WHAT I BELIEVE and not the word 4 the law ’ without addition, as actually stands in that verse. More than that, *j however, Christ uses the same expression in the Gospel of Luke in a connection which makes its meaning indubitable. In Luke xvi. 15, 16 Christ says to the Pharisees who assumed right- eousness in the written law: 4 Ye are they that justify yourselves in the sight of men; but God < knoweth your hearts: for that which is exalted; among men is an abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John: from that time the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is preached, and every one entereth into it [by his own efforts].’ 1 And then in the following verse, 17, he says: 4 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the law to fail/ By the words, 4 the law and the prophets were until John/ Christ repeals the written law.
By the words, 4 It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail/ he confirms the eternal law. In the first words he says, 4 the law and the prophets’ — that is to say the written law; in the second he says simply 4 the law / therefore the law eternal. \ Consequently it is clear that here the eternal law is contrasted with the written law,2 and 1 Where Tolstoy’s translation diverges in meaning 1 from our Revised and Authorized Versions, his words i U are enclosed in square brackets.
2 More than that, as though to prevent any possible doubt as to which law he is speaking of, he immediately, in this connexion, gives an example — a very striking j c example — of a contradiction of the law of Moses with ^ the eternal law of which no atom can fail • giving ]/ JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 165 that just the same contrast is made in the context in Matthew, where the eternal law is defined by the words, the law or the prophets.
The history of verses 17 and 18 in their variations is remarkable. In most of the texts there is only the word ‘ law * without the addition of ‘ prophets/ In these versions there can be no suggestion that it means the written law. In other copies, in Tischendorf s, and in the canonical version, there is the addition of 4 prophets/ not with the conjunction 'and/ but with the conjunction ‘ or ' — the law or the prophets — which also excludes the meaning of the written law and gives the meaning of the eternal law.
In some of the texts not accepted by the Church the addition of ‘ prophets ' with the conjunction ‘ and/ and not ‘ or/ finds place — and in these same versions, when the word 4 law 9 is repeated ‘ and the prophets ' is also repeated. So that the meaning of the whole utterance in these versions is given as though Christ spoke only of the written law.
These variations supply the history of the interpretation of that passage. The only clear rendering of the passage is that Christ here, as in Luke, is speaking of the eternal law. But among the copyists of the Gospel manuscripts were some who wished to assert the obligatorithe sharpest contradiction to the Mosaic law that occurs in the Gospels, he says (Luke xvi. 18): ‘ Every one that putteth away his wife and marrieth another, committeth adultery.’ That is to say that, whereas in the written law divorce is allowed, in the eternal law it is a sin. — L. T.
WHAT I BELIEVE ness of the written law of Moses, and these! scribes added to the word 4 law 9 the additional jk words 4 and the prophets/ and changed the j meaning.
Other Christians, who did not acknowledge the books of Moses, either excluded the addi- tion or changed the word 4 and/ kg l, to the word 4 or/ fj. And with this word 4 or ' the passage entered into the canonical version. But despite the clearness and certainty of the mean- ing of the text in that form in which it had entered the canon, the canonical interpreters continued to interpret it in the spirit that had prompted the alternative which had not been I accepted in the text. The passage was sub- mitted to innumerable explanations which were the further removed from its plain meaning in proportion as the interpreter agreed less j with the real, direct, simple meaning of Christ's teaching; and most of the interpreters retain the apocryphal sense — the very one rejected by the text.
Fully to convince oneself that in these verses Christ is speaking only of the eternal law, it | is worth while to examine the meaning of the word which served the pseudo -interpreters as an excuse. In Russian the word zakon (law), in Greek vofics, and in Hebrew torah, all have two main meanings: one is the law itself (that which is right) without reference to its expres- sion; the other conception is that of the written j expression of what certain people consider to i be the law. These two different meanings exist in all languages.
JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 167 In Greek, in the Epistles of Paul, this distinc- \ tion is sometimes marked by the use of the article. Without an article, Paul uses this word chiefly in the meaning of the ‘ written law/ but with the article in the meaning of the e eternal law of God/ Among the ancient Hebrews, in the prophets, as Isaiah, the word ‘ law/ torah, is always used in the meaning of the one eternal revelation and teaching of God independent of verbal expression. And this same word ‘ law/ torah, in Ezra for the first time, and in the latest period in Talmudic times, began to be used to mean the five written books of Moses, over which the general title of Torah was inscribed, as we use the word Bible, but with this difference, that we have a word to distinguish the conception of the Bible from that of the law of God, while in Hebrew one and the same word was used for both conceptions.
And therefore Christ, using the word £ law/ torah, employs it now to confirm it, when he uses it, in the meaning given it by Isaiah and the other prophets, of the law of God which is eternal, and now to reject it when he means by it the five books of the law. But for the sake of distinction when (rejecting it) he uses this word in the meaning of the written law, he always adds the words ‘ and the prophets/ or prefixes the word ‘ your ' to the word ‘ law/ When he says, ‘ Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them, for this is the law and the prophets/ he is speaking of the written law. He says that WHAT I BELIEVE the whole of the written law can be compressed into this one expression of the eternal law, and < by these words he annuls the written law.
When he says (Luke xvi. 16), ‘ The law and j the prophets were until John/ he is speaking of the written law, and by these words denies its authority.
When he says (John vii. 19), ‘ Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law? ’ or (John viii. 17), 'In your law it is written/ or (John xv. 25), ‘ The word that is written in their law/ he is speaking of the written law: the law he denied, the law which condemned him to death. (John xix. 7) ‘ The Jews answered Pilate, We have a law, and by that law he ought to die.’ Evidently that law of the Jews, on the basis of which they executed him, is not the law Christ taught. But when Christ says, ‘ I came not to destroy the law, but to teach you to fulfil it, for nothing can change I in the law, but all must be fulfilled/ he is speaking not of the written law but of the divine eternal law, and is confirming it.
But let us suppose that all these are merely formal proofs; let us suppose that I have care- fully selected contexts and variations and have! carefully hidden everything opposed to my interpretation; let us suppose that the Church's interpretation is very clear and convincing, and j that Christ really did not infringe the law of Moses but left it in full strength. Suppose that to be so. But then, what did Christ teach?
According to the Church's explanations he j i JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 169 taught that he, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God the Father, came to the earth and by his death redeemed Adam's sin. But every one who has read the Gospels knows that in them Christ says nothing, or speaks very vaguely, about that. But assuming that we do not know how to read, and that the above assertions really are made there: at any rate, Christ's indication that he is the Second Per- son of the Trinity and redeems the sins of humanity occupies the smallest and most obscure portion of the Gospels. What, then, does all the rest of Christ's teaching consist of? It is impossible to deny, and Christians have always acknowledged, that the chief con- tent of Christ's message is the teaching of life: how men should live with one another.
Having admitted that Christ taught a new way of life, one has to picture to oneself some definite kind of people among whom he taught. Let us imagine to ourselves Russians, or Englishmen, or Chinese, or Indians, or even savages on an island, and we shall see that every people always has its rules of life, its law of life, and that therefore if a teacher teaches a new law of life he thereby destroys the former law: without destroying it he cannot teach, I So it would be in England, in China, and among ourselves. The teacher will inevitably destroy our laws, which we consider precious and almost holy; but among us it might occur that the preacher, teaching us a new way of life, will only destroy our civil law, our State law, or our customs, but will not touch the laws we consider G* WHAT I BELIEVE G* WHAT I BELIEVE divine — though it is hard to imagine this. But among the Jewish people who then had only one code of law — entirely divine and embracing the whole of life to its minutest details — among such a people what could a preacher teach who declared in advance that the whole law of the people among whom he was preaching w^as valid? But let us say that this, too, is not a proof. Let those who interpret the words of Christ to mean that he confirmed the whole law of Moses explain this to themselves: Who it was that, throughout his active career, Christ exposed? Against whom did he revolt, call- ing them Pharisees, lawyers, and scribes? Who was it that rejected Christ's teaching? Whose High Priest had him crucified? If Christ acknowledged the law of Moses, where were those true adherents of that law who approved of him for doing so? Can it be that there was not one such?
The Pharisees, we are told, were a sect. The Jews do not say so! They say: The Pharisees were the faithful adherents of the law. But let us grant that they were a sect. The Sad- ducees were also a sect. Where, then, were the people who were not a sect, but true believers?
In the Gospel of John they all — Christ's enemies — are called simply the J ews. And they did not agree with Christ's teaching and were opposed to him simply because they were Jews. But in the Gospels not only the Pharisees and Sadducees are represented as Christ's enemies: among his enemies the lawyers are also men- tioned, the very men who conserved the law JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 171 of Moses; the Scribes, the very men who read the law; the Elders, the very ones who were always considered the representatives of national wisdom.
Christ said: 4 1 came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance * — to a change of life, fjLeravoia. Where and who, then, were these righteous? Was Nicodemus the only one? But even Nicodemus is represented to us as a kindly but erring man. We are so accustomed to the very strange explanation that the Pharisees and some wicked Jews crucified Christ, that the simple question never enters our heads: Where were those who were not Phari- sees and not wicked, but real Jews who kept the law? One has only to put that question and it all becomes plain. Christ — whether he was God or man — brought his teaching into the world among a people who kept a law which regulated the whole of their lives and was called the law of God. What relation could Christ have to that law?
Every prophet — every teacher of a faith, revealing the law of God to men — inevitably encounters among men something people believe to be the law of God, and so he cannot I avoid making use of the word law in a double sense; for it means what people falsely consider to be the law of God, 4 your law,5 and it also means the true, eternal law of God. But besides being unable to avoid a double use of I that word, the preacher usually does not wish to avoid it, but intentionally unites the two meanings: indicating that the law, which, I WHAT I BELIEVE taken in its entirety is false, and which is professed by those whom he is addressing, * does contain certain eternal truths. And every preacher will take those laws which are fundamentally true as the basis of his sermon. That is what Christ did among the Jews, 1 among whom both laws were called by the one word tor ah. Christ, in reference to the law of ■■ Moses — and to a yet greater extent in reference to the prophets, especially Isaiah, whose words he constantly quoted — acknowledged that in the Hebrew law and prophets there are eternal and divine truths coincident with the eternal law, and these — such as the saying, 4 Love God and thy neighbour ’ — he takes as the basis of his teaching. Christ often expresses this thought. (Luke x. 26) He says, 4 What is written in the law? how readest thou? ’ In the law also there are eternal truths to be found, if you only know how to read it. And he points out more than once that the com- mandment in their law relating to the love of God and of one’s neighbour is a commandment of the eternal law. In Matt. xiii. 52, Christ, after all the parables by which he explained! 1 to his Apostles the meaning of his teaching, finally, as referring to all that had preceded, said: 4 Therefore every scribe [that is every literate person, who has learned the truth] is e like unto a householder, which bringeth forth n out of his treasure [indiscriminately, both T together] things new and old.’ j j St. Irenaeus, and following him the whole y Church, understood these words in that way; JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 173 but quite arbitrarily, and to the infringement of the meaning of the whole speech, attached to them also the implication that all that was old was sacred. The plain meaning is that he who seeks what is good takes not only what is new but what is old, and that it must not be rejected simply because it is old. By these words Christ says that he does not deny those things in the old law which are eternal. But when he is spoken to of the whole law or its forms, he says that one must not pour new wine into old bottles. Christ could not confirm the whole law, but neither could he reject the whole law and the prophets — that law in which is said, ‘ Love thy neighbour as thyself/ and those prophets whose words he often used to express his own thoughts. And lo and behold, instead of this simple, clear under- standing of these words, which as they were spoken and in the way they confirm the whole of Christ’s teaching are very simple, a misty explanation is substituted introducing a contra- diction where none existed, and thereby destroying the meaning of the teaching and I reducing it to verbiage, and practically re- : establishing the teaching of Moses in all its savage cruelty.
According to all the Church’s interpretations, especially since the fifth century, Christ did not infringe the written law, but confirmed it. But how did he confirm it? How can the law of Christ be united with the law of Moses? To that no reply is given. In the interpretations a play of words is made use of, and it is said 174 WHAT X BELIEVE that Christ fulfilled the law of Moses in that in him the prophecies were fulfilled, and that Christ, through us, by man’s faith in him, fulfils the law. The only question essential to every believer (as to how to unite two eontradictory laws governing human life) is left without even an attempt to meet it. And the contradiction between the verse in which it is said that Christ does not destroy the law and the verses which say, 6 Ye have heard that it was said...but I say unto you...and again between the whole spirit of the teaching of Moses and that of Christ, remains in full force.
Any one interested in this question should look at the Church’s interpretations of this passage, from St. John Chrysostom to our times. Only by reading these long dissertations will he be clearly convinced that here no solution of the contradiction is offered, but that a contra- diction is artificially introduced where none existed.
The impossible attempts to unite the un- uniteable clearly indicated that this union is not the result of a mistake, but has a clear and definite aim — it was needed. And it is even obvious why it was needed.
This is what St. John Chrysostom says, replying to those who rejected the Mosaic law {Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew. Part 1. Homily xvi. Pusey's Library of the Fathers, 4 In the next place, they criticize the Law in the Old Covenant* which bids us put out an eye JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 175 for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and straightway they insult and say: “ Why, how can he be good who speaks so? ” What then do we say in answer to this? That it is the highest kind of philanthropy. For He made this law, not that we might strike out one another’s eyes, but that fear of suffering by others might restrain us from doing any such thing to them. As therefore He threatened the Ninevites with overthrow, not that He might destroy them (for had that been His will, He ought to have been silent), but that He might by fear make them better, and so quiet His wrath: so also hath He appointed a punishment for those who wantonly assail the eyes of others, that if good principles dispose them not to refrain from such cruelty, fear may restrain them from injuring their neighbour’s sight.
‘ And if this be cruelty, it is cruelty also for the murderer to be restrained, and the adul- terer checked. But these are the sayings of senseless men, and of those that are mad to the extreme of madness. For I, so far from saying that this comes of cruelty, should say, that the contrary to this would be unlawful, according to men’s reckoning. And whereas thou sayest, “Because He commanded to pluck out an eye for an. eye, therefore He is cruel ”; I say that if He had not given this commandment then He would have seemed, in the judgement of most men, to be that which thou sayest He is.’
St. John Chrysostom definitely accepts the law of a tooth for a tooth as divine, and what WHAT I BELIEVE opposes the taking of a tooth for a tooth (that is to say, Christ’s teaching of non-resistance) as unlawful (pp. 237-8). 'For let us suppose that this law has been done away/ says St. John Chrysostom, 4 and that no one feared the punishment ensuing thereupon, but that licence had been given to all the wicked to follow their own dispositions in all security, to adul- terers, and to murderers, to perjured persons and to parricides; would not all things have been turned upside down? Would not cities, market-places and houses, sea and land, and the whole world, have been filled with un- numbered pollutions and murders? Every one sees it. For when there are laws, and fear, and threats, our evil dispositions are hardly checked; were even this security taken away, what is there to prevent men’s choosing vice? and what degree of mischief would not then come revelling upon the whole of human life? The rather, since cruelty lies not only in allowing the bad to do what they will, but in another thing too quite as much; to overlook, and leave uncared for, him who hath done no wrong, but who is without cause or reason suffering ill. For tell me: were any one to gather together wicked men from all quarters, and arm them with swrords, and bid them go about the whole city, and massacre all that came in their way, could there be anything more like a wild beast than he % And what if some other should bind, and confine with the utmost strictness, those whom that man had armed, and should snatch from out those lawless hands them JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 177 who were on the point of being butchered, could anything be greater humanity than this? ’ St. John Chrysostom does not say by what standard one would be guided in determining who are evil. What if he were himself evil, and imprisoned the good? 1 ‘ Now then, I bid thee transfer these examples to the Law likewise, for He that commands to pluck out an eye for an eye, hath laid the fear as a kind of strong chain upon the souls of the bad, and so resembles him, who detains those assassins in prison; whereas he who appoints no punishment for them, doth all but arm them by such security, and acts the part of that other, who was putting the swords in their hands, and letting them loose over the whole city.’
If St. John Chrysostom acknowledged the law of Christ, he should explain who will pluck out the eyes and the teeth and cast others into prison. If he who forbids us to do so, that is to say if God Himself, plucked them out, there would be no contradiction, but it is men who have to do it; and these men the Son of God has commanded that it should not be done. God said, pluck out teeth, and His 1 Here Tolstoy introduces an argument which occurs repeatedly in his works. He diverts the argument as to whether a man of good will, who desires to preserve the peace, is morally justified in forcibly restraining a murderer, by a reference to the difficulty of judging the facts of each case rightly. The moral issue is perplexed by the introduction of a simultaneous consideration of the fact that man is intellectually fallible.
WHAT I BELIEVE Son said, do not pluck them out. One or the other has to be acknowledged; and St. John Chrysostom, and following him the Church in general, acknowledges the command of God the Father, that is to say of Moses, and rejects the command of the Son, that is of Christ, whose teaching he is supposed to profess. Christ rejects the law of Moses and gives his own. For a man believing in Christ there is no contradiction. Disregarding the law of Moses, he believes in the law of Christ and fulfils it. For one believing in the law of Moses there is also no contradiction. The Jews consider the words of Christ vain, and believe in the law of Moses. There is a contradiction only for those who wish to live by the law of Moses, but assure themselves and others that they believe the law of Christ — for those whom Christ calls hypocrites, the offspring of vipers.
Instead of acknowledging one of the two, the law of Moses or of Christ, they acknowledge both to be divinely true.
But when the question touches life itself, the law of Christ is simply denied and the law of Moses acknowledged.
In this false interpretation, if one examines its meaning, lies a terrible drama of the struggle of evil and darkness with goodness and light. J Among the Jewish people, confused by in- 1 numerable external rules laid on them by the | 1 Levites as divine laws and each stamped with i f the words fi The Lord said unto Moses/ Christ t appeared. He found not only the relations of man to God, his sacrifices, holidays and fasts, I fi JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 179 but all the relations of man to man — the national, civil, and family relations — and all the details of private life — circumcisions, the wash- ings of man’s person, and of his cups and his dress — all defined to the last detail, and all acknowledged as the command of God, the law of God. What can, I will not say Christ— God, but a prophet or an ordinary teacher, teach to such a people without infringing this law,, which defines everything down to the smallest details? Christ, like all the prophets, selects from among the things the people considered to be the lav/ of God that which was really the law of God. He takes the foundations, and rejects all the rest, and unites his own revelation of the eternal i law with these foundations. There is no need to destroy everything, but inevitably the law, which I was considered equally obligatory in ail its parts, is broken. Christ does this; and he is accused i of breaking what was considered to be the law of God, and for this he is executed. But his i teaching remains among his disciples and passes into another circle and into other centuries. But in this other circle, and these other centuries, the new teaching is again overgrown by similar accretions, interpretations, and explanations — again mean human inventions replace the divine revelation. Instead of ‘ And the Lord said unto I Moses,’ we are told 1: £ It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us,’ and again the letter hides the spirit. And, most surprising of all, the teaching of Christ becomes involved with all that