Chapter 9 - Tolstoi and the Social Ideal of the Eastern Church: John Chrysostom

Summary

In the book I do not give a full treatment of Tolstoi’s social ideas but concentrate on how his social teaching was influenced by Orthodox sources, in particular by the extremely popular fifth-century saint John Chrysostomus, who preached a kind of anarchist socialism surprisingly akin to that of Tolstoi. In his first religious tract after his spiritual crisis, What I Believe (1884), Tolstoi referred to Chrysostom several times, but only to criticize him: This bishop, Tolstoi claimed, was willing to compromise with the state and secular society in a way that the first Christians did not. This, however, clearly distorted John Chrysostomus’s message as it was recorded in numerous homilies, also those that Tolstoi had read. In their polemics against Tolstoi, several Orthodox authors referred to Chrysostomus to show that the Church already had a true apostle of nonresistance to evil and abnegation of all property, and thus had no need of Tolstoi’s socialism. However, when a Russian professor of Church history and expert on patristic theology claimed that Tolstoi conveyed the ideals of Chrysostomus better than the Russian Church did, the professor was summarily dismissed from his university chair – a strong indication of how sensitive the issue had become.