Leo Tolstoy

“ Pages 322, 323: ‘Let us suppose that the law is entirely cast aside,’ says John Chrysostom further, ‘that all fear of promised punishment is done away with, that the wicked are left to live according to their inclinations, without fear of punishment – adulterers, murderers, thieves, and perjurers. Wouldn’t all be overthrown; wouldn’t houses, marketplaces, cities, lands, seas, and the whole universe be full of iniquity? ”

“ Christ rejects the Mosaic Law, and gives His own in its stead. For him who believes in Christ there is no contradiction. He pays no heed to the Mosaic Law, believes in Christ’s doctrine, and fulfills it. Neither is there any contradiction for him who believes in the Mosaic Law. The Hebrews do not consider the words of Christ valid, and they believe in the Mosaic Law. There is a contradiction only for those who, while choosing to live according to the Mosaic Law, try to persuade themselves and others that they believe in the doctrine of the Christ ”

“ Not only the relations in which man stands to God, but the sacrifices, feast days, fasts, the relations between men – public, civil, and family relations – all the details of private life, circumcision, ablution of themselves and their cups, their clothes, all – even in the most trifling details – were encompassed by rules, and these were acknowledged as the commandments of God, the law of God. ”

“ Cruelty does not lie in leaving the wicked free to act as they please, but in letting the innocent man suffer without defending him. If a man were to collect a crowd of miscreants around him, and having furnished them with weapons, were to send them forth into the town to kill all those they met in the streets, could anything be more barbarous? ”

“ He takes from the old law, considered by the people as divine, what is truly the law of God. He takes the basic principles, setting all the rest aside, and He adds to it His own revelation of the eternal law. Though all need not be cast aside, a law that is considered obligatory in all its minutest details must inevitably be violated. ”

“ The majority of expounders retain the apocryphal sense, which the text rejects.
In order to be convinced that Christ speaks in this verse only of the eternal law, it will suffice to fully understand the word that has given rise to these false interpretations. In Russian, it is ‘законъ’ (law) ; in Greek νομος; in Hebrew, ‘tora.’ This word has two principal meanings in the Russian, Greek, and Hebrew languages: the one, the unexpressed, unwritten law; the other, the written expression of what certain men call the law. Indeed, the difference exists in all languages. ”

“ Moreover we find, in the gospel according to St. Luke, that Christ uses the same words in a manner that leaves no doubt as to their true meaning (Luke 16:15) . Christ says to the Pharisees, who thought to justify themselves by the written law, ‘You are those who justify themselves before men; but God knows your hearts, for that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John. ”

“ Since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presses into it.’ And immediately after this, in the 17th verse, we read, ‘And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.’ The words ‘the law and the prophets, until John,’ annul the written law. ”

“ The obvious meaning of the text is that he who seeks for what is good, takes not only what is new, but what is old too, and that its being old is not a sufficient reason for throwing it aside. Christ means, by this saying, that He does not deny what is eternal in the ancient law. But when questioned concerning the law or its forms, He says, ‘We do not pour new wine into old bottles.’ Christ could not confirm the whole law, neither could He completely deny the law and the prophets ”

“ For if even the existence of laws, fear and threats of punishment, can hardly keep the evil intentioned with bounds, what would there then be to restrain men from evil deeds, if all obstacles were removed? ”

“ Thus likewise the hot-tempered, who are ready to put out their neighbors’ eyes, are threatened with punishment for the sole purpose of making their fears of punishment restrain them from injuring their fellow-creatures. ”

“ Moreover, not only is the preacher of the new doctrine unable to avoid the two-fold use of the word, but it often happens that he does not even endeavor to do so, and purposely unites both ideas, in order to point out that the law confessed by those he tries to convert, though defective as a whole, is not devoid of some divine truths. ”

“ And if another were to bind these armed men and imprison them, releasing the victims these miscreants had threatened with death, could anything be more humane?’
But John Chrysostom does not tell us by what the other is to be guided in his definition of the wicked. May he not himself be a wicked man, and imprison the good?
‘Now apply this example to the law. He who gave the commandment, “an eye for an eye” has bound the minds of the wicked in chains of fear, and may be compared to the man who bound the miscreants ”

“ According to the commentaries of the Church, He taught men that He was the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God the Father, and that He had come down from heaven to redeem mankind from the sin of Adam. ”

“ Take, for instance, the Russians, the English, the Chinese, the Hindus, or even any wild insular tribe, and you will be sure to find that they all have their own rules of life, their own laws; and that no teacher could introduce new laws of life without destroying the former ones ”