Reasoning
The title of the book is taken from Luke 17:21. In the book Tolstoy speaks of the principle of non-violent resistance when confronted by violence, as taught by Jesus (see Christian pacifism). Tolstoy sought to separate Orthodox Russian Christianity (which was merged with the state) from what he believed was the true gospel of Jesus Christ, specifically the Sermon on the Mount.
Tolstoy takes the viewpoint that all governments who wage war are an affront to Christian principles. When Christ says to turn the other cheek, Tolstoy asserts that he means simply that and rejects the interpretations of Roman and medieval scholars who attempted to limit its scope, writing:
“How can you kill people, when it is written in God’s commandment: ‘Thou shalt not murder’?”Tolstoy presented excerpts from magazines and newspapers relating various personal experiences, and gave keen insight into the history of non-resistance as being professed by a minority of believers from the very foundation of Christianity. In particular, he confronts those who argue that such a change to a non-violent society would be disastrous with the following recourse:
“That this social order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is necessary to society; that still greater disaster would ensue if this organization were destroyed; all this is said only by those who profit by this organization, while those who suffer from it – and they are ten times as numerous – think and say quite the contrary.”Tolstoy recounted challenges by people of all classes that his views on non-resistance were wrong, but argued that no matter how the challengers tried to attack the doctrine, its essence could not be overcome. He advocated non-violence as a solution to nationalist woes and as a means for seeing the hypocrisy of the church. In reading Jesus' words in the Gospels, Tolstoy notes that the modern church is a heretical creation:
“Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church.”Read more about this topic: The Kingdom Of God Is Within You
Famous quotes containing the word reasoning:
“Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“As if reasoning were any kind of writing or talking which tends to convince people that some doctrine or measure is true and right.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)