Leo Tolstoy

Life

Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, at Yasnaya Polyana, Russia, into an aristocratic family holding the title of count. He left the law program at Kazan University without completing his degree, and in 1851 he served as a cadet in the Caucasus. After his marriage in 1862, he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which earned him worldwide renown. In the late 1870s, however, he passed through a profound spiritual crisis marked by a fear of death and doubts about the meaning of life. Thereafter he wrote chiefly on religion and ethics rather than fiction, and by 1885 he had come to reject private property. In 1910 he left home and wandered, dying at a railway station on November 20 of that year.

Thought and Writings

Tolstoy understood Christian doctrine as a teaching of nonresistance, that is, of not opposing evil with violence. He held that the institutional church contradicted this teaching, and he also rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. His best-known religious work is The Kingdom of God Is Within You. Although he completed it in 1893, Russian censors banned its publication; it circulated in manuscript and was translated and published abroad. The title is taken from Luke 17:21. In the book he argued that the church must choose between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed, since the two are mutually exclusive. His thought, which rejected both state power and ecclesiastical institutions, is commonly called "Christian anarchism." The book is known to have strongly influenced Gandhi, who corresponded with Tolstoy about nonviolence.

Excommunication by the Russian Orthodox Church

His criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church in Resurrection, published in 1899, prompted his excommunication in 1901. At its session of February 20–22, 1901, the Holy Synod (the supreme administrative body then governing the Orthodox Church) issued a decree excommunicating Tolstoy. The decree formally declared that Tolstoy had no connection with the Orthodox Church. When news of the excommunication spread, it provoked public outrage, and protests followed in many places. In 2010, the centenary of his death, the church still declined to reverse its decision. Tikhon Shevkunov, then executive secretary of the Council of Bishops, stated that Tolstoy had brought the excommunication upon himself and that the Synod's 1901 decision had merely confirmed what had already taken place.

Influence in Korea

Tolstoy was introduced to Korea by intellectuals of the enlightenment period. In the July 1909 issue of the magazine Sonyeon (Boys), Choe Nam-seon praised Tolstoy as "the greatest man of the present age" and "the greatest personality since Christ." Yi Kwang-su is said to have learned of Tolstoy through Hong Myeong-hui while studying at Meiji Gakuin in Japan, a school founded by American Presbyterian missionaries. According to one study, Tolstoy's literature was received favorably in East Asia, whereas his anarchism was received unfavorably. His folk tales (short moral stories based on popular legends), such as "What Men Live By," were also widely read. Among them, "Where Love Is, God Is" is regarded as a representative work long cherished by Korean readers.

Assessment

In literature, Tolstoy is regarded, together with Fyodor Dostoevsky, as one of the great masters of nineteenth-century Russian literature. Assessments of his faith, however, are divided. Supporters see him as a thinker who sought to live out the ethics of Jesus Christ, especially the Sermon on the Mount, literally. They also value the influence his ideas later had on nonviolent movements. Critics point to his denial of the Trinity and of the institutional church. In its decree of excommunication, the Russian Orthodox Church characterized him as a "false teacher." His theology also differs sharply from the doctrine of the major Korean Protestant denominations, which confess the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus as foundations of the faith.