Monday, July 03, 2006
(4:44 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Praise the Lord
From Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917):Any man in whom the Jesus-strain reappears clearly is felt to be a kind of superman. If Tolstoi, for instance, had never begun to follow Christ in his life, he would be simply one of a group of brilliant Russian novelists. Since he received something of the mind of Jesus into his mind, he became one of the prophetic figures of our age and no one can tell how much he contributed, through others, to enable Russia, newly free, to make the one sincere and penetrating utterance made on behalf of democracy and peace in the Spring and Summer of 1917.Does it seem to everyone else that he's basically saying we partly have the spirit of Christ, as manifested in Tolstoy, to thank for the Bolshevik Revolution? [UPDATE: Well, if it seems like that to you, you're wrong -- the Bolshevik Revolution didn't take place until the Fall, as pointed out by Ralph Luker in comments and as implied by its popular name: the October Revolution.]
It's also interesting to me that Tolstoy currently seems to be considered just a Russian novelist, whereas back around the turn of the century, he was considered to be this prophetic figure.
