Abstract
The world is awash in news surrounding the Russian invasion and subsequent occupation of Ukraine. Politicians and pundits discuss, ad nauseam, the various motivations behind such a brutal and devastating assault, alternating between the geopolitical, the personal, and at times, the religious reasons for Vladimir Putin’s ill-fated campaign. In his book, Second Tolstoy: The Sermon on the Mount as Theo-tactics, Steve Hickey contends there is no better time to hear the message of New Life Conception by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Indeed, he argues, now is probably the best time.
Tolstoy’s exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount returns to a pre-Constantinian understanding of Christ’s commandments. He seeks to avoid any efforts at analogizing or rationalizing Christ’s words and instead relies on them as a simple, concise, and indisputable means of interaction between all human beings. Hickey’s work is one of the first to give serious credence to Leo Tolstoy’s political theology. He argues that many have commented on the latter half of Tolstoy’s life work, most often in a simple dismissal of his overall philosophy and without dedicating any effort at refuting the specifics of his exegesis of Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Hickey’s project seeks to legitimize Tolstoy as a political theologian, to draw attention to the various assertions he makes, and to bring about a broader awareness of his work alongside other accepted greats such as “Bonhoeffer, Yoder, and Hauerwas” (p. 4). Hickey’s contention is that Tolstoy “is the baseline in Sermon on the Mount scholarship for the following century; and that he is just upstream from every expression and discussion today about nonviolent resistance.” (p. 4).
The project consists of three parts beginning with “The Doctrine of Jesus,” which discusses topics such as the intermingling of Tolstoy’s life with his literature, the main arguments of his theological works, What I Believe and The Kingdom of God is Within You, his prescription of the Sermon on the Mount as a new ethic for life, and his personal letters to such individuals as Tsar Alexander III and Mahatma Gandhi. The second part, entitled “The Doctrine of the Church,” is Hickey’s effort to place Tolstoy within a small, rarely discussed group of reformers, led most prominently by Petr Chelčicky. The latter half of this part deals with the various critiques of Tolstoy, giving particular prominence to the few commenters who seriously considered and critiqued his various positions, as opposed to those who, as Hickey often laments, critiqued the messenger as opposed to the message being offered. The third and final part is “The Doctrine of the World,” wherein Hickey provides us the most concerted and powerful arguments for reconsideration of Tolstoy as more than a celebrated genius of literature. Hickey contends that Tolstoy is an underappreciated modern-day prophet who took Jesus Christ at his word and lamented the state of government, the church, and the modern economic state as pagan in their efforts to twist the simple message of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. It is in this final section that Hickey offers the reader a roadmap, of sorts, in Tolstoy’s New Life Conception that helps us re-imagine the world through an alternative politic based entirely on love of neighbor and enemy, alike. Hickey offers Tolstoy as an alternative to Marxism-Leninism, Social Darwinism, and state violence alike.
Hickey’s project is wonderfully constructed with simple and intentional development beginning with Tolstoy’s life and literature, progressing into his own conversion and the ways in which he wrestled with Scripture, and culminating with a convincing argument for the prescience of Tolstoy’s ethics and the ways in which it can be integrated into modern political and social movements. Along the way, he coins new terms such as “theo-tactics” and laments the use of antiquated and unhelpful terms such as “anarchism.” Throughout this work, Hickey names various well-known and celebrated thinkers and political actors with direct historical and philosophical connections to Tolstoy such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jean Lassere, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. but only offers a tangential discussion of these various connections, reserving further exposition on the topic for future efforts. Second Tolstoy serves as a long overdue analysis and a reintroduction of Tolstoy’s political theology. It is an effort to seriously consider the words and wisdom of a man who was convinced of the simplicity and universality of the Sermon on the Mount ethics in all areas of human life, work, and relations.