The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 13/Critique of Dogmatic Theology/Preface
PREFACE
I was inevitably led to the investigation of the doctrine of the faith of the Orthodox Church. In the communion with the Orthodox Church I had found salvation from despair. I was firmly convinced that in this doctrine lay the only truth, but many, very many, manifestations of this doctrine, which were contrary to those fundamental concepts which I had about God and his law, compelled me to turn to the study of the doctrine itself.
I did not then assume that the doctrine was false,—I was afraid of supposing that,—for one untruth in that doctrine destroyed the whole doctrine, and then I should lose the main support which I had found in the church as the carrier of truth, as the source of that knowledge of the meaning of life which I was trying to find in faith. So I began to study the books which expounded the Orthodox doctrine. In all those works the doctrine, in spite of the diversity of details and some difference in consecutiveness, is one and the same; so, too, the connection between the parts and the fundamental principle is one and the same.
I read and studied those books, and here is the feeling which I have carried away from that study. If I had not been led by life to the inevitable necessity of faith; if I had not seen that this faith formed the foundation of the life of all men; if this feeling, shattered by life, had not been strengthened anew in my heart; if the foundation of my faith had been only confidence; if there were within me only the faith of which theology speaks (taught to believe), I, after reading these books, not only would have turned an atheist, but should have become a most malignant enemy of every faith, because I found in these doctrines not only nonsense, but the conscious lie of men who had chosen the faith as a means for obtaining certain ends.
The reading of these books has cost me a terrible labour, not so much on account of the effort which I was making in order to understand the connection between the expressions, the one which the people who wrote them saw, as on account of the inner struggle which I had to carry on all the time with myself, in order, as I read these books, to abstain from indignation.
I used up a great deal of paper, analyzing word after word, at first the Symbol of Faith, then Filarét’s Catechism, then the Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, then Makári’s Introduction to Theology, and then his Dogmatic Theology. A serious, scientific tone, such as these books, particularly the new ones, like Makári’s Theology, are written in, was impossible during the analysis of these books. It was impossible to condemn or reject the ideas expressed, because it was impossible to catch a single clearly expressed idea. The moment I got ready to take hold of an idea, in order to pass judgment upon it, it slipped away from me, because it was purposely expressed obscurely, and I involuntarily returned to the analysis of the expression of the idea itself,—when it appeared that there was no definite idea; the words had not the meaning which they generally have in language, but a special one, the definition of which was not tangible. The definition or elucidation of a thought, if there was any, was always in a reverse sense; to define or clear up a difficult word use was made of a word or series of words entirely incomprehensible. For a long time I wavered in doubt, did not permit myself to deny what I did not understand, and with all the forces of mind and soul tried to understand that teaching in the same way as those understood it who said that they believed in it, and demanded that others, too, should believe in it. This was the more difficult for me, the more detailed and quasi-scientific the exposition was.
When I read the Symbol of Faith in church Slavic, in its word-for-word translation from the obscure Greek text, I managed somehow to combine my conceptions of faith, but when I read the Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, who express those dogmas more in detail, I was unable to combine my conceptions of faith, and was almost unable to make out what was meant by the words which I read. With the reading of the Catechism this disagreement and lack of comprehension increased. When I read the Theology, at first Damascene’s and then Makári’s, my lack of comprehension and my disagreement reached its farthest limits. But at last I began to understand the external connection which united those words, and that train of thoughts which had guided the writer, and the reason why I could not agree with them.
I worked over it for a long time and finally reached a point when I knew the Theology like a good seminarist, and I am able, following the trend of the thoughts which have guided the authors, to explain the foundation of everything, the connection between the separate dogmas, and the meaning in this connection of every dogma, and, above all, I am able to explain why such and not another connection, strange as it is, was chosen. When I attained to that, I was shocked. I saw that all that doctrine was an artificial code (composed from the mere external, most inexact terms) of the expressions of the beliefs of a great variety of men, discordant among themselves and mutually contradictory. I saw that harmonization was of no use to anybody, that nobody could ever believe all that doctrine, and never did, and that, therefore, there must be some external purpose in the impossible combination of these various doctrines into one and in promulgating them as truth. I even comprehended that purpose. I also understood why this doctrine was sure to produce atheists in the seminaries, where it is taught, and I understood the strange feeling which I experienced while reading those books. I had read the so-called blasphemous works of Voltaire and Hume, but never had I experienced such an undoubted conviction of the full faithlessness of a man as what I experienced in reference to the composers of the Catechisms and the Theologies. When you read in these works the quotations from the apostles and the so-called fathers of the church, of which the Theology is composed, you see that those are expressions of believing men, you hear the voice of their heart, in spite of the awkwardness, crudity, and at times falseness of their expressions; but when you read the words of the compiler, it becomes clear to you that the compiler did not care at all for the sincere meaning of the expression quoted by him,—he does not even try to comprehend it. All he needs is a casual word, in order to attach by means of it an idea of the apostle to an expression of Moses or of a new father of the church. All he wants is to form such a code as will make it appear that everything which is written in the so-called Holy Scriptures and in the fathers of the church was written only in order to prove the Symbol of Faith. And so I came at last to see that all that doctrine, the one in which, I then thought, the faith of the masses was expressed, was not only a lie, but also a deception, which The Metropolitan Filarét
Photogravure from Engraving by Schübler
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had taken form through the ages and had a definite, base purpose.
Here is that doctrine. I expound it according to the Symbol of Faith, the Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, Filarét’s Catechism, and, mainly, Makári’s Dogmatic Theology, a book which the church regards as the best dogmatic theology.