The Christian Difference
The Christian Difference: Understanding Suffering Through Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Christ-Centered Realism May 11, 2011 In What is Art? , Tolstoy claims that Christianity is an inflection point, perhaps the inflection point in the history of art and literature. I would tend to agree. Although his casual chain of artistic influence may not pass the strictest anthropological muster, it does seem clear that something changed with the arrival of the early Christians. He emphasizes the fact that God was now personal, humble; how God was no longer a God embodied in a person or an ideal of beauty or strength, but was defined by “humility, purity, compassion, [and] love.” Christopher Hitchens has a line about how atheism is just the next logical step in the evolution of belief: We went from believing in a panoply of different Gods to believing in regionally powerful Gods to believing in one, universal, all-powerful God. The next step, he says, is to submit ourselves to the final s...