The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / MiscellaniesTolstoy, Leo, graf
Religion
The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / Miscellanies
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russian literature -- Translations into English
The only definition of heresy (the word ἁίρεσις means
_part_) is the name given by an assembly of men to every judgment
which rejects part of the teaching, as professed by the assembly.
A more particular meaning, which more frequently than any other is
ascribed to heresy, is that of an opinion which rejects the church
doctrine, as established and supported by the worldly power.
There is a remarkable, little known, very large work
(_Unpartheyische Kirchen und Ketzer-Historia_, 1729), by Gottfried
Arnold, which treats directly on this subject and which shows all
the illegality, arbitrariness, senselessness, and cruelty of using
the word "heresy" in the sense of rejection. This book is an attempt
at describing the history of Christianity in the form of a history
of the heresies.
In the introduction the author puts a number of questions: (1)
regarding those who make heretics (_von den Ketzermachern selbst_);
(2) concerning those who were made heretics; (3) concerning the
subjects of heresy; (4) concerning the method of making heretics,
and (5) concerning the aims and consequences of making heretics.
In connection with each of these points he puts dozens of questions,
answers to which he later gives from the works of well-known
theologians, but he chiefly leaves it to the reader himself to
make the deduction from the exposition of the whole book. I shall
quote the following as samples of these questions, which partly
contain the answers. In reference to the fourth point, as to how
heretics are made, he says in one of his questions (the seventh):
"Does not all history show that the greatest makers of heretics and
the masters of this work were those same wise men from whom the
Father has hidden His secrets, that is, the hypocrites, Pharisees,
and lawyers, or entirely godless and corrupt people?" Questions 20
and 21: "And did not, in the most corrupt times of Christianity,
the hypocrites and envious people reject those very men who were
particularly endowed by God with great gifts, and who in the time
of pure Christianity would have been highly esteemed? And, on
the contrary, would not these men, who during the decadence of
Christianity elevated themselves above everything and recognized
themselves to be the teachers of the purest Christianity, have
been recognized, in apostolic times, as the basest heretics and
antichristians?"
Expressing in these questions this thought, among others, that the
verbal expression of the essence of faith, which was demanded by the
church, and a departure from which was considered a heresy, could
never completely cover the world-conception of the believer, and
that, therefore, the demand for an expression of faith by means of
particular words was the cause of heresy, he says, in Questions 21
and 33:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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