C. Minor themes
The minor themes, as well as the major ones, all stem from Tolstoy's single-minded morality. His controversial anti-war views, expressed in Part 8, became formalized among the doctrines of Tolstoyan Christianity. A Christian's first duty, Tolstoy later stated, is to abstain from living by the work of others and from participating in the organized violence of the state. While all forms of violence are evil, any government compulsion shares this taint, since the individual must be free to follow his own inner goodness, seeking for himself what is right and wrong. These as yet unformalized doctrines motivate Levin's disinterest in the "Slavonic question" and make him challenge why Russian soldiers should murder Turks.
Despite Tolstoy's anarchic morality, he believes that God's judgment operates the sanctions of moral law. The Pauline epigraph which appears at the novel's title page expresses this fatalism: "Vengeance is mine and I shall repay, saith the Lord" (Romans, 12:19). In other words, the good character gains reward, the bad one is punished; Levin achieves salvation, Anna finds death. Only God judges, not men, says Tolstoy. Depicting the gossiping members of Anna's social set with pitiless irony as they glory in the scandal, Tolstoy chastises these human judges.
