The Five Commandments of Christ

Tolstoy identified the five commandments as: first, be not angry — control the will to harm, beginning with the thought; second, do not commit adultery in your heart — honour all sexual relationships; third, swear no oaths — do not bind yourself unconditionally to any human authority; fourth, do not resist evil by force — the central commandment; fifth, love your enemies — extend goodwill even to those who harm you. He read these not as counsels of perfection addressed to exceptional saints but as practical rules for ordinary life, whose consistent application would transform social existence.

Tolstoy is particularly focused on the fourth commandment — non-resistance — which he regards as the one the Church most urgently needed to suppress in order to maintain its alliance with state power. From Constantine onward, the Church had needed armies to protect and extend Christian civilisation; armies require soldiers willing to kill; soldiers cannot be taught that killing is absolutely forbidden. The solution was to reinterpret "resist not evil" as a spiritual counsel rather than a practical rule — to make it mean something inward and quiet that left the outer world of violence undisturbed.

What struck Tolstoy most forcefully about these commandments, once he had identified them, was their utter simplicity — their accessibility to anyone, regardless of education, theological sophistication, or social position. Christ had not preached a complex metaphysical system or a sacramental theology requiring priestly mediation. He had given practical rules that any person could understand and attempt to follow. The entire apparatus of the Church — its councils, its creeds, its hierarchy, its sacraments — was, from Tolstoy's perspective, an elaboration that had displaced rather than served the original simple teaching.

What I Believe was written in 1883–84 and banned in Russia. Tolstoy's method in reading the Gospels — close attention to the plain meaning of the Greek, with systematic scepticism toward all traditional theological interpretations — was derived from his own translation project, which he worked on from 1880 to 1882.