Lev Nikolayevich 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? ”

“ But whoever has read the gospel knows that Christ says nothing of this, or, at least, alludes to it in very ambiguous terms; the passages in which Christ speaks of himself as being the Second Person of the Trinity, and of his redeeming mankind, are the shortest and least perspicuous in the gospels. In what, then, does the rest of Christ’s teaching consist? It is impossible to deny, what all Christians have always acknowledged, that the main point in Christ’s teaching consists in his rules of life – how men are to live together. ”

“ For him who believes Christ there is no contradiction. He pays no heed to the Mosaic Law, believes in Christ’s teaching, 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 teaching of the Christ ”

“ No effort is made to solve the only question that is of essential importance to every believer: how these two contradictory laws, referring to life, can be united into one. The inconsistency of the text, which says that Christ does not destroy the law, with the one in which we read, ‘It has been said...but I say to you,’ (indeed the contradiction between the whole spirit of the Mosaic Law and the teaching of Christ) remains in all its force. ”

“ Cruelty lies not only 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? ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ Moreover, not only is the preacher of the new teaching 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, on the contrary, if another were to bind these armed men and imprison them, releasing the victims who 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let everyone who is interested in this question examine for himself the commentaries on this passage given to us by the Church, beginning from John Chrysostom to the present time. It is only after having read these that he will see clearly not only that no explanation of the contradiction is given, but also that a contradiction has been skillfully inserted where there was none before. The impossible attempts at uniting what cannot be united are clear proof that this was not an involuntary mental error, but was effected with some definite purpose in view ”

“ 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 ”

“ Christ does so in addressing the Hebrews, who have the same word ‘tora’ for both laws. Referring to the Mosaic Law, and more often still to the prophets, especially the prophet Isaiah, whom he often quotes, Christ acknowledges that in the Hebrew law, and in the prophets, there are eternal truths, divine truths, which coincide with the eternal law ”

“ How do you read it? ’ We may find the eternal truth in the law, if we can read. And he points out more than once that the precept contained in their law of love to God and their neighbor was a precept of the eternal law. After the parables by which he explains his teaching to his disciples, Christ says, as if in reference to all that had preceded, ‘Therefore every scribe ( i.e. every man who can read and has been taught the truth) is like a householder who brings forth out of his treasure (indiscriminately) things old and new.’ (Matthew 13:52)
It is thus that St. ”