CRITICISMS OF THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE ON
THE PART OF BELIEVERS AND OF UNBELIEVERS.
Fate of the Book "What I Believe"--Evasive Character of
Religious Criticisms of Principles of my Book--1st Reply: Use
of Force not Opposed to Christianity--2d Reply: Use of Force
Necessary to Restrain Evil Doers--3d Reply: Duty of Using
Force in Defense of One's Neighbor--4th Reply: The Breach
of the Command of Non-resistance to be Regarded Simply as a
Weakness--5th Reply: Reply Evaded by Making Believe that the
Question has long been Decided--To Devise such Subterfuges
and to take Refuge Behind the Authority of the Church, of
Antiquity, and of Religion is all that Ecclesiastical Critics
can do to get out of the Contradiction between Use of Force and
Christianity in Theory and in Practice--General Attitude of the
Ecclesiastical World and of the Authorities to Profession of
True Christianity--General Character of Russian Freethinking
Critics--Foreign Freethinking Critics--Mistaken Arguments of
these Critics the Result of Misunderstanding the True Meaning of
Christ's Teaching.
The impression I gained of a desire to conceal, to hush up, what I
had tried to express in my book, led me to judge the book itself
afresh.
On its appearance it had, as I had anticipated, been forbidden, and
ought therefore by law to have been burnt. But, at the same time, it
was discussed among officials, and circulated in a great number of
manuscript and lithograph copies, and in translations printed abroad.
And very quickly after the book, criticisms, both religious and
secular in character, made their appearance, and these the government
tolerated, and even encouraged. So that the refutation of a book
which no one was supposed to know anything about was even chosen as
the subject for theological dissertations in the academies.
The criticisms of my book, Russian and foreign alike, fall under
two general divisions--the religious criticisms of men who regard
themselves as believers, and secular criticisms, that is, those of
freethinkers.
I will begin with the first class. In my book I made it an accusation
against the teachers of the Church that their teaching is opposed
to Christ's commands clearly and definitely expressed in the Sermon
on the Mount, and opposed in especial to his command in regard to
resistance to evil, and that in this way they deprive Christ's
teaching of all value. The Church authorities accept the teaching of
the Sermon on the Mount on non-resistance to evil by force as divine
revelation; and therefore one would have thought that if they felt
called upon to write about my book at all, they would have found it
inevitable before everything else to reply to the principal point of
my charge against them, and to say plainly, do they or do they not
admit the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and the commandment
of non-resistance to evil as binding on a Christian. And they were
bound to answer this question, not after the usual fashion (_i. e._,
"that although on the one side one cannot absolutely deny, yet on
the other side one cannot again fully assent, all the more seeing
that," etc., etc.). No; they should have answered the question as
plainly as it was put in my book--Did Christ really demand from his
disciples that they should carry out what he taught them in the
Sermon on the Mount? And can a Christian, then, or can he not,
always remaining a Christian, go to law or make any use of the law,
or seek his own protection in the law? And can the Christian, or can
he not, remaining a Christian, take part in the administration of
government, using compulsion against his neighbors? And--the most
important question hanging over the heads of all of us in these days
of universal military service--can the Christian, or can he not,
remaining a Christian, against Christ's direct prohibition, promise
obedience in future actions directly opposed to his teaching? And can
he, by taking his share of service in the army, prepare himself to
murder men, and even actually murder them?
These questions were put plainly and directly, and seemed to require
a plain and direct answer; but in all the criticisms of my book there
was no such plain and direct answer. No; my book received precisely
the same treatment as all the attacks upon the teachers of the Church
for their defection from the Law of Christ of which history from the
days of Constantine is full.
A very great deal was said in connection with my book of my having
incorrectly interpreted this and other passages of the Gospel, of
my being in error in not recognizing the Trinity, the redemption,
and the immortality of the soul. A very great deal was said, but not
a word about the one thing which for every Christian is the most
essential question in life--how to reconcile the duty of forgiveness,
meekness, patience, and love for all, neighbors and enemies alike,
which is so clearly expressed in the words of our teacher, and in the
heart of each of us--how to reconcile this duty with the obligation
of using force in war upon men of our own or a foreign people.
All that are worth calling answers to this question can be brought
under the following five heads. I have tried to bring together in
this connection all I could, not only from the criticisms on my book,
but from what has been written in past times on this theme.
The first and crudest form of reply consists in the bold assertion
that the use of force is not opposed by the teaching of Christ; that
it is permitted, and even enjoined, on the Christian by the Old and
New Testaments.
Assertions of this kind proceed, for the most part, from men who
have attained the highest ranks in the governing or ecclesiastical
hierarchy, and who are consequently perfectly assured that no one
will dare to contradict their assertion, and that if anyone does
contradict it they will hear nothing of the contradiction. These men
have, for the most part, through the intoxication of power, so lost
the right idea of what that Christianity is in the name of which they
hold their position that what is Christian in Christianity presents
itself to them as heresy, while everything in the Old and New
Testaments which can be distorted into an antichristian and heathen
meaning they regard as the foundation of Christianity. In support of
their assertion that Christianity is not opposed to the use of force,
these men usually, with the greatest audacity, bring together all the
most obscure passages from the Old and New Testaments, interpreting
them in the most unchristian way--the punishment of Ananias and
Sapphira, of Simon the Sorcerer, etc. They quote all those sayings
of Christ's which can possibly be interpreted as justification of
cruelty: the expulsion from the Temple; "It shall be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom than for this city," etc., etc. According to
these people's notions, a Christian government is not in the least
bound to be guided by the spirit of peace, forgiveness of injuries,
and love for enemies.
To refute such an assertion is useless, because the very people who
make this assertion refute themselves, or, rather, renounce Christ,
inventing a Christianity and a Christ of their own in the place of
him in whose name the Church itself exists, as well as their office
in it. If all men were to learn that the Church professes to believe
in a Christ of punishment and warfare, not of forgiveness, no one
would believe in the Church and it could not prove to anyone what it
is trying to prove.
The second, somewhat less gross, form of argument consists in
declaring that, though Christ did indeed preach that we should turn
the left cheek, and give the cloak also, and this is the highest
moral duty, yet that there are wicked men in the world, and if these
wicked men were not restrained by force, the whole world and all good
men would come to ruin through them. This argument I found for the
first time in John Chrysostom, and I show how he is mistaken in my
book "What I Believe."
This argument is ill grounded, because if we allow ourselves to
regard any men as intrinsically wicked men, then in the first place
we annul, by so doing, the whole idea of the Christian teaching,
according to which we are all equals and brothers, as sons of one
Father in heaven. Secondly, it is ill founded, because even if to
use force against wicked men had been permitted by God, since it is
impossible to find a perfect and unfailing distinction by which one
could positively know the wicked from the good, so it would come to
all individual men and societies of men mutually regarding each other
as wicked men, as is the case now. Thirdly, even if it were possible
to distinguish the wicked from the good unfailingly, even then it
would be impossible to kill or injure or shut up in prison these
wicked men, because there would be no one in a Christian society to
carry out such punishment, since every Christian, as a Christian, has
been commanded to use no force against the wicked.
The third kind of answer, still more subtle than the preceding,
consists in asserting that though the command of non-resistance to
evil by force is binding on the Christian when the evil is directed
against himself personally, it ceases to be binding when the evil
is directed against his neighbors, and that then the Christian is
not only not bound to fulfill the commandment, but is even bound
to act in opposition to it in defense of his neighbors, and to
use force against transgressors by force. This assertion is an
absolute assumption, and one cannot find in all Christ's teaching
any confirmation of such an argument. Such an argument is not
only a limitation, but a direct contradiction and negation of the
commandment. If every man has the right to have recourse to force
in face of a danger threatening another, the question of the use
of force is reduced to a question of the definition of danger for
another. If my private judgment is to decide the question of what is
danger for another, there is no occasion for the use of force which
could not be justified on the ground of danger threatening some
other man. They killed and burnt witches, they killed aristocrats
and girondists, they killed their enemies, because those who were in
authority regarded them as dangerous for the people.
If this important limitation, which fundamentally undermines the
whole value of the commandment, had entered into Christ's meaning,
there must have been mention of it somewhere. This restriction is
made nowhere in our Saviour's life or preaching. On the contrary,
warning is given precisely against this treacherous and scandalous
restriction which nullifies the commandment. The error and
impossibility of such a limitation is shown in the Gospel with
special clearness in the account of the judgment of Caiaphas, who
makes precisely this distinction. He acknowledged that it was wrong
to punish the innocent Jesus, but he saw in him a source of danger
not for himself, but for the whole people, and therefore he said:
It is better for one man to die, that the whole people perish not.
And the erroneousness of such a limitation is still more clearly
expressed in the words spoken to Peter when he tried to resist by
force evil directed against Jesus (Matt. xxvi. 52). Peter was not
defending himself, but his beloved and heavenly Master. And Christ
at once reproved him for this, saying, that he who takes up the sword
shall perish by the sword.
Besides, apologies for violence used against one's neighbor in
defense of another neighbor from greater violence are always
untrustworthy, because when force is used against one who has not
yet carried out his evil intent, I can never know which would be
greater--the evil of my act of violence or of the act I want to
prevent. We kill the criminal that society may be rid of him, and
we never know whether the criminal of to-day would not have been
a changed man to-morrow, and whether our punishment of him is not
useless cruelty. We shut up the dangerous--as we think--member of
society, but the next day this man might cease to be dangerous and
his imprisonment might be for nothing. I see that a man I know to be
a ruffian is pursuing a young girl. I have a gun in my hand--I kill
the ruffian and save the girl. But the death or the wounding of the
ruffian has positively taken place, while what would have happened
if this had not been I cannot know. And what an immense mass of evil
must result, and indeed does result, from allowing men to assume the
right of anticipating what may happen. Ninety-nine per cent. of the
evil of the world is founded on this reasoning--from the Inquisition
to dynamite bombs, and the executions or punishments of tens of
thousands of political criminals.
A fourth, still more refined, reply to the question, What ought to
be the Christian's attitude to Christ's command of non-resistance
to evil by force? consists in declaring that they do not deny the
command of non-resistance to evil, but recognize it; but they only
do not ascribe to this command the special exclusive value attached
to it by sectarians. To regard this command as the indispensable
condition of Christian life, as Garrison, Ballou, Dymond, the
Quakers, the Mennonites, and the Shakers do now, and as the Moravian
brothers, the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Bogomilites, and the
Paulicians did in the past, is a one-sided heresy. This command has
neither more nor less value than all the other commands, and the man
who through weakness transgresses any command whatever, the command
of non-resistance included, does not cease to be a Christian if
he hold the true faith. This is a very skillful device, and many
people who wish to be deceived are easily deceived by it. The device
consists in reducing a direct conscious denial of a command to a
casual breach of it. But one need only compare the attitude of the
teachers of the Church to this and to other commands which they
really do recognize, to be convinced that their attitude to this is
completely different from their attitude to other duties.
The command against fornication they do really recognize, and
consequently they do not admit that in any case fornication can cease
to be wrong. The Church preachers never point out cases in which the
command against fornication can be broken, and always teach that
we must avoid seductions which lead to temptation to fornication.
But not so with the command of non-resistance. All church preachers
recognize cases in which that command can be broken, and teach the
people accordingly. And they not only do not teach that we should
avoid temptations to break it, chief of which is the military oath,
but they themselves administer it. The preachers of the Church never
in any other case advocate the breaking of any other commandment.
But in connection with the commandment of non-resistance they openly
teach that we must not understand it too literally, but that there
are conditions and circumstances in which we must do the direct
opposite, that is, go to law, fight, punish. So that occasions for
fulfilling the commandment of non-resistance to evil by force are
taught for the most part as occasions for not fulfilling it. The
fulfillment of this command, they say, is very difficult and pertains
only to perfection. And how can it not be difficult, when the breach
of it is not only not forbidden, but law courts, prisons, cannons,
guns, armies, and wars are under the immediate sanction of the
Church? It cannot be true, then, that this command is recognized by
the preachers of the Church as on a level with other commands.
The preachers of the Church clearly do not recognize it; only not
daring to acknowledge this, they try to conceal their not recognizing
it.
So much for the fourth reply.
The fifth kind of answer, which is the subtlest, the most often used,
and the most effective, consists in avoiding answering, in making
believe that this question is one which has long ago been decided
perfectly clearly and satisfactorily, and that it is not worth while
to talk about it. This method of reply is employed by all the more or
less cultivated religious writers, that is to say, those who feel the
laws of Christ binding for themselves. Knowing that the contradiction
existing between the teaching of Christ which we profess with our
lips and the whole order of our lives cannot be removed by words,
and that touching upon it can only make it more obvious, they, with
more or less ingenuity, evade it, pretending that the question of
reconciling Christianity with the use of force has been decided
already, or does not exist at all.[1]
[1] I only know one work which differs somewhat from this general
definition, and that is not a criticism in the precise meaning of
the word, but an article treating of the same subject and having
my book in view. I mean the pamphlet of Mr. Troizky (published at
Kazan), "A Sermon for the People." The author obviously accepts
Christ's teaching in its true meaning. He says that the prohibition
of resistance to evil by force means exactly what it does mean; and
the same with the prohibition of swearing. He does not, as others
do, deny the meaning of Christ's teaching, but unfortunately he does
not draw from this admission the inevitable deductions which present
themselves spontaneously in our life when we understand Christ's
teaching in that way. If we must not oppose evil by force, nor swear,
everyone naturally asks, "How, then, about military service? and the
oath of obedience?" To this question the author gives no reply; but
it must be answered. And if he cannot answer, then he would do better
not to speak on the subject at all, as such silence leads to error.
The majority of religious critics of my book use this fifth method
of replying to it. I could quote dozens of such critics, in all of
whom, without exception, we find the same thing repeated: everything
is discussed except what constitutes the principal subject of
the book. As a characteristic example of such criticisms, I will
quote the article of a well-known and ingenious English writer and
preacher--Farrar--who, like many learned theologians, is a great
master of the art of circuitously evading a question. The article was
published in an American journal, the _Forum_, in October, 1888.
After conscientiously explaining in brief the contents of my book,
Farrar says: "Tolstoy came to the conclusion that a coarse deceit
had been palmed upon the world when these words, 'Resist not evil,'
were held by civil society to be compatible with war, courts of
justice, capital punishment, divorce, oaths, national prejudice, and,
indeed, with most of the institutions of civil and social life. He
now believes that the kingdom of God would come if all men kept these
five commandments of Christ, viz.: 1. Live in peace with all men. 2.
Be pure. 3. Take no oaths. 4. Resist not evil. 5. Renounce national
distinctions.
"Tolstoy," he says, "rejects the inspiration of the Old Testament;
hence he rejects the chief doctrines of the Church--that of the
Atonement by blood, the Trinity, the descent of the Holy Ghost
on the Apostles, and his transmission through the priesthood."
And he recognizes only the words and commands of Christ. "But is
this interpretation of Christ a true one?" he says. "Are all men
bound to act as Tolstoy teaches--_i. e._, to carry out these five
commandments of Christ?" You expect, then, that in answer to this
essential question, which is the only one that could induce a man
to write an article about the book, he will say either that this
interpretation of Christ's teaching is true and we ought to follow
it, or he will say that such an interpretation is untrue, will show
why, and will give some other correct interpretation of those words
which I interpret incorrectly. But nothing of the kind is done.
Farrar only expresses his "belief" that, "though actuated by the
noblest sincerity, Count Tolstoy has been misled by partial and
one-sided interpretations of the meaning of the Gospel and the mind
and will of Christ." What this error consists in is not made clear;
it is only said: "To enter into the proof of this is impossible in
this article, for I have already exceeded the space at my command."
And he concludes, in a tranquil spirit:
"Meanwhile, the reader who feels troubled lest it should be his duty
also to forsake all the conditions of his life and to take up the
position and work of a common laborer, may rest for the present on
the principle, _securus judicat orbis terrarum_. With few and rare
exceptions," he continues, "the whole of Christendom, from the days
of the Apostles down to our own, has come to the firm conclusion that
it was the object of Christ to lay down great eternal principles, but
not to disturb the bases and revolutionize the institutions of all
human society, which themselves rest on divine sanctions as well as
on inevitable conditions. Were it my object to prove how untenable
is the doctrine of communism, based by Count Tolstoy upon the divine
paradoxes [_sic_], which can be interpreted only on historical
principles in accordance with the whole method of the teaching of
Jesus, it would require an ampler canvas than I have here at my
disposal." What a pity he has not "an ampler canvas at his disposal"!
And what a strange thing it is that for all these last fifteen
centuries no one has had "a canvas ample enough" to prove that
Christ, whom we profess to believe in, says something utterly unlike
what he does say! Still, they could prove it if they wanted to. But
it is not worth while to prove what everyone knows; it is enough to
say, "_securus judicat orbis terrarum_."
And of this kind, without exception, are all the criticisms of
educated believers, who must, as such, understand the danger of
their position. The sole escape from it for them lies in their hope
that they may be able, by using the authority of the Church, of
antiquity, and of their sacred office, to overawe the reader and
draw him away from the idea of reading the Gospel for himself and
thinking out the question in his own mind for himself. And in this
they are successful; for, indeed, how could the notion occur to
anyone that all that has been repeated from century to century with
such earnestness and solemnity by all those archdeacons, bishops,
archbishops, holy synods, and popes, is all of it a base lie and a
calumny foisted upon Christ by them for the sake of keeping safe
the money they must have to live luxuriously on the necks of other
men? And it is a lie and a calumny so transparent that the only way
of keeping it up consists in overawing people by their earnestness,
their conscientiousness. It is just what has taken place of late
years at recruiting sessions; at a table before the zertzal--the
symbol of the Tzar's authority--in the seat of honor under the
life-size portrait of the Tzar, sit dignified old officials, wearing
decorations, conversing freely and easily, writing notes, summoning
men before them, and giving orders. Here, wearing a cross on his
breast, near them, is a prosperous-looking old priest in a silken
cassock, with long gray hair flowing on to his cope, before a lectern
who wears the golden cross and has a Gospel bound in gold.
They summon Ivan Petroff. A young man comes in, wretchedly, shabbily
dressed, and in terror, the muscles of his face working, his eyes
bright and restless; and in a broken voice, hardly above a whisper,
he says: "I--by Christ's law--as a Christian--I cannot." "What is
he muttering?" asks the president, frowning impatiently and raising
his eyes from his book to listen. "Speak louder," the colonel with
shining epaulets shouts to him. "I--I as a Christian----" And at last
it appears that the young man refuses to serve in the army because he
is a Christian. "Don't talk nonsense. Stand to be measured. Doctor,
may I trouble you to measure him. He is all right?" "Yes." "Reverend
father, administer the oath to him."
No one is the least disturbed by what the poor scared young man is
muttering. They do not even pay attention to it. "They all mutter
something, but we've no time to listen to it, we have to enroll so
many."
The recruit tries to say something still. "It's opposed to the law
of Christ." "Go along, go along; we know without your help what is
opposed to the law and what's not; and you soothe his mind, reverend
father, soothe him. Next: Vassily Nikitin." And they lead the
trembling youth away. And it does not strike anyone--the guards, or
Vassily Nikitin, whom they are bringing in, or any of the spectators
of this scene--that these inarticulate words of the young man, at
once suppressed by the authorities, contain the truth, and that the
loud, solemnly uttered sentences of the calm, self-confident official
and the priest are a lie and a deception.
Such is the impression produced not only by Farrar's article, but
by all those solemn sermons, articles, and books which make their
appearance from all sides directly there is anywhere a glimpse of
truth exposing a predominant falsehood. At once begins the series of
long, clever, ingenious, and solemn speeches and writings, which deal
with questions nearly related to the subject, but skillfully avoid
touching the subject itself.
That is the essence of the fifth and most effective means of getting
out of the contradictions in which Church Christianity has placed
itself, by professing its faith in Christ's teaching in words, while
it denies it in its life, and teaches people to do the same.
Those who justify themselves by the first method, directly, crudely
asserting that Christ sanctioned violence, wars, and murder,
repudiate Christ's doctrine directly; those who find their defense
in the second, the third, or the fourth method are confused and can
easily be convicted of error; but this last class, who do not argue,
who do not condescend to argue about it, but take shelter behind
their own grandeur, and make a show of all this having been decided
by them or at least by someone long ago, and no longer offering a
possibility of doubt to anyone--they seem safe from attack, and will
be beyond attack till men come to realize that they are under the
narcotic influence exerted on them by governments and churches, and
are no longer affected by it.
Such was the attitude of the spiritual critics--_i. e._, those
professing faith in Christ--to my book. And their attitude could
not have been different. They are bound to take up this attitude by
the contradictory position in which they find themselves between
belief in the divinity of their Master and disbelief in his clearest
utterances, and they want to escape from this contradiction. So that
one cannot expect from them free discussion of the very essence of
the question--that is, of the change in men's life which must result
from applying Christ's teaching to the existing order of the world.
Such free discussion I only expected from worldly, freethinking
critics who are not bound to Christ's teaching in any way, and can
therefore take an independent view of it. I had anticipated that
freethinking writers would look at Christ, not merely, like the
Churchmen, as the founder of a religion of personal salvation, but,
to express it in their language, as a reformer who laid down new
principles of life and destroyed the old, and whose reforms are not
yet complete, but are still in progress even now.
Such a view of Christ and his teaching follows from my book. But to
my astonishment, out of the great number of critics of my book there
was not one, either Russian or foreign, who treated the subject from
the side from which it was approached in the book--that is, who
criticised Christ's doctrines as philosophical, moral, and social
principles, to use their scientific expressions. This was not done in
a single criticism. The freethinking Russian critics taking my book
as though its whole contents could be reduced to non-resistance to
evil, and understanding the doctrine of non-resistance to evil itself
(no doubt for greater convenience in refuting it) as though it would
prohibit every kind of conflict with evil, fell vehemently upon this
doctrine, and for some years past have been very successfully proving
that Christ's teaching is mistaken in so far as it forbids resistance
to evil. Their refutations of this hypothetical doctrine of Christ
were all the more successful since they knew beforehand that their
arguments could not be contested or corrected, for the censorship,
not having passed the book, did not pass articles in its defense.
It is a remarkable thing that among us, where one cannot say a word
about the Holy Scriptures without the prohibition of the censorship,
for some years past there have been in all the journals constant
attacks and criticisms on the command of Christ simply and directly
stated in Matt. v. 39. The Russian advanced critics, obviously
unaware of all that has been done to elucidate the question of
non-resistance, and sometimes even imagining apparently that the rule
of non-resistance to evil had been invented by me personally, fell
foul of the very idea of it. They opposed it and attacked it, and
advancing with great heat arguments which had long ago been analyzed
and refuted from every point of view, they demonstrated that a man
ought invariably to defend (with violence) all the injured and
oppressed, and that thus the doctrine of non-resistance to evil is an
immoral doctrine.
To all Russian critics the whole import of Christ's command
seemed reducible to the fact that it would hinder them from
the active opposition to evil to which they are accustomed. So
that the principle of non-resistance to evil by force has been
attacked by two opposing camps: the conservatives, because this
principle would hinder their activity in resistance to evil as
applied to the revolutionists, in persecution and punishment
of them; the revolutionists, too, because this principle would
hinder their resistance to evil as applied to the conservatives
and the overthrowing of them. The conservatives were indignant
at the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force hindering the
energetic destruction of the revolutionary elements, which may ruin
the national prosperity; the revolutionists were indignant at the
doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force hindering the overthrow
of the conservatives, who are ruining the national prosperity. It
is worthy of remark in this connection that the revolutionists have
attacked the principle of non-resistance to evil by force, in spite
of the fact that it is the greatest terror and danger for every
despotism. For ever since the beginning of the world, the use of
violence of every kind, from the Inquisition to the Schlüsselburg
fortress, has rested and still rests on the opposite principle of the
necessity of resisting evil by force.
Besides this, the Russian critics have pointed out the fact that the
application of the command of non-resistance to practical life would
turn mankind aside out of the path of civilization along which it is
moving. The path of civilization on which mankind in Europe is moving
is in their opinion the one along which all mankind ought always to
move.
So much for the general character of the Russian critics.
Foreign critics started from the same premises, but their discussions
of my book were somewhat different from those of Russian critics, not
only in being less bitter, and in showing more culture, but even in
the subject-matter.
In discussing my book and the Gospel teaching generally, as it is
expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, the foreign critics maintained
that such doctrine is not peculiarly Christian (Christian doctrine is
either Catholicism or Protestantism according to their views)--the
teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is only a string of very pretty
impracticable dreams _du charmant docteur_, as Renan says, fit for
the simple and half-savage inhabitants of Galilee who lived eighteen
hundred years ago, and for the half-savage Russian peasants--Sutaev
and Bondarev--and the Russian mystic Tolstoy, but not at all
consistent with a high degree of European culture.
The foreign freethinking critics have tried in a delicate manner,
without being offensive to me, to give the impression that my
conviction that mankind could be guided by such a naïve doctrine as
that of the Sermon on the Mount proceeds from two causes: that such
a conviction is partly due to my want of knowledge, my ignorance
of history, my ignorance of all the vain attempts to apply the
principles of the Sermon on the Mount to life, which have been
made in history and have led to nothing; and partly it is due to
my failing to appreciate the full value of the lofty civilization
to which mankind has attained at present, with its Krupp cannons,
smokeless powder, colonization of Africa, Irish Coercion Bill,
parliamentary government, journalism, strikes, and the Eiffel Tower.
So wrote de Vogüé and Leroy Beaulieu and Matthew Arnold; so wrote
the American author Savage, and Ingersoll, the popular freethinking
American preacher, and many others.
"Christ's teaching is no use, because it is inconsistent with
our industrial age," says Ingersoll naïvely, expressing in this
utterance, with perfect directness and simplicity, the exact notion
of Christ's teaching held by persons of refinement and culture of our
times. The teaching is no use for our industrial age, precisely as
though the existence of this industrial age were a sacred fact which
ought not to and could not be changed. It is just as though drunkards
when advised how they could be brought to habits of sobriety should
answer that the advice is incompatible with their habit of taking
alcohol.
The arguments of all the freethinking critics, Russian and foreign
alike, different as they may be in tone and manner of presentation,
all amount essentially to the same strange misapprehension--namely,
that Christ's teaching, one of the consequences of which is
non-resistance to evil, is of no use to us because it requires a
change of our life.
Christ's teaching is useless because, if it were carried into
practice, life could not go on as at present; we must add: if we have
begun by living sinfully, as we do live and are accustomed to live.
Not only is the question of non-resistance to evil not discussed;
the very mention of the fact that the duty of non-resistance enters
into Christ's teaching is regarded as satisfactory proof of the
impracticability of the whole teaching.
Meanwhile one would have thought it was necessary to point out at
least some kind of solution of the following question, since it is at
the root of almost everything that interests us.
The question amounts to this: In what way are we to decide men's
disputes, when some men consider evil what others consider good, and
_vice versa_? And to reply that that is evil which I think evil, in
spite of the fact that my opponent thinks it good, is not a solution
of the difficulty. There can only be two solutions: either to find a
real unquestionable criterion of what is evil or not to resist evil
by force.
The first course has been tried ever since the beginning of
historical times, and, as we all know, it has not hitherto led to any
successful results.
The second solution--not forcibly to resist what we consider evil
until we have found a universal criterion--that is the solution given
by Christ.
We may consider the answer given by Christ unsatisfactory; we may
replace it by another and better, by finding a criterion by which
evil could be defined for all men unanimously and simultaneously; we
may simply, like savage nations, not recognize the existence of the
question. But we cannot treat the question as the learned critics of
Christianity do. They pretend either that no such question exists at
all or that the question is solved by granting to certain persons
or assemblies of persons the right to define evil and to resist it
by force. But we know all the while that granting such a right to
certain persons does not decide the question (still less so when we
are ourselves the certain persons), since there are always people who
do not recognize this right in the authorized persons or assemblies.
But this assumption, that what seems evil to us is really evil, shows
a complete misunderstanding of the question, and lies at the root of
the argument of freethinking critics about the Christian religion. In
this way, then, the discussions of my book on the part of Churchmen
and freethinking critics alike showed me that the majority of men
simply do not understand either Christ's teaching or the questions
which Christ's teaching solves.