Church and State, Leo Tolstoy
Church and State
Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
WHAT an extraordinary thing it is! There are people who seem ready to climb out of their skins for the sake of making others accept this, and not that, form of revelation. They cannot rest till others have accepted their form of revelation, and no other. They anathematize, persecute, and kill whom they can of the dissentients. Other groups of people do the same anathematize, persecute, and kill whom they can of the dissentients. And others again do the same. So that they are all anathematizing, persecuting, and killing demanding that every one should believe as they do. And it results that there are hundreds of sects all anathematizing, persecuting, and killing one another.
At first I was astonished that such an obvious absurdity such an evident contradiction did not destroy religion itself. How can religious people remain so deluded ? And really, viewed from the general, external point of view it is incomprehensible, and proves irrefragably that every religion is a fraud, and that the whole thing is superstition, as the dominant philosophy of today declares.
And looking at things from this general point of view, I inevitably came to acknowledge that all religion is a human fraud. But I could not help pausing at the reflection that the very absurdity and obviousness of the fraud, and the fact that nevertheless all humanity yields to it, indicates that this fraud must rest on some basis that is not fraudulent.
Otherwise we could not let it deceive us it is too stupid. The very fact that all of mankind that really lives a human life yields to this fraud, obliged me to acknowledge the importance of the phenomena on which the fraud is based. And in consequence of this reflection, I began to analyze the Christian teaching, which, for all Christendom, supplies the basis of this fraud.
That is what was apparent from the general point of view. But from the individual point of view which shows us that each man (and I myself) must, in order to live, always have a religion show him the meaning of life the fact that violence is employed in questions of religion is yet more amazing in its absurdity.
Indeed how can it, and why should it, concern any one to make somebody else, not merely have the same religion as himself, but also profess it in the same way as he does ? A man lives, and must, therefore, know why he lives. He has established his relation to God; he knows the very truth of truths, and I know the very truth of truths. Our expression may differ; the essence must be the same we are both of us men.
Then why should I what can induce me to oblige any one or demand of any one absolutely to express his truth as I express it ?
I cannot compel a man to alter his religion either by violence or by cunning or by fraud false miracles.
His religion is his life. How can I take from him his religion and give him another? It is like taking out his heart and putting another in its place. I can only do that if his religion and mine are words, and are not what gives him life; if it is a wart and not a heart.
Such a thing is impossible also, because no man can deceive or compel another to believe what he does not believe; for if a man has adjusted his relation toward God and knows that religion is the relation in which man stands toward God he cannot desire to define another man’s relation to God by means of force or fraud.
That is impossible, but yet it is being done, and has been done everywhere and always. That is to say, it can never really be done, because it is in itself impossible; but something has been done, and is being done, that looks very much like it. What has been, and is being done, is that some people impose on others a counterfeit of religion and others accept this counterfeit this sham religion.
Religion cannot be forced and cannot be accepted for the sake of anything, force, fraud, or profit. Therefore what is so accepted is not religion but a fraud. And this religious fraud is a long-established condition of man’s life.
In what does this fraud consist, and on what is it based ? What induces the deceivers to produce it ? and what makes it plausible to the deceived ? I will not discuss the same phenomena in Brahminism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism, though any one who has read about those religions may see that the case has been the same in them as in Christianity; but I will speak only of the latter it being the religion known, necessary, and dear to us. In Christianity, the whole fraud is built up on the fantastic conception of a Church; a conception founded on nothing, and which as soon as we begin to study Christianity amazes us by its unexpected and useless absurdity.
Of all the godless ideas and words there is none more godless than that of a Church. There is no idea which has produced more evil, none more inimical to Christ’s teaching, than the idea of a Church.
In reality the word ekklesia means an assembly and nothing more, and it is so used in the Gospels. In the language of all modern nations the word ekklesia (or the equivalent word ” church “) means a house for prayer. Beyond that, the word has not progressed in any language, notwithstanding the fifteen hundred years’ existence of the Church-fraud. According to the definition given to the word by priests (to whom the Church-fraud is necessary) it amounts to nothing else than a preface which says: ” All that I am going to say is true, and if you disbelieve I shall burn you, or denounce you, and do you all manner of harm.”
This conception is a sophistry, needed for certain dialectical purposes, and it has remained the possession of those to whom it is necessary. Among the people, and not only among common people, but also in society, among educated people, no such conception is held at all, even though it is taught in the catechisms. Strange as it seems to examine this definition, one has to do so because so many people proclaim it seriously as something important, though it is absolutely false.
When people say that the Church is an assembly of the true believers, nothing is really said (leaving aside the fantastic inclusion of the dead); for if I assert that the choir is an assembly of all true musicians, I have elucidated nothing unless I say what I mean by true musicians. In theology we learn that true believers are those who follow the teaching of the Church, i.e. belong to the Church.
Not to dwell on the fact that there are hundreds of such true Churches, this definition tells us nothing, and at first seems as useless as the definition of “choir” as the assembly of true musicians. But then we catch sight of the fox’s tail. The Church is true, and it is one, and in it are pastors and flocks, and the pastors, ordained by God, teach this true and only religion. So that it amounts to saying :
” By God, all that we are going to say, is all real truth.” That is all. The whole fraud lies in that, in the word and idea of a Church. And the meaning of the fraud is merely that there are people who are beside themselves with desire to teach their religion to other people.
And why are they so anxious to teach their religion to other people ? If they had a real religion they would know that religion is the understanding of life, the relation each man establishes to God, and that consequently you cannot teach a religion, but only a counterfeit of reUgion. But they want to teach. What for? The simplest reply would be that the priest wants rolls and eggs, and the
archbishop wants a palace, fishpies, and a silk cassock. But this reply is insufficient. Such is no doubt the inner, psychological motive for the deception, that which maintains the fraud. But as it would be insufficient, when asking why one man (an executioner) consents to kill another against whom he feels no anger, to say that the executioner kills because he thereby gets bread and brandy and a red shirt, so it is insufficient to say that the metropolitan of Kief with his monks stuffs sacks with straw [1] and calls them relics of the saints, merely to get thirty thousand rubles a year income.
The one act and the other is too terrible and too revolting to human nature for so simple and rude an explanation to be sufficient. Both the executioner and the metropolitan explaining their actions would have a whole series of arguments based chiefly on historical tradition. Men must be executed; executions have gone on since the world commenced. If I don’t do it another will. I hope, by God’s grace, to do it better than another would. So also the metropolitan would say: External worship is necessary; since the commencement of the world the relics of the saints have been worshiped. People respect the relics in the Kief Catacombs and pilgrims come here; I, by God’s grace, hope to make the most pious use of the money thus blasphemously obtained.
To understand the religious fraud it is necessary to
