The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

in my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith.

These words by the narrator echo what Abraham said from heaven to Lazarus' rich man (Luke 16:19-31). And later Ivan's devil will say something very similar: "what good is faith by force? Besides, proofs are no help to faith, especially material proofs."

One cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced.” “How? By what?” “By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor, then undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul. This has been tested. It is certain.”

David Bentley Hart writes in "Atheist Delusions" of a truth that only charity can reveal: "In the light of Christianity's absolute law of charity, we came to see what formerly we could not: the autistic or Down syndrome or otherwise disabled child, for instance, for whom the world can remain a perpetual perplexity, which can too often cause pain but perhaps only vaguely and fleetingly charm ordelight; the derelict or wretched or broken man or woman who has wasted his or her life away; the homeless, the utterly impoverished, the diseased, the mentally ill, the physically disabled; exiles, refugees, fugitives; even criminals and reprobates. To reject, turn away from, or kill any or all of them would be, in a very real sense, the most purely practical of impulses. To be able, however, to see in them not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike, to be cherished and adored, is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls. To look on the child whom our ancient ancestors would have seen as somehow unwholesome or as a worthless burden, and would have abandoned to fate, and to see in him or her instead a person worthy of all affection-resplendent with divine glory, ominous with an absolute demand upon our consciences, evoking our love and our reverence-is to be set free from mere elemental existence, and from those natural limitations that pre-Christian persons took to be the very definition of reality."

What’s shame for the mind is beauty all over for the heart.

true!

what have children got to do with it? It’s quite incomprehensible why they should have to suffer, and why they should buy harmony with their suffering. Why do they get thrown on the pile, to manure someone’s future harmony with themselves? I understand solidarity in sin among men; solidarity in retribution I also understand; but what solidarity in sin do little children have? And if it is really true that they, too, are in solidarity with their fathers in all the fathers’ evildoings, that truth certainly is not of this world and is incomprehensible to me.

Christian universalism expressed again here, maybe not intentionally, but in effect, with this rejection of the doctrine of original sin, a rejection I agree with as do many Christians

Is there in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive?

A question asked by the Pharisees in the Gospels and always answered, by themselves, in the negative

Tell me straight out, I call on you—answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears—would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth.” “No, I would not agree,” Alyosha said softly.

"Gird up your loins: I will ask and you will answer" (Job 38:3).

He appeared quietly, inconspicuously, but, strange to say, everyone recognized him. This could be one of the best passages in the poem, I mean, why it is exactly that they recognize him. People are drawn to him by an invincible power, they flock to him, surround him, follow him. He passes silently among them with a quiet smile of infinite compassion.

The stereotype of God: a figure shining like a king would. In fact when he was on earth he was obscure.

And you have no right to add anything to what you already said once.

The canon is closed, sir. We are all set, thank you.

the very people who today kissed your feet, tomorrow, at a nod from me, will rush to heap the coals up around your stake, do you know that?

Of course, he remembers

“The old man himself points out to him that he has no right to add anything to what has already been said once. That, if you like, is the most basic feature of Roman Catholicism, in my opinion at least: ‘Everything,’ they say, ‘has been handed over by you to the pope, therefore everything now belongs to the pope, and you may as well not come at all now, or at least don’t interfere with us for the time being.’

He remembers that too: many of his fellow first-century Jews believed that prophecy was over

For in these three questions all of subsequent human history is as if brought together into a single whole and foretold; three images are revealed that will take in all the insoluble historical contradictions of human nature over all the earth. This could not have been seen so well at the time, for the future was unknown, but now that fifteen centuries have gone by, we can see that in these three questions everything was so precisely divined and foretold, and has proved so completely true, that to add to them or subtract anything from them is impossible.

So the devil's canon is thought to be closed, too

No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: “Better that you enslave us, but feed us.”

Only free peoples can feed themselves. Beggars will always go hungry.

They will also be convinced that they are forever incapable of being free, because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and rebels.

Moses' people did not decide that this is what they were, though they were frequently tempted to that despair. Israel always longed to be free and independent.

Instead of the firm ancient law,23 man had henceforth to decide for himself, with a free heart, what is good and what is evil,

But this was not something that Jesus did and his followers "corrected." St. Paul's letters in the New Testament are essentially one long argument that the old Jewish Law no longer binds us and that our faith is of the heart and free. If this was Jesus' teaching then Paul certainly carried it on, and it's Paul's form of Christianity, rather than others that wished to keep Jewish law, that survived and became the Christian religion we've known since.

And why are you looking at me so silently and understandingly with your meek eyes? Be angry! I do not want your love, for I do not love you.

He remembers this too, from his trials. Both Pilate and Herod were annoyed with his silence

Tamerlanes and Genghis Khans, swept over the earth like a whirlwind, yearning to conquer the universe, but they, too, expressed, albeit unconsciously, the same great need of mankind for universal and all-embracing union.

A telling choice of models

Oh, we will convince them that they will only become free when they resign their freedom to us, and submit to us.

A statement audacious enough for God

They themselves will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember to what horrors of slavery and confusion your freedom led them.

Jews remembered always the bondage from which God delivered them. Reminders of the Exodus fill the Hebrew Bible, and Jews recall the event every year at Passover. The Jews did suffer slavery and chaos after Egyptian bondage, but at most they could say that this was the recurrence of slavery, not that God's gift of freedom, given at the Exodus, led them into slavery. As a nation, of course, Israel has always yearned for independence and freedom. Christians have a different focus, centered on Jesus, but the Hebrew Bible is part of the Christian scriptures, and the Jewish tradition of choosing independence over slavery is part of the Christian DNA, though Christians have not always recognized this fact.

Too well, far too well, will they appreciate what it means to submit once and for all!

blood-chilling

they will love us like children for allowing them to sin. We will tell them that every sin will be redeemed if it is committed with our permission;

a twist on "all is permitted"

We will allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children—all depending on their obedience—

too true

For only we, we who keep the mystery, only we shall be unhappy.

some self-deceit, to go along with the outward deceit

beyond the grave they will find only death. But we will keep the secret, and for their own happiness we will entice them with a heavenly and eternal reward.

It's true that we all doubt, and many doubt hypocritically. But if this man really doesn't believe in an afterlife, then he can't believe that he's speaking to Jesus. He must disbelieve the miracle of the prior day that he witnessed himself. And he cannot believe that Jesus ever had the power, for example, to convert those stones into bread. This leaves his angry accusations against Jesus gutted, converting them into mere philosophical reflections in the company of a nobody. But he gives many signs otherwise, throughout the conversation: he's angry at Jesus for appearing; tells him never to appear again; needs him to reply to the accusations, etc. He's been calling Jesus' tempter an intelligent spirit, but that belief, too, must go, if he believes in no spirit world. However, Ivan says himself that this whole story could be the old priest's dream merely, and that Alyosha can take it as such if he wishes, since it ultimately doesn't matter. That story logic, per Ivan, is just not important: what's important is "that the old man needs to speak out, that finally after all his ninety years, he speaks out, and says aloud all that he has been silent about for ninety years." That's how the parable needs to be engaged, on that level -- the content of his views.

Whoever does not believe in God will not believe in the people of God.

That's what has happened to the Grand Inquisitor

For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people’s help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish.

the Grand Inquisitor again

We are assured that the world is becoming more and more united, is being formed into brotherly communion, by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air. Alas, do not believe in such a union of people.

familiar!

Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals: they are sinless, and you, you with your grandeur, fester the earth by your appearance on it, and leave your festering trace behind you—alas, almost every one of us does!

our ecological footprint!

“He loved candies, the ladies used to bring him candies in their pockets, he was a tea sipper, a glutton, filling his stomach with sweets and his mind with arrogant thoughts … That is why he suffers this shame

Jesus was known as a glutton

No doubt some other young man, who takes his heart’s impressions more prudently, who has already learned how to love not ardently but just lukewarmly, whose thoughts, though correct, are too reasonable

Reason is safe in this way, and limited in that way

And it seems to me there’s so much strength in me now that I can overcome everything, all sufferings, only in order to say and tell myself every moment: I am! In a thousand torments—I am; writhing under torture—but I am. Locked up in a tower, but still I exist, I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, still I know it is. And the whole of life is there—in knowing that the sun is.

Sublime "Who shall say how much of the eight years they have spent in that space there in front of the aperture, nursing their hope of rescue by that timid yet friendly ray of light? When the brightness came creeping in, they knew it was dawn; when it began to fade, they knew the world was hushing for the night, which could not be anywhere so long and utterly dark as with them. The world! Through that crevice, as if it were broad and high as a king's gate, they went to the world in thought, and passed the weary time going up and down as spirits go, looking and asking, the one for her son, the other for her brother." ("Ben-Hur") '"Look at that ray of sunlight shining through my window,' said the abbe. 'Now look at the lines I have drawn on the wall. Thanks to these lines, which take account of the double movement of the earth and its course round the sun, I know the time more accurately than if I had a watch, because the mechanism of a watch may be damaged, while that of the earth and the sun never can.' Dantes understood nothing of this explanation: he had always thought, seeing the sun rise behind the mountains and set in the Mediterranean, that it moved, and not the earth. He considered almost impossible this 'double movement' of the earth which he did not perceive, even though he inhabited it, and he saw contained in each of the other man's words the mysteries of a science that would be asexciting to explore as the mines of gold and diamonds he had visited while still almost a child on a journey that he had made to Gujarat and Golconda." ("The Count of Monte-Cristo")

Rakitin says it’s possible to love mankind even without God. Well, only a snotty little shrimp can affirm such a thing, but I can’t understand it. Life is simple for Rakitin: ‘You’d do better to worry about extending man’s civil rights,’ he told me today, ‘or at least about not letting the price of beef go up; you’d render your love for mankind more simply and directly that way than with any philosophies.’ But I came back at him: ‘And without God,’ I said, ‘you’ll hike up the price of beef yourself, if the chance comes your way, and make a rouble on every kopeck.’ He got angry.

Nice!

The Homilies of Our Father among the Saints, Isaac the Syrian.3 Ivan Fyodorovich read it mechanically.

Smerdyakov, the mocker of religion, is reading Christian Universalism!

“what good is faith by force? Besides, proofs are no help to faith, especially material proofs.

The very opposite of the devil that tempted Jesus and was invoked by the Grand Inquisitor. The narrator had written early in the book: "in my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith." This also echoes the words of Abraham to Lazarus' rich man (Luke 16:19-31 ).

I was there when the Word who died on the cross was ascending into heaven, carrying on his bosom the soul of the thief who was crucified to the right of him, I heard the joyful shrieks of the cherubim singing and shouting ‘Hosannah,’ and the thundering shout of rapture from the seraphim, which made heaven and all creation shake. And, I swear by all that’s holy, I wanted to join the chorus and shout ‘Hosannah’ with everyone else. It was right on my lips, it was already bursting from my breast … you know, I’m very sensitive and artistically susceptible. But common sense—oh, it’s the most unfortunate quality of my nature—kept me within due bounds even then, and I missed the moment!

brilliant

Man will be exalted with the spirit of divine, titanic pride, and the man-god will appear. Man, his will and his science no longer limited, conquering nature every hour, will thereby every hour experience such lofty delight as will replace for him all his former hopes of heavenly delight.

only war resulted

a fit of innocently infantile sunnymindedness,

brilliant phrase

this consumptive and embittered man had too great a desire to speak his whole mind at least once in his life.

This line, referring to the prosecuting attorney at Mitya's trial, recalls what Ivan had said about the Grand Inquisitor: "the old man needs to speak out, that finally after all his ninety years, he speaks out, and says aloud all that he has been silent about for ninety years."

Despair and repentance are two totally different things.

bunker 1945

in the absence of any evidence even slightly resembling the truth, it will be too difficult for you to say: ‘Yes, guilty.’ It is better to let ten who are guilty go, than to punish one who is innocent—do you hear, do you hear this majestic voice from the last century of our glorious history?

These words speak in a way to the whole problem of unjust suffering that has been a central theme of the book. The words are Peter the Great's, taken from his "Military Code" of 1716. They echo what Ivan said about not wanting to live in a world in which one innocent person will suffer.

“We are wicked, sister, you and I! We’re both wicked!

Oz!

Well, and who has united us in this good, kind feeling, which we will remember and intend to remember always, all our lives, who, if not Ilyushechka, that good boy, that kind boy, that boy dear to us unto ages of ages! Let us never forget him, and may his memory be eternal and good in our hearts now and unto ages of ages!”

A memory here serves like a visual ikon in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, uplifting the mind of the one who meditates on it