 Chapter 3 of the Kingdom of God is within you. Recording by Sunshine Paul The Kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Constance Garnet. Chapter 3. Christianity Misunderstood by Believers Meaning of Christian doctrine, understood by a minority, has become completely incomprehensible for the majority of men. Reason of this to be found in misinterpretation of Christianity and mistaken conviction of believers and unbelievers alike that they understand it. The meaning of Christianity obscured for believers by the Church, the first appearance of Christ's teachings, its essence and difference from heathen religion. Christianity not fully comprehended at the beginning, became more and more clear to those who accepted it from its correspondence with truth. Simultaneously with this arose the claim to possession of the authentic meaning of the doctrine based on the miraculous nature of its transmission. Assembly of Disciples as described in the Acts. The authoritative claim to the sole possession of the true meaning of Christ's teaching, supported by miraculous evidence, has led by logical development to the creeds of the churches. A church could not be founded by Christ. Definitions of a church according to the catechisms. The churches have always been severally number and hostile to one another. What is heresy? The work of G. Arnold on heresies? Heresies, the manifestations of progress in the churches? Churches cause dissension among men and are always hostile to Christianity. Account of the work done by the Russian Church. Matthew 13, 23. The Sermon on the Mount or the Creed? The Orthodox Church conceals from the people the true meaning of Christianity. The same thing is done by the other churches. All the external conditions of modern life are such as to destroy the doctrine of the church and therefore the churches use every effort to support their doctrines. Thus the information I received after my book came out went to show that the Christian doctrine in its direct and simple sense was understood and had always been understood by minority of men, while the critics, ecclesiastical and free-thinking alike, denied the possibility of taking Christ's teaching in its direct sense. All this convinced me that while on one hand the true understanding of this doctrine had never been lost to a minority but had been established more and more clearly. On the other hand the meaning of it had been more and more obscured for the majority. So that at last such a depth of obscurity has been reached that men do not take in the direct sense even the simplest precepts expressed in the simplest words in the Gospel. Christ's teaching is not generally understood in its true simple and direct sense even in these days. When the light of the Gospel has penetrated even to the darkest recesses of human consciousness. When in the words of Christ that which was spoken in the ear is proclaimed from the house tops and when the Gospel is influencing every side of human life domestic, economic, civic, legislative and international. This lack of true understanding of Christ's words at such a time would be inexplicable if there were not causes to account for it. One of these causes is the fact that believers and unbelievers alike are firmly persuaded that they have understood Christ's teaching a long time and that they understand it so fully, indubitably and conclusively that it can have no other significance than the one they attribute to it. The reason of this conviction is that the false interpretation and consequent misapprehension of the Gospel is an error of such long standing. Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup which is already full. The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already. But the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already without a shadow of doubt what is laid before him. The Christian doctrine is presented to the men of our world today as a doctrine which everyone has known so long and accepted so unhesitatingly in all its minutest details that it cannot be understood in any other way than it is understood now. Christianity is understood now by all who profess the doctrines of the Church as a supernatural miraculous revelation of everything which is repeated in the Creed. By unbelievers it is regarded as an illustration of man's craving for a belief in the supernatural which mankind has now outgrown as in historical phenomenon which has received full expression in Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy and Protestantism and has no longer any living significance for us. The significance of the Gospel is hidden from believers by the Church from unbelievers by science. I will speak of the former. 1800 years ago there appeared in the midst of the heathen Roman world a strange new doctrine unlike any of the old religions and attributed to a man, Christ. This new doctrine was in both form and content absolutely new to the Jewish world in which it originated and still more to the Roman world in which it was preached and diffused. In the midst of the elaborate religious observances of Judaism in which the words of Isaiah, law was laid upon law and in the midst of the Roman legal system worked out to the highest point of perfection a new doctrine appeared which denied not only every deity and all fear and worship of them but even all human institutions and all necessity for them. In place of all the rules the old religions this doctrine sets up only a type of inward perfection, truth and love in the person of Christ and as a result of this inward perfection being attained by men also the outward perfection foretold by the prophets the kingdom of God when all men would cease to learn to make war when all shall be taught of God and united in love and the lion will lie down with the lamb. Instead of the threats of punishment which all the old laws of religions and governments alike laid down for non-fulfillment of their rules instead of promises of rewards for fulfillment of them this doctrine called meant to it only because it was the truth. John 7.17 If any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God. John 8.46 If I say the truth why do you not believe me but you seek to kill me a man that hath told you the truth ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Keep my sayings and ye shall know of my sayings whether they be true. No proofs of this doctrine were offered except its truth. The correspondence of the doctrine with the truth. The whole teaching consisted in the recognition of truth and following it in a greater and greater attainment of truth and a closer and closer following of it in the acts of life. There are no acts in this doctrine which could justify a man and make him saved. There is only the image of truth to guide him for inward perfection in the person of Christ and for outward perfection in the establishment of the kingdom of God. The fulfillment of this teaching consists only in walking in the chosen way, in getting nearer to inward perfection in the imitation of Christ and the outward perfection in the establishment of the kingdom of God. The greater or less blessedness of a man depends according to this doctrine not on the degree of perfection to which he is attained but on the greater or less swiftness with which he is pursuing it. The progress towards perfection of the publican, of the publican Zacchaeus, of the woman that was a sinner, of the robber on the cross is a greater state of blessedness according to this doctrine than the stationary righteousness of the Pharisee. The lost sheep is dearer than the 99 that were not lost. The prodigal son, the piece of money that was lost, have found again a dearer, more precious to God than those which have not been lost. Blessedness consists in progress towards perfection. To stand still in any condition, blessedness consists in progress toward perfection. To stand still in any condition whatever means the cessation of this blessedness. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. No man having put his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. Rejoice not that the spirits are subject to you but seek rather that your names will be written in heaven. Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect. Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness. The fulfilment of this precept is only to be found in uninterrupted progress toward the attainment of ever-high truth, toward establishing more and more firmly an ever-greater love within oneself, and establishing more and more widely the kingdom of God outside oneself. It is obvious that appearing as it did in the midst of the Jewish and heathen world such teaching could not be accepted by the majority of men who were living a life absolutely different from what was required by it. It is obvious too that even for those by whom it was accepted it was so absolutely opposed to all their old views that it could not be comprehensible in its full significance. It has been only by a succession of misunderstandings, errors, partial explanations and the corrections and additions of generations that the meaning of the Christian doctrine has grown continually more and more clear to men. The Christian view of life has exerted an influence on the Jewish and heathen, and the heathen and Jewish view of life has too exerted an influence on the Christian. And Christianity as the living force has gained more and more upon the extinct Judaism and heathenism and has grown continually clearer and clearer as it freed itself from the admixture of falsehood which had overlaid it. Men went further and further in the attainment of the meaning of Christianity and realized it more and more in life. The longer mankind lived, the clearer and clearer became the meaning of Christianity, as must always be the case with every theory of life. Succeeding generations corrected the errors of their predecessors and grew ever nearer and nearer to a comprehension of the true meaning. It was thus from the very earliest times of Christianity and so too from the earliest times of Christianity there were men who began to assert on their own authority that the meaning they attribute to the doctrine is the only true one. And as proof bring forward supernatural occurrences in support of the correctness of their interpretation. This was the principal cause at first of the misunderstanding of the doctrine, and afterward of the complete distortion of it. It was supposed that Christ's teaching was transmitted to men not like every other truth but in a special miraculous way. Thus the truth of the teaching was not proved by its correspondence with the needs of the mind and the whole nature of man, but by the miraculous manner of its transmission, which was advanced as an irrefutable proof of the truth of the interpretation put on it. This hypothesis originated from misunderstanding of the teaching and its result was to make it impossible to understand it rightly. And this happened first in the earliest times when the doctrine was still not so fully understood and often interpreted wrongly, as we see by the Gospels and the Acts. The less the doctrine was understood the more obscure it appeared and the more necessary were external proofs of its truth. The proposition that we ought not to do unto others as we would not they should do unto us did not need to be proved by miracles and needed no exercise of faith because this proposition isn't itself convincing and in harmony with man's mind and nature. But the proposition that Christ was God had to be proved by miracles completely beyond our comprehension. The more the understanding of Christ's teaching was obscured the more the miraculous was introduced into it and the more miraculous was introduced into it the more the doctrine was strained from its meaning and the more obscure it became and the more it was strained from its meaning and the more obscure it became more strongly its infallibility had to be asserted and the less comprehensible the doctrine became. One can see by the Gospels the Acts and the Epistles how from the earliest times the non-comprehension of the doctrine called forth the need for proofs through the miraculous and incomprehensible. The first example in the book of Acts is the assembly which gathered together in Jerusalem to decide the question which had arisen whether to baptize or not the uncircumcised and those who had eaten a food sacrificed to idols. The very fact of this question being raised showed those who discussed it did not understand the teaching of Christ who rejected all outward observances, ablutions, purifications, fasts and sabbaths. It was plainly said not that which goeth into a man's mouth but that which cometh out of a man's mouth defileeth him and therefore the question of baptizing the uncircumcised could only have arisen among men who though they loved their master and dimly felt the grandeur of his teaching still did not understand the teaching itself very clearly and this was the fact. Just in proportion to the failure of the members of the assembly to understand the doctrine was their need of external confirmation of their incomplete interpretation of it and then to settle this question the very asking of which proved their misunderstanding of the doctrine there was uttered in this assembly as is described in the Acts that strange phrase which was for the first time found necessary to give external confirmation to certain assertions and which has been productive of so much evil that is it was asserted that the correctness of what they had decided was guaranteed by the miraculous participation of the Holy Ghost that is of God in their decision but the assertion that the Holy Ghost that is God spoke through the Apostles in its term wanted proof and thus it was necessary to confirm this that the Holy Ghost should descend at Pentecost in tongues of fire upon those who made this assertion in the account of it the descent of the Holy Ghost proceeds the assembly but the book of Acts was written much later than both events but the descent of the Holy Ghost to had to be proved for those who had not seen the tongues of fire though it's not easy to understand why tongue of fire burning above a man's head should prove that what a man is going to say will infallibly be the truth and so arose the necessity for still more miracles and changes raising of the dead to life and striking of the living dead and all those marvels which have been a stumbling block to men of which the axis full and which far from ever convincing one of the truth the Christian doctrine can only repel men from it the result of such a means of confirming the truth was that more these confirmations of truth by tales of miracles were heaped upon one after the other the more the doctrine was distorted from its original meaning and the more incomprehensible it became thus it was from the earliest times and so it went on constantly increasing to it reached in our day the logical climax of the dogmas of transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope or of the bishops or of scripture and of requiring a blind faith rendered incomprehensible and utterly meaningless not in God but in Christ not in a doctrine but in a person as in Catholicism or in persons as in Greek orthodoxy or in a book as in Protestantism the more widely Christianity was diffused and the greater the number of people unprepared for it who were brought under its sway the less it was understood the more absolutely was its infallibility insisted upon and the less possible became to understand the true meaning of the doctrine in the times of Constantine the whole interpretation of the doctrine had already been reduced to a resume supported by the temporal authority of the disputes that had taken place in the council to a creed which reckoned off I believe in so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so to the end to one holy apostolic church which means the infallibility of those persons who call themselves the church so that it all amounts to a man no longer believing in God nor Christ as they are revealed to him but believing in what the church orders him to believe in but the church is holy the church was founded by Christ God could not leave men to interpret his teaching at random therefore he founded the church all those statements are so utterly untrue and unfounded that one is ashamed to refute them nowhere nor in anything except in the assertion of the church can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what church men understand by the church in the gospels there is a warning against the church as it is an external authority a warning most clear and obvious in the passage where it said that Christ followers should call no man master but nowhere is anything said the foundation of what church men call the church the word church is used twice in the gospels once in the sense of an assembly of men to decide a dispute the other time in connection with the obscure utterance about a stone Peter and the gates of hell from these two passages in which the word church is used in the signification merely of an assembly has been deduced all that we now understand by the church but Christ could not have founded the church that is what we now understand by that word for nothing like the idea of the church as we know it now with its sacraments miracles and above all its claim to infallibility is to be found either in Christ's words or in the ideas of the men of that time the fact that men called what was formed afterward by the same word as Christ used to something totally different does not give them the right to assert that Christ founded one true church besides if Christ had really founded such an institution as the church for the foundation of all his teaching and the whole faith he would certainly have described this institution clearly and definitely and would have given the only true church besides tales of miracles which are supposed to support every kind of superstition some tokens so unmistakable that no doubt of its genuineness could ever have arisen but nothing of the sort was done by him and there have been and still are different institutions each calling itself the true church the Catholic catechism says leglice il a society des fidèles établis par notre Seigneur Jezutri rappendu sur la toute la terre est soumise à l'autorité des passe de légitimer principalement notre sainter la pape si footnote understanding by the words pasta les idemais an association of men having the pope at its head and consisting of certain individuals bound together by a certain organization footnote the church is the society of the faithful established by our Lord Jesus Christ spread over the whole earth and subject to the authority of its lawful pastors and chief of them our Holy Father the Pope the Greek Orthodox catechism says the church is a society founded upon earth by Jesus Christ which is united into one whole by one divine doctrine and by sacraments under the rule and guidance of a priesthood appointed by God meaning by priesthood appointed by God the Greek Orthodox priesthood consisting of certain individuals who happen to be in such or such positions the Lutheran catechism says the church is holy Christianity or the collection of all believers under Christ their head to whom the Holy Ghost through the Gospels and sacraments promises communicates and administers heavenly salvation meaning that the Catholic Church is lost in error and that the true means of salvation is in Lutheranism for Catholics the Church of God coincides with the Roman priesthood and the Pope the Greek Orthodox believer the Church of God coincides with the establishment and priesthood of Russia see footnote footnote Homiakov's definition of the church which was received with some favor among Russians does not improve matters if we are to agree with Homiakov in considering the Greek Orthodox Church as the one true church Homiakov asserts that a church is a collection of men all without distinction of clergy and laymen united together by love and that only to men united by love is the truth revealed let us love each other that in the unity of thought etc let us love each other that in the unity of thought etc and that such a church is the church which in the first place recognizes the Nicene Creed and in the second place does not after the division of the churches recognize the popes and new dogmas but with such a definition of the church there is still more difficulty in reconciling as Homiakov tries to do the church united by love with the church that recognizes the Nicene Creed and the doctrine of Photius so that Homiakov's assertion that this church united by love and consequently holy is the same church as the Greek Orthodox priesthood profess faith in is even more arbitrary than the assertions of the Catholics or the Orthodox if we admit the idea of a church in the sense of Homiakov gives to it that is a body of men bound together by love and truth then all that any man can predicate in regard to this body if such and one exists is its love and truth but there can be no outer signs by which one could reckon oneself or another as a member of this holy body nor by which one could put anyone outside it so that no institution having an external existence can correspond to this idea for Lutherans the church of God coincides with the body of men who recognize the authority of the Bible and Luther's catechism ordinarily when speaking of the rise of Christianity men belonging to one of the existing churches use the word church in the singular as though there were and had been only one church but this is absolutely incorrect the church as an institution which asserted that it possessed infallible truth did not make its appearance singly there were at least two churches directly this claim was made while believers were agreed among themselves and the body was one it had no need to declare itself as a church it was only when believers were split up into opposing parties renouncing one another that it seemed necessary to each party to confirm their own truth by scribing to themselves infallibility the conception of one church only arose when there were two sides divided and disputing who each called the other side heresy and recognize their own side only is the infallible church if we knew that there was a church which decided in the year 51 to receive the uncircumcised it is only so because there was another church of the Judaists who decided to keep the uncircumcised out if there is a Catholic church now which asserts its own infallibility that is only because there are churches Greco-Russian Old Orthodox Lutheran each asserting its own infallibility and denying that of all other churches so that the one church is only a fantastic imagination which has not the least trace of reality about it as a real historical fact there has existed and still exist several bodies of men each asserting that it is the one church founded by Christ and that all the others who call themselves churches are only sects and heresies the catechisms of the old churches are the most worldwide influence the catholic the old orthodox and the Lutheran openly assert this in the Catholic catechism it is said qu'ils sont ceux qui sont eux de l'église les infidels les herétiques les schismatiques footnote who are those who are outside the church infidels heretics and schismatics the so-called Greek orthodox are regarded as schismatics the Lutherans as heretics so that according to the Catholic catechism the only people in the church are Catholics in the so-called orthodox catechism it is said by the one Christian church is understood the orthodox which remains fully in accord with the universal church as for the Roman church and other sects the Lutherans the rest they do not even dignify by the name of church they cannot be included in the one true church since they have themselves separated from it according to this definition the Catholics and Lutherans are outside the church and there are only orthodox in the church the Lutheran catechism says the vare kirch wird darin erkannt das in ir das wird gots lauter und rein ohne menschen susade gelört und die sacramentetroh nach christie einsitzung gewahrt werden footnote the true church will be known by the word of God being studied clear and unmixed with man's editions and the sacraments being maintained faithful to Christ's teaching according to this definition all those who have added anything to the teaching of Christ and the apostles as the Catholic and the Greek churches have done are outside the church and in the church there are only Protestants the Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost has been transmitted without a break in their priesthood the orthodox assert that the same Holy Ghost has been transmitted without a break in their priesthood the Arians assert that the Holy Ghost was transmitted in their priesthood they assert this with just as much right as the church is in authority now the Protestants of every kind Lutherans reform church presbyterians Methodist Sweden Borgings Mormons assert the Holy Ghost is only present in their communities if the Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost at the time of the division of the church into Aryan and Greek left the church that fell away and remained in the one true church with precisely the same right the Protestants of every denomination can assert that at the time of the separation of their church from the Catholic the Holy Ghost left the Catholic and passed into the church they professed and this is just what they do every church traces its creed through an uninterrupted transmission from Christ and the apostles and truly every Christian creed that has been derived from Christ must have come down to the present generation through a certain transmission but that does not prove that it alone of all that has been transmuted excluding all the rest can be the sole truth admitting of no doubt every branch in a tree comes from the root in unbroken connection but the fact that each branch comes from the one end root does not prove that each branch was the only one it is precisely the same with the church every church presents exactly the same proofs of the succession even the same miracles and support of its authenticity as every other so that there is but one strict and exact definition of what is a church not of something fantastic which we wish it to be but of what it is and has been in reality a church is a body of men who claim for themselves that they are in complete and sole possession of the truth and these bodies having in course of time aided by the support of the temporal authorities developed into powerful institutions have been the principal obstacles to the diffusion of a true comprehension of the teaching of Christ it could not be otherwise the chief peculiarity which distinguished Christ's teaching from previous religions consisted in the fact that those who accepted it strove ever more and more to comprehend and realize its teaching but the church doctrine asserted its own complete and final comprehension and realization of it strange though it may seem to us who have been brought up in the erroneous view of the church as a Christian institution and in contempt for heresy yet the fact is that only in what was called heresy was there any true movement that is true Christianity and that it only ceased to be so when those heresies stopped short in their movement and also petrified into the fixed forms of a church and indeed what is a heresy read all the theological works one after another in all of them heresy is the first subject which presents itself a definition since every theological work deals with the true doctrine of Christ as distinguished from the erroneous doctrines which surrounded that is heresies yet you will not find anywhere anything like a definition of heresy the treatment of this subject by the learned historian of Christianity Ede Presence in his Histoire du Dogme Paris 1869 under the heading Ubi Christus Ebi Ecclesia may serve as an illustration of the complete absence of anything like a definition of what is understood by the word heresy here is what he says in his introduction page 3 je sais que l'on nous conteste le doigt de le qualifier ainsi that is to call heresies les tendances qui feront si vivement combattu par les premiers pairs la désignation même des récits semblent une atteinte pour tes à la liberté de conscience et de penser nous n'est pouvant partager ce scrupe car il n'irait à rien moins quoi en les vers à christianisme du caractère distinctif c footnote footnote I know that our right to qualify thus the tendencies which were so actively opposed by the early fathers is contested the very use of the word heresy seems an attack on liberty of conscience and thought we cannot share this scruple for it would amount to nothing less than depriving christianity of all distinctive character and though he tells us that after Constantine's time the church did actually abuse its power died by designating those who dissented from it as heretics and persecuting them yet he says when speaking of early times l'église est une libre association il y a tout profit assez séparé d'elle la polemique contre l'erreur à d'un autre ressource que la pensée et les sentiments un type d'octrénal uniforme n'a pas encore été élaboré les divisions secondaires se produisant une oreille et une occident avec une entière liberté la théodologie n'est point li d'une variable formule si au sein de cette diversité apparaît un fond commun de croyance n'ésont pas un doigt du voie non pas un système formule et compose par les représentants de notre été des coles mais les fois elle-même dans son extinct plus sur et sa manifestation la plus spontanée si cette même une animité qui se révélait dans les croyances essentielles se retrouve pour repousser tel et honte ou tel et tendance ne serons nous pas en droit de conclure que ces tendances était en désaccordant flagrant avec les principes fondamentaux de christianisme cette présumption ne se transforme réelle pas en cette étude si nous reconnaissons dans la doctrine universellement repoussé par l'église les traits caractiques de l'une des religions du passé pour dire que l'adnosticisme ou les bionitisme sont les formes légitimés de la pensée chrétien il faut le dire radiment qu'il n'y a pas des pensées chrétiens ni des caractères spécifiques qui la fasse reconnaître sous prétexte des légères gires on la dissout persons au temps de platons nos et couvrir de son nom une d'autres qui ne pas fait place à la terre des idées et en ne excité les justes moqueries de la graisse en voulons faire des picures ou des noms un disciple de l'académie reconnaissant donc que s'il existe une religion ou un d'autres qui s'appelle christianisme il peut avoir c et recise c footnote footnote the church is a free association there is much to be gained by separation from it conflict with error has no weapons other than thought and feeling one uniform type of doctrine has not yet been elaborated divergencies in secondary matters arise freely in eastern west theology is not wedded to invariable formulas if in the midst of this diversity a massive beliefs common to all is apparent is one not justified in seeing in it not a formulated system framed by the representatives of pedantic authority but faith itself in its surest instinct and its most spontaneous manifestation if the same unanimity which is revealed in essential points of belief is found also in rejecting certain tendencies are we not justified in concluding that these tendencies were in flagrant opposition to the fundamental principles of christianity and will not this presumption be transformed into certainty if we recognize in the doctrine universally rejected by the church the characteristic features of one of the religions of the past to say that nosticism or ebionnitism a legitimate forms of christian thought one must boldly deny the existence of christian thought at all or any specific character by which it could be recognized while ostensibly widening its realm one undermines it no one in the time of Plato would have ventured to give his name to a doctrine in which the theory of ideas had no place and one would deservedly have excited the ridicule of Greece by trying to pass off Epicurus or Zeno as a disciple of the academy let us recognize then that if a religion or a doctrine exists which is called christianity it may have its heresies the author's whole argument amounts to this that every opinion which differs from the code of dogmas we believe in at a given time is heresy but of course at any given time in place men always believes in something or other and this belief in something indefinite at any place at some time cannot be a criterion of truth it all amounts to this since ubi christus ebi ecclesia then christus is where we are every so-called heresy regarding as it does its own creed as the truth can just as easily find in the church history a series of illustrations of its own creed can use all presences arguments on its own behalf and can call its own creed the one truly christian creed and that's just what all heresies do and have always done the only definition of heresy the word Greek word spelled alpha followed by an apostrophe iota but with accent row epsilon sigma iota zeta meaning a part is this the name given by body of men to any opinion which rejects a part of the creed professed by that body the more frequent meaning more often ascribed to the word heresy is that of opinion which rejects the church doctrine founded and supported by the temporal authorities there is a remarkable and voluminous work very little known on part here she curtson and kedsa history 1729 by got freed armoured which deals precisely with the subject and points out all the unlawfulness the arbitrariness the senselessness and the cruelty of using the word heretic in the sense of reprobate this book is an attempt to write the history of christianity in the form of a history of heresy in the introduction the author propounds a series of questions one of those who make heretics two of those whom they made heretics three of heretical subjects themselves four of the method of mating heretics and five of the object and result of making heretics on each of these points he propounds 10 more questions the answers to which he gives later on from the works of well-known theologians but he leaves the reader to draw for himself the principal conclusion from the expositions in the whole book as examples of these questions in which the answers are to some extent included also I will quote the following under the fourth head of the manner in which heretics are made he says in one of the questions in the seventh does not all history show that the greatest makers of heretics and masters of that craft were just these wise men from whom the father hid his secrets that is the hypocrites the Pharisees and the lawyers men utterly godless and perverted question 20 to 21 and in the corrupt times of christianity were not these very men cast out denounced by the hypocrites and envious who were endowed by God with great gifts and who would in the days of pure christianity have been held in high honor and on the other hand would not the men who in the decline of christianity raised themselves above all and regarded themselves as the teachers of the purest christianity would not these very men in the times of the apostles and the disciples of christ have been regarded as the most shameless heretics and anti-christians he expounds among other things in these questions the theory that any verbal expression of faith such as was demanded by the church and the departure from which was reckoned as heresy could never fully cover the exact religious ideas of a believer and that therefore the demand for an expression of faith in certain words was ever productive of heresy and he says in question 21 and if heavenly things and thoughts present themselves to a man's mind as so great and so profound that he does not find corresponding words to express them ought one to call him a heretic because he cannot express his idea with perfect exactness and in question 33 and is not the fact that there was no heresy in the earliest days due to the fact that Christians did not judge one another by verbal expressions but by deed and by heart since they had perfect liberty to express their ideas without dread of being called heretics was it not the easiest and most ordinary ecclesiastical proceeding if the clergy wanted to get rid of or to ruin anyone for them to cast suspicion on the person's belief and to throw a cloak of heresy upon him and by this means to produce his condemnation and removal true though it may be that there were sins and errors among the so-called heretics it is no less true and evident he says father on from the innumerable examples quoted here i.e. in the history of the church and of heresy that there was not a single sincere and conscientious man of any importance whom the church men would not from envy or other causes have ruined thus almost 200 years ago the real meaning of heresy was understood and not withstanding that the same conception of it has gone on existing up to now and it cannot fail to exist so long as the conception of a church exists heresy is the obverse side of the church wherever there is a church there must be the conception of heresy a church is a body of men who assert that they are in possession of infallible truth heresy is the opinion of the men who do not admit the infallibility of the church's truth heresy makes its appearance in the church it is the effort to break through the petrified authority of the church all effort after a living comprehension of the doctrine has been made by heretics to tullian oregon augustin luther hus seven roller helchitsky and the rest were heretics it could not be otherwise the follower of christ whose service means an ever growing understanding of his teaching and a never closer fulfillment of it in progress toward perfection cannot just because he is a follower of christ claimed for himself or any other that he understands christ teaching fully and fulfills it still less can he claim this for any body of men to whatever degree of understanding and perfection the follower of christ may have attained he always feels the insufficiency of his understanding and fulfillment of it and is always striving towards a fuller understanding and fulfillment and therefore to assert of oneself or of any body of men that one is or they are in possession of perfect understanding and fulfillment of christ's word is to renounce the very spirit of christ's teaching strange as it may seem the churches as churches always have been and cannot but be institutions not only alien spirit to christ's teaching but even directly antagonistic to it with good reason voltaire calls the church landfam with good reason have all or most all so called sex of christians recognize the church as the scarlet woman foretold in the apocalypse with good reason is the history of the church the history of the greatest cruelties and horrors the churches as churches are not as many people suppose institutions which have christian principles for their basis even though they may have strayed a little away from the straight path the churches as churches as bodies which assert their own infallibility our institutions opposed to christianity there is not only nothing in common between the churches as such and christianity except the name but they represent two principles fundamentally opposed and antagonistic to one another one represents pride violence self assertion stagnation and death the other meekness penitence humility progress and life we cannot serve these two masters we have to choose between them the servants of the churches of all denominations especially of later times try to show themselves champions of progress in christianity they make concessions wish to correct the abuses that have slipped into the church and maintain that one cannot on account of these abuses deny the principle itself of a christian church which alone can bind all men together in unity and be a mediator between men and God but this is all a mistake not only have churches never bound men together in unity they've always been one of the principle causes of division between men of their hatred of one another of wars battles inquisitions massacres of st. Bartholomew and so on and the churches have never served as mediators between men and God such mediation is not wanted and was directly forbidden by Christ who has revealed his teaching directly and immediately to each man but the churches set up dead forms in the place of God and far from revealing God they obscure him from men's sight the churches which originated from misunderstanding of Christ's teaching and have maintained this misunderstanding by their immovability cannot but persecute and refuse to recognize all true understanding of Christ's words they try to conceal this but in vain every step forward longer path pointed out for us by Christ is a step toward their destruction to hear and to read the sermons and articles in which church writers of later times of all denominations speak of Christian truths and virtues to hear or read the skillful arguments that have been elaborated during centuries and exhortations and professions which sometimes seem like sincere professions one is ready to doubt whether the churches can be antagonistic to Christianity it cannot be one says that these people who can point to such man as Christ Sotom Fenelon Butler and others professing the Christian faith were antagonistic to Christianity one is tempted to say the churches may have strayed away from Christianity they may be an error but they cannot be hostile to it but we must look to the fruit to judge the tree as Christ taught us and if we see that their fruits were evil that the results of their activity were antagonistic to Christianity we cannot but admit that however good the men were the work of the church in which these men took part was not Christian the goodness and worth of these men who served the churches was the goodness and the worth of the men and not of the institution they served all the good men such as Francis of Assisi Francis of sales or Tihon Zadonsky Thomas a campus and others were good men in spite of their serving an institution hostile to Christianity and they would have been still better if they had not been under the influence of the error which they were serving but why should we speak of the past and judge from the past which may have been misrepresented but misunderstood by us the churches with their principles and their practice and not a thing of a past the churches are before us today and we can judge of them to some purpose by their practical activity their influence on men what is the practical work of the churches today what is their influence upon men what is done by the churches among us among the Catholics and the Protestants of all denominations what is their practical work and what are the results of their practical work the practice of our Russian so called Orthodox Church is plain to all it is an enormous fact which there is no possibility of hiding and about which there can be no disputing what constitutes the practical work of this Russian church this immense intensively active institution which consists of a regiment of half a million men and cost the people tens of millions of rubles the practical business of the church consists in instilling by every conceivable means into the mass of 100 millions of the Russian people those extinct relics of beliefs for which there is nowadays no kind of justification in which scarcely anyone now believes and often not even those whose duty it is to diffuse these false beliefs to instill into the people the formulas of Byzantine theology of the Trinity of the mother of God of sacraments of grace and so on extinct conceptions foreign to us and having no kind of meaning for men of our times forms only one part of the Russian Church another part of its practice consists in the maintenance of idol worship in the most literal meaning of the word in the veneration of holy relics and of icons the offering of sacrifices to them and the expectation of their answers to prayer I'm not going to speak of what is preached and what is written by the clergy of scientific or liberal tendencies in the theological journals I'm going to speak of what is actually done by the clergy through the wide expanse of the Russian land among a people of 100 millions what do they diligently assiduously everywhere alike without intermission teach the people what they demand from the people in virtue of their so-called Christian faith I will begin from the beginning with the birth of a child at the birth of a child they teach them that they must recite a prayer over the child and mother to purify them as though without this prayer the mother of a newborn child unclean to do this the priest holds the child in his arms before the images of the saints called by the people plainly gods and reads words of exercising power and this purifies the mother then it is suggested to parents and even exacted of them under fear of punishment for non-fulfillment that the child must be baptized that is be dipped by the priest three times into the water while certain words understood by no one are allowed and certain actions still less understood are performed various parts the body are up with oil the hair is cut while the sponsors blow and spit at an imaginary devil all this is necessary to purify the child and to make him a Christian then it is instilled into the parents that they ought to administer the sacrament the child that is give him in the guise of bread and wine a portion of Christ's body to eat as a result of which the child receives the grace of God within it and so on then it is suggested that the child as it grows up must be taught to pray to pray means to place himself directly before the wooden boards on which are painted the faces of Christ the mother of God and the saints to bow his head and his whole body and to touch his forehead his shoulders and his stomach with his right hand holding his fingers in a certain position and to utter some words of Slavonic the most usual of which has taught to all children are mother of God virgin rejoice the etc. then it is instilled into the child as it is brought up that at the site of any church or icon he must repeat the same action I cross himself then it is instilled into him that on holidays holidays other days on which Christ was born though no one knows when that was on which he was circumcised on which the mother of God died on which the cross was carried in procession on which icons have been set up on which a lunatic saw a vision and so on on holidays he must dress himself up in his best clothes and go to church and must buy candles and place them before the images of the saints then he must give offerings and prayers for the dead and little loaves to be cut up into three cornered pieces and must pray many times for the health and prosperity of the czar and the bishops and for himself and his own affairs and then kiss the cross and the hand of the priest besides these observances it's instilled into him that at least once a year he must confess to confess means to go to the church and to tell the priest his sins on the theory that this informing a stranger of his sins completely purifies him from them and after that he must eat with a little spoon a morsel of bread and wine which will purify him still more next it is instilled into him that if a man and woman want their physical union to be sanctified they must go to church put on metal crowns drink certain potions walk three times around a table to the sound of singing and that then the physical union of a man and woman becomes sacred and altogether different from all other such unions further it is instilled into him in his life that he must observe the following rules not to eat butter or milk on certain days and on certain other days to sing tedium's and requiem's for the dead on holidays to entertain the priest and give him money and several times in the year to bring the icons from the church and to carry them slung on his shoulders through the fields and houses it's instilled into him that on his deathbed a man must not fail to eat bread and wine with a spoon and that it will be still better if he has time to be rubbed with sacred oil this will guarantee his welfare in the future life after his death it is instilled into his relatives that it is a good thing for the salvation of the dead man to place a printed paper of prayers in his hand it is a good thing further to read aloud a certain book over the dead body and to pronounce the dead man's name in church at a certain time all this is regarded as faith obligatory on everyone but if anyone wants to take particular care of his soul then according to this faith he is instructed that the greatest security of the salvation of the soul in the world is attained by offering money to the churches and monasteries and engaging the holy men by this means to pray for him entering the monasteries to and kissing relics and miraculous icons a further means of salvation for the soul according to this faith icons and relics communicate a special sanctity power and grace even proximity to these objects touching them kissing them putting candles before them crawling under them while they're being carried along are all efficacious for salvation as well as tedium's repeated before these holy things so this and nothing else is the faith called orthodox that is the actual faith which under the guise of Christianity has been with all the forces of the church and is now with his special zeal instilled into the people and let no one say that the orthodox teachers place the essential part of their teaching in something else and that all these are only ancient forms which it is not thought necessary to do away with that is false this and nothing but this is the faith taught through the whole of Russia by the whole of the Russian clergy and of late years with a special zeal there is nothing else taught something different maybe talked of and written of in the capitals but among the hundred millions of people this is what is done this is what is taught nothing more churchmen may talk of something else but this is what they teach by every means in their power all this and the worship of relics and of icons has been introduced into the works of theology and into the catechisms thus they teach it to the people in theory and in practice using every resource of authority solemnity pump and violence to impress them they compel the people by over oring them to believe in this and jealously guard this faith from any attempt to free the people from these barbarous superstitions as I said when I published my book Christ's teaching and his very words about non-resistance to evil were for many years a subject for ridicule and low jesting in my eyes and churchmen far from opposing it even encouraged this scoffing at sacred things but try the experiment of saying at this respectful word about a hideous idol which is carried sacrilegiously about Moscow by drunken men under the name of the icon of the iversky virgin and you will raise a groan of indignation from the same churchmen all that they preach is an external observance of the rights of idolatry and let it not be said that the one does not hinder the other that these ought to have done and not to leave the other undone all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe that observe and do but do not key after their works for they say and do not this was spoken of the Pharisees who fulfilled all the external observances prescribed by the law and therefore the words whatsoever they bid you observe that observe and do refer to works of mercy and goodness and the words do not ye after their works for they say and do not refer to their observance of ceremonies and their neglect of good works and of exactly the opposite meaning to that which the churchman tried to give the passage interpreting it as an injunction to observe ceremonies external observances and the service of truth and goodness are for the most part difficult to combine the one excludes the other so it was with the Pharisees so it is now with the church Christians if a man can be saved by the redemption by sacraments and by prayer then he does not need good works the sermon on the mount or the creed one cannot believe in both and churchmen have chosen the latter the creed is taught and is read as a prayer in the churches but the sermon on the mount is excluded even from the gospel passages read in the churches so that the congregation never hears it in church except on those days when the whole of the gospel is read indeed it could not be otherwise people who believe in a wicked and senseless God who has cursed the human race and devoted his own son to sacrifice and a part of mankind to eternal torment cannot believe in the God of love the man who believes in a God in a Christ coming again in glory to judge and to punish the quick and the dead cannot believe in the Christ who made us turn the left cheek judge not forgive those that wrong us and love our enemies the man who believes in the inspiration of the Old Testament the sacred character of David who commanded on his deathbed the murder of an old man who had cursed him and whom he could not kill himself because he was bound by an oath to him and the similar atrocities of which the Old Testament is full cannot believe in the holy love of Christ the man who believes in the church's doctrine of the compatibility of warfare and capital punishment with Christianity cannot believe in the brotherhood of all men and what is most important of all the man who believes in salvation through faith in the redemption or the sacraments cannot devote all his powers to realizing Christ's moral teaching in his life the man who has been instructed by the church in the profane doctrine that a man cannot be saved by his own powers but that there is another means of salvation well infallibly rely on this means and not on his own powers which they assure him it is sinful to trust in the teaching of every church with its redemption sacraments excludes the teaching of Christ most of all the teaching of the Orthodox church with its idolatrous observances but the people have always believed their own accord as they believe now will be said in answer to this the whole history of the Russian people proves it one cannot deprive the people of their traditions this statement to is misleading the people did certainly at one time believe in something like what the church believes in now though it was far from being the same thing in spite of their superstitious regard for icons house spirits relics and festivals with reeds of birch leaves there has still always been in the people a profound moral and living understanding of Christianity which there has never been in the church as a whole and which is only met with in its best representatives but the people not withstanding all the prejudices instilled them by the government and the church have in their best representatives long outgrown that crude stage of understanding a fact which is proved by the spring up everywhere of the rationalist sects with which Russia is swarming today and on which church men are now carrying on an ineffectual warfare the people are advancing to a consciousness of the moral living side of Christianity and then the church comes forward not borrowing from the people but zealously instilling into them the petrified formalities of an extinct paganism and driving to thrust them back again into darkness from which they are emerging with such effort we teach the people nothing new nothing but what they believe only in a more perfect form so the churchman this is just what the man did who tied up the full grown chicken and thrust it back into the shell it had come out of I've often been irritated though it would be comic if the consequences were not so awful by observing how men shut one another in a delusion and cannot get out of this magic circle the first question the first doubt of a Russian who is beginning to think is a question about the icons and still more the miraculous relics is it true that they are genuine and that miracles are work through them hundreds of thousands of men put this question to themselves and their principal difficulty in answering it is the fact that bishops metropolitan's and all men in positions of authority kissed the relics and wonder working icons ask the bishops and men in positions of authority why they do so and they will say they do it for the sake of the people while the people kissed them because the bishops and men in the authority do so in spite of all the external varnish of modernity learning and spirituality which the members of the church begin nowadays to assume in their works their articles their theological journals and their sermons the practical work of the Russian church consists of nothing more than keeping the people in their present condition of course and savage idolatry and worse still strengthening and diffusing superstition and religious ignorance and suppressing that living understanding of Christianity which exists in the people side by side with idolatry I remember once being present in the monks bookshop of the opchi hermitage while an old peasant was choosing books for his grandson who could read a monk pressed him on accounts of relics holidays miraculous icons a sultry etcetera I asked the old man has he the gospel no give him the gospel in Russian I said to the monk that will not do for him answer the monk there you have an epitome of the work of our church but this is only in barbarous Russia the European and American reader will observe and such an observation is just but only so far as it refers to the government which aids the church in its task of steltification and corruption in Russia it is true that there is no way in Europe a government so despotic and so closely allied with the ruling church and therefore the share of the temporal power in the corruption of the people is greatest in Russia but it is untrue that the Russian church in its influence on the people is in any respect different from any other church the churches are everywhere the same and if the Catholic the Anglican or the Lutheran has not at hand a government as compliant as the Russian it is not due to any in disposition to profit by such a government the church as a church whatever it may be Catholic Anglican Lutheran Presbyterian every church in so far as it is a church cannot but strive the same object as the Russian church that object is to conceal the real meaning of Christ's teaching and to replace it by their own which lays no obligation on them excludes the possibility of understanding the true teaching of Christ and what is the chief consideration justifies the existence of priests supported at the people's expense what else has Catholicism done what else is it doing in its prohibition of reading the gospel and in its demand for unreasoning submission to church authorities and to an infallible Pope is the religion of Catholicism any other than that of the Russian church there is the same external ritual the same relics miracles and wonder working images of Notre Dame and the same processions the same loftily vague discussions of Christianity in books and sermons and when it comes to practice the same supporting of the present idolatry and is not the same thing done in Anglicanism Lutheranism and in every denomination of Protestantism which has been formed into a church there is the same duty laid on their congregations to believe in the dogmas expressed in the fourth century which have lost all meaning for men of our times and the same duty of idolatrous worship if not of relics and icons then of the Sabbath day and the letter of the Bible there is always the same activity directed to concealing the real duties of Christianity and to putting in their place an external respectability and Kant as it is so well described by the English who are peculiarly oppressed by it in Protestantism this tendency is especially remarkable because it has not the excuse of antiquity and does not exactly the same thing show itself even in contemporary revivalism the revived Calvinism and evangelicalism to which the salvation army owes its origin uniform is the attitude of all the churches to the teaching of Christ whose name they assume for their own advantage the inconsistency of all church forms of religion with the teachings of Christ is of course the reason why special efforts are necessary to conceal this inconsistency from people truly the need only imagine ourselves in the position of any grown-up man not necessarily educated even the simplest man of the present day who has picked up the ideas that are everywhere in the air nowadays of geology physics chemistry cosmography or history when he for the first time consciously compares them with the articles of belief instilled into him in childhood and maintained by the churches that God created the world in six days and light before the sun that Noah shut up all the animals in his arc and so on that Jesus is also God the son who created all before time was that this God came down upon earth to atone for Adam's sin that he rose again ascended into heaven and sit upon the right hand of the father and will come in the clouds to judge the world and so on all these propositions elaborated by men of the fourth century had a certain meaning for men of that time but for men of today they have no meaning whatever men of the present day can repeat these words with their lips but believe them they cannot for such sentences as that God lives in heaven the heavens opened and a voice from somewhere said something that Christ rose again and ascended somewhere in heaven and again will come from somewhere on the clouds and so on have no meaning for us a man who regarded the heavens as a solid finite vault could believe or disbelieve that God created the heavens that the heavens opened that Christ ascended into heaven but for us all these phrases made no sense whatsoever men of the present can only believe as indeed they do that they ought to believe in this but believe it they cannot because it has no meaning for them even if all these phrases ought to be interpreted in a figurative sense and our allegories we know that in the first place all churchmen are not agreed about it but on the contrary the majority stick to understanding the holy scripture in its literal sense and secondly that these allegorical interpretations are very varied and are not supported by any evidence but even if a man wants to force himself to believe in the doctrines of the church just as they are taught to him the universal diffusion of education and of the gospel and of communication between people of different forms of religion presents a still more insurmountable obstacle to his doing so a man of the present day need only buy a gospel for three co-pecs and read through the plain words admitting of no misinterpretation that Christ said to the Samaritan woman that the Father seeketh not worshipers at Jerusalem nor in this mountain nor in that but worshipers in spirit and in truth or the saying that the Christian must not pray like the heathen nor for show but secretly that is in his closet or that Christ's follower must call no man master or father he need only read these words to be thoroughly convinced that the church pastors who call themselves teachers in opposition to Christ's precept and dispute among themselves constitute no kind of authority and that what the churchman teachers is not Christianity less even than that is necessary even if a man nowadays did continue to believe in miracles and did not read the gospel mere association with people of different forms of religion and faith which happens so easily in these days compels him to doubt the truth of his own faith it was all very well when a man did not see men of any other form of religion than his own he believed that his form of religion was the one true one but a thinking man has only to come into contact as constantly happens these days with people equally good and bad of different denominations who condemn each other's beliefs to doubt of the truth of the belief he professes himself in these days only a man who is absolutely ignorant or absolutely indifferent to the vital questions with which religion deals can remain in the faith of the church what deceptions and what strenuous efforts the churches must employ to continue in spite of all these tendencies subversive of the faith to build churches to perform masses to preach to teach to convert and most of all to receive for it all immense emoluments as do all the priests pastors, incumbents superintendents abbots archdeacons bishops and archbishops they need special supernatural efforts and the churches do with ever increasing intensity and zeal make such efforts with us in Russia besides other means they employ simple, brute force as there the temporal power is willing to obey the church men who refuse an external assent to the faith and say so openly are either directly punished or deprived of their rights men who strictly keep the external forms of religion are awarded and given privileges that is how the orthodox clergy proceed but indeed all churches without exception avail themselves of every means for the purpose one of the most important of which is what is now called hypnotism every art from architecture to poetry is brought into requisition to work its effect on men's souls and to reduce them to a state of stupefaction and this effect is constantly produced this use of hypnotizing influence on men to bring them to a state of stupefaction is especially apparent in the proceedings of the Salvation Army who employ new practices to which we are unaccustomed trumpets, drums, songs, flags, costumes, marching, dancing, tears and dramatic performances but this only displeases us because these are new practices were not the old practices and churches essentially the same with their special lighting gold, splendor, candles, choirs, organ bells, vestments, intoning, etc. but however powerful this hypnotic influence may be it is not the chief nor the most pernicious activity of the church the chief and most pernicious work of the church is that which is directed to the deception of children these very children of whom Christ said woe to him that offended one of these little ones from the very first awakening of the consciousness of the child they begin to deceive him to instill into him with the utmost solemnity what they do not themselves believe in and they continue to instill it into him till the deception has by habit grown into the child's nature they studiously deceive the child on the most important subject in life and when the deception has grown into his life that it would be difficult to out-root it then they reveal to him the whole world of science and reality which cannot by any means be reconciled with the beliefs that have been instilled into him leaving it to him to find his way as best he can out of these contradictions if one set oneself the task of trying to confuse a man so that he could not think clearly nor free himself from the perplexity of two opposing theories of life which had been instilled into him from childhood one could not invent any means more effectual than the treatment of every young man educated in our so-called Christian society it is terrible to think what the church is do to men but if one imagines oneself in the position of the men who constitute the church we see they could not act differently the churches are placed in a dilemma the sermon on the mount or the nicene creed the one excludes the other if a man sincerely believes in the sermon on the mount the nicene creed must inevitably lose all meaning and significance for him and the church and its representatives together with it if a man believes in the nicene creed that is in the church that is in those who call themselves its representatives the sermon on the mount becomes superfluous for him and therefore the churches cannot but make every possible effort to obscure the meaning of the sermon on the mount and to attract men to themselves it's only due to the intense zeal of the churches in this direction that the influence of the churches has lasted hitherto let the church stop its work of hypnotizing the masses and deceiving children even for the briefest interval of time and men would begin to understand Christ's teaching but this understanding will be the end of the churches and all their influence and therefore the churches will not for an instant relax their zeal in the business of hypnotizing grown-up people and deceiving children this then is the work of the churches to instill a false interpretation of Christ's teaching into men and to prevent a true interpretation of it for the majority of so-called believers end of chapter 3 recording by Paul Newman Sheffield, England sunshinepaul.blogspot.com