A Confession · Theme

Faith and Doubt

How A Confession develops Faith and Doubt.

Tolstoy explores his loss of childhood religious faith, his intellectual rejection of Orthodox Christianity, and his eventual struggle to reconcile reason with the irrational but life-sustaining faith of the common people.

Where it surfaces

I
The narrator's loss of childhood faith and the gradual erosion of religious belief under the influence of reason and experience.
VIII
The narrator struggles with faith as irrational yet essential, doubting his own reason and the validity of the common people's beliefs.
IX
The narrator acknowledges faith as the only source of life's meaning, despite its irrationality.
Chapter X
The narrator grapples with doubt regarding the faith of the educated, while finding genuine faith among the poor and simple.
XII
The chapter vividly portrays the oscillation between doubt (despair, thoughts of suicide) and faith (joy, renewed life) as the narrator seeks God.
XIII
The narrator grapples with accepting Church rituals and doctrines while doubting their validity, ultimately choosing to humble his reason and submit to tradition.
XIV
The narrator experiences intense doubt during the Eucharist and struggles to maintain faith despite theological contradictions.
Chapter XV
Tolstoy's intense struggle between his desire to believe and his intellectual rejection of church doctrines; his envy of peasants' simple faith.
XVI
The narrator moves from doubt to a conviction that truth exists in religion, yet acknowledges falsehood, prompting a critical examination.