The Law of Violence and the Law of Love

A Christian cannot use violence. It is said: “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” The meaning of these words is that if you are struck, it is better than returning blow for blow to turn the other cheek. Such is God’s law for the Christian. Whoever commits violence and for whatever purpose it is committed, it is evil all the same—evil like the evil of murder, of fornication—no matter for what purpose it is committed, and whether one person or millions commit it—evil is always evil, because before God all people are equal and because God’s commandment is not like human commandments with their exceptions, qualifications, and evasions according to time and place. God’s commandment is one for all people, because the spirit living in us is one and the same in all. For a Christian, in the extreme case, it is better to be killed than to be a killer; better to suffer violence than to commit violence oneself. If people wrong me, then I, as a Christian, should reason thus: I too have wronged people, and therefore it is good that God sends me a trial for my instruction and purification from sins. But if people wrong me when I am in the right, then it is doubly good for me, because through this I become a comrade of the frontline fighters for life, for light, for freedom. One cannot save one’s soul through evil; one cannot come to good by the road of evil, just as one cannot come home by walking away from home. Satan does not cast out Satan: evil is not overcome by evil but only piles evil upon evil and strengthens it. Evil is overcome only by the opposite spirit—by truthfulness and goodness. By goodness, only by goodness, and by patience and suffering can and should evil be extinguished.

But people do not live according to the Christian law, the law of reason, humility, self-renunciation, forgiveness, and brotherly love; they live according to the animal law, the law of the beast, according to which “whoever can, devours.” One may allow that a person uses force over a delirious patient, over a drunkard, over a madman, over a foolish child—not with the aim of doing him harm but with the aim of preventing disaster. One may tolerate, forgive, and permit such violence as an unavoidable evil, but not glorify it. But when the law of bestial life is elevated to a social matter as the law for all, and glorified as if it were a divine law, then for rational people, especially for Christians, this becomes something unnatural, antichristian, a blasphemy against the spirit of Christ—an unforgivable sin.

Christ and Antichrist have lived from eternity as two opposing forces. To live according to Christ means to live humanly, to love people, to do good, and to repay evil with good. To live according to Antichrist means to live like a beast, to love only oneself, and to repay both evil and good with evil. The more we try in our ordinary, hourly life to live according to Christ, the more love and happiness there will be among people. The more we adhere to the teaching of Antichrist, the more disastrous people’s lives will be. The commandment of non-resistance to evil clearly shows two different paths: the path of truth, the path of Christ, the path of sincerity of thought and feeling—the path of life; and the other path: the path of deception, the path of the devil, the path of all hypocrisy—the path of death. And though it may be frightening to take upon oneself the cross of the commandment of non-resistance to evil, though it may be frightening to give oneself up as a sacrifice to an evildoer, we know where the road of good is, the road of salvation.

Let us therefore make the effort to walk this road, and let us illuminate this path with the light of our understanding—knowing that we are not running into a wall but that ahead there is a road and light.

Not to resist evil by force does not mean that one must renounce the protection of one’s life and labors and those of other people; it means only that all this must be protected in a different way, so that this protection is not contrary to reason. One must protect the life and labors of others and one’s own by trying to awaken the good feeling in the attacking evildoer. But for a person to be able to do this, he must himself be good and reasonable. If I see, for example, that one person intends to kill another, then the best thing I can do is to put myself in the place of the one being killed—and protect, cover with myself that person and, if possible, save him, drag him away, hide him—just as I would try to save a person from the flames of a fire or one who is drowning: either perish myself or save him. But if I find myself powerless in this way, because I myself am an erring sinner, then this powerlessness of mine does not give me the right to awaken the beast in myself and bring disorder into the world through the evil of violence and its justification.

—Buka

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Translator’s Notes:

• “Buka” was a pseudonym used in The Circle of Reading, though the authorship is uncertain. The philosophical depth and characteristic themes (non-resistance, the contrast between Christ and Antichrist, the “law of the beast”) are quintessentially Tolstoyan.
• The phrase “whoever can, devours” (кто кого может, тот того и гложет) is a Russian proverb describing the brutal law of nature or social Darwinism.
• The distinction between tolerating occasional unavoidable violence and glorifying violence as a social principle is central to Tolstoy’s critique of the state, which he saw as institutionalized violence dressed up in the language of divine right.
• “Frontline fighters for life, for light, for freedom” (передовых бойцов за жизнь, за свет, за свободу) echoes the language of revolutionary movements but redirects it toward spiritual rather than political struggle.
• The practical example at the end—placing oneself between the attacker and victim rather than attacking the attacker—illustrates Tolstoy’s conviction that non-resistance does not mean passivity but rather active love that accepts suffering rather than inflicting it.