How Christian Was Leo and Fyodor?

Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky:  Great Christian Authors  

By Dr. Michael Baglino, Ed. D.

Don’t be intimidated.   Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are not what you think. It’s a pleasure to read their novels and essays. Their topics are well chosen, coming from what life has thrown at them. This makes them even more fascinating.  What has life thrown at them?  Well, the Christianity of both authors was definitely influenced by their Siberian experiences, for one thing.  Not only Christians, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are psychologists and sociologists with a deep and clear understanding of the human condition and the Russian condition in the mid 19th century. Rather, Anna Karenina reads like Danielle Steele and War and Peace reads like a[n] historical journey across decades and continents.  The Death of Ivan Ilych is probably the most insightful account of the death process.  LoL - you can read this without getting depressed. And let it be clear, there are no happy endings in his dozens of essays from such works as Divine and Human. He does not write of living happily ever after.  It is all about social reality in Russia. Women are beaten, people get sick and die, men drink and fight, families are distraught.    

The Russian Orthodox Church actually excommunicated Leo Tolstoy for his heretical views on Christianity and Jesus.  The teachings of Christ were one thing, but the belief in the divinity of Christ escaped Tolstoy.  His focus was on the meaning of life as taught by Christ, not His miracles nor evidence of the supernatural.  Love, compassion, and peace were the messages, and the church’s institutional evolution was the barrier to such a message according to Tolstoy.  The true essence of Christianity can be found in the faith of the peasantry, not in either the clergy or ruling elites of society.  Dogma and ritual got in the way of His moral teachings and clouded the true meaning and ability to practice Christian principles. Rather, Tolstoy believed love and nonviolence should be the focus of Christian religion.  This emphasis even caught the attention of world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Yet a Christian moral philosophy is something in which to adhere, and this would lead a soul to personal perfection. An admitted sinner, and of all sorts of sins, the killing of others in war was particularly troublesome to his conscience.  He believed in truth, not telling falsehoods of any kind from lies to deceit, not committing adultery, not killing in war or otherwise, not seeking revenge but loving your enemy. Most definitely, it was his inability to accept the Holy Eucharist as the true body and blood of Christ that turned him away from the orthodox church and his ultimate excommunication.  Finally, he saw Christianity as a moral belief system in total contradiction to governments that focused on control, imprisonment, and war.  Tolstoy more accurately can be said to be a Christian anarchist.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky also reassesses Christianity as a contradiction to institutionalized religion.  His thoughts are expressed in Notes from the Underground, Brothers Karamazov, and Crime and Punishment.  Existential philosophers have a field day with Dostoyevsky, and he has emerged as one of their gurus.  For Dostoyevsky, it is a matter of choice and the human will.  How existential is that?   On personal matters, Dostoyevsky wasted so much of his earnings on gambling. He would make his money in Moscow from writings sold in Russia and Europe, and then take train trips to Paris and gamble it away.  Only to return with the financial need to write another book.  One of his associates claimed that Fyodor was one of the worst Christians he had ever met.  

It seems that throughout his literary efforts, many characters are trying to figure out what it is all about.  As in The Idiot, a central character, Myshkin is traveling from Switzerland to St. Petersburg and caught up in so many conversations concerning Christian qualities, mostly on compassion, humility and love, including his own personal love encounter.  

The Brothers Karamazov contains the famous Grand Inquisition, where Jesus is arrested, and what arises through the interviews are the issues of authority, faith, and of course, free will again. Philosophically, is faith in Jesus a burden or a gift? Is institutional control a burden upon individual choice? Can humans really handle true freedom? Institutional religion claims not.  Institutional religion needs to remind us of God, His laws, His mercy, and His graces.  Thus, what emerges is a conflict between faith and authority.  My favorite novel of all times, Crime and Punishment, delves into the conscience of its protagonist, Raskolnykov. His conscience is guilt-ridden by his committing murder, resulting in psychological torture. He believed himself to be extraordinary, but comes to realize  the opposite.  How can he be reconciled to God?  Is redemption before God possible? These are questions about our individual existence or crosses we must bear to varying degrees, and once again only personal faith can answer the unprovable.  I repeat, how existential is that?

For a speaker on this or other topic, see - www.michaelbaglino.com/speaker/ contact me at - euroamerican22@gmail.com

References:

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor.   

The Brothers Karamazov

Crime and Punishment

The Idiot

Notes From the Underground

Tolstoy, Leo.  

Divine and Human

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Essays

The Kingdom of God is Within You

Master and Man