Tolstoy...

[leeand00]

Say I read on here before that alot of people read Tolstoy...
I visited a site on the guy, and it said in the timeline of his life that he excommunicated himself from the Orthodox Church, but it doesn't say what he did to have this happen, does anyone know?

Thanks,
Andy

 

[Orthodox Andrew]

I did a quick search on Google, but I didn't get any solid reason for it, either.

 

[prodromos]

http://www.ccel.org/php/disp.php3?authorID=schaff&bookID=encyc11&page=463

A great change in his activities occurred from 1880 onward. He carefully examined, and ended by totally rejecting, the claims of the Russo-Greek Church, and incidentally those of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches also. For some years he devoted himself to an ardent study of the Gospels, rejecting the miraculous elements as well as all that seemed unreasonable or incomprehensible in them. From what remained, he constructed a consecutive narrative, which his vivid insight into the great problems of life renders interesting and suggestive, though his rendering is not always justified by the text. His object was to rescue what he believed to be the real teaching of Christ, and to combat what he thought the Church's false interpretations-a process which he has compared to " depolarizing a magnetized watch."

and

http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/

After finishing Anna Karenina Tolstoy renounced all his earlier works and wrote Conversion (1879) to explain his doctrines. Voskresenia (1899, Resurrection) was Tolstoy's last major novel.

By this time, Tolstoy started to see himself more as a sage and moral leader than an artist. In 1901 the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated the author.

 

[Suzannah]

Odd that such a man could come to these conclusions. Reminds me of GK Chesterton who said that madness follows those who are incessantly logical/rational.

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were the King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s.

(G.K. CHESTERTON Orthodoxy, p. 222.)
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