The Teaching of the Twelve ApostlesУчение двенадцати апостолов

In 1883 the Greek Metropolitan Bryennios found in Constantinople, in an old collection of ancient Christian teachings, a work entitled “The Teaching of the 12 Apostles” or “The Teaching of the Lord, Given to the Nations through the 12 Apostles.” Of this book, which some teachers of the Church revered as sacred, only the title had been known until then.

This work contains the very essence of the Christian teaching. It conveys, in different words and with some additions and explanations, those great truths and precepts that are set out in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and in chapter 6 of Luke. Thus, for example, to the precept about giving to those who ask, this is added: “Blessed is he who gives according to the commandment, for he is free from punishment; but woe to him who receives: for whoever takes when in need is in the right; but he who is not in need shall give account of why and for what he took.” There is also an explanation, absent from the Gospels, that alms are alms only when they come from a sweating hand, that is, when what is given has been earned by the labor of the giver.

The same is said still more clearly in chapter 4. There it is said that a Christian must regard nothing as his own property, and can help those in need only by his own labor.

This work also contains a beautiful and very important precept, not found in the Gospels, on how a Christian should treat people according to the state of their souls. “Have hatred for no one,” it says there, “but reprove some, pray for others, and love still others more than your own soul.”

Clearly, the counsel to reprove some refers to those who go astray through ignorance or through being carried away, to such as reproof can help to set out on the good path. Prayer is counseled for those who are deaf to reproof and admonition. This clearly refers to those of whom it is said in the Gospel that one should not cast pearls before those who cannot value them. Here the same thought is expressed more gently and more kindly. This teaching counsels not turning away from such people but praying for them: that is, never ceasing to wish them their true good, and being always ready, should they soften, to come to their aid. And loving more than one’s own soul clearly refers to those who are united by one faith.

Important and new, too, is the precept in chapter 6 on how to answer the usual objection to Christ’s teaching from people who do not want to accept it. “If you are going to fulfill it, then fulfill all of it,” say such objectors. “And to fulfill all of it, one must renounce life, and that is impossible.” The answer to this objection is this:

“Beware of anyone who would lead you astray from this way, since he teaches you not according to God; for if you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect, and if you cannot, then do what you can.”

Besides these and many other new and remarkable explanations, this book has definite directions on how baptism is to be performed. It says that one must baptize as follows: having imparted all the teaching given above to the one being baptized (an adult, therefore), baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Likewise the Eucharist is spoken of as a prayer of thanksgiving read in the common assembly at a meal, without any hint of a sacrament. Of prayer it says the same as the Gospel: that prayer should consist in saying the “Our Father.”

Instructions are also given on how to choose bishops and deacons — as elected officers of the community, without the slightest indication of ordination. There are many other ordinances as well about apostles and prophets, entirely at odds with the institutions that exist now.

And now this book appears, recognized by all scholars as a work of the end of the first century or the beginning of the second: that is, a Christian document earlier than the Gospel of Luke and contemporary with the Gospel of John; a voice that confirms, clarifies and strengthens all that we know of the moral and practical side of Christianity, and yet disagrees in much, and in what is most essential, with its outward side. And what then? One would think the discovery of such a document should cause the greatest stir in the Christian world. All Christians, one would think, should seize on this document, study its contents, go deep into its meaning, compare their established tenets with it and correct them by it; they should have spread this work among the people in millions of copies and be reading it in the churches. Nothing of the kind is happening, nor has it happened. Ten or so scholars have examined this document from the point of view of the Church at large and of history; a few priests who specialize in false interpretation have thought up some arguments or other by which it turns out that the later institutions are right, and not those written of in this work; so that the discovery of “The Teaching of the Lord to the Nations through the 12 Apostles,” that is, the hearing of the voice of holy people of the first centuries of Christianity, a voice that confirms, clarifies and strengthens all that we know of the moral side of Christianity — the discovery of this document makes far less of an impression on Christian society than the discovery of a piece of a naked Venus in some excavation.

The posthumous writings of some unhappy madman, a Nietzsche or a Verlaine, come to light, and hundreds of thousands of copies are printed and distributed. But the words of that Christ whom we supposedly profess ring out, and we only try somehow to be rid of them as quickly as we can, so that they will not keep us from our important affairs: the discovery of a new planet, disputes about the origin of species, arguments about the properties of radium — things needed for nothing at all.

Yes, this is exactly it: “The heart of these people has grown coarse, and with their ears they barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, that I should heal them” (Isaiah 6:9–10, Matthew 13:15).

But, thank God, there are still people among the masses for whom this voice from the times of the first century matters, and who will joyfully find in it a still greater clarification and confirmation of the truth that lights their lives and gives them strength. It is for these people that I write this and reprint this work.

There are two ways: the way of life and the way of death. And the difference between these two ways is great. The way of life is this:

First, love God, who created you.

Second, your neighbor as yourself, and therefore do not do to another anything you would not want done to you.

The teaching of these two sayings is this:

The first commandment of the teaching: love God, who created you.

Bless those who curse you; pray for your enemies, for those who attack you, and fast for those who wrong you; for it is no good thing to love only those who love you. The heathen do the same. They love their own and hate their enemies, and that is why they have enemies. But you, love those who hate you, and then you will have no enemies.

Beware of bodily and worldly impulses.

If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also, and you will be perfect. If anyone forces you to go one verst with him, go with him two. If anyone takes your caftan, give him your shirt as well. If anyone has taken from you what is yours, do not try to get it back, for this is not to be done. And give to everyone who asks of you, and do not demand it back, for the Father wants each to have, as his own, what he has given to all people. Blessed is he who gives according to the commandment: he is in the right; but woe to him who takes, for only he who takes out of need is in the right; but whoever takes without need must give account of why and for what he took. Whoever is caught in the snares of Mammon will be tormented for what he has done, and will not get free of them until he has given up the last of it. It is of this that it is said: let your mercy come out of your hands as sweat, while you do not yet even know to whom you will give.

The second commandment of the teaching: love your neighbor as yourself, that is, do not do to another what you would not want done to you.

Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not defile children, do not live in debauchery, do not steal, do not practice sorcery, do not poison, do not destroy an infant in its mother’s womb nor kill one that is born, do not desire to have what is your neighbor’s, do not swear, do not bear false witness, do not speak foul words, do not think foul thoughts, do not be double-minded or double-tongued — a double tongue is a snare of death. Let your word be neither false nor empty, but always full of deeds; be neither greedy nor rapacious, nor a hypocrite, nor sullen, nor proud. Bear no ill will toward your neighbor, hate no man, but reprove some, pray for others, and love still others more than your own soul.

My child! Shun all evil and everything that resembles it. Do not give way to anger: anger leads to murder; do not give way to contentiousness, to disputes, to heat — from all this come murders. My child! Shun lust: lust leads to debauchery; do not speak foul words, and do not let your eyes wander to what you have no need to see: this leads to adulteries. My child! Do not tell fortunes, for this leads to idolatry; do not work magic, do not practice the black arts, do not utter incantations, and do not be present at such doings, for this is idolatry. My child! Do not be a deceiver, for deceit leads to theft; do not be avaricious or vainglorious — this too leads to theft. My child! Do not be discontented: discontent leads to reviling; do not be self-satisfied and censorious, for this too leads to reviling; be meek, for the meek shall inherit the earth; be patient, merciful, and without malice, and humble, and kind, and on every occasion remember with fear these words which you have heard. Do not exalt yourself, and do not let presumption into your heart. Let your heart not be drawn to the exalted and the strong, but let it cleave to the righteous and the humble. And whatever happens to you, accept as good, knowing that nothing happens without God.

My child! Day and night remember the one who teaches you the word of God, and honor him as the Lord, for the Lord is there, in the place from which you learned of him. Always seek out holy people and keep company with them, so as to find rest for your soul in their words. Do not desire division among people, but reconcile those at enmity. Judge between them justly, and without respect of persons convict them of their sins. Do not be duplicitous, and do not say: it can be done this way, and it can be done that way. Do not stretch out your hand when it is a matter of taking, and do not close it when it is a matter of giving. What you have earned with your hands, give as a ransom for your sins. Do not hesitate to give, and when you have given, do not regret it, for you will come to know what the best reward is for the good you do. Do not turn away from one in need, but let all that you have be shared with your brother, and call nothing your own property; for if all that is immortal you hold in common, all the more must all that is perishable be common among you. Do not leave off guiding your son or your daughter, but from their youth teach them the fear of God. Do not command your servant or your maidservant: they believe in the same God as you. Otherwise, out of bitterness, they may cease to fear the God who is over you both; for the right to command goes not by persons, but to the one whom the Spirit has appointed.

Hate all hypocrisy and everything that is not pleasing to God. Do not forsake the commandments of the Lord, but keep those you have received, adding nothing and taking nothing away. Among the believers, confess your sins, and do not think of praying while you have ill will in your heart.

Such is the way of life.

But the way of death is this: first of all it is calamitous and full of abominations. Murders, adultery, lusts, debauchery, theft, idolatry, sorcery, poisoning, robberies, deceits, hypocrisy, duplicity, cunning, pride, malice, presumption, greed, foul speech, envy, insolence, conceit, vainglory, persecutors of the good, haters of the truth, lovers of lies, those who do not acknowledge the reward for righteousness, who do not cleave to the good and do not know right judgment, those who care and busy themselves not about good but about evil, who do not know meekness and patience, lovers of trifles, seekers of worldly rewards, who have no pity on the beggar, who do not labor for the toil-worn, who do not know the one who created them, murderers and seducers of children, destroyers of the image of God, who turn away from the needy and wear out with labor those already worn out, comforters of the rich and lawless judges of the poor — sinners through and through, in everything. Beware, my children, of such people!

See that no one turns you aside from this way of the teaching.

(An Address to a Circle of Young People)

I should like, in parting (at my age every meeting with people is a parting), to tell you briefly how, as I understand it, people ought to live so that our life may not be the evil and grief it now seems to most people, but may be what God wants and what we all want, that is, a good and a joy, as it should be.

Everything depends on how we understand our life. If we understand our life to mean that this life is given to me in my body, to Ivan, Pyotr, Marya, and that the whole business of life is to get as many joys and pleasures, as much happiness, as possible for this “I” of mine, Ivan, Pyotr, Marya, then life will always, and for everyone, be unhappy and embittered.

Life will be unhappy and embittered because whatever any of us want for ourselves, all the rest want just the same. And since all want as much good of every kind for themselves as possible, and this good is one and the same for all such people, there is never enough of it for all. And so, if people each live for themselves, they cannot avoid taking from one another, fighting, getting angry with one another, and because of this their life is never happy. And if at times people do get what they want, it is always too little for them, and they try to get more and more; and besides, they are afraid that what they have got will be taken from them, and they envy those who have got what they have not.

So if people understand their life as being, for each of them, in their own body, the life of such people cannot fail to be unhappy. And that is what it is now for all such people. But life ought not to be like this, that is, unhappy. Life is given to us for our good, and that is how we all understand life. And for life to be that, people must understand that our real life is not in our body at all but in the spirit that lives in our body, and that our good lies not in pleasing the body and doing what it wants, but in doing what is wanted by this spirit, which is one and the same and lives in us just as in all people. And what this spirit wants is its own good, the good of the spirit. And since this spirit is one and the same in all people, it wants the good of all people. And to want the good of all people is to love people. And no one and nothing can keep us from loving people; and the more we love, the freer and more joyful our life becomes.

So it turns out that, however hard we try, we can never please the body, because what the body needs cannot always be had, and to get it we have to fight with others; but the soul we can always please, because the soul needs only love, and for love there is no need to fight with anyone; not only is there no need to fight with others, but on the contrary, the more we love, the closer we come to other people. So nothing can stand in the way of love, and the more each of us loves, the more and more we not only become happy and joyful ourselves but make other people happy and joyful too.

This, then, dear brothers, is what I wanted to say to you in parting: to say what all holy and wise people, and Christ, and all the sages of the world have taught you, namely, that our life is unhappy because of ourselves; that the power which sent us into life, and which we call God, sent us not to suffer but to have the very good that we all desire; and that we fail to receive this good meant for us only when we understand life otherwise than we should and do otherwise than we should.

And yet we complain of life, saying that our life is badly ordered, and do not think that it is not our life that is badly ordered, but that we are not doing what we ought. It is just as if a drunkard were to complain that he had taken to drink because so many taverns and dramshops had sprung up, when so many taverns and dramshops had sprung up only because so many drunkards like him had multiplied.

Life is given to people for their good, if only they would use it as it ought to be used. If only people lived not by envy of one another but by love, life would be an unceasing good for all.

Now on every side they say only one thing: our life, they say, is bad and unhappy because it is badly ordered — let us remake the bad order into a good one, and our life will be good.

Dear brothers, do not believe it; do not believe that your life can be worse or better because of one order or another. To say nothing of the fact that all those people who are concerned with the ordering of a better life all disagree among themselves and all quarrel with one another: some propose one order, considering it the very best, while others say that this order is the very worst and that the only good one is the one they propose. And still others reject that one too and propose their own very best, and so on. But even if there were such a very best order, even if we were to grant that the very best order had been devised, how could people be made to live by this order, how could this good order be kept, when people are used to living badly and love it? For as it is, we are used to living badly and love it; whatever we take in hand, we foul; and yet we say that we shall live well when the order is good. But how can there be a good order when people are bad?

So even if there is such a very best order of life, to attain it people must become better. Yet you are promised a good life after you have, on top of your present bad life, also fought with people, done violence to people, even killed them, in order to bring in this good order; that is, you are promised a good life after you yourselves have become still worse than you are now.

Do not believe it, do not believe it, dear brothers. For life to be good there is only one means: that people themselves be better. And let people be better, and the life that should be among good people will order itself of its own accord.

Your salvation, and that of all people, lies not at all in a sinful, violent ordering of life, but in the ordering of your own soul. Only by this, by such an ordering of the soul, will each of us win, for ourselves and for others, the greatest good and the very best order of life that people could ever desire. The true good, the good that every human heart seeks, is given to us not in some future order of life upheld by violence, but now, to all of us, everywhere, at every moment of life and even of death; and it is attained by love.

This good has been given to us from of old; but people did not understand it and did not take it. Now, though, the time has come when we can no longer help accepting it: we cannot help accepting it, first, because the outrages and sufferings of our life have brought us to the point where our life is becoming an unbearable torment. The second reason is that the true teaching of Christ, which is being revealed to us more and more, has now become so clear that for our salvation we can no longer help acknowledging and accepting it. Our salvation now lies in one thing: in recognizing that our true life is not in our body but in the spirit of God that lives in us, and that therefore all the efforts we once put into bettering our bodily life, both individual and social, we can and must put into the one and only thing that is needful and important for a human being: that each of us should foster and strengthen in ourselves love not only for those who love us but, as Christ said, for all people, and above all for people who are strangers to us, for those who hate us.

Our life now is so far from this that at first it seems impossible to shift all our efforts from care for worldly affairs onto a single work, unseen and unfamiliar to us: love for all people.

But it only seems so: love for all people, even for those who hate us, is far more natural to the human soul than strife with our neighbors and hatred of them. A change in the understanding of the meaning of life is not only not impossible in our time; on the contrary, what is impossible is to go on with the embittered life of all against all that we lead now. This change is not only not impossible; on the contrary, it alone can lead people out of the calamities they suffer from, and therefore this change must inevitably, sooner or later, come about.

Dear brothers, why, and for what, do you torment yourselves? Only remember that the greatest good is meant for you, and take it. It is all within you. It is so easy, so simple and so joyful.

But perhaps people who suffer, the poor and the oppressed, will say: “Yes, this may be good for the rich and powerful; it is easy for the rich and powerful to love their enemies when those enemies are in their power. But it is hard for us, who suffer and are oppressed.” But that is not true. Dear brothers, to change their understanding of life is equally needful for the powerful, the rich, and for the ruled, the poor. And for the ruled and the poor it is easier than for the rich. The ruled and the poor need only, without changing their position, not only refrain from deeds contrary to love but also take no part in such deeds, acts of violence among them, and this whole order hostile to love will fall of itself; whereas for the powerful it is much harder to accept and fulfill the teaching of love. To fulfill this teaching they must renounce the temptations of power and wealth that possess them; and that is harder for them; while the poor and the ruled need only commit no new violence and, above all, take no part in the old.

As a person grows, so grows humanity. The consciousness of love has grown in it and is growing still, and in our time it has grown to the point where we cannot fail to see that it must save us and become the foundation of our life. For what is happening now is the last convulsion of a dying life of violence, malice and lovelessness.

For by now it cannot fail to be clear that all these struggles, all this hatred, all these orders imposed by violence, are all senseless deceptions leading nowhere but to ever-growing calamities. And it cannot fail to be clear that the one, the simplest and easiest salvation from all this is the consciousness of the fundamental principle of the life of all people — love — the principle that inevitably, without any effort, replaces the greatest evil with the greatest good.

There is a tradition that the apostle John, when he had reached a great age, was wholly taken up with one feeling and kept expressing it in the same words, saying only one thing: “Children, love one another.” So old age expressed itself, that is, the life of one man who had lived to a certain limit. In just the same way must the life of humanity express itself, once it has lived to a certain limit.

For it is so simple, so clear: you live, that is, you were born, you grow, you mature, you grow old, and any moment now you will die. Can the aim of your life really lie in you? Surely not. “What, then,” you ask yourself, “what am I?” And there is only one answer: I am something that loves. At first it seems that it loves only itself; but you need only live a little, think a little, to see that to love yourself, passing through life and dying, is impossible and pointless. You feel: I must love, and I do love myself. But loving myself, I cannot help feeling that the object of my love is unworthy of it; and yet I cannot help loving. In love there is life. What, then, is to be done? Love others, those close to me, friends, those who love me? At first it seems that this satisfies the need for love; but all these people are, first, imperfect; second, they change; and above all, they die. What, then, is there to love? And there is only one answer: to love all, to love the principle of love, to love love, to love God. To love not for the sake of the one you love, not for your own sake, but for love’s sake. Only understand this, and at once all the evil of human life is destroyed, and its meaning becomes plain and joyful.

“Yes, that would be good. What could be better?” people will say. “It would be good to love and to live for love, if everyone lived that way. But as it is, I am to live for love, give everything to another, while others live for themselves, for their bodies; what will become of me, and not of me alone, but of my family, of those I love and cannot help loving? People have been talking of love for a long time, but no one follows it. And it cannot be followed. One could give one’s life to love only if all people at once, by some miracle, exchanged the worldly, bodily life for a spiritual, divine one. But there is no such miracle, and so all this is words, not deeds.” So people say, soothing themselves in their false, habitual life. They say so, but in the depths of their souls they know that they are wrong. They know that these arguments are false. They are false because it is only for the advantage of the worldly, bodily life that all people need to change their life at once; it is not so for the spiritual life: for love, love of God and of people. Love gives us our good not in its consequences but in love itself; it gives us our good wholly regardless of how other people act and of whatever goes on in the outer world. Love gives us our good in this: that in loving we are united with God, and we not only desire nothing for ourselves but desire to give everything we have, and our very life, to others, and in this giving of ourselves to God we find our good. And so all that other people do, all that may happen in the world, can have no influence on what we do. To love is to give ourselves to God, to do what God wants; and God is love, that is, he wants the good of all, and so he cannot want us to perish in fulfilling his law.

Those who love do not perish, even alone among the unloving. And if they do perish among people, as Christ perished on the cross, their death is both joyful for them and significant for others, not despairing and insignificant, as the deaths of worldly people are.

So the excuse that I do not give myself to love because not everyone will do the same, and I shall be left alone, is both mistaken and wrong. It is just as if people who had to work to feed themselves and their children would not set to work because others do not work.

Yes, dear brothers, let us put our life into strengthening love within us, and leave the world to go as it will, that is, as is ordained for it from above. Let us do so, and believe me, we shall receive the greatest good for ourselves and do all the good for people that we possibly can.

For it is so simple, so easy and so joyful. Let each of us only love, love not only those who love us but all people, especially those who hate us, as Christ taught, and life is an unceasing joy, and all the questions that people gone astray try so vainly to resolve by violence are not only resolved but cease to exist. “And we know that we have passed from death into life, if we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother has not eternal life. Only he who loves his brother has eternal life abiding in him.”

One word more, dear brothers.

One cannot know of any undertaking whether it is good or bad without having tested it in practice, in life. If a farmer is told that it is good to sow rye in rows, or a beekeeper that it is good to use frame hives, a sensible farmer or beekeeper, to find out for certain whether what he is told is true, will make an experiment, and will follow or not follow what was proposed to him according to how far he finds it borne out by the experiment.

So it is in the whole business of life. To find out for certain how far the precepts of love apply in life, put them to the test.

Try it: take it upon yourselves, for a set time, to follow the demands of love in everything: to live so that in all your affairs you remember, before anything else, not to depart from love with any person, a thief, a drunkard, a rude superior or subordinate; that is, when you deal with someone, to remember what that person needs, not what you need. And when you have lived so for the time you set, ask yourselves: was it hard for you, and did you spoil your life or better it? And according to what the experiment shows you, decide then whether it is true that fulfilling love gives good in life, or whether this is only words. Put it to the test: try, instead of repaying an offender evil for evil, instead of condemning behind their backs those who live badly, and so on — instead of this, try to answer evil with good, to say nothing bad about anyone, not to treat even an animal, a dog, roughly, but with kindness and gentleness; live so a day, two days or longer (as an experiment), and compare the state of your soul during that time with what it used to be. Put it to the test, and you will see how, instead of being gloomy, angry and heavy at heart, you will be bright, cheerful, joyful. And live so a second week and a third, and you will see how the joy in your soul will keep growing and growing, and your affairs, far from going wrong, will go better and better.

Only put it to the test, dear brothers, and you will see that the teaching of love is not words but a deed, the nearest, the very nearest of deeds, one that all can understand and all need.