My review of The Grand Inquisitor, in The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
These are some thoughts on this most-famous portion of Dostoevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov. I recently re-read this for the first time in many years, and these are some of my reactions to it.
I was 23 years old the first time I read this novel, and at this time I really liked the irony of the idea of the Church imprisoning Jesus. Just the idea itself struck me as very creative and poignant. It is like the tree rejecting its own roots. I also liked how the story is told in the context of a poem or a dream, which keeps it safely in the realm of fantasy. But it is clearly making a point and I think people debate this part of the book more often than any other part of it.
The story takes place during perhaps the darkest time in the Church's history, the Inquisition. This was a time when the Church was the most dramatically removed from its own ideals. The way it behaved and its methods could not possibly have been more different from Jesus and his message. So it's not too surprising to imagine Jesus returning to earth during this time and the Church being scared of him and trying to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
I love the discussion between the Inquisitor and Jesus. Actually, it's more of a monlogue than a discussion, since Jesus never replies until the very end, when he kisses him. I assume this kiss is a mirror of the kiss that Judas gave Jesus, except in this case Jesus kisses his betrayer.
The entire setting is poetic, especially with the Inquisitor reminding Jesus of the 3 temptations he experienced with Satan in the desert, and the Inquisitor telling Jesus that he was wrong to have turned them down. He tells Jesus that he he should have taken Satan up on his offer, and not waste grace on the human race.
The Inquisitor's view of humanity is obviously very cynical, and in direct opposition to that of Jesus. When Jesus kisses him at the end, and he is released then disappears into the streets of Spain it leaves the entire dream without any real resolution. Was Dostoevsky trying to criticize the Church, was he making some other point, or did he just get lost in his parable and not know how to end it?
Many people argue that Dostoevsky was illustrating how corrupt the Church has been in its history, to the extent that it could not know how to react to Jesus himself. It is often argued that Dostoevsky is one of a long line of Church-critics. But during this time in his life, Dostoevsky was deeply religious and committed to his faith and engaged in the life of the Church. I don't think he was simply criticizing the Church, but was more likely illustrating the tension that will always exist between ideals and institution.
The story could have been one in which Plato comes back to life and philosophers in the University of Sorbonne in Paris throw him in to prison. Or Goethe comes back to life and modern German poets try to get rid of him. The institution that outlives its founder will eventually loose its way, and it needs to periodically return to the ideals that gave birth to that institution. The Church has experienced this several times in its history, and probably will do so again.
Dostoevsky was deeply influenced by the Gospels and the writings of Paul and the traditions of the Church. He applied these ideas to his observations on human psychology and how people are motivated to balance the needs of living as a community and to how they exercise their own free choices. He was far from just an angry writer, mad at the Church. He realized the weakneses of the Church as an institution, but he was more deeply empowered by the Church. This parabel in his novel is an illustration of tension in the Church, not its failings.
When I read this book in college, my professor simply talked about how corrupt the Church was throughout history, and Dostoevsky was using a poetic method to illustrate this fact. But at the time, as I do now, I think this is just too simplistic of an explanation. It's just too easy to say this. I think the reader needs to realize that Dostoevsky as critiquing something he valued, not something he hated. He was comparing ideals to institutions, and the tension between the two. He was not trying to tear down the institution.
Reading it this second time I thought of 2 other things. First, Dostoevsky was a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but the Inquisition never existed in this Church tradition. It was limited to Roman Catholic countries. I think a lot of people confuse these 2 churches, or assume they are just 2 sides of the same coin. But they are very different, and Dostoevsky was describing events that did not happen in his own Church, but in a different Church tradition. So I think perhaps he was making a comment on the Catholic Church, more than he was making a comment on the Church in general.
The Orthodox Church often describes the Catholic Church as "laying its own eggs". Just like a chicken lays its own eggs, they say that the Protestant Reformation was a result of the arrogance of the Catholic Church, and that it was their own fault. The Reformation never happened in the Orthodox tradition. And the Inquisition was also isolated to the Catholic tradition. This never happened in the Orthodox tradition. The Orthodox have their own problems, but not these 2 things. They lay different eggs...!
So I think it's important to read this story keeping in mind that the reader is describing something that happened to a different Church tradition.
Secondly, reading the words of the Grand Inquisitor reminded me of something I have been thinking of for the past year or so, regarding the Inquisition. I think the Inquisition is not quite as bad as people assume. I know I am in the minority when I say this, since everyone "knows" that the Inquisition was the worst thing that ever happened to the Church. The Inquisition is like Nazis: everyone hates them, and no one ever even thinks of defending either one. But I think reality is a bit different.
The Inquisition lasted for about 350 years. If you ask people how many people died in the Inquisition, they will assume it was a huge number. However, the number was actually very small. The Church kept very detailed records of the Inquisition and we know how many people died during it: less than 10,000 people.
10,000 people killed over a period of 350 years is an average of 28 people killed each year. 28 executions each year. How many people die of influenza each year? How many people die of cancer each year? Even back then, I think it was more than 28 people each year.
I don't even think religion kills that many people, despite what people often say. I actually think religion kills far less people than other reasons for killing people.
How many people die in non-religious wars? In Rwanda, in the 1990's, half the country killed the other half, killing around 1 million people in 6 months. This war was not about religion, it was about tribal membership.
During World War II, 6 million Jews died and around 20 million German and Russian soldiers died fighting. This war was not about religion, it was about race and power.
The Communist Civil War in Russia killed about 50 million people. This was not over religion, but over economics.
During the French Revolution, in a single year (1793) 20,000 people were killed, twice as many people as in the entire Inquisition. Yet this war was not over religion, but over Socialism.
During the average year of the Inquisition, 28 people were killed. I think that if you have to choose what reason people fight wars over, religion is the least deadly. All other reasons for fighting produce far more deaths. Religious persecution, no matter how bad it is, still causes the least number of deaths.
I know this sounds totally wrong to the modern ear, but if you look at the basic numbers this is what is revealed. So I agree that the Inquisition was a bad thing, and I don't want to defend it. But I think people need to be honest when they talk about it. It was bad, but it was the least-bad of a lot of other bad excuses people invent to kill people.
The fact that Dostoevsky chose this period of history to contrast the message of Jesus with the institution of the Church was probably just an effort on his part to create the starkest contrast between the 2 points. But I think if he wrote it today he might have Jesus return to Earth in Rwanda, where people were burned alive in churches, by priests. The Inquisition is no longer the worst period in history.
This is something I didn't think about the first time I read The Brothers Karamazov. These thoughts are more recent, but it's an example of how you can read the same thing several times and each time it illustrates something new. I still think this little story within the story is very poetic and creative, but I think people need to remember who Dostoevsky was, and what Church he belonged to, in order to better understand his parable.