A review by joshknape
Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.0

I read The Grand Inquisitor, the most famous chapter in The Brothers K, once before in my initial reading of the novel circa ten years earlier. For some reason, I have decided to re-read it alone.

Thoughts:

I would need to re-read this repeatedly to fully absorb and comprehend it, and not just because I tend to need more than one reading or listening. The Grand Inquisitor is militant atheist Ivan's "poem" (I call it his parable) dramatizing his reason for disbelief, and my only personal experience of atheism and rebellion is the fact that every Christian was an unbeliever before receiving Christ as Lord and savior. I know nothing about living a life of willful defiance against God; in fact I consider it my weakness, my limitation; I worry about it. According to the introduction to this little edition of The Grand Inquisitor, Dostoyevsky said his fath is stronger because it "came through the crucible of doubt." Mine didn't. Therefore, real-life Ivan Karamazovs and I hardly speak the same language, and I cannot call on personal expeience to help. Predictably, I have understood The Grand Inquisitor probably on only the most basic level.

It may be also predictable that based on what I do understand, my only reaction to the priest's argument to Christ (in reality, Ivan's argument) is to...laugh at it. In brief, Ivan (as the priest) argues that contra God's declarations, man does indeed live by bread alone; man is too contemptibly weak and fearful to want the freedom of choice given to him by God; therefore, the priests will provide man with bread forevermore, and man will serve the priests rather than serving God. ...Um...okay. So I'm supposed to live by bread alone. No, thank you. Ivan earnestly says he returns his "ticket" to God, unclaimed. I return the one offered by Ivan.

And of course the priest's (again, Ivan's) argument is thoroughly self-serving. How lucky for him that the elite represented by the priest would exclusively control the supply of bread, allowing them to lord it over the "weak" and "fearful" hoi polloi. The limitation (if not weakness) of the "Grand Inquisitor Argument" is that it operates strictly from the elite's viewpoint. It does not address how the elite's despised masses would feel about Christ. Actually, it does--they adore him more fervently than many crowds did in Israel during His ministry-- but the point is that the priest speaks only for his class, considering it separate from and superior to the masses.

What mind-blowing arrogance, what nerve Ivan (through his fictional alter ego the priest) must possess to stand in front of Jesus Christ (whom the priest at no point denies the identity of) and lecture him on how the priestly class "corrected" His teachings. Ivan makes no attempt to dismiss God as simply nonexistent; he instead tells Christ...His teachings are simply wrong. How prideful but how remarkably candid and un-pretentious. Only the second such atheist argument I've ever read.

The strength (such as it is) of Ivan's argument also comes from its honesty: not only acknowledging God and addressing Him directly, but acknowledging scriptural teachings and responding to them. It acknowledges that, as taught in the Bible, God has an "elect": that He chose who will and will not receive Christ. Noting this, the priest then points out to Jesus: "Thou wilt come with Thy chosen, the proud and strong; but we will say that they have only saved themselves, but we have saved all." Since the doctrine of the elect is a mystery, in the sense that we have no idea why God chose particular people for salvation, I would have no idea how to answer this point. Except to say to the priest (e.g., to Ivan): You say you have saved people. Have you? By giving them bread and telling them they do live by bread alone? By looking your Maker in the eye and telling Him what He said is untrue, did you expect to convince me of anything but your own arrogance?