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Loading... The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Christianity not as a mystic religion but as a new theory of life (original 1894; edition 2005)1,123 | 7 | 17,818 |
(3.9) | 11 | New Age.
Politics.
Religion & Spirituality.
Nonfiction.
HTML: Initially banned in his home country The Kingdom of God Is Within You is Leo Tolstoy's great non-fictional work. The zenith of Tolstoy's thirty years of Christian thinking, it sets out a plan for a new society guided by a literal Christian interpretation. Christ conceived of a society based on love, compassion and tolerance, and Tolstoy believed this was incompatible with violence. Tolstoy's response is the principle of nonresistance in the face of violence, and that the wars that governments wage were at odds with Christian ideals. He believed we should not be limiting the scope of God's commandments, writing "how can you kill people, when it is written in God's commandment: 'Thou shalt not murder'?" Mahatma Gandhi wrote that The Kingdom of God Is Within You "overwhelmed" and "left an abiding impression" on him, listing it as one of three modern works most influential on his life and philosophy. . … (more) |
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▾References References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English (1)▾Book descriptions New Age.
Politics.
Religion & Spirituality.
Nonfiction.
HTML: Initially banned in his home country The Kingdom of God Is Within You is Leo Tolstoy's great non-fictional work. The zenith of Tolstoy's thirty years of Christian thinking, it sets out a plan for a new society guided by a literal Christian interpretation. Christ conceived of a society based on love, compassion and tolerance, and Tolstoy believed this was incompatible with violence. Tolstoy's response is the principle of nonresistance in the face of violence, and that the wars that governments wage were at odds with Christian ideals. He believed we should not be limiting the scope of God's commandments, writing "how can you kill people, when it is written in God's commandment: 'Thou shalt not murder'?" Mahatma Gandhi wrote that The Kingdom of God Is Within You "overwhelmed" and "left an abiding impression" on him, listing it as one of three modern works most influential on his life and philosophy. . ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description
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Published in 1884, ‘The kingdom of God is within you’ is perhaps Tolstoy’s most significant work of non-fiction. Due to the Russian censors, it was first published in Germany, but its dominant idea of non-violence echoed across the international stage throughout the 20th century.
In essence, the book is a defence by Tolstoy of the position on non-violence he adopted in ‘My Religion’; and therefore also an assault on the Orthodox Church. ‘Nowhere,’ says Tolstoy, ‘is there evidence that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church.’ And in what it now proclaimed, Tolstoy believed the church was wasting its time: ‘The activity of the church consists in forcing, by every means in its power, upon millions Russian people, those antiquated, time-worn beliefs which have lost all significance.’
Freshly informed by Quaker ideals of non-violence; and full of both story telling and rhetoric, here is Tolstoy calling for a change in consciousness in society. He does not accept that ‘this social order, with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies and wars, is necessary to society.’ That which is, is not that which must be.
Rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, Tolstoy’s Christianity is not primarily concerned with worship or salvation, but with a new way of behaving in society - behaviour informed by the pointlessness and sin of violence. Tolstoy tellingly reflects on the army at work - whether in internal repression or in national wars - and asks: ‘How can you kill people when it is written in God’s commandment ‘Thou shall not murder?’
Gandhi was ‘overwhelmed’ by the book, said ‘it left an abiding impression’, and in time, a correspondence started between the two men. The book convinced Gandhi that Hinduism and Christianity were one and the same at their core, and informed his passive resistance first in South Africa and then India; and later, of course, that of Martin Luther King in the USA. | |
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yet is impossible to believe that he would not protect people from attacks by other humans. ( )