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THE GOSPEL IN DOSTOYEVSKY
The Gospel in Dostoyevsky
Selections from His Works
Introduced by J.I. Packer, Malcolm Muggeridge, & Ernest Gordon
Illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg
PLOUGH PUBLISHING HOUSE
Published by Plough Publishing House
Walden, New York
Robertsbridge, England
Elsmore, Australia
Copyright ©2014, 1988 by Plough Publishing House
All rights reserved.
PRINT ISBN: 978-0-87486-634-6
PDF ISBN: 978-0-87486-629-2
EPUB ISBN: 978-0-87486-627-8
MOBI ISBN: 978-0-87486-628-5
Essentially an English translation of Das Evangelium in Dostojewski, edited by Karl Nötzel (1870–1945) and published by the Eberhard Arnold-Verlag, Sannerz and Leipzig, 1927. Nötzel, a Russian-born German, was known for his German translations of Russian authors.
The English translations of Contance Garnett were revised and edited for this edition. The excerpt from The Adolescent (The Raw Youth) was translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew and reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Co. The illustrations are reprinted by courtesy of Fritz Eichenberg, Associated American Artists, The Heritage Club, and the Limited Editions Club. The cover and frontispiece “Portrait of Dostoyevsky” is from a Fritz Eichenberg wood engraving 4 x 2¾ inches.
The editors wish to express gratitude for the essential help and advice received from Ernest Gordon, Philip Yancey, and C.J.G. Turner.
Contents
The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov
The Devil from The Brothers Karamazov
The Failure of Christendom from The Idiot
ON THE WAY TO GOD
The Story of Marie
A Fool for Christ from The Idiot
The Awakening of Lazarus from Crime and Punishment
Hymn of the Men Underground from The Brothers Karamazov
Reprieve and Execution from The Idiot
The Onion from The Brothers Karamazov
The Last Judgment from Crime and Punishment
The Crucifixion from The Idiot
From the Life of the Elder Zossima
The Wedding at Cana from The Brothers Karamazov
LIFE IN GOD
Talks With an Old Friend of God from The Adolescent (The Raw Youth)
Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima from The Brothers Karamazov
Afterword
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Biographical Sketch
DOSTOYEVSKY IS TO me both the greatest novelist, as such, and the greatest Christian storyteller, in particular, of all time. His plots and characters pinpoint the sublimity, perversity, meanness, and misery of fallen human adulthood in an archetypal way matched only by Aeschylus and Shakespeare, while his dramatic vision of God’s amazing grace and of the agonies, Christ’s and ours, that accompany salvation, has a range and depth that only Dante and Bunyan come anywhere near. Dostoyevsky’s immediate frame of reference is Eastern Orthodoxy and the cultural turmoil of nineteenth-century Russia, but his constant theme is the nightmare quality of unredeemed existence and the heartbreaking glory of the incarnation, whereby all human hurts came to find their place in the living and dying of Christ the risen Redeemer. In the passages selected here, a supersensitive giant of the imagination projects a uniquely poignant vision of the plight of man and the power of God. If it makes you weep and worship, you will be the better for it. If it does not, that will show that you have not yet seen what you are looking at, and you will be wise to read the book again.
Regent College, Vancouver
J. I. Packer
Foreword
LIKE SO MANY of my generation, I first read Dostoyevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, when I was very young. I read it like a thriller, with mounting excitement. Later, when I came to read Dostoyevsky’s other works, especially his great masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, I realized that he was not just a writer with a superlative gift for storytelling, but that he had a special insight into what life is about, into man’s relationship with his Creator, making him a prophetic voice looking into and illumining the future. I came to see that the essential theme of all his writing is good and evil, the two points round which the drama of our mortal existence is enacted.
Dostoyevsky was a God-possessed man if ever there was one, as is clear in everything he wrote and in every character he created. All his life he was questing for God, and found him only at the end of his days after passing through what he called “the hell-fire of doubt.” Freedom to choose between good and evil he saw as the very
