The Gospel According to Leo

Abstract

As Tolstoy felt he had to make his faith credible by veiling it in Christ’s shroud, he was obliged to make continuous appeals to the Gospel. The trouble was that the Scripture stubbornly refused to show a Tolstoyan Christ—a mortal, agnostic, vaguely Buddhist guru preaching touchy-feely morality and nothing else. Any critic of Tolstoy could easily turn the Gospel against him, and many did. To someone as hubristic as Tolstoy this could only mean one thing: inasmuch as the Gospels disagreed with him, they were wrong. But he could not have come out and said so openly, while still claiming to be a Christian.

And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.

(John 8:23)