the Gospels

The Gospels, the Christian scriptures that record the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, function in Tolstoy's Resurrection as the ultimate moral and spiritual authority that catalyzes Nekhludoff's final awakening and provides the framework for his understanding of justice, forgiveness, and the meaning of life. Throughout the novel, the Gospels appear in multiple contexts—as a source of comfort and community during a prison Easter service, as a text that Nekhludoff had once read with the young Katusha, and finally as the instrument of his decisive spiritual transformation. The book's treatment of the Gospels moves from institutionalized ritual to personal revelation, tracing Nekhludoff's journey from a man who had long known the words to one who finally, in a moment of crisis, grasps their full, practical meaning.

The Gospels in the Prison Church

The most extended depiction of the Gospels as an institutional text occurs during the Sunday prison service, where the priest reads a passage from the Gospel according to St. Mark. The reading describes Christ's resurrection, his appearance to Mary Magdalene, and his command to the disciples to preach the Gospel to all creation, with the promise that believers will cast out devils, speak in new tongues, take up serpents, and drink poison without harm. The narrator's commentary is sharply ironic: the priest reads "very distinctly" a passage that promises liberation to captives, while the service itself is conducted in a prison where men and women are held in chains. The irony deepens as the narrator observes that none of those present—from the inspector down to Maslova—seemed conscious that this same Jesus had forbidden the very things being done in His name: judging, imprisoning, tormenting, and executing men. The gilt cross that the priest holds out to be kissed is described as "nothing but the emblem of that gallows on which Christ had been executed for denouncing just what was going on here." The Gospels, in this context, are reduced to a ritual object, their radical message neutralized by the institutional church that claims to represent them.

The Gospels in Nekhludoff's Youth

Earlier in the novel, the Gospels appear in a more personal and formative context. During the summer Nekhludoff spent with his aunts at Panovo, when he was a university student writing an essay on land tenure, he gave Katusha books by Dostoevsky and Turgenev to read, and she particularly liked Turgenev's Lull. The Gospels are not explicitly mentioned in this passage, but the spiritual atmosphere of that summer—Nekhludoff's reading of Spencer and Henry George, his idealistic resolve to give his land to the peasants, his pure love for Katusha—establishes the moral framework that the Gospels will later articulate with final clarity. The Easter eve service that Nekhludoff attends with Katusha, with its joyful hymns and the repeated cry of "Christ is risen," represents a moment of unselfconscious spiritual unity, before the fall that will separate them for years.

The Gospels as the Key to Nekhludoff's Awakening

The decisive encounter with the Gospels occurs in the final chapter of the novel, after Nekhludoff has witnessed Kryltzoff's death and the horrors of the prison. Exhausted and despairing, he sits alone in his hotel room and mechanically opens the Testament that the Englishman had given him as a souvenir. He begins reading the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18, and the words strike him with unprecedented force. The passage about forgiving "not until seven times, but until seventy times seven" suddenly appears to him not as an abstract ideal but as the only practical solution to the evil he has witnessed: if all men acknowledged themselves as sinners, none could claim the right to punish or correct others. The parable of the unforgiving servant—the man forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents who then refuses to forgive a fellow servant a hundred pence—becomes a mirror of the entire social order Nekhludoff has been fighting. He sees that the judges, prosecutors, and officials who punish others are themselves guilty, and that their punishment of others is a form of the same hypocrisy the parable condemns.

The Five Commandments as a Program for Life

Reading the Sermon on the Mount, Nekhludoff identifies five specific commandments that he now understands as practical, achievable laws rather than exaggerated demands. The first forbids not only murder but anger and contempt toward a brother. The second forbids not only adultery but the lustful gaze, and demands faithfulness to one's partner. The third forbids all oaths. The fourth commands turning the other cheek and forgiving offenses. The fifth commands loving one's enemies. These commandments, Nekhludoff realizes, if actually practiced, would establish "the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth" and render impossible the violence, imprisonment, and cruelty that have filled him with horror. The parable of the vineyard workers reinforces this insight: men have imagined themselves masters of a life that belongs to another, and their misery flows from this fundamental error. The only reasonable meaning of life, Nekhludoff concludes, is to fulfill the Master's will as expressed in these commandments.

The Gospels as the Foundation of Nekhludoff's New Life

The novel ends not with Nekhludoff's arrival at a fixed doctrine but with the beginning of "a perfectly new life"—a life whose meaning has been transformed by his reading of the Gospels. The final sentence states that "how this new period of his life will end time alone will prove," leaving the outcome open. The Gospels have not provided Nekhludoff with a set of answers to every practical question, but with a new orientation: the certainty that the only duty of every man is to fulfill these laws, and that every deviation from them is a mistake followed by retribution. This is not a conversion to institutional Christianity—the novel has been scathing about the prison church and the state religion—but a personal appropriation of the Gospels' ethical core. The book that Nekhludoff had known since childhood, that he had heard read in the prison church, that he had once given to Katusha, finally becomes the living text that reorders his entire understanding of justice, punishment, and love.