Pål Kolstø's Heretical Orthodoxy extends the Tolstoian spirituality depicted in Richard Gustafon's Leo Tolstoi: Resident and Stranger by focusing on the reception history composed by Lev Tolstoi's contemporaries and by demonstrating that Tolstoi “entered” the role of three Orthodox pious archetypes (starets, strannik, and iurodivyi) associated with an estrangement characteristic of those without belonging (271). Characterizing the author's conversion as a “breakthrough,” Kolstø posits that a greater appreciation for Tolstoianism will result in the reader's discovery of ideas “latent” in his pre-conversion literature, but the substance of the study remains commonalties between the canonical Orthodox tradition and Tolstoi's writings, especially those dating from the composition of Ispoved΄ (2). Kolstø depicts Tolstoi as a misunderstood author struggling for truth in the midst of Deus absconditus while unreconciled to the faith of his childhood owing to an inability to accept intellectually the internal contradictions of a tradition simultaneously professing atonement and individual responsibility as well as the incomprehensibility of God alongside God's immanence (52, 59). The textual analysis of Tolstoi's oeuvre, interwoven throughout the monograph, serves to affirm the attributes of the Orthodox God recognized by Tolstoi: God's unity and God as being, while delineating his anthropocentric rather than theocentric Weltanschauung with his rejection of Christian precepts on Christ's divinity and the Trinity.

When defining his historical-genetic approach, Kolstø specifies that he intends to engage primarily Orthodox literature, and only that with which Tolstoi “to a high degree of certainty” was familiar (12). From a summary of the reception of Tolstoi among members of the Solov΄ev society, Kolstø concludes that these contemporaries reached no consensus with Vladimir Ėrn (appreciating his artistic representation of Christians), Sergii Bulgakov (contending that the metaphysical dimension of Christianity eluded him), and Vasilii Zen΄kovskii (valuing his mystical experiences). Many references to theologians publishing in Orthodox journals serve to reconstruct the dialogue (both in print and in person) between Tolstoi and his contemporary theologians, including prominent members of the black clergy like Amvrosii of Optina Pustyn or members of the Holy Synod. As a result, although Tolstoi esteemed the intuitive religious practice of the peasantry, the monograph traces Tolstoi's interaction with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, partly as a consequence of the extensive presentation of his “self-excommunication” (226). Kolstø's analysis of the Moscow Patriarchate's published decision to deny Tolstoi the traditional otpevanie, pominovenie, and panikhida upon his death fills two chapters of the book, as he evaluates the family's reaction to the decision as well as the public's response. During these chapters, Kolstø frequently downplays the severity of these extraordinary measures undertaken by the Synod by attributing them not to retaliation for Tolstoi's critique of Orthodoxy but to a failure of the Synod to communicate effectively, to official concern for his impact on impressionable believers, and to a campaign to return Tolstoi to the fold. The many journal articles cited by Kolstø attest to the Orthodox Church's increased visibility resulting from its engagement with Tolstoyanism, but he ultimately concludes that although Tolstoi drew upon his Orthodox heritage for key ideas like asceticism, all the same he sought to “reinterpret” rather than “rediscover” the “unadulterated doctrine” of Christ while maintaining that in Christianity lies were interwoven with truth (269).

In the final analysis, Kolstø convincingly argues that the fact that detractors applied the label of Antichrist to Tolstoi further attests to the presence of Orthodox ideas in his teachings, since a sign of the Antichrist is his resemblance to Christ, through which he leads the faithful astray. While Kolstø overlooks some of the novelist's greatest contributions to fundamental—yet not uniquely—Christian concepts like Providence in Voina i mir or the development of individual conscience in Anna Karenina, his elucidation of Tolstoi's appraisal of the two attributes Christ assigns to himself in the Gospel of John (14:6), through an identification with “the Truth and the Way,” effectively demonstrates how this admirer of the strannik adopts this final role with little anticipation of its very public consequences (116). Despite the professor of patristics Vasilii Ekzempliarskii's defense of Tolstoi's social message and Bulgakov's censure of leadership for displaying such “zeal” in correcting Tolstoi while tolerating the “antics” of Grigorii Rasputin, Kolstø defends the Russian ecclesiastical leadership when concluding that the Russian readership, unfamiliar with Tolstoi's most extreme views because of the censor prohibiting their publication, failed to comprehend the motivations behind the Circular Letter (155).