An old writer’s adage asserts we don’t love the work of writing; we love having written (All writers can insert an “Amen” here). For Leo Tolstoy, long considered one of history’s greatest writers, Christianity seemed to be something he aspired to but couldn’t accept.
Who Was Leo Tolstoy?
Leo Tolstoy was born in Russia in 1828 into a noble family who were practicing Christians, attending the Russian Orthodox Church. His mother died when he was two, and he strived all his life to remember her face.
Tolstoy served in the Crimean War and later retired to his family estate. He wrote, farmed, and reared his large family (he and his wife had 13 children, 10 of which survived).
Many biographies exist about his writings. Therefore, we will center on how his faith affected his writing.
Leo Tolstoy’s faith was complex. He vocally rejected the Russian Orthodox Church—sacraments, formal church services, fasting, and the adulation of artifacts and symbols disgusted him. Neither intellectualism nor humanism satisfied him. Led by German philosophers, Tolstoy found temporal peace in human reason. He was satisfied to learn God’s existence cannot be proven by human reason, and he dejectedly determined rational knowledge does not provide life’s purpose. He considered suicide but could not go through with it. In his anguish, he sought solace in other peoples’ faith—that of the Russian peasants. Theirs was a simple faith that didn’t question the person who gave their lives meaning—God.
In his unrelenting quest for inner peace, Tolstoy grasped at the faith of the Russian peasants but not their faith in God. He posited, “faith alone stores the deepest human wisdom, and faith alone made it possible to live.” He said in his partial autobiography, Confession, “I returned to a belief in God, in moral perfection, and in a tradition that instills life with meaning.”
Yet what did he do with this humanly reasoned faith? He fashioned his moral philosophy based on what he believed was Jesus’ message of wholistic love, compassion, and a non-confrontational response to wickedness. He tried to live by Christian morals and exploring the vaunted position emanating from his spiritually themed writings. Tolstoy raised a banner for equitable care of the Russian peasants and working-class people. Later in life, Tolstoy decried his wealth and attempted to live a nomadic, spartan life.
Despite his moralistic and often biblically soaked work catalog, Tolstoy doesn’t appear to have ever personally surrendered to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In Confession, he wrote, “I was baptized and raised according to the principles of the Orthodox Christian Church. I was taught them from my childhood, throughout my adolescence and my youth. But at eighteen, after a second year at university, I no longer believed in anything I had been taught.” He may have had a heart change later; we don’t know, but we bow to the Lord’s knowledge of every man’s heart (1 Kings 8:39; Psalm 44:21; Revelation 2:23).
How Did Leo Tolstoy’s Faith Inform His Work?
Leo Tolstoy’s faith was constituted of moral principles loosely based on some Scripture and the morals he saw practiced by the late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Russian lower classes. He desperately wanted inner peace yet never proclaimed acceptance of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
In his introduction to How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories, A.N. Wilson highlights how Tolstoy’s faith in people over the church appears in Tolstoy’s short story “What Men Live By” featuring an angel who learns about humanity:
“Tolstoy’s Christ is not to be found in the obscure doctrines of the Orthodox faith nor in its theatrical rituals; he is found in the goodness of men and women. The angel in the story learns that “men live, not by selfishness, but by love.”
Wilson further argues, “[Tolstoy] was never really a Christian, because he never truly believed that Nature was at war with Grace, or that it needed to be redeemed.”
In 1879, Tolstoy claimed a “spiritual awakening” and wrote Confession, though his faith never included personally surrendering to Jesus Christ as Lord. However, he never seemed able to reject it either. In The Gospel in Tolstoy, Miriam LeBlanc writes, “with all his rationalism, Tolstoy remained a man haunted by Jesus of Nazareth.”
Tolstory’s writing routinely discussed Jesus’ ethical teachings, especially the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-7:27), and included many moral arguments and dilemmas. He became an ardent Christian anarchist (rejecting the state as an authority) and denounced violence. His works proclaimed his beliefs in these areas and advocated for nonviolent resistance (as seen in The Kingdom of God is Within You). Tolstoy’s ideas profoundly impact people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He also provided a powerful argument that people should enjoy the fruits of their own land in Resurrection.
Based on his life story, we can speculate that the seed that fell for Leo Tolstoy was on rocky ground. However, scholars suggest that Tolstoy’s writings still have something to teach people about living out their faith. As LeBlanc observes:
“Jesus’ example and teachings–especially the Sermon on the Mount–loomed over the writer’s life in ways large and small, from his ardent pacifism to his repeated attempts to divest himself of his inherited wealth and privilege. . . In a Christendom all too comfortable with oppressive worldly power, Tolstoy issued a sharp challenge to return to the radical call of Jesus.”
Leo Tolstoy Quotes about Writing and Faith
On God and Faith
“Every endeavor of the imagination to know Him more definitely (for instance, as my Creator, or as a Merciful Being) removes me farther from Him, and prevents me drawing nearer to Him.” — The Theological Works of Leo Tolstoy
“From the age of sixteen I no longer prayed and went to church and did my devotions, and in this I followed my own impulse. I didn’t believe what I had taught since childhood, but I believed in something.
To what? I couldn’t say it in a precise way. I believed in God, or rather I did not deny God, but what God?
I was not denying Christ either, nor his teaching, but what did this teaching consist of?...”
Today, remembering that time, I see clearly that my Religion was that something which, apart from purely animal instinct, guided my life. My only, my true belief at that time was my belief in perfection.
But what was perfecting and what was its purpose? I couldn’t tell.” — Confession
“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God.” — War and Peace
“It seems that only God can know the truth, it is to him alone we must appeal, and from him alone expect mercy.” — “God Sees the Truth, But Waits”
“But where did the lie come from and where did the truth come from? The lie as well as the truth are transmitted by what is called the Church. The lie as well as the truth are contained in the tradition, in what is called holy tradition, and in Scripture.” — Confession
On Writing
“Write 1) in black, without considering the places and correctness of the expression of thoughts; 2) rewrite, excluding everything superfluous and giving the real place to every thought, and 3) rewrite, correcting the incorrectness of the expressions.” — Tolstoy’s Diaries Volume 1: 1847-1894
“You should only write when you feel within you some completely new and important content, clear to you but unintelligible to others, and when the need to express this content gives you no peace.” — Tolstoy’s Letters
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” — How to Write Like Tolstoy by Leonard Cohen
“The main thing is not to be in a hurry to write, not to grudge correcting and revising the same thing 10 or 20 times, not to write a lot and not, for heaven’s sake, to make of writing a means of livelihood or of winning importance in people’s eyes.” — Tolstoy’s Letters
“The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with anyone else: and the most important affair is to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life I can’t understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.” — “Three Questions: A Story”
Best Leo Tolstoy Writings to Start With
Where does one start with a writer who produced so much work? Anna Karenina, with a whopping 738 pages? War and Peace, with an expansive 1,296 pages? Both seem too daunting for a beginning look at the genius of Leo Tolstoy. It’s best to start “small,” yet even Tolstoy’s novellas and short stories are packed with sweeping tales that engage our minds and hearts. With that in mind, here is a starter list for those who want to become acquainted with Tolstoy’s brilliance as a storyteller and novelist.
Where Love Is, There God Is Also. From melancholy to hopeful, this short story can be called a parable based on two biblical passages, 1 John 4:8 (“God is love”) and Hebrews 13:2 (“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”). The story revolves around Martin Avdyeitch, a poor shoe cobbler who lost his faith when he lost his wife and children. He is bitter yet kind, and through an encounter with a former friend, he reopens the Scriptures and finds hope and love.
The Raid and The Death of Ivan Ilyich are contained within a Penguin Classics book collecting Tolstoy’s short stories. The Raid is a story of courage and cowardice during a military excursion in the Caucasus. One of Tolstoy’s ongoing themes is in this story: What causes a man to face peril and take the life of his fellow man? The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a novella examining a man’s acknowledgment of his impending death and his family and friends feigning ignorance. In the end, at his death, he concludes he has lived an artificial life.
Go on from there to read some of his other short stories and novellas, including his semi-autobiographical Confession.
When ready, tackle Anna Karenina and War and Peace, even in small bites. But be prepared. Tolstoy’s stories will hook you.
Christian Writers Like Leo Tolstoy to Explore
Although not a declared Christian, Leo Tolstoy investigated and wrote noble moral stories based on some of Jesus’ teachings. The results led practicing Christians and those fascinated by Christian teachings. Authors and one of their books likened to Tolstoy’s themes include:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008). A renowned Christian activist who fought against Soviet oppression, Solzhenitsyn is best known for The Gulag Archipelago, which exposed the horrific treatment of political dissenters in Russia.
Eugune Vodalazkin (1964-). A contemporary Russian author who professes Christian faith, Vodalazkin’s work includes The Aviator, which investigates how God controls time and man’s placement in it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). Another Russian novelist who struggled with faith, though Dostoevsky found his home within the church. Some have said no book could be more powerful and Christian” than his novel The Brothers Karamazov.
Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852). While not claiming to follow Christ, Gogol called himself a Christian teacher. His best-known work is the novel Dead Souls.
Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883). While not a Christian, Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons has been called a study of “the triumph of old customs and Christianity over the extreme negativism of nihilism.”
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