John of Kronstadt’s Reply to Leo Tolstoy on His Appeal to the Clergy

Russian people! I want to show you the godless character of Leo Tolstoy, from his latest work, published abroad, titled: «An Appeal to the Clergy»—that is, to the clergy in general, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and Anglican alike, as is plain from the very opening of his work. Do not be surprised at my intention: it would be strange if I, having read this work, did not wish to speak my own word in defense of the Christian faith, which he so maliciously and unjustly reviles, along with the clergy of every Christian confession. It is necessary to say this word now, and to show plainly this godless character, because very many people do not know of Tolstoy’s dreadful blasphemy, and know him only as a talented writer from his earlier works—«War and Peace», «Anna Karenina», and the rest. Tolstoy has twisted his moral character into something monstrous, into something revolting. I do not exaggerate. I have this work in my hands, and here, in brief, is its content.

With a writer’s habitual glibness, with extreme self-conceit and head held high, Leo Tolstoy addresses the clergy of every confession and sets it before his own judicial tribunal, presenting himself as their judge. Here you know Tolstoy at once, as a lion is known by its claws. But in what does he accuse the pastors of the Christian churches, and for what does he condemn them? For this: that the representatives of these Christian confessions accept, as the expression of exact Christian truth, the Nicene Creed, which Tolstoy does not acknowledge and does not believe, since it does not agree with his godlessness.

Then he accuses the pastors of this: that their predecessors taught this truth chiefly by force (on the contrary, it was pagans and Jews who persecuted and did violence to Christians in every way, which is how so many martyrs came to be) and even decreed this truth by law (bureaucratic language) and put to death those who did not accept it (this never happened with the Orthodox clergy). Further on, Tolstoy writes in parentheses: millions upon millions of people have been tortured, killed, burned, for not wishing to accept it (the Orthodox clergy gets its share of blame here too, in passing). In Tolstoy’s words there is plain slander and a complete ignorance of the history of the Christian Church.

Listen further to his false outpouring of words: this method (that is, forcing acceptance of the Christian faith through torture) has, over time, come to be used less, and is now employed, of all Christian countries, (it seems) only in Russia.

So Tolstoy’s hand rose to write such vile slander against Russia, against her government!… But if this were true, then Leo Tolstoy would long ago have been executed or hanged for his godlessness, for his blasphemy against God and the Church, for his malicious writings, for leading tens of thousands of Russian youth astray, for the tens of thousands of Dukhobors he has seduced, deceived, and ruined. And yet Tolstoy lives like a lord on his estate at Yasnaya Polyana, and walks about in complete freedom.

Next, Tolstoy attacks the clergy—do you know for what? For instilling the Church’s teaching in people who are, he claims, in no state to weigh critically what is handed to them: by this he means wholly uneducated laborers who have no time to think (and what, then, are feast days and the Church’s own thorough extra-liturgical explanatory talks for?), and, above all, children, who accept without question and fix permanently in their memory whatever is handed to them. As though children ought not to accept the word of truth on faith.

Listen, listen, Orthodox people, to what this Russian lion commands the clergy of every land: he asserts, quite seriously and with complete self-assurance, that the uneducated—especially laborers and children—ought not to be taught faith in God, in the Church, in the Mysteries, in the resurrection, in the life to come, ought not to be taught to pray, because all of this, according to Tolstoy, is absurd, and because they cannot weigh critically what is taught to them—as though they had no understanding or capacity at all, when in truth the Lord brings forth praise for His own majesty and goodness out of the mouths of infants and nursing children; He hides His wisdom from the wise and understanding and reveals it to infants (Mt 11:25); and from the proud Tolstoy He has hidden His wisdom, and revealed it instead to simple, unlearned people, such as the apostles were, and such as the simple and unlearned or little-learned people of today are—so that no flesh, no human being, should boast before God (1Cor 1:29). Tolstoy wants to turn everyone into savages and atheists—both children and the simple people—for he himself has become a complete savage with regard to faith and the Church, through his own lack of upbringing in faith and piety from his youth. I think that if, from his youth, Christian teaching had truly been instilled in Tolstoy’s mind and heart, as it is instilled in everyone from the earliest age, he would not have turned into such a bold, notorious atheist, like Judas the betrayer. Tolstoy’s lack of upbringing from his youth, and his idle, dissolute life of adventures in his younger years—as is plain from his own account of his life under his pen name—were the chief cause of his radical godlessness; his acquaintance with Western atheists helped him further along this dreadful path, and his excommunication from the Church by the Most Holy Synod embittered him to the utmost degree, wounding his pride as a count and a writer, and dimming his worldly fame. From this came his shameless, naive, malicious slander against the clergy in general, against the Christian faith, against the Church, against all of Holy, God-breathed Scripture. By his blasphemous writings, Tolstoy wishes, no less, if not more, than the apocalyptic dragon, to sweep away a third of the stars of heaven—that is, a whole third of Christians, especially the educated and, in part, the common people. Oh, if only he believed the word of the Savior, who says in the Gospel: whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea (Mt 18:6).

Let us go further into the depths of Tolstoy’s supposed wisdom. Woe, it is said in Scripture, to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight. Tolstoy considers himself wiser and more truthful than everyone—even than the sacred writers made wise by the Holy Spirit; he treats Holy Scripture as a fairy tale and reviles the clergy of every Christian confession for teaching the sacred history of the Old and New Testaments, regarding as invention the account of God’s creation of the world and man, of good and evil, of God—he mocks the whole of sacred history and God’s first covenant with man concerning the keeping of the commandment, the fulfillment of which was meant to confirm the will of the first humans in obedience to their Creator and to seal their union with God forever, their blessed state and immortality even of the body; and in general he distorts and mocks the whole of sacred history that follows, accepting not one single account on faith. So, for example, he says that God, in showing favor to Abraham and his descendants, performs on their behalf the most unnatural (!) deeds, called miracles (Tolstoy does not believe in them), and the most terrible (!) cruelties (and this of God, who is merciful, loving of mankind, and longsuffering)—so that this whole history, apart from naive, sometimes innocent, but often immoral tales (!), this whole history, beginning with the plagues sent by Moses (not by Moses, but by God, righteous and longsuffering), and the Angel’s killing of all their firstborn, down to the fire that consumed 250 conspirators, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram swallowed up by the earth, and the destruction of 14,000 people within a few minutes, down to enemies sawn apart with saws (it turns out he has heard the bell ring but does not know where—everyone knows it was the lawless king of Judah, Manasseh, who ordered the prophet Isaiah sawn in two for his prophecy)—and those put to death by Elijah the prophet, who flew off (!) to heaven (not flew off, but was taken up to heaven, as it were, by God’s command in a fiery chariot with fiery horses), the priests who opposed him, and Elisha, who cursed the boys who mocked him, who were then torn apart and eaten by two she-bears for it—this whole history is (according to Tolstoy) a series of miraculous events and dreadful atrocities (Tolstoy, in rejecting a personal, holy, and righteous God, rejects His justice as well), carried out by the Jewish people, their leaders, and God Himself (!). Here, before your eyes, is Tolstoy’s godlessness and blasphemy against our righteous, most merciful, and longsuffering God! But these are only the flowers—the berries are still to come.

Listen further to what Tolstoy says about the New Testament, that is, the Gospel. You, he reproaches the clergy of every confession, teach children and the ignorant (only children and the ignorant, not the educated as well?) the history of the New Testament in such an interpretation that its chief significance lies not in its moral teaching, not in the Sermon on the Mount, but in reconciling the Gospel with the history of the Old Testament, in the fulfillment of prophecies and in miracles (all of these, and the whole content, are in fact taught—Tolstoy either does not know what he is saying, or willfully distorts the truth); further on, Tolstoy speaks in a mocking tone of the appearance of the wondrous star at the Savior’s birth, of the singing of the angels, of the conversation with the devil (in whom he does not believe, though the devil is truly his father, for it is said: «You are of your father the devil»; Jn 8:44), of the turning of water into wine, of the Lord walking on the water, of miraculous healings, of the resurrection of the dead, of the resurrection of the Lord Himself and His ascension into heaven. In the end, Leo Tolstoy has gone so far as not even to grant the sacred books of the Old Testament the name of a fairy tale, but calls them «the most harmful books in the Christian world, a dreadful book». At this we cannot help but exclaim: oh, how dreadful you yourself are, Leo Tolstoy, brood of vipers, who have opened your mouth to blaspheme the God-breathed writing of the Old and New Testaments, which forms the sacred treasure, beyond all price, of the whole Christian world!! Do you truly imagine that anyone with mind and conscience will believe your mad words, knowing from childhood that the books of the Old and New Testaments bear in themselves the seal of divine inspiration? Yes, we affirm that the books of the Old and New Testaments are the most reliable truth and the first, necessary, foundational knowledge for the spiritual life of a Christian, and that is why the education of children of every rank and condition, even the children of the tsar himself, begins with them. It seems that Leo Tolstoy alone did not begin from there, and that is why he has descended into such savagery and blasphemy against God, his Creator, and against his own nurturing Mother—the Church of God.

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Listen to what Tolstoy says next about himself—for it is certainly about himself, and not about anyone else, since what he goes on about applies to no one else. A foreign substance cannot be introduced into a living organism without that organism suffering from the effort to rid itself of the foreign substance introduced into it, and sometimes even perishing in that effort.

Unhappy Tolstoy: he very nearly perished in his efforts to become an apostate from God, and yet achieved his own ruin all the same, becoming a complete renegade from the faith. Listen further to his absurdity, so as to be convinced that Tolstoy, in his malice against faith and the Church, slanders it, having fallen under Satan’s influence. Here are his own words! «What terrible harm must be produced in a person’s mind by those expositions of the Old and New Testament teaching, foreign both to modern knowledge and to common sense and moral feeling, instilled in him at a time when he cannot yet weigh them critically» (for this there is faith, as trust in the truth). To this I answer: all of us have known the history of the Old and New Testaments from childhood, and from studying them we have received the most life-giving, saving knowledge and the highest religious delight. Tolstoy, however, through his own craftiness and his fascination with godless German and French writers, could never experience this, for the Lord has hidden His pure wisdom from his insolent mind.

Tolstoy subordinates the infinite mind of God to his own blind and proud intellect, and flatly refuses to believe, as an impossible thing, in the creation of the world out of nothing, in the universal Flood, in Noah’s Ark, in the Trinity, in the fall of Adam (and hence in the need for the all-redeeming sacrifice), in the virgin conception, in the miracles of Christ, and asserts that for one who believes all this, the demands of reason are no longer binding, and such a person cannot be certain of any truth at all.

«If the Trinity is possible, Tolstoy goes on mocking, if the virgin conception and the redemption of the human race by the blood of Christ are possible, then anything is possible, and the demands of reason are not binding.» — Hear, Christians, how Tolstoy sets his own blind reason above God, and since he, Tolstoy, cannot comprehend the highest mystery of the Godhead—the Trinity of Persons and unity of essence—he considers the very being of the Trinity impossible, and the redemption of fallen mankind by the blood of Jesus Christ impossible as well. — «Drive a wedge, he says, between the boards of a granary bin; however much grain you pour into such a bin, it will not stay. Just so with a mind into which the wedge of the Trinity has been driven, or of a God who became man and by His suffering redeemed the human race and then flew off again (what a distortion of Holy Scripture!) to heaven—no sound, coherent understanding of life can any longer be held in it.»

I answer: Tolstoy has indeed driven a wedge into his own head—proud unbelief—and has thereby fallen into utter nonsense regarding faith and any true understanding of life, and has turned his whole life upside down. In general, Tolstoy firmly believes in the infallibility of his own reason, and calls the religious truths revealed to mankind by God Himself meaningless and contradictory propositions, while calling those who have accepted them with mind and heart sick people, as it were. (Is not Tolstoy himself sick, then, for not accepting them?)

Tolstoy’s whole work, «An Appeal to the Clergy», is filled with the most shameless lies of which a man who has severed his connection with truth and rightness is capable. Everywhere false premises lead to false conclusions and the most absurd inferences. The author has set himself the goal of leading everyone astray from the path of truth, of turning everyone away from faith in God and from the Church; he strives to corrupt everyone and lead them to ruin; this is evident from the whole of this present work of his.

It is not worth answering every individual thought of Tolstoy’s—they are so plainly absurd, blasphemous, and intolerable to Christian feeling and hearing; so self-contradictory and self-defeating—they have finally killed Leo Tolstoy’s own soul, and made a turn to the light of truth utterly impossible for him.

«Answer not a fool according to his folly, says wise Solomon, lest you also be like him» (Prov 26:4). And indeed, if one answers Tolstoy according to his folly, matching all his senseless blasphemies, one becomes like him and is infected by his corrupting stench. «Answer not a fool according to his folly, Solomon continues, in another sense, lest he be wise in his own eyes» (v. 5). And I have answered the fool according to his folly, so that he should not appear wise in his own eyes, but a true fool. Is it not folly to reject a personal, all-good, all-wise, righteous, eternal, almighty Creator, one in essence and threefold in Persons, when in the human soul itself, in its single essence, there dwell three equal powers—mind, heart, and will—after the image of the three Persons of the Godhead? Does not mankind honor, among numbers, the number three above all others—that is, does it not by its very nature venerate the Trinity that created it? Does not mankind feel its own fall, and its extreme need of redemption and a Redeemer! Is not God the God of wonders, and is not the very existence of the world itself the greatest wonder? Does not mankind believe in its descent from a single forefather? Does it not believe in the Flood!

Does it not believe in hell, in requital according to deeds, in the blessedness of the righteous, even if not all this comes from the revelation of God’s word? Is it not hard for Tolstoy to kick against the goads? Can one reason at length with Tolstoy, who rejects the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end? How can one speak seriously with a man who does not believe that A is A, that B is B? It is not worth answering a fool according to his folly.

Leo Tolstoy’s chief, cardinal error consists in this: that he, taking Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and His word on non-resistance to evil—which he has perversely misinterpreted—as the starting point of his work, has understood neither the Sermon on the Mount nor the commandment of poverty of spirit, of the need for humility and repentance, which are the foundation of Christian life; and Tolstoy has grown proud, like Satan, and does not acknowledge the need for repentance, hoping to attain perfection by some strength of his own, without Christ and His grace, without faith in His redemptive suffering and death, while by non-resistance to evil he means, in effect, indulgence toward every evil—that is, non-resistance to sin, or connivance with sin and the human passions—and thus he lays a well-worn road for every lawlessness, and in this way becomes the greatest accomplice of the devil, who destroys the human race, and the most notorious enemy of Christ. Instead of grieving and being contrite over his own sins and those of others, Tolstoy dreams of himself as a perfect man, or a superman, as the notorious madman Nietzsche once dreamed; while what is exalted among men is an abomination before God. The Savior’s first word to sinful people was the commandment of repentance: «From that time Jesus began to preach and to say: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand»; but Tolstoy says, do not repent—repentance is faintheartedness, absurdity; without repentance, without Christ, we will attain perfection by our own reason, and indeed have already attained it, he says: look at the progress of human reason, of human knowledge, of romantic, historical, and philosophical literature, of various inventions, of factory goods, of railways, telegraphs, telephones, phonographs, gramophones, airships. For Tolstoy there is no higher spiritual perfection in the sense of attaining the Christian virtues—simplicity, humility, purity of heart, chastity, prayer, repentance, faith, hope, love in the Christian sense; he does not acknowledge Christian ascetic struggle; he laughs at holiness and the saints—he himself deifies himself, worships himself as an idol, as a superman; I, and no one but I, Tolstoy imagines. You are all in error; I have discovered the truth and I teach all people the truth! The Gospel, according to Tolstoy, is invention and fable. Well then, Orthodox people, who is this Leo Tolstoy?

He is a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And how many he has devoured through his flattering pamphlets! Beware of him.

Archpriest John Sergiev (of Kronstadt)