Preface by Tolstoy

톨스토이의 서문

THIS short exposition of the Gospel is a summary of a large work which exists in manuscript and cannot be published in Russia. That work consists of four parts:

1. An account (Confession) of the course of my own life and of the thoughts which led me to the conviction that the Christian teaching contains the truth.

2. An examination of the Christian teaching: first according to its interpretation by the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church, then according to its interpretation by the Church in general – by the Apostles, the Councils, the so-called Fathers of the Church – and an exposure of what is false in those interpretations.

3. An examination of Christian teaching not according to those interpretations but solely according to what has come down to us of Christ’s teaching, as ascribed to him in the Gospels.

4. An exposition of the real meaning of Christ’s teaching, the reasons why it has been perverted, and, the consequences to which it should lead.

From the third of those parts the present account has been compiled.

The harmonization of the four Gospels has been in accord with the sense of the teaching. In making it I hardly had to digress from the order in it is set down in the Gospels, so that there are not more but fewer transpositions of the verses than in most of the concordances known to me, or than in Grechulevich’s arrangement of the Four Gospels. In my treatment of the Gospel of John there are no transpositions, but everything follows the order of the original.

The division of the Gospel into twelve chapters (or six if each two be united) came about of itself from the sense of the teaching. This is the meaning of those chapters:

8. 그러므로 진리의 삶은 시간에서 독립된다: 그것은 현재에 있다. 

So each two chapters are related as cause and effect. In addition to these twelve chapters an introduction from the first chapter of the Gospel of John is added, in which the writer of that Gospel speaks, in his own name, as to the meaning of the whole teaching, and a conclusion from the same writer’s Epistle (written probably before the Gospel) containing a general deduction from all that precedes.

These two parts do not form an essential part of the teaching, but though they both might be omitted without losing the sense of the teaching (the more so as they come in the name of John and not of Jesus) I have retained them because in a straightforward understanding of Christ’s teaching these parts, confirming one another on the whole, furnish, in contradiction to the queer interpretation of the Churches, the plainest indication of the meaning that should be ascribed to the teaching.

At the beginning of each chapter, besides a brief indication of its subject, I have given the words which correspond to that chapter from the prayer Jesus taught his disciples. When I had finished my work I found to my surprise and joy that the Lord’s Prayer is nothing but a very concise expression of the whole teaching of Jesus in the very order in which I had arranged the chapters, and that each phrase of the prayer corresponds to the meaning and sequence of the chapters:

각 장의 서두에서, 그 주제에 대한 간략한 암시는 물론, 나는 예수가 그의 제자들을 가르친 기도문으로부터 그 장에 상응하는 말씀을 대비시켰다. 내가 작업을 마쳤을 때 나는 놀랍고 즐겁게도, 주 기도문은 오직, 내가 각 장들을 배열한 것과 같은 순서로서, 예수의 전체 가르침에 대한 매우 간결한 표현이며, 기도문의 각 구절들은 장들의 의미와 순서에 상응한다는 사실을 발견했다:

1. Our Father, 

Man is a son of God

2. 우리 아버지여, 

사람은 하나님의 아들이다.

2. Which art in Heaven, 

God is the infinite spiritual source of life.

1. 하늘에 계신, 

하나님은 삶의 무한한 영적 근원이다.

3. Hallowed be Thy Name,

May this source of life be held holy

3. 이름이 거룩히 여김을 받으시오며,

이 삶의 근원이 성스러이 여겨져야 한다.

4. Thy Kingdom come,

May his power be realized in all men

4. 나라이 임하시오며,

모든 사람들에게 그의 권능이 실현될 것이다.

5. Thy will be done, as in heaven,

May the will of this infinite source be fulfilled as it is in himself

5. 뜻이 하늘에서 이룬 것같이,

이 무한한 근원의 뜻이 그 안에서처럼 이루어진다.

6. So on earth, 

so also in the bodily life. 

6. 땅에서도 이루어지이다, 

육신의 삶에도 또한 이루어져야 한다.

7. Give us our daily bread,

Temporal life is the food of the true life.

8. 우리에게 일용할 양식을 주옵시고,

이 세상의 삶은 참된 삶의 양식이다.

8. Each day. 

True life is in the present.

7. 오늘날 ,

참된 삶은 현재에 있다. 

9. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,

And let not the mistakes and errors of the past hide that true life from us.

9. 우리가 우리에게 죄지은 자를 사하여 준 것같이 우리 죄를 사하여 주옵시고, 

과거의 잘못과 오류가 우리로부터 참된 삶을 가리지 않도록 하여 주시옵소서. 

10. And lead us not into temptation, 

And may they not lead us into delusion,

10. 우리를 시험에 들게 하지 마옵시고,

그것들이 우리를 잘못으로 인도하지 마옵시고, 

11. But deliver us from evil,

And so there shall be no evil. 

11. 다만 악에서 구하옵소서, 

그리고 어떠한 악도 존재하지 않도록 하시옵소서. 

12. For thine is the kingdom the power,

and the glory, And may thy power, and strength, and wisdom, prevail.

12. 나라와 권세와 영광이 아버지께 영원히 있사옵니다, 

당신의 권능과 힘과 지혜가 충만하기를 기원하옵니다.

In the full exposition, in the third part, everything in the Gospels is set down without any omissions. But in the present rendering the following are omitted: the conception and birth of John the Baptist, his imprisonment and death, the birth of Jesus, his genealogy, his mother’s flight with him to Egypt; his miracles at Cana and Caperaum; the casting out of the devils; the walking on the sea; the blasting of the fig-tree; the healing of the sick; the raising of the dead; the resurrection of Christ himself, and the references to prophecies fulfilled by his life.

Those passages are omitted in the present short exposition because, containing nothing of the teaching but only describing events that took place before, during, or after the period in which Jesus taught, they complicate the exposition. Those verses, however they may be understood, do not contain either contradiction or confirmation of the teaching. Their sole significance for Christianity was to prove the divinity of Jesus to those who did not believe in it. But for one who understands that a story of miracles is unconvincing, and who also doubts that the divinity of Jesus is asserted in his teaching, those verses drop away of themselves as superfluous.

In the larger work every deviation from the ordinary version, as well as every inserted comment and every omission, is explained and justified by comparison of the different variants of the Gospels, by examination of contexts, and by philological and other considerations. In the present brief rendering all such proofs and refutations of the false understanding of the Churches, as well as the detailed notes and references, are omitted, on the ground that however exact and correct the discussions of each separate passage may be, they cannot carry conviction as to the true understanding of the teaching. The justness of the understanding of the teaching is better proved not by the discussion of particular passages but by its own unity, clarity, simplicity and completeness, and by its accordance with the inner feeling of all who seek the truth.

방대한 작품에서는 일반적인 버전에서 모든 이탈과 각각의 삽입된 주해와 생략은, 복음서의 상이한 변형의 비교, 문맥의 조사, 문헌학 및 여타의 고찰로서 설명되고 증명되어진다. 현재의 간략한 번역에서는 교회들의 잘못된 깨달음에 대한 그러한 모든 증거와 논증들, 상세한 주석과 참조들은 생략되어 지는데, 각각의 독립된 구절에 대하여 아무리 정확하고 올바른 토론이라도 가르침에 대한 진정한 깨달음에 관련한 확신을 담을 수 없다는 근거 때문이다. 가르침에 대한 깨달음의 합당함은 특정한 구절들에 대한 토론에 의하여 더욱 증명되는 것이 아니라 그 자체의 통일성, 명쾌함, 단순성 및 완전성이며, 진리를 추구하는 모든 사람들의 내적인 느낌에 부합하여야 한다.

In respect of all the divergences of my rendering from the Church’s authorized text, the reader should not forget that the customary conception that the four Gospels with all their verses and syllables are sacred books is a very gross error. The reader should remember that Jesus never wrote any book himself, as Plato, Philo, or Marcus Aurelius did; nor even, like Socrates, transmitted his teaching to educated men, but that he spoke to many uneducated men and only long after his death did people begin to write down what they had heard about him.

교회가 공인한 원문들에 대한 나의 번역에 대한 모든 다양성들을 고려할 때에, 독자들은 모든 구절들과 음절들을 포함하는 네 개의 복음서가 신성한 책이라고 하는 관습적인 개념은 매우 엄청난 오류임을 잊어서는 안 된다. 독자들은, 플라톤, 필로, 또는 마르크스 아우렐리우스와 마찬가지로, 예수가 결코 어떤 책도 스스로 집필하지 않았다는 것을 기억해야 한다; 심지어는, 소크라테스처럼, 그의 가르침을 학식 있는 사람들에게 전수하지도 않았으며, 하지만 예수는 많은 배우지 못한 사람들에게 설교를 하였으며, 단지 그가 죽은 지 오래되어서야 사람들은 그에 대하여 들은 것을 기록하기 시작하였다.

The reader should remember that there were very many such accounts from among which the Churches selected first three Gospels and then one more, and that in selecting those best Gospels as the proverb,- 'There is no stick without knots’ says-they had to take in many knots with what they selected from the whole mass of writings about Christ, and that there are many passages in the canonical Gospels just as poor as in the rejected apocryphal ones.

The reader should remember that it is the teaching of Christ which may be sacred, but certainly not any definite number of verses and syllables, and that certain verses picked out from here to there cannot become sacred merely because people say they are.

Moreover the reader should remember that these selected Gospels are also the work of thousands of different human brains and hands, that they have been selected, added to, and commented on, for centuries, that all the copies that have come down to us from the fourth century are written in continuous script without punctuation, so that even after the fourth and fifth centuries they have been subject to very diverse readings, and that there are not less than fifty thousand such variations of the Gospels.

This should all be borne in mind by the reader, that he may not be misled by the customary view that the Gospels in their present form have come to us direct from the Holy Ghost.

The reader should remember that far from it being blameworthy to discard useless passages from the Gospels and elucidate some passages by others, it is on the contrary irrational not to do so and to hold a certain number of verses and syllables as sacred.

On the other hand I beg readers to remember that if I do not regard the Gospels as sacred books that have come down to us from the Holy Ghost, even less do I regard them as mere historical monuments of religious literature. I understand the theological as well as the historical view of the Gospels, but regard them myself differently, and so I beg the reader not to be confused either by the church view or by the historical view customary in day among educated people, neither of which I hold.

I regard Christianity neither as an inclusive divine revelation nor as an historical phenomenon, but as a teaching which-gives us the meaning of life. I was led to Christianity neither by theological nor historical investigations but by this that when I was fifty years old, having asked myself and all the learned men around me what I am and what is the meaning of my life, and received the answer that I am a fortuitous concatenation of atoms and that life has no meaning but is itself an evil, I fell into despair and wanted to put an end to my life; but remembered that formerly in childhood when I believed, life had a meaning for me, and that for the great mass of men about me who believe and are not corrupted by riches life has a meaning; and I doubted the validity of the reply given me by the learned men of my circle and I tried to understand the reply Christianity gives to those who live a real life. And I began to seek Christianity in the Christian teaching that guides such men’s lives. I began to study the Christianity which I saw applied in life and to compare that applied Christianity with its source.

The source of Christian teaching is the Gospels, and in them I found the explanation of the spirit which guides the life of all who really live.

But together with this source of the pure water of life I found, wrongfully united with it, mud and slime which had hidden its purity from me: by the side of and bound up with the lofty Christian teaching I found a Hebrew and a Church teaching alien to it. I was in the position of a man who receives a bag of stinking dirt, and only after long struggle and much labor finds that amid that dirt lie priceless pearls; and he understands that he was not to blame for disliking the stinking dirt, and that those who have collected and preserved these pearls together with the dirt are also not to blame but deserve love and respect.

I did not know the light and had thought there was no light of truth to be found in life, but having convinced myself that men live by that light alone, I began to look for its source and found it in the Gospels, despite the false Church interpretations. And on reaching that source of light I was dazzled by it, and found full replies to my questions as to the meaning of my own life and that of others-answers in full agreement with those I knew of from other nations, but which in my opinion were superior to them all.

I was looking for an answer to the question of life and not to theological or historical questions, and so for me the chief question was not whether Jesus was or was not God, or from whom the Holy Ghost proceeded and so forth, and equally unimportant and unnecessary was it for me to know when and by whom each Gospel was written and whether such and such a parable may, or may not, be ascribed to Christ. What was important to me was this light which has enlightened mankind for eighteen hundred years and which enlightened and still enlightens me; but how to name the source of that light, and what materials he or someone else had kindled, did not concern me.

On that this preface might end were the Gospels recently discovered books and had Christ’s teaching not suffered eighteen hundred years of false interpretation. But now to understand the teaching of Jesus it is necessary to know clearly the chief methods used in these false interpretations. The most customary method of false interpretation, and one which we have grown up with, consists of preaching under the name of Christianity not what Christ taught but a church teaching composed of explanations of very contradictory writings into which Christ’s teaching enters only to a small degree, and even then distorted and twisted to fit together with other writings. According to this false interpretation Christ’s teaching is only one link in a chain of revelations beginning with the commencement of the world and continuing in the Church until now. These false interpreters call Jesus God; but the fact that they recognize him as God does not make them attribute more importance to his words and teaching than to the words of the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, the Apocalypse, or even to the decisions of the Councils and the writings of the Fathers of the Church.

These false interpreters do not admit any understanding of the teaching of Jesus which does not conform to the previous and subsequent revelations; so that their aim is not to explain the meaning of Christ’s teaching, but as far as possible to harmonize various extremely contradictory writings, such as the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Acts – that is, all that is supposed to constitute the Holy Scriptures.

Such explanations aiming not at truth but at reconciling the irreconcilable, namely, the writings of the Old and the New Testament, can obviously be innumerable, as indeed they are. Among them are the Epistles of Paul and the decisions of the Councils (which begin with the formulary: ‘It has pleased Us and the Holy Ghost’), and such enactments as those of the Popes, the Synods, the pseudo-Christs, and all the false interpreters who affirm that the Holy Ghost speaks through their lips. They all employ one and the same gross method of affirming, the truth of their interpretations by the assertion that their interpretations are not human utterances but revelations from the Holy Ghost. Without entering on an examination of these beliefs, each of which calls itself the true one, one cannot help seeing that by the method common to them all of acknowledging the whole immense quantity of so-called scriptures of the Old and New Testament as equally sacred, they themselves impose an insuperable obstacle to an understanding of Christ’s teaching; and that from this mistake arises the possibility and inevitability of endlessly divergent interpretations of the teaching. The reconcilement of a number of revelations can be infinitely varied, but the interpretation of the teaching of one person (and one looked upon as God) should not occasion discord.

If God descended to earth to teach people, his teaching, by the very purpose of his coming, cannot be understood in more than one way. If God came down to earth to reveal truth to men, at least he would have revealed it so that all might understand: if he did not do that he was not God; and if the divine truths are such that even God could not make them intelligible to mankind, men certainly cannot do so.

만일 하나님이 사람들을 가르치려고 지상에 내려 오셨다면, 그의 가르침은, 그가 온 바로 그 목적에 따라서, 한가지 이상의 방법으로 이해될 수는 없다. 만일 하나님이 사람들에게 진리를 밝히고자 지상에 내려오셨다면, 최소한 그는 그것이 모든 사람들에게 이해되도록 드러내셨을 것이다: 만일 그가 그렇게 행하지 않았다면 그는 하나님이 아니다; 그리고 만일 하나님의 진리들이 그런 것이므로 심지어 하나님조차도 인류에게 진리들을 알게 할 수 없다면, 사람들은 틀림없이 그렇게 할 수가 없다.

If Jesus is not God, but a great man, then still less can his teaching produce discord. For the teaching of a great man is only great because it expresses intelligibly and clearly what others have expressed unintelligibly and obscurely. What is incomprehensible in a great man’s teaching is not great, and therefore a great man’s teaching does not engender sects. Only an exposition which affirms that it is a revelation from the Holy Ghost and is the sole truth, and that all other expositions are lies, gives birth to discord and to the mutual animosities among the Churches that result therefrom. However much the various Churches affirm that they do not condemn other communities, that they have no hatred of them but pray for union, it is untrue. Never, since the time of Arius, has the affirmation of any dogma arisen from any other cause than the desire to condemn a contrary belief as false. It is a supreme degree of pride and ill will to others to assert that a particular dogma is a divine revelation proceeding from the Holy Ghost: the highest presumption because nothing more arrogant can be said than that the words spoken by me are uttered through me by God; and the greatest ill will because the avowal of oneself as in possession of the sole indubitable truth implies an assertion of’ the falsity of all who disagree. Yet that is just what all the Churches say, and from this alone flows and has flowed all the evil which has been committed and still is committed in the world in the name of religion.

만일 예수가 하나님이 아니고 위대한 사람이라면, 그래도 여전히 그의 가르침은 불일치를 만들어 낼 수 없다. 왜냐하면 위대한 사람의 가르침은 그것이 다른 사람들이 알아들을 수 없고 불투명하게 표현하는 것을 지적이고 명료하게 표현하기 때문에 오로지 위대한 것이다. 위대한 사람의 가르침에서 깨달을 수 없는 것은 위대하지 않다, 그리고 그러므로 위대한 사람의 가르침은 분파들을 생성하지 않는다. 그것이 성령에서 나오는 계시이며 유일한 진리라고, 그리고 다른 모든 설명은 거짓말이라고 주장하는 설명만이, 그로 인하여 발생하는 교회들 사이에 불화와 상호간의 적개심을 만들어낸다. 아무리 다양한 교회들이 그들은 다른 공동체를 비난하지 않으며, 그들에 대한 증오를 갖지 않으며 화합을 위해 기도한다고 공언하더라도, 그것은 진실이 아니다. 아리우스 시대 이후로, 상반된 믿음을 거짓이라고 비난하려는 욕망 외에는 다른 어떤 이유로도 어떠한 교리의 주장이 나온 적이 결코 없다. 특정한 교리가 성령에서 나오는 신성한 계시라고 주장하는 것은 다른 사람들에게는 최고의 자만이며 적대감이다: 최고의 억측, 즉, 내가 설교하는 말들이 하나님에 의해서 나를 통해 나온다고 말하는 것이야 말로 가장 교만한 것이다; 가장 큰 적대감, 즉 자신이 유일하게 의심의 여지가 없는 진리를 지녔음을 공언함은, 반박하는 모든 사람이 허위임을 단정하는 것을 암시한다. 하지만 그것이 바로 모든 교회가 말하는 것이다, 그리고 오직 이런 결과로 해서 종교라는 미명하에 자행되어 왔고, 아직도 자행되고 있는 모든 악이 흘러나오고 있으며 흘러나왔던 것이다.

But besides the temporary evil which such an interpretation by the Churches and the sects produces, it has another important inner defect which gives an obscure, indefinite, and insincere character to their assertions. This defect consists in the fact that all the Churches – having acknowledged the latest revelation of the Holy Ghost, who descended on the apostles and has passed and still passes to the supposedly elect – nowhere define directly, definitely, and finally, in what that revelation consists; and yet they base their belief on that supposedly continuing revelation and call it Christian. All the churchmen who acknowledge the revelation from the Holy Ghost recognize (like the Mohammedans) three revelations: that of Moses, of Jesus, and of the Holy Ghost. But in the Mohammedan religion it is believed that after Moses and Jesus, Mahomet is the last of the prophets and that he explained the revelations of Moses and Jesus, and this revelation of Mahomet every True Believer has before him.

But it is not so with the Church faith. That also, like the Mohammedan, acknowledges three revelations: that of Moses, of Jesus, and of the Holy Ghost, but it does not call itself Holy Ghostism after the name of the last revealer, but affirms that the basis of its faith is the teaching of Christ. So that while preaching, its own doctrines it attributes their authority to Christ. Churchmen acknowledging the last revelation explaining all previous ones, should say so and call their religion by the name of whoever received the last revelation-acknowledging it to be that of Paul, or of this or that Council of the Church, or of the Pope, or of the Patriarch. And if the last revelation was that of the Fathers, a decree of the Eastern Patriarchs, a Papal encyclical, or the syllabus or catechism of Luther or of Philaret, they should say so and call their religion accordingly, because the last revelation which explains all the preceding is always the most important one. But they do not do so, but while preaching doctrines quite alien to Christ’s teaching, affirm that their doctrine was taught by Christ. So that according to their teaching Jesus declared that by his blood he had redeemed the human race ruined by Adam’s sins; that God is three persons; that the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles and was transmitted to the priesthood by the laying on of hands; that seven sacraments are necessary for salvation; that communion should be received in two kinds, and so on. They would have us believe that all this is the teaching of Jesus, whereas in reality there is not a word about any of it in his teaching. Those false teachers should call their teaching and religion the teaching, and religion of the Holy Ghost but not of Christ; for only that faith can be called Christian which recognizes the revelation of Christ reaching us in the Gospels as the final revelation.

It would seem that the matter is plain and not worth speaking about, but, strange to say, up to now the teaching of Christ is not separated on the one side from an artificial and quite unjustifiable amalgamation with the Old Testament, and on the other from the arbitrary additions and perversions made in the name of the Holy Ghost.

To this day there are some who, calling Jesus the second person of the Trinity, do not conceive of his teaching otherwise than in conjunction with those pseudo revelations of the third Person which they find in the Old Testament, the Epistles, the decrees of the Councils and the decisions of the Fathers, and they preach the strangest beliefs, affirming them to be the religion of Christ.

Others not acknowledging Jesus as God, similarly conceive of his teaching not as he could have taught it but as understood by Paul and other commentators. While regarding Jesus not as God but as a man, these commentators deny him a most legitimate human right, that of answering only for his own words and not for false interpretations of them. Trying to explain his teaching, these learned commentators attribute to Jesus things he never thought of saying. The representatives of this school of interpreters-beginning with the most popular of them, Renan-without troubling to separate what Jesus himself taught from what the slanders of his commentators have laid upon him, and without troubling to understand his teaching more profoundly, try to understand the meaning of his appearance and the spread of his teaching by the events of his life a and the circumstances of his time.

예수를 하나님이라고 인정하지 않는 다른 사람들은, 유사하게도 그의 가르침을 그가 가르쳤던 대로가 아니라 바울이나 다른 주석가들에게 이해된 대로 받아들이고 있다. 예수를 하나님이 아니라 사람으로 여기는 한편, 이들 주석가들은 예수에게서 가장 합법적인 인간적 권리를, 즉 그들의 해석에 대해서가 아니라 예수 자신의 말씀에 대해서만 책임질 권리를 부인한다. 예수의 가르침을 설명하려 하면서, 이들 지식 있는 주석가들은 그가 결코 말하려고 생각한 적이 없는 것들을 예수에게로 돌린다. 이러한 해석 학파의 대표자들 – 그 중에서도 가장 저명한 사람으로 시작하자면, 르낭 – 은, 예수의 주석가들의 중상모략이 예수에게 뒤집어 씌운 것들로부터 예수 자신이 가르친 것들을 구별하는 수고도 하지도 않으며, 예수의 가르침을 좀더 깊이 있게 깨달으려 수고도 하지 않으면서, 예수 출현의 의미와 가르침의 전파를 예수 생애의 사건들과 그 시대의 상황에 따라서만 깨닫고자 시도하고 있다.

The problem that confronts them is this: eighteen hundred years ago a certain pauper appeared and said certain things. He was flogged and executed. And ever since that time (though there have been numbers of just men who died for their faith), milliards of people, wise and foolish, learned and ignorant, have clung to the belief that this man alone among men was God. How is this amazing fact to be explained? The churchmen say that it occurred because Jesus was God. In that case it is all understandable. But if he was not God how are we to explain that everyone looked upon just this common man as God? And the learned men of that school assiduously explore every detail of the life of Jesus, without noticing that however much they explore those details (in reality they have gathered none), even if they were able to reconstruct his whole life in the minutist detail, the question why he, just he, had such an influence on people would still remain unanswered. The answer is not to be found in knowledge of the society Jesus was born into, or how he was educated, and so on, still less is it to be found in knowledge of what was being done in Rome, or in the fact that the people of that time were inclined to superstition, but only by knowing what this man preached that has caused people, from that time to this, to distinguish him from all others and to acknowledge him as God. It would seem that the first thing to do is to try to understand that man’s teaching, and naturally his own teaching and not coarse interpretations of it that have been spread since his time. But this is not done. These learned historians of Christianity are so pleased to have understood that Jesus was not God and are so anxious to prove that his teaching is not divine and is therefore not obligatory, that forgetting that the more they prove him to have been an ordinary man and his teaching not to be divine the further they are from solving the problem before them-they strain all their strength to do so. To see this surprising error clearly, it is worth recalling an article by Havet, a follower of Renan’s, who affirms that Jesus Christ n’avait rien de chretien, or Souris, who enthusiastically argues that Jesus Christ was a very coarse and stupid man.

그들과 마주하고 있는 문제는 이렇다: 1800년 전에 어떤 극빈자가 나타나서 특정한 일들을 말했다. 그는 매를 맞고 처형되었다. 그리고 그 시대 이후로 (비록 자신들의 신앙을 위해 죽은 수많은 의인들이 있어왔지만), 수십억의 사람들이, 현명하건 바보이건, 배웠건 못 배웠건, 사람들 중에서 오직 이 사람이 하나님이었다는 믿음에 매달려 왔다. 이 놀라운 사실이 어떻게 설명될 수 있을까? 성직자들은 예수가 하나님이기 때문에 이 일이 일어 났다고 말한다. 그러한 경우라면 모든 것은 이해될 수 있다. 하지만 그가 하나님이 아니라면, 모든 사람이 오로지 이 보통 사람을 하나님으로 여기는 것을 어떻게 설명해야 할까? 그리고 그러한 학파의 식자들은 부단히 예수의 삶에 대하여 아주 세밀하게 탐구를 하지만, 그들이 아무리 깊이 그처럼 자세히 탐구하더라도(실상, 그들은 아무것도 모으지 못했다), 예수의 전 생애를 가장 미세한 부분까지 재구성할 수 있을지라도, 그가, 오직 그가, 사람들에게 그러한 영향을 가지고 있는가 하는 문제는 아직도 대답하지 못한 상태임을 알아 차리지 못하고 있다. 그 해답은 예수가 태어난 사회나 그가 공부한 방법 등에 관한 지식으로 발견될 수 있는 것이 아니며, 로마에서 무엇이 일어나고 있었는지에 대한 지식에서, 또는 그 시대의 사람들이 미신에 빠져 있었다는 사실에서는 더 더욱 발견될 수 있는 것이 아니라, 오직 사람들로 하여금, 그 시대부터 지금까지, 다른 모든 사람들로부터 예수를 구별하여 하나님으로 받아들이도록 만든 이 사람이 설교한 것을 앎으로서 찾을 수 있다. 언뜻 보기에 제일 먼저 해야 할 일은 이 사람의 가르침, 즉, 자연히 그 자신의 가르침을 이해하도록 하는 것이며, 그의 시대 이후 퍼져 나온 형편없는 해석들이 아니다. 하지만 이 방법은 행해지지 않았다. 이들 유식한 그리스도교 역사가들은 예수가 하나님이 아니라는 것에 너무 즐거워 하였고, 그의 가르침이 신성한 것이 아니라는 것을 열심히 증명하려고 하였으므로 가르침이 의무가 될 수 없었다, 그래서 그들이 예수가 평범한 사람이며 그의 가르침이 신성하지 않음을 증명하면 할수록 그들 앞에 놓인 문제를 해결 함에서 멀어 진다는 것을 잊어버리고 – 그들은 그러한 행위에 그들의 전력을 쏟고 있는 것이다. 이런 놀라운 오류를 명확히 알기 위하여, 르낭의 추종자인 하베트의 논문을 떠올릴 필요가 있으며, 그는 ‘예수그리스도는 전혀 그리스도교인을 닮지 않았다’고 주장하였으며, 또 수리스는 예수 그리스도가 매우 무식하고 어리석은 자라고 하면서 열띤 논쟁을 벌였다.

The essential thing is, not to prove that Jesus was not God and that therefore his doctrine is not divine, or to prove that he was a Catholic, but to know in all its purity what constituted that which was so lofty and so precious to men that they have acknowledged and still acknowledge its preacher to have been God.

And so if the reader belongs to the great majority of educated people brought up in the Church belief but who have abandoned its incompatibilities with common sense and conscience-whether he has retained a love and respect for the spirit of the Christian teaching or (as the proverb puts it ‘has thrown his fur coat into the fire because he is angry with the bugs’) considers all Christianity a harmful superstition-I ask him to remember that what repels him and seems to him a superstition is not the teaching of Christ; that Christ cannot be held responsible for that monstrous tradition that has been interwoven with his teaching and presented as Christianity: that to prejudge of Christianity, on the teaching of Christ as it has come down to us must be learned-that is, the words and actions attributed to Christ and that have an instructive meaning.

Studying the teaching of Christ in that way the reader will convince himself that Christianity, far from being a mixture of the lofty and the low, or a superstition, is a very strict, pure, and complete metaphysical and ethical doctrine, higher than which the reason of man has not yet reached, and in the orbit of which (without recognizing the fact) human activity-political, learned, poetic, and philosophic-is moving.

If the reader belongs to that small minority of educated people who hold to the Church religion and profess it not for outward purposes but for inward tranquillity, I ask him to remember that the teaching of Christ as set forth in this book (despite the identity of name) is quite a different teaching from that which he professes, and that therefore the question for him is not whether the doctrine here offered agrees or disagrees with his belief, but is simply, which best accords with his reason and conscience-the Church teaching composed of adjustments of many scriptures, or the teaching of Christ alone? The question for him is merely whether he wishes to accept the new teaching or to retain his own belief.

But if the reader is one of those who outwardly profess the Church creed and values it not because he believes it to be true but because he considers that to profess and preach it is profitable to him, then let him remember that however many adherents he may have, however powerful they may be, on whatever thrones they may sit, and by whatever great names they may call themselves, he is not one of the accusers but of the accused. Let such readers remember that there is nothing for them to prove, that they have long ago said what they had to say and that even if they could prove what they wish to, they would only prove, each for himself, what is proved by all the hundreds of opposing Churches; and that it is not for them to demonstrate, but to excuse themselves: to excuse themselves for the blasphemy of adjusting the teaching of the God-Christ to suit the teaching of Ezras, of the Councils, and Theophilacts, and allowing themselves to interpret and alter the words of God in conformity with the words of men; to excuse themselves for their libels on God by which they have thrown all the fanaticism they had in their hearts onto the God-Jesus and given it out as his teaching; to excuse themselves for the fraud by which, having hidden the teaching of God who came to bestow blessing on the world, they have replaced it by their own blasphemous creed, and by that substitution have deprived and still deprive milliards of people of the blessing Christ brought to men, and instead of the peace and love he brought have introduced into the world sects, condemnations, murders, and all manner of crimes.

For such readers there are only two ways out: humble confession and renunciation of their lies, or a persecution of those who expose them for what they have done and are still doing.

If they will not disavow their lies, only one thing remains for them: to persecute me-for which I, completing what I have written, prepare myself with joy and with fear of my own weakness.

LEO TOLSTOY. YASNAYA POLYANA, 1883.

[ 홈 ] [ 위로 ] [ 머리말 ] [ 서언 : 삶의 깨달음 ] [ I. 하나님의 아들 ] [ II. 하나님을 섬김 ] [ III. 삶의 근원 ] [ IV. 하나님의 나라 ] [ V. 진리의 삶 ] [ VI. 거짓된 삶 ] [ VII. 아버지와 한 몸 ] [ VIII. 삶은 영원하다. ] [ IX. 시험 ] [ X. 시험과의 싸움 ] [ XI. 고별 강연 ] [ XII. 영의 승리 ] [ 각 장의 요약 ] [ Flowers 의 서문 ] [ Notes ] [ 요약복음 (전체) ]