Tolstoy, the wikipedia relates, was a Christian anarchist. "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere."-Tolstoy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy
Tolstoy was a veteran of war and became a skeptic generally about mankind and social organizations. He did seem to believe in God however, and in the life of Jesus Christ. Christology has found some controversy historically in the nature of the divinity of Jesus Christ. I have a positive few of that so much so that The Lord was the Son of God-in other words a specific incarnation of God in temporal form and one with eternal life. Obviously there is a substantial amount of range of latitude one can take with interpretation of that kind of comment.
Tolstoy was something of a natural mystic. In later life he renounced wealth and affirmed asceticism. He greatly respected Jesus and believed that people commonly misunderstand his meaning. The Lord said in Matthew 19:24 ""It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.""
I listened to Tolstoy's commentary on religion available free at Thought Audio. He was a skeptic about the formal church structure in Russia and thought it somewhat syncretistic and disingenuous. In fact he believed that the regular liturgy tended to keep people ignorant. In Russia of his day the peasants were still discouraged to read the Bible for-themselves.
Jesus of course said that the kingdom of God is within you and one would expect nothing less of a transcending God concerned with spirit. Tolstoy was theistic yet he evidently enjoyed reading Schopenhauer so far as he encountered the mystical sort of influence perhaps first such as Schopenhauer derived himself from the East, Zoroastrianism and the influence of the idea of Brahma.
Unlike the Palagians that did not believe in the dual nature of Christ, the left position might be construed as tending toward a Spinozan or Shirley McClain sort of God is within you paradigm with the subject persona of the individual being a kind of illusion.
The differences East and West and not so great historically between the two points of view. Even within the Orthodox church tradition their were many that experienced heyschasm or mystical union with God before that was banned by the church hierarchy. Plotinus described the One in his 54 tractates named the Enneads, and he is perhaps mistakenly regarded as a pagan by those unaware of the deeper idea of a transcendent God surpassing the Higgs field of one's time.
There are reasons historically why orthodox and even state churches opposed the influence of mysticism and wanted pure naive-realism as the foundation for church worship of God. Part of that was historical too with state religions sometimes worshiping the fearless leader of politics as a god (such as Nero). Others had vested interests in exclusive control of access to heaven and hell on Earth and beyond the 4 dimensions of space-time if they thought about the beyond the garden of Eden downloaded paradigm.
Anyway, so much for Tolstoy for now. Dostoyevsky is of interest too. What about Alyosha? Wasn't he a better soul than his brother Ivan, and more humble about life besides?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy
Tolstoy was a veteran of war and became a skeptic generally about mankind and social organizations. He did seem to believe in God however, and in the life of Jesus Christ. Christology has found some controversy historically in the nature of the divinity of Jesus Christ. I have a positive few of that so much so that The Lord was the Son of God-in other words a specific incarnation of God in temporal form and one with eternal life. Obviously there is a substantial amount of range of latitude one can take with interpretation of that kind of comment.
Tolstoy was something of a natural mystic. In later life he renounced wealth and affirmed asceticism. He greatly respected Jesus and believed that people commonly misunderstand his meaning. The Lord said in Matthew 19:24 ""It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.""
I listened to Tolstoy's commentary on religion available free at Thought Audio. He was a skeptic about the formal church structure in Russia and thought it somewhat syncretistic and disingenuous. In fact he believed that the regular liturgy tended to keep people ignorant. In Russia of his day the peasants were still discouraged to read the Bible for-themselves.
Jesus of course said that the kingdom of God is within you and one would expect nothing less of a transcending God concerned with spirit. Tolstoy was theistic yet he evidently enjoyed reading Schopenhauer so far as he encountered the mystical sort of influence perhaps first such as Schopenhauer derived himself from the East, Zoroastrianism and the influence of the idea of Brahma.
Unlike the Palagians that did not believe in the dual nature of Christ, the left position might be construed as tending toward a Spinozan or Shirley McClain sort of God is within you paradigm with the subject persona of the individual being a kind of illusion.
The differences East and West and not so great historically between the two points of view. Even within the Orthodox church tradition their were many that experienced heyschasm or mystical union with God before that was banned by the church hierarchy. Plotinus described the One in his 54 tractates named the Enneads, and he is perhaps mistakenly regarded as a pagan by those unaware of the deeper idea of a transcendent God surpassing the Higgs field of one's time.
There are reasons historically why orthodox and even state churches opposed the influence of mysticism and wanted pure naive-realism as the foundation for church worship of God. Part of that was historical too with state religions sometimes worshiping the fearless leader of politics as a god (such as Nero). Others had vested interests in exclusive control of access to heaven and hell on Earth and beyond the 4 dimensions of space-time if they thought about the beyond the garden of Eden downloaded paradigm.
Anyway, so much for Tolstoy for now. Dostoyevsky is of interest too. What about Alyosha? Wasn't he a better soul than his brother Ivan, and more humble about life besides?
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