The Contradictions of The Church and The Doctrine of Christ - Leo Tolstoy скачать в хорошем качестве

The Contradictions of The Church and The Doctrine of Christ - Leo Tolstoy

When I began to read Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You, it was immediately obvious that it was a sequel to this volume, What I Believe. Wanting to start at the beginning, I looked for this volume, only to find that, while the sequel was readily available, What I Believe was downright hard to find. This transcription is my attempt to correct that deficiency. Literary purists will be unhappy that I have tried to bring Popoff’s translation up to date with the changes in grammar and usage that have been made in the last 120 years. (I am unhappy with Popoff’s use of quotation marks and semicolons, but I have left most of them unchanged.) They will be happier with Kessinger Publishing’s reprint of the original. I wanted to make this material understandable to the widest possible audience, and I felt that 19th century style, King James quotations, and outright mistakes did not serve that end. I made every attempt to remain faithful to Tolstoy’s original intention. If I have failed in that attempt, I am a reasonable fellow. Point out my errors and I will fix them. Do I agree with everything that Tolstoy wrote? No. I think he had a romantic and unrealistic notion of peasant life. He did not account for psychopathic behavior. That is not to say that such behavior invalidates his conclusions, but it is an omission that some will certainly use against him. He has, by today’s Protestant standards, a somewhat skewed view of orthodox theology, no doubt because, at the time he wrote What I Believe, he only knew the teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church of 120 years ago. It would appear that Tolstoy did not experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which leads him to think only of ‘reason’ when writing of ‘the light that is within us,’ and does not believe in the devil. Still, much of what he had to say is as true today as the day he wrote it – and is even true of today’s Protestant churches. This transcription is under no copyright protection. It is my gift to you. You may freely copy, print, and transmit it, but please do not change or sell it.