Читать книгу The Gospel in Dostoyevsky - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Страница 9

Introduction

THIS BOOK OF EXCERPTS from the writing of Dostoyevsky begins, very rightly, with “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” from The Brothers Karamazov. This is the high point of the stories he incorporates into his novels and essays. They are similar to the parables told by Jesus. They provide the reader with a practical illustration of a universal truth that can be described in no other way. “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” is a superb parable of human existence. It raises the great, or cursed, questions so characteristic of Dostoyevsky’s passion for the living gospel. Only in the light of the gospel is the complexity of human existence made understandable, purposeful, and hopeful. Without it there is no meaning to the daily round of human life.

One might expect the Legend to be narrated by a believer. It is not. It is a prose poem composed by Ivan, the Karamazov brother who is the rationalist and the man of “the Euclidean mind.” He, like the believer, is passionately involved in the gospel but in terms of its rejection, because it does not conform to his logic or his demand for “justice.” He cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. The only logical thing left for him to do is to return his ticket to existence. But to whom is he to return it? “And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man, I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.” Thus the idea of God is essential even for someone who is trying passionately to deny him.

Alyosha, the believing brother, understands this tormented position and classifies it as rebellion, the rebellion of the disbeliever, who must have “justice.” If he cannot have it, then he has no recourse but to destroy himself. In analyzing his brother’s position Alyosha is describing man after the fall, man in rebellion against God, man seeking to be as God. Thus sin is not passive but active; not simply a failure to obey God’s command, but a deliberate refusal to obey; indeed, an act of defiance.

Ivan, in telling “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” is thus telling his own story. He rebels against God’s ordering of creation and denies the effectiveness of Christ’s redemption. His Euclidean mind rejects the reality of God, man, and nature because it does not measure up to his formula of justice. Although he agonizes over the suffering of innocent children, he does so nevertheless, not from his love of them, but rather from his idea of its injustice. He confesses, “I never could understand how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love people at a distance.” “One can love one’s neighbors in the abstract” (page 24). Such is the position of the Grand Inquisitor. For love of humanity he has assumed the burden of its freedom, a freedom too great for the people to bear. In assuming this burden he has chosen the way of the three temptations, which Jesus rejected for the sake of freedom. Thus he tells Jesus, “At last we have completed that work in thy name…Today people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet” (page 6).

The freedom to which the Grand Inquisitor refers is the freedom of illusion. At best it is an idea and no more than that. Thus he believes himself to be justified in giving the masses bread in exchange for their soul. The mystery of his ideology replaces the divine mystery. By means of it the people assume that the bondage enforced by “the sword of Caesar” is indeed the freedom they seek.

The tragic irony of Ivan’s situation is thus reflected in the image of the Grand Inquisitor. Both of them understand the mystery of the gospel as the mystery of divine/human freedom, yet they cannot accept it. They are in bondage. In rejecting the deliverance offered to them in the God-man they have chosen to be the man-God; the man who rules the Tower of Babel, or any tyranny in any time and in any place. It is on this note that the Legend ends. Jesus, whom the Grand Inquisitor has condemned, kisses “his bloodless, aged lips.” “The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea” (page 19). For the sake of his idea he condemns Jesus who is the Word become flesh. The passion of his Euclidean thinking leaves him with no alternative.

Dostoyevsky raises the question about the gospel: What is it? The answer is that it is the good news of our deliverance. St. Paul’s great affirmation in Galatians 5:1 is the triumphant note of freedom achieved for us in and by Christ, “For freedom Christ set us free.” This is not just an idea invented by scholars. It is the costly action of God in his freedom. This freedom has awful consequences. We have the freedom to defy the living God who has created us. What we term the Fall is an act of freedom. It is a negative freedom, however; it is that of rebellion. This is our condition without God – rebels who are driven by pride to assume what they imagine to be the power of God over others. We claim the freedom to sin, but we are unwilling to assume its consequences. We turn to Satan for justification, as the Grand Inquisitor (or Ivan) did. He is their invention as the justifier of their rebellion. These are the Grand Inquisitor’s words: “The wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and nonexistence, the great spirit talked with thee [Jesus] in the wilderness.” For both him and Ivan the miracle is not our Lord’s rejection of the three temptations, but their own invention and preservation of them. They are “the whole future history of the world and of humanity” (page 7). They represent the choice of human pride, the original sin.

Although humankind has chosen to rebel against God, God has not rebelled against it and all its members. His love will not let them go. Makar presents this truth, “I’d be frightened to meet a truly godless man…I’ve never really met a man like that. What I have met were restless men, for that’s what they should really be called…They come from all classes, even the lowest…but it’s all restlessness” (page 209). This restlessness describes the situation of all who were called to be pilgrims on the way to the eternal city but have lost their way because they have lost sight of their destination. They have, therefore, given away their inheritance and lost their destiny, like the Prodigal Son. God, however, is there! He has made us for himself!

Dostoyevsky seems to be indicating that man without God is nothing. The background for his writing is that of nineteenth century secularism. The Enlightenment had surpassed the Reformation to affirm as truth the idea of a godless cosmos, in which the state is supreme and its subjects have lost the dignity of the divine image. Erich Fromm was correct in stating that the intellectuals got rid of God in the eighteenth century and of man in the nineteenth. Dostoyevsky reminds us, however, that God and man cannot be destroyed by this idea. Perhaps two of the darkest rebels are the old father Karamazov, who represents the collective sin of Russia, and Stavrogin in The Possessed, who is the second generation rebel and revolutionary. Like Lenin and his successors, Stavrogin had come to the position of assuming that without God all things – such as terrorism and murder – are permissible. The elder Zossima describes such a condition as hell; he reflects upon the question, “What is hell?” and answers it by replying that it is “the suffering of being unable to love” (page 234). Such is the awful consequence of the freedom granted to us to negate God, and with him our origin and destiny.

Creative freedom, on the other hand, is an act of grace. The gospel bears witness to the only One who was and is truly free. Like the pious people of the peasantry, Dostoyevsky saw the humiliation of God in Jesus, as it is described by St. Paul in Philippians 2:5–11, as the essence of the gospel. This humiliation as the essence of the gospel is, however, a phase of the divine exaltation in which we are included. In this respect the teaching of Irenaeus in the second century ad had a great deal of influence upon the spiritual life of the Russian Orthodox Church. His teaching is more timely than ever: namely, God became man that man might become one with God.

In Crime and Punishment Dostoyevsky tells the story of Raskolnikov, who believes himself to be liberated from the old morality of Christian culture to the extent that he is free to murder a woman whom he presumes to be a useless member of society. His crime appears to be without purpose and without passion. He is one of those who prides himself upon his inability to love. Yet it is by the love of Sonia, a Russian version of Mary Magdalene, that he is claimed by grace. He sees in her “a sort of insatiable compassion” which leads him to his first act of repentance (page 105). While still trying to believe in his freedom from God he turns to her, bends down, drops to the ground, and kisses her foot (page 110). This irrational act adds to his confusion to the extent that he tries to dismiss her as a “religious maniac.” Nevertheless, he asks her to read the miracle of the raising of Lazarus. This she does. In doing so she reads it in such a way that her reading of it is her great confession: “Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the son of God which should come into the world” (page 119). By her faith the power of grace that brought Lazarus from the corruption of the grave is repeated in the experience of Raskolnikov. He has the assurance that by this grace he will be forgiven at the Last Judgment. He is thus liberated from the bondage of sin, guilt, and fear.

As Sonia, the humiliated woman, is the agent of Raskolnikov’s redemption, so the humiliated people of Russia will be the agent of its deliverance from the consequences of the sin of the nineteenth century intellectuals. This is a prophecy that may well be in the process of being fulfilled at the moment. “But God will save Russia as he has saved her many times. Salvation will come from the people, from their faith and their meekness” (page 223). It is those who share in the fellowship of suffering that share in the liberating action of the living God. The eyes of their faith are opened by grace so that they behold the mystery of God revealed in Christ’s agony on the cross. They understand, as the intellectuals cannot, that their salvation is beyond rational knowledge. It is of faith, for faith is our response to God’s revelation in Christ.

At this point it may be well to think about Dostoyevskv’s free characters. Three in particular are:

1. The underground man – or the equivalent of the ant who lives under the floorboards – is the man who dares to be free no matter how irrational such a claim may be. Despite the rational structuring of society and the attempted abolition of human freedom, he refuses to be a stop in the organ that can be pulled and pressed at the command of some superorganist. He is free to be absurd and to defy the system.

2. Prince Myshkin of The Idiot is the aristocrat who disregards the position granted to him by birth and wealth in order to take his place among the people in his freedom to be a fool in the eyes of his peers for Christ’s sake. His identity is with the humiliated Christ, and as such he is called upon to engage in his acts of deliverance. In his love for Nastasya Filippovna he is moved to bring – or at least to make the attempt to bring – Christ’s salvation to her, mad though she may be. In doing so he is reflecting the image of Christ – thus incurring the wrath of his critics who abuse and despise him and yet inwardly love him, even as the repentant rebel on the cross turned to Jesus beseeching deliverance. In describing the witness of the Prince, Dostoyevsky seems to be drawing upon the image of the suffering Messiah of Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12, which in turn is similar to the great kenotic passage in Philippians 2; Prince Myshkin thus is free to suffer. This is the cross he has accepted.

3. Alyosha is the pilgrim, and disciple, who learns that by repentance we participate in the benefits of Christ’s deliverance and are thus set free to love and to be responsible. Like Raskolnikov he is captured by grace. It is not his doing nor even of his seeking. Salvation is a happening beyond the control of church or state. It is an ecstasy of response to the wind of God that blows where it wills.

The miracle of grace in Alyosha’s life is related to Christ’s first miracle at the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee. By the narration of this miracle Alyosha becomes aware that Christ visits people in their gladness to intensify their joy. Again, it is the humiliated who possess the gladness to respond ecstatically to the joy of Christ.

It is the elder Zossima, who in reflecting the grace of Jesus, leads Alyosha into his presence. By him he was called to participate in the joy of the celebration. Thus, in his dream, he perceives that the dead elder Zossima is alive in the power of the resurrection. It is to this life eternal that he is invited as the elder Zossima takes him by the hand to raise him from his knees. As he rises he hears the staretz say, “We are drinking the new wine, the wine of new, great gladness” (page 194).

Suddenly the mystery is revealed. His soul is filled to overflowing with rapture. In his ecstasy he throws himself down on the earth to kiss it and water it with his tears. By this unprecedented act “He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion…‘Someone visited my soul in that hour’” (page 198). How similar this is to the humiliation and exaltation of Raskolnikov.

Alyosha not only waters the earth with his tears and loves the stars, he also assumes the responsibility of “all men’s sins.” By such an act of love he fulfills the purpose of his freedom and participates in God’s continuing work of redemption. It is only by such love that he learns to “perceive the divine mystery in things” (page 229). This exhortation by Zossima is a moving poem of agape. In such love we may understand better the beatitude of the meek inheriting the earth.

Alyosha is the Christian who, in his freedom, responds to the living gospel. In responding he freely accepts responsibility for the sins and salvation of his fellow sinners. He loves in the love of Christ. By such love the condemnation of the ultimate judgment is overcome, and the mystery of the revelation is understood. Behind such a position we may note the good news of John 3:16: God loved, God gave his Son, God gives eternal life, God sets us free from the bondage of sin. Along with it is the testimony of St. John in the fourth chapter of his first letter: “God is love…There is no room for fear in love; perfect love banishes fear…We love because He loved us first.” Dostoyevsky’s love of the gospel is thus clearly evident in his writings, and Alyosha reflects his own pilgrimage to the city of God, the kingdom which is not of this world.

Dostoyevsky’s hosanna of faith was hammered out on the anvil of doubt. Doubt does not imply ignorance, nor denial of the gospel, but rather the testing of the truth of the gospel. He tells in his Diary of a Writer that he was brought up in a pious Russian family. He received instruction in the gospel “almost from the cradle.” Such an upbringing was unusual among the Russian intellectuals of that time. Their interest was not in the church and the tradition it represented but in the apparently new and exciting philosophies of the Enlightenment. The theories of rationalism, romanticism, positivism, agnosticism, humanism, nihilism, anarchism, and communism were standard fare at the dinner tables of the aristocratic intellectuals. It is sometimes affirmed that the tragedy of Russia is that it never enjoyed the civilizing influence of the Renaissance. I do not think this is true. From the time of Peter the Great on, the intellectual climate of Russia was influenced by the ideas spawned in the post-Renaissance period of the West. Those of the nineteenth century expressed the rejection of Christianity and its moral principles, which had contributed to the development of Western democracy. Such was the intellectual atmosphere that involved Dostoyevsky in the struggle of faith.

His writings reveal that he remembered a great deal of his early Christian education. The book of Job made a lasting impression upon him. It is the story of the righteous man who suffered and through his suffering came to participate in a personal dialogue with the living God. What had once been hearsay was transcended into fact by meeting God face to face. In seeing God, Job repented in humiliation through which his former life of superficial righteousness was discarded for the righteousness of the right relationship granted to him by the action of God. Reference to this spiritual experience is made by Staretz Zossima in his account of his fascination with Job at the age of eight.

Along with Dostoyevsky’s instruction in the gospel went instruction in the stories of the saints. The one that made a deep impression on him was the account of a fourteenth-century Russian saint by the name of Sergey. This saint lived as a hermit in the forest, sustaining himself daily by a piece of bread. One day he encountered a large bear at the entrance of his hut. Instead of running away, the saint befriended the bear and shared his meager rations with him. Thereafter, the bear visited him daily. Dostoyevsky refers to this story in The Brothers Karamazov. Its influence is obvious in Staretz Zossima’s great poem of love: “Love all God’s creation…Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.”

Another influence was that of the monks in their monasteries (page 219). Dostoyevsky regarded them as expressing the purest form of spiritual life. They turned away from the lusts of the flesh and worldly power to be with God, to identify with the poor and the outcasts just as Jesus had done, and to serve them in love. Thus the portrait Dostoyevsky gives us of his ideal Christian is that of Zossima, who like himself had once been a slave of pride. In his pride and anger and for no reason, he had mercilessly beaten his batman (servant) in the army. By repentance he participated in the new life of the Spirit and in utter humility sought the forgiveness of the peasant he had wronged.

The publication of his Poor Folk in 1846 may mark the time of his change from being a conventional Christian to becoming a radical socialist and atheist. Belinsky befriended him and hailed his book as a work of great literary art. The radical intellectuals of this period regarded Belinsky as their hero. In following his leadership Dostoyevsky took the way that led to his arrest and the death sentence in 1849. At the moment of execution he was reprieved. We may imagine what a traumatic experience that was. It marks the change from the intellectual dilettante playing with ideas like a Greek hero-god to his involvement with sinners as a sinner. He gives us a description of this terrifying moment in The Idiot when he describes the scene of the mass of people come to watch the execution and the loneliness of the victim. As spectators they watch the priest holding the cross for the victim to kiss “with his blue lips” (page 135).

After this reprieve Dostoyevsky served four years of hard labor and then five years of exile in Siberia. Those were years of utter humiliation. His very moving The House of the Dead, which was written from his diary, tells the story of his suffering and his depression. It was “a time of living burial.” It was also the time of his crucifixion and resurrection. On his way to prison a woman thrust a New Testament into his hand. This provided him with the means of entering into and dwelling in the passion and exaltation of Jesus. Suffering had become a way of the cross for him even after his return from Siberian exile. His lot was one of sickness, poverty, debts, and overwork. The fruits of his suffering, however, are his literary achievements. Because of his debts he was forced to become an exile, yet once again. In this exile he wrote The Idiot and The Possessed.

As well as being a description of his degradation, The House of the Dead is a metaphor of human existence similar to the one used earlier by Pascal: namely, we are all cast into the death cell, and we experience daily our own death in the death of the other. This may be regarded as the basis of Christian existentialism. Descartes’ famous dictum, Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), presumes that reason precedes existence. This is the fallacious premise which closed the Fabian intellect of Ivan Karamazov to the primacy of existence. But sin is not a failure of conditioning or an unwholesome idea. It is the major fact of the human condition. It was this fact that turned Dostoyevsky from Belinsky and his nihilistic revolutionary theories, to Christ and his gospel. The Possessed (or The Devils) is an illustration of the descent from utopian socialism to the blind, black pit of demonic rebellion. It is also a prophecy of Russia’s future, in which it would surrender to the temptations of “wonder” bread and power and give its soul to the Grand Inquisitor.

The awful nature of evil as our rebellion against God, which Dostoyevsky portrayed so vividly, has troubled many of his critics. He has been judged as a pathologically disturbed person unduly fascinated by the despair of depression. Such a criticism is in essence a reflection of the Euclidean mind. The romantic vision of a utopia governed by the ideologically enlightened “philosopher kings” is one that ignores our present existence. Such utopias are seldom more than the projections of the present place and time idealized in order to conform to our judgments. In other words, they are constructed from what is at hand, including the injustices we wish to correct. One example of this is Freud’s analysis of Dostoyevsky in which he accused him of denigrating acceptable morality by plunging his characters into the pit of evil and then exalting them, as in the case of Raskolnikov, to the heights of moral excellency. Another example is that of a critic who described Dostoyevsky as “The Rasputin of literature.” In the manner of Ivan, such critics can allow no place for the acceptance of the mystery of grace.

Admittedly his works could be described as psychopathological but only by those who are ignorant of the gospel he came to love so well. The good news is that God in Christ has entered into our condition to the extent of dying for us on the cross. He is with us, that is, at the moment of our ultimate failure, to transform it into the beauty of eternal life. By faith, we enjoy the wonder of Christ’s presence. As at the wedding feast at Cana, his presence is an occasion of great joy.

The present revival of religion in the Soviet Union owes much to Dostoyevsky and his early admirers. He has made an enormous contribution to the Christian thinkers who have been, and are, leaders in this spiritual reformation. Perhaps the best and most revealing testimony to his witness is that made by Nicholas A. Berdyaev in his admirable book Dostoyevsky. He writes, “He stirred and lifted up my soul more than any other writer or philosopher has done, and for me people are always divided into ‘dostoyevskyites’ and those to whom his spirit is foreign… ‘The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,’ in particular, made such an impression on my young mind that when I turned to Jesus Christ for the first time, I saw him under the appearance that he bears in the Legend.”

Ernest Gordon

Author of Miracle on the River Kwai