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
FAITH IN GOD
The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor
This “prose poem” from The Brothers Karamazov is probably the climax of Dostoyevsky’s religious confessions. It is put into the mouth of Ivan Karamazov, who refuses to recognize God although he admits God’s existence.
“HE CAME SOFTLY, unobserved, and yet, strange to say, everyone recognized him. The people are irresistibly drawn to him, they surround him, they flock about him, follow him. He moves silently in their midst with a gentle smile of infinite compassion. The sun of love burns in his heart; light and power shine from his eyes; and their radiance, shed on the people, stirs their hearts with responsive love. He holds out his hands to them and blesses them and a healing virtue comes from contact with him, even with his garments. An old man in the crowd, blind from childhood, cries out, ‘O Lord, heal me and I shall see thee!’ and as it were, scales fall from his eyes and the blind man sees him. The people weep and kiss the earth under his feet. Children throw flowers before him, sing, and cry hosannah. ‘It is he – it is he!’ all repeat. ‘It must be he, it can be no one but he!’ He stops at the steps of the Seville cathedral at the moment when the weeping mourners are bringing in a little open white coffin. In it lies a child of seven, the only daughter of a prominent citizen. The dead child lies hidden in flowers. ‘He will raise your child,’ the crowd shouts to the weeping mother. The priest, coming to meet the coffin, looks perplexed and frowns, but the mother of the dead child throws herself at his feet with a wail. ‘If it is you, raise my child!’ she cries, holding out her hands to him. The procession halts, the coffin is laid on the steps at his feet. He looks with compassion, and his lips once more softly pronounce, ‘Talitha cumi!’ and the maiden arises. The little girl sits up in the coffin and looks round, smiling with wide-open wondering eyes, holding white roses they had put in her hand.
“There are cries, sobs, confusion among the people, and at that moment the cardinal himself, the Grand Inquisitor, passes by the cathedral. He is an old man, almost ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and sunken eyes, in which there is still a gleam of light. He is not dressed in his gorgeous cardinal’s robes, as he was the day before, when he was burning the enemies of the Roman Church – at this moment he is wearing his coarse, old monk’s cassock. At a distance behind him come his gloomy assistants and slaves and the ‘holy guard.’ He stops at the sight of the crowd and watches it from a distance. He sees everything; he sees them set the coffin down at his feet, sees the child rise up, and his face darkens. He knits his thick grey brows and his eyes gleam with a sinister fire. He holds out his finger and bids the guards take him. And such is his power, so completely are the people cowed into submission and trembling obedience to him, that the crowd immediately make way for the guards, and in the midst of deathlike silence they lay hands on him and lead him away. The crowd, like one man, instantly bows down to the earth before the old inquisitor. He blesses the people in silence and passes on. The guards lead their prisoner to the close, gloomy vaulted prison in the ancient palace of the Holy Inquisition and shut him in it. The day passes and is followed by the dark, burning, breathless night of Seville. The air is fragrant with laurel and lemon. In the pitch darkness the iron door of the prison is suddenly opened and the Grand Inquisitor himself comes in with a light in his hand. He is alone; the door is closed at once behind him. He stands in the doorway and for a minute or two gazes into his face. At last he goes up slowly, sets the light on the table and speaks.
“‘Is it you? You?’ but receiving no answer, he adds at once, ‘Don’t answer, be silent. What can you say, indeed? I know too well what you would say. And you have no right to add anything to what you have said of old. Why then, are you come to hinder us? For you have come to hinder us, and you know that. But you know what will be tomorrow? I know not who you are and care not to know whether it is you or only a semblance of him, but tomorrow I shall condemn you and burn you at the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people who have today kissed your feet, tomorrow at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap up the embers of your fire. Know you that? Yes, maybe you know it,’ he added with thoughtful penetration, never for a moment taking his eyes off the Prisoner.”
“I don’t quite understand, Ivan. What does it mean?” Alyosha, who had been listening in silence, said with a smile. “Is it simply a wild fantasy, or a mistake on the part of the old man – some impossible confusion?”
“Take it as the last,” said Ivan, laughing, “if you are so corrupted by modern realism and can’t stand anything fantastic. If you like it to be a case of mistaken identity, let it be so. It is true,” he went on, laughing, “the old man was ninety, and he might well be crazy over his set idea. He might have been struck by the appearance of the Prisoner. It might, in fact, be simply his ravings, the delusion of an old man of ninety, over-excited by the auto-da-fé of a hundred heretics the day before. But does it matter to us after all whether it was a mistake of identity or a wild fantasy? All that matters is that the old man should speak out, should speak openly of what he has thought in silence for ninety years.”
“And the Prisoner too is silent? Does he look at him and not say a word?”
“That’s inevitable in any case,” Ivan laughed again. “The old man has told him he hasn’t the right to add anything to what he has said of old. One may say it is the most fundamental feature of Roman Catholicism, in my opinion at least. ‘All has been given by you to the pope,’ he says, ‘and all, therefore, is still in the pope’s hands, and there is no need for you to come now at all. You must not meddle for the time, at least.’ That’s how they speak and write too – the Jesuits, at any rate. I have read it myself in the works of their theologians.
“‘Have you the right to reveal to us one of the mysteries of that world you have come from?’ my old man asks him, and answers the question for him. ‘No, you have not; so you may not add to what has been said of old, and may not take from men the freedom which you exalted when you were on earth. Whatever you might reveal anew will encroach on men’s freedom of faith; for it will be manifest as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was dearer to you than anything in those days fifteen hundred years ago. Did you not often say then, “I will make you free”? But now you have seen these “free” men,’ the old man adds suddenly, with a pensive smile. ‘Yes, we’ve paid dearly for it,’ he goes on, looking sternly at him, ‘but at last we have completed that work in your name. For fifteen centuries we have been wrestling with your freedom, but now it is ended and over for good. Do you not believe that it’s over for good? You look meekly at me and do not deign even to be wroth with me. But let me tell you that now, 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. But that has been our doing. Was this what you did? Was this your freedom?…
“‘The wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-existence,’ the old man goes on, ‘the great spirit talked with you in the wilderness, and we are told in the books that he “tempted” you. Is that so? And could anything truer be said than what he revealed to you in three questions and what you rejected,
