “the Church,” regard themselves as holding the truth not because what they preach is true but because they consider themselves the only true successors of the disciples of the disciples of the disciples, and finally the disciples of the teacher—God—himself.([61], pp. 313–14)
3.2. Common Objections
3.3. Tolstoyan Anticlericalism Today
4. Extending Tolstoyan Anticlericalism beyond the Church
4.1. The Torch of Rational Scrutiny
4.2. Knowing False Preachers by Their Fruits
4.3. Secular “Clericalisation”
5. Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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