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13 - A Confession - Leo Tolstory · Philosophy and Faith

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirteen of a confession by Leo Tolstoy. I turn
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  Speaker 1: from the life of our circle, acknowledging that ours is
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  Speaker 1: not life but a simulation of life, that the conditions
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  Speaker 1: of superfluidity in which we live deprive us of the
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  Speaker 1: possibility of understanding life, and that in order to understand life,
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  Speaker 1: I must understand not an exceptional life such as ours,
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  Speaker 1: who are parasites of life, but the life of simple
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  Speaker 1: laboring folk, those who make it life, and the meaning
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  Speaker 1: which they attribute to it. The simplest laboring people around
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  Speaker 1: me were the Russian people, and I turned to them
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  Speaker 1: into the meaning of life which they gave. That meaning,
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  Speaker 1: if one could put it into words, was as follows.
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  Speaker 1: Every man is come to the world by the will
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  Speaker 1: of God, and God has so made men that man
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  Speaker 1: could destroy his soul or save it. The aim of
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  Speaker 1: man in life is to save his soul. And to
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  Speaker 1: save his soul he must live godly, and to live
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  Speaker 1: godly he must renounce all pleasures of life, must labor,
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  Speaker 1: humble himself, suffer, and be merciful. That meaning people obtained
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  Speaker 1: from the whole teaching of faith transmitted to them by
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  Speaker 1: their pastors and by the traditions that live among the people.
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  Speaker 1: This meaning was clear to me and near to my heart.
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  Speaker 1: But together with this meaning of the popular faith of
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  Speaker 1: our non sectarian folk among whom I lived, much was
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  Speaker 1: inseparably bound up that revolted me and seemed to me inexplicable. Sacraments,
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  Speaker 1: church services, fast in the adoration of relics and icons.
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  Speaker 1: The people cannot separate one from the other, nor could I.
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  Speaker 1: And strange as much of what entered into the faith
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  Speaker 1: of these people was to me, I accepted everything, and
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  Speaker 1: attended the services, knelt morning and evening in prayer, fasted
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  Speaker 1: and prepared to receive the eucharists. And at first my
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  Speaker 1: reason did not resist anything. The very things that had
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  Speaker 1: formerly seemed to me impossible did not now evoke in
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  Speaker 1: me any opposition. My relations to faith before and after
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  Speaker 1: were quite different. Formerly, life itself seemed to me full
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  Speaker 1: of meaning, and faith presented itself as the arbitrary assertion
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  Speaker 1: of propositions, to me, quite unnecessary, unreasonable, and disconnected from life.
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  Speaker 1: I then asked myself what meaning those propositions had, and
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  Speaker 1: convinced that they had none, I rejected them. Now, on
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  Speaker 1: the contrary, I knew firmly that my life otherwise has
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  Speaker 1: and can have no meaning, And articles of faith were
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  Speaker 1: far from presenting themselves to me as unnecessary. On the contrary,
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  Speaker 1: I had been led by indubitable experience to the conviction
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  Speaker 1: that only these propositions presented by faith give life a meaning.
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  Speaker 1: Formerly I looked on them as some quite unnecessary gibberish.
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  Speaker 1: But now if I did not understand them, I yet
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  Speaker 1: knew that they had a meaning, and I said to
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  Speaker 1: myself that I must learn to understand them. I argued
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  Speaker 1: as follows, telling myself that the knowledge of faith flows,
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  Speaker 1: like all humanity with its reason, from a mysterious source
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  Speaker 1: that sources God, the origin both of the human body
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  Speaker 1: and the human reason. As my body has descended to
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  Speaker 1: me from God, so also has my reason and my
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  Speaker 1: understanding of life. And consequently, the various stages of development
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  Speaker 1: of that understanding of life cannot be false. All that
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  Speaker 1: people sincerely believe and must be true. It may be
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  Speaker 1: differently expressed, but it cannot be a lie. And therefore,
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  Speaker 1: if it presents itself to me as a lie, that
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  Speaker 1: only means that I have not understood it. Furthermore, I
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  Speaker 1: said to myself, the essence of every faith consists in
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  Speaker 1: its giving life a meaning which death does not destroy.
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  Speaker 1: Naturally for a faith to be able to reply to
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  Speaker 1: the questions of a king dying in luxury, or an
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  Speaker 1: old slave tormented by overwork, or of an unreasonable child,
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  Speaker 1: of a wise old man, or a half witted old woman,
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  Speaker 1: of a young and happy of a youth tormented by passions,
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  Speaker 1: of all people in the most varied conditions of life
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  Speaker 1: and education. If there is one reply to the one
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  Speaker 1: eternal question of life, why do I live? In? What
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  Speaker 1: will result of my life? The reply, though one in
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  Speaker 1: its essence, must be endlessly varied in its presentation, And
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  Speaker 1: the more it is one, the more true and profound
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  Speaker 1: it is, the more strange and deformed must it naturally
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  Speaker 1: appear in its attempted expression comfortably to the education and
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  Speaker 1: position of each person. But this argument, justifying in my
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  Speaker 1: eyes the queerness of much on the ritual side of religion,
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  Speaker 1: did not suffice to allow me, in the one great
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  Speaker 1: affair of life religion, to do things in which seemed
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  Speaker 1: to me questionable. With all my soul, I wished to
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  Speaker 1: be in a position to mingle with the people, fulfilling
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  Speaker 1: the ritual side of their religion, but I could not
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  Speaker 1: do it. I felt that I should lie to myself
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  Speaker 1: and mock all which was sacred to me, were I
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  Speaker 1: to do so. At this point, however, our new Russian
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  Speaker 1: theological writers came to my rescue. According to the explanation,
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  Speaker 1: these theologians gave the fundamental dogma of our faith is
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  Speaker 1: the infallibility of the Church. From the admission of that
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  Speaker 1: dogma follows inevitably the truth of all that is professed
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  Speaker 1: by the Church. The Church, as an assembly of true believers,
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  Speaker 1: united by love and therefore possessed of true knowledge, became
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  Speaker 1: the basis of my faith. I told myself that divine
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  Speaker 1: truth cannot be accessible to a separate individual. It is
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  Speaker 1: revealed only to the whole assembly of people united by love.
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  Speaker 1: To attain truth, one must not be separate, and in
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  Speaker 1: order to not separate one's self, one must love and
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  Speaker 1: must endure things one may not agree with. Truth reveals
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  Speaker 1: itself to love, and if you do not submit to
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  Speaker 1: the rights of the Church, you transgress against love, and
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  Speaker 1: by transgressing against love, you deprive yourself of the possibility
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  Speaker 1: of recognizing the truth. I did not then see the
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  Speaker 1: selfistry contained in this argument I did not see that
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  Speaker 1: union and love may give the greatest love, but certainly
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  Speaker 1: cannot give us divine truth expressed in the definite words
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  Speaker 1: of the Nicene Creed. I also do not perceive that
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  Speaker 1: love cannot make a certain expression of truth in obligatory
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  Speaker 1: condition of union. I did not then see these mistakes
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  Speaker 1: in the argument, and thanks to it, was able to
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  Speaker 1: accept and perform all the rights of the Orthodox Church
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  Speaker 1: without understanding most of them. I then tried with all
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  Speaker 1: the strength of my soul to avoid all arguments and contradictions,
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  Speaker 1: and tried to explain as reasonably as possible the church
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  Speaker 1: statements I encountered. While fulfilling the rights of the Church,
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  Speaker 1: I humbled my reason and submitted to the traditions possessed
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  Speaker 1: by all humanity. I united myself with my forefathers, the father, mother,
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  Speaker 1: and grandparents that I loved. They and all my predecessors
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  Speaker 1: believed and lived, and they produced me. I united myself
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  Speaker 1: also with the mission of the common people, whom I respected. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: those actions had nothing bad in themselves, bad I considered
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  Speaker 1: the indulgence of one's desires. When rising early for church services,
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  Speaker 1: I knew I was doing well, if only because I
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  Speaker 1: was sacrificing my bodily ease, to humble my mental pride,
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  Speaker 1: for the sake of union with my ancestors and contemporaries,
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  Speaker 1: and for the sake of finding the meaning of life.
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  Speaker 1: It was the same with my preparations to receive communion,
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  Speaker 1: and with the daily reading of prayers with genuflections, and
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  Speaker 1: also with the observance of all the fasts. However insignificant
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  Speaker 1: these sacrifices might be, I made them not for the
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  Speaker 1: sake of something good. I fasted, prepared for communion, and
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  Speaker 1: observed the fixed hours of prayers at home and in church.
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  Speaker 1: During church service, I attended to every word and gave
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  Speaker 1: them a meaning whenever I could. In the mass, the
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  Speaker 1: most import certain words for me were let us love
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  Speaker 1: one another in conformity, the furthest words in unity, we
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  Speaker 1: believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
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  Speaker 1: I passed by because I could not understand them. End
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  Speaker 1: of Chapter thirteen.