I recently read yet another excellent book by Jeremy S. Begbie, Resounding Truth:  Christian Wisdom in the World of Music.  Once again Begbie brings music into conversation with theology-a conversation that continues to yield fresh insights.  One of the goals of Begbie’s book is to explore how Christians might “re-sound” God’s truth in the world of music, as well as to help us “re-think” our own pre-conceived views of music. The book as a whole is divided into three parts.  Part one provides an overview of the way music is practiced in Western culture and attempts to clarify the meaning of the term, “music.” In this section of the book, Begbie considers the ways that marketing and selling shape how we understand and practice music and how innovations in sound technology have distanced music from its “physical roots” (56)-topics particularly relevant to contemporary discussions in the sociology of music.  Likewise, Begbie argues against the trend to focus exclusively on (static) works-an approach that has characterized musicology in the West.  Instead, “it is best to think of music primarily as an art of actions,” the two chief actions being music making and music hearing, both of which are “socially and culturally embedded” (57).  Yet, Begbie also stresses that “music is embedded in a sonic order-it involves the integrity of the materials that produce sound and of sound waves, the integrities of the human body, and the integrity of time” (57).  In other words, though he gives full weight to the constructive and culturally conditioned aspects of music, Begbie likewise wants to do justice to the givens of music, or as he puts it, to “music’s embeddedness in a cosmos created out of the inexhaustible abundance of the Triune god” (58).

In part two, Begbie examines how music was understood and practiced by representatives of the “Great Tradition” (e.g., Pythagoras, Plato, Augustine, and Boethius), selected Reformation thinkers (Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli), and three modern Protestant theologians (Schleiermacher, Barth, and Bonhoeffer).  The final chapter of part two concentrates on the lives of two contemporary Roman Catholic “theological musicians,” Olivier Messiaen (1908-92) and James MacMillan (1959-). Begbie’s analyses of these two musicians are particularly helpful, as his explications and musical examples enable us to see how bringing music into dialogue with theology opens up “new spaces” for re-sounding God’s inexhaustible truth in a polyphonic mode.

Turning first to Messiaen, Begbie focuses on his treatment of time and eternity.  In contrast with the harmonic structures that characterize and dominate traditional Western music, structures that constantly move from tension to resolution and create a “dynamic of desire,” Messiaen’s music is permeated with harmonic sequences that remain unresolved for several passages (e.g., a long series of dominant seventh chords which fail to reach an expected tonic chord).  In combination with his atypical harmonic choices, Messiaen also employs innovative rhythmic techniques in order to create a musical impression of eternity.  For example, by using nonretrogradable rhythms, that is, “rhythms that sound or play the same backward as they do forward,” Messiaen’s music has a circular feel rather than a sense of linear, forward movement (however paradoxical that may seem in light of the temporal nature of music).  As Begbie explains, “[j]ust because they do not sound different when reversed, they present a kind of fusion of past, present, and future in which beginning and end fold into each other” (170).  Of course, Messiaen’s music does not completely lack traditional harmonic and rhythmic elements; however, when joined with his non-standard harmonic and rhythmic practices, a mysterious, bewitching effect is produced, which he believed particularly fitting for “embodying the truths of the Catholic faith and above all the truths of eternity” (170).   Though at times, Messiaen appears to overemphasize eternity to the detriment of created time, Begbie provides several examples to assuage such concerns.  For instance, Begbie highlights Messiaen’s view that our future life with God will not be a static existence but will involve movement of some sort.  In other words, when temporal creatures, as it were, enter into eternity, this should not be understood as “time’s destruction and the end of all movement and dynamism but the fulfillment of time, a kind of time in which past, present, and future can no longer be separated” (174).   Here Begbie distinguishes between temporality characterized by “transience and decay” and a more positive sense of dynamic, eternal existence-the latter set in sharp contrast with any idea of eternity as “nothing but pure stillness” (174).

Turning next to MacMillan, we find a composer, who unlike Messiaen, does not sense the need to abandon or subvert the traditional tension/resolution harmonic patterns of Western tonal music.  Instead, for MacMillan, such techniques “are a compelling means of keeping a composer in touch with a world that, though created good, has been so severely marred and disfigured” (176).  Conflict and struggle characterize MacMillan’s music, as his theological vision takes seriously the harsh realities and injustices so prevalent in the world.  A severe critic of the “modernist myth of progress,” MacMillan embraces extremes and is not afraid to give expression in his music to the messiness of embodied existence (178).  Rather than reproduce the saccharine sentimentality present in much Christian music today, MacMillan’s “pieces frequently display the dialectics and juxtaposition of extreme violence and extreme tranquility, the confrontation of dissonance and consonance” (179).  As Begbie notes, what seems to motivate MacMillan’s opposition to “monodimensional” (music lacking the conflict and struggle of reality) and overly sentimental expressions of music, is his embrace of our embodied existence and specifically, Jesus’s “flesh-involved engagement with the world in its fallenness” (180).  In other words, MacMillan is not driven by a nostalgic conservative impulse to return to a perceived Golden Age of music; rather, his desire to continue and expand the tension/resolution patterns of the Western tradition comes from his deep ties to the Christian narrative-a narrative whose center involves the crucifixion and resurrection of a God made flesh.  In short, although both Messiaen and MacMillan are committed to the same Christian story, each has a different “center of gravity.”   “[F]or MacMillan it is God’s cross-shaped involvement with this world of time, for Messiaen it is the joyful eternity that the timeless God has promised and secured for us” (180).

The church and postmodern culture blog recently posted my brief essay, “Rowan Williams on Dostoevsky’s Faith and Ivan’s Inquisitor.”  If you are interested in Dostoevsky and did not have time to read my recent multi-part series on Dostoevsky, then this short post will perhaps spark your interest.

I highly recommend Williams’ book, Language, Faith, and Fiction:  The Making of the Christian Imagination. Even if you happen to disagree with Williams on various political, social or theological issues, his book on Dostoevsky is well worth your time.  Personally, I found the book spiritually edifying and existentially challenging.  Williams’ explanation of the diabolical, the sacramental nature of reality, the social importance of the role of icons (understood both specifically and broadly), and the need for humans to recognize and embrace a spirit of solidarity–what the Russians call, “соборность” (”sobornost”)–rather than a spirit of individualism, are among the many outstanding features of the book.

The following product description and editorial review appears on the back book cover and was copied from Amazon.com.

Product Description
Rowan Williams explores the intricacies of speech, fiction, metaphor, and iconography in the works of one of literature’s most complex, and most complexly misunderstood, authors. Williams’ investigation focuses on the four major novels of Dostoevsky’s maturity (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Devils, and The Brothers Karamozov). He argues that understanding Dostoevsky’s style and goals as a writer of fiction is inseparable from understanding his religious commitments. Any reader who enters the rich and insightful world of Williams’ Dostoevsky will emerge a more thoughtful and appreciative reader for it.

Reading Dostoevsky is like looking from a high peak at several mountain ranges, some brightly lit, others dark with mist, going back farther than the eye can see. In this breathtaking book, Rowan Williams takes us on a journey through literary art, the nature of fiction, psychological depths, historical and cultural setting and allusion, and beyond all else a world of faith and doubt, of philosophy and theology not dry on the page but moist with tears of compassion. We return to Dostoevsky with new insight and wide-ranging understanding and to real life with fresh perspectives on what it means to be human, to be under threat from the demonic, and above all to sense the dark and urgent presence of the living God. –N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham

Rowan Williams here reveals the originality and daring that have made him such a controversial (and inspiring) leader of his church. The readings demonstrate an impressive grasp of current scholarly criticism of Dostoevsky. But this is not just another book about Dostoevsky. The literary interpretations are guided by an intense humanism that shares at points surprising parallels with radical leftist critiques. As author of a previous book of Sergej Bulgakov, Williams is at home in Russian philosophy, particularly the Orthodox emphasis on kenosis, the voluntary emptying out of Christ’s divine attributes during his time on earth. This aspect of Russian thought was important for Bakhtin, who serves as a kind of dialogic third partner in Williams conversation with his reader. This is a work of learning and passion, a heteroglot blend of literary, ethical, and subtle theological argument that is full of surprising local triumphs of interpretation — and that most un-academic virtue, wisdom. –Michael Holquist, Professor Emeritus of Comparative and Slavic Literature, Yale University

Rowan Williams, in this study of Dostoevsky’s characters, brings to attention the theological anthropology implicit in and generative of the narratives’ dynamics. In his hands, theology becomes not a kind of explanation or completion but both a release, an opening of the narratives to the as yet unsaid, and a clarification of the continuities between the characters and the Orthodox Christianity of the setting. Crucial to this reading of Dostoevsky is an understanding of personal identity not as a possession but as a consequence of an ongoing relational process and an interweaving of freedom with a responsibility for others. As we no longer read Dostoevsky the way we did before reading Mikhail Bakhtin, so also, having read Williams, we no longer will read either Dostoevsky or Bakhtin as we once did. –Wesley A. Kort, Professor of Religion, Duke University

[Part I]
This resistance to a reduction of white sameness by enslaved blacks took many forms, ranging from physical violence to seeking a new life in free territories to purposely disrupting work routines.  Another area in which resistance manifested was in what we might call the specifically “religious” sphere.  “Slave religion” (Cone’s term), which asserted the dignity of blacks because they too are created in God’s image, not only affirmed freedom from bondage but also freedom in bondage (Cone 1972, 28).  That is, though it is the case that Christian slaves did seek an ultimate, definitive end to their sufferings in the new, re-created world, they also believed in and sang spirituals about a God who was actively involved in history now-in their history (Cone 1972, 32).  As Cone observes, black spirituals were often inspired by biblical passages that emphasized God’s care for and participation in liberating the oppressed.  While they expressed a deep trust in God’s promise to deliver his people, the spirituals also allowed the slaves to cry out in their suffering, asking the same question encountered so often in the Psalms, “How long, O Lord?”  In this willful act of turning to God in prayer, we see not only the manifestation of an eschatological hope on the basis of who God is and what he has done and is doing in history, but we likewise have an acknowledgment of the eschatological tension experienced in the present life where injustice so frequently prevails.  When the day finally came and God liberated the slaves from their bonds, these African American believers experienced what Cone calls an “eschatological freedom grounded in the events of the historical present, affirming that even now God’s future is inconsistent with the realities of slavery” (Cone 1972, 42).  In short, for black slaves, freedom “was a historical reality that had transcendent implications” (Cone 1972, 42).  Thus, given what we have said up to this point, we might summarize one of the central theological themes of black spirituals as the belief that God had not forsaken his people coupled with the conviction that he would one day deliver them from their present unjust human oppressors-a conviction that in no way promoted a passive strategy of non-resistance but encouraged them to speak against the injustices committed against them and to pursue the freedom and dignity that they deserved as human beings.

Not only did black spirituals play a significant role the genealogy of jazz, but the blues as well left its own particular imprint on the face of jazz.  Employing a slightly different analogy, one might say that black spirituals and the blues are in a sense the soul that to varying degrees continues to animate jazz.   In both of these musical styles, we encounter improvisatory elements, syncopated rhythms, call and response patterns, and the use of “blue notes,” that is, flattened third, fifth, and seventh scale tones.  These blue notes imitate musically a wide spectrum of human emotions yet are particularly apt at communicating deep, heartfelt sorrow.  Although, on the one hand, it is accurate to understand jazz as a fusion of European harmonic structures and practices with distinctively African elements such as syncopation, swing, and complex polyrhythmic layerings; nonetheless, on the other hand, jazz, having been in a very real sense birthed into being by black spirituals and nurtured by the blues, retains, reflects and continues to re-tell the Christian narrative of hope in the midst of suffering.   Such hope was regularly exhibited in the lives of jazz musicians like Duke Ellington and Charlie Christian, who struggled moment by moment against the hatred of racism.  While both these musicians surpassed many if not all of their white contemporaries in musical talent, they and other black musicians were denied opportunities to play in the major venues, overlooked by the media, and made to stand in the shadows of white performers. Yet, in spite of this unfair and dishonest treatment, jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington (a professing Christian), Charlie Christian and numerous others were able to transcend these injustices by means of their music.

Though admittedly I have provided a mere sketch of the genealogy of jazz, my chief purpose has been to highlight the role played by black spirituals, and hence Christianity, on the historical development of jazz.  Just as the spirituals served as a way not only to tell the black story, but also the black story as understood within the history of redemption, so too jazz retains significant aspects of the Christian narrative, as it continues to communicate the joys, sorrows and hope of both African Americans and all others who are open to being changed by the narrative and the music.

Works Cited

Cone, James H, 1972.  The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation. New York: The Seabury Press.

Part of what I hope to accomplish with this albeit brief ad fontes journey is to raise our awareness of the function of black spirituals within the context of the early black Christian communities in America, and to highlight the distinctive ways in which the Christian faith of African Americans cannot be extricated from the coming-into-being of what many (including myself) consider as America’s most important musical contribution, jazz.  Black spirituals first and foremost have a story to tell-a story whose main characters were concrete individuals, who, on a day to day basis, were confronted with a society, which by and large refused to acknowledge their history and existence as human beings.  In the face of the de-humanized and deplorable treatment of slaves by the whites in power, black spirituals allowed slaves to affirm their dignity as human beings created in God’s image and provided a way for their otherwise legally silenced voices to be heard.

While the Africans of North America were being torn from their families and homeland and stripped of their culture, their white oppressors were unable to silence their music-music that in many ways allowed the cultural richness of the African people to live on.  Although the origins of African slavery in North America are difficult to pinpoint, it was in Jamestown in 1619 that the first Africans were sold into slavery.  By 1700, the majority of Africans in North America were made slaves for life (Cone 1972, 20).   Despite the great physical and psychological suffering,[1] the African spirit resisted a reduction to white sameness.  Vividly describing some of the inhumane and compassionless treatment endured by slaves, Cone writes:

Slavery meant being regarded as property, like horses, cows, and household goods.  For blacks the auction block was one potent symbol of their subhuman status.  The block stood for ‘brokenness,’ because on sale days no family ties were recognized. [...] Slavery meant working fifteen to twenty hours a day and being beaten for showing fatigue.  It meant being driven into the field three weeks after delivering a baby.  It meant having the cost of replacing you calculated against the value of your labor during a peak season, so that your owner could decide whether to work you to death.  It meant being whipped for crying over a fellow slave who had been killed while trying to escape (Cone 1972, 20-1).

Numerous other monstrosities could be cited, including slave catechisms created by whites, who claimed the name of Christ, hoped to more docile slaves and to convince blacks that they were in fact created to be slaves.  As previously mentioned, one must not underestimate the deeply historical, concrete nature of black spirituals as vehicles to communicate not only the slaves’ experiences in a white-defined society, but also they served as a way to preserve their African cultural roots and identity.  Yet, here again, white hatred went beyond physical enslavement and extended its scope in an attempt to “dehistoricize black existence, to foreclose the possibility of a future defined by the African heritage.  White people demeaned black people’s sacred tales, ridiculing their myths and defiling the sacred rites” (Cone 1972, 23).  Manifestly, the whites in power had defined humanity according to their own European image in order to justify their cruel actions as “civilizing the savages.”  However, their perverse plans failed, and “black history is the record of their failure” (Cone 1972, 24).

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[1] Cone provides several powerful examples of the suffering endured by people of African heritage.  “Slavery meant being regarded as property, like horses, cows, and household goods.  For blacks the auction block was one potent symbol of their subhuman status.  The block stood for ‘brokenness,’ because on sale days no family ties were recognized. [...] Slavery meant working fifteen to twenty hours a day and being beaten for showing fatigue.  It meant being driven into the field three weeks after delivering a baby.  It meant having the cost of replacing you calculated against the value of your labor during a peak season, so that your owner could decide whether to work you to death.  It meant being whipped for crying over a fellow slave who had been killed while trying to escape” (Cone 1972, 20-1).

[This is the final post in this series]

The first thing to note about the “Grand Inquisitor” story is that it is Ivan’s tale, which he decides to share with Alyosha.  Thus, the content of the story communicates Ivan’s understanding of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church, the nature of human beings, and the “problem” of freedom.  In other words, we must make a sharp distinction between Dostoevsky’s views and Ivan’s in this section or we run the risk of completely misinterpreting what Dostoevsky wants to convey.  In contrast with what Ivan portrays about freedom in his “poem,” Dostoevsky highly valued freedom, considering it one of humankind’s most precious gifts.[1] Ivan’s Inquisitor, a Roman Catholic cardinal, who has Christ arrested during a surprise visit to Spain in the years of the Inquisition, accuses Jesus of having too high a view of human beings and their ability to rightly employ their freedom.  According the Inquisitor, humans are “weak, vicious, worthless and rebellious,”[2] and Jesus, in allowing them to freely choose to follow Him, only increased their sufferings-sufferings which came about in the first place because of this so-called gift of freedom.

Since the Inquisitor is absolutely convinced that Jesus’ way is impossible given the weak and base nature of human beings, he and his comrades have stepped in to finish Christ’s incomplete work.  That is, they will provide people with a relatively stable, comfortable life in which the necessities of life are met (e.g., food, protection, presumably shelter)-and all in Christ’s name of course; however, a price is required:  freedom.  Unveiling his plan and what he considers the true state of human beings to none other than Christ Himself, the Inquisitor proclaims:

we alone shall feed them in Thy name, declaring falsely that it is in Thy name.  Oh, never, never can they feed themselves without us!  No science will give them bread so long as they remain free.  In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.”[3]

Here we see the “noble lie” of the Republic transposed into a modern key.  The Inquisitor-kings, the elite few who have come to realize that Christ’s way is impossible for the wretched masses, will take the sufferings of the masses upon themselves.  Just what is this suffering that the rulers so willingly propose to endure?  The suffering consists in the fact that these elite few knowingly deceive the people in the name of Christ-something they deem a necessary evil, genuinely believing it to be for the good of the people (народ) in light of their inability to properly exercise their freedom.[4]

As the Inquisitor continues his account of the plight of humankind or at least the plight of the masses, he explains that human beings in their freedom long to worship someone, and that they experience “no greater anxiety” than to find someone to whom they can “hand over that gift of freedom” with which they were created.[5] Had Jesus, according to the Inquisitor, followed Satan’s advice in the wilderness and in effect agreed that humans do live by bread alone, the masses would have willingly handed over their freedom and worshipped Him alone.  “In bread there was offered Thee an invincible banner; give bread, and man will worship Thee, for nothing is more certain than bread.”[6] In other words, had Jesus taken on the role of a provider and protector who meets the material needs of the people, not only would they have willingly worshiped Him, but they would have at last found a common object of worship over whom no particular group or culture would divide; hence, a “certain” object of worship would have been established.  For who, suggests the Inquisitor, could possibly argue and go to war over a God who offered the possibility of a life wherein one’s basic material needs are met?  However, Jesus did not offer the people a kingdom of bread in exchange for their freedom and dutiful, if not mechanical, devotion.[7] Instead, quips the Inquisitor,

Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic [неопределенного]; Thou didst choose what was utterly beyond the strength of men [не по силам людей], acting as though Thou didst not love them at all-Thou who didst come to give Thy life for them!  Instead of taking possession of men’s freedom, Thou didst increase it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with its sufferings forever.  Thou didst desire man’s free love [свободной любви человека], that he should follow Thee freely, enticed [прельщенный] and taken captive by Thee [плененный тобою].  In place of the rigid ancient law [твердого древнего закона], man must hereafter with free heart [свободным сердцем] decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image [образ] before him as his guide.[8]

In light of the Inquisitor’s reductionistic and pessimistic view of human beings and what he believes constitutes “happiness” for the so-called masses, he charges Jesus with failing to show the people genuine love and compassion.  In his estimation, Jesus’s high view of humans will in the end destroy them.  Of this, the Inquisitor claims certainty, for he had come to believe that the masses had been created a “mockery” and that they would “never be capable of using their freedom.”[9] Having become convinced of these things and yet still remaining a lover of humanity, the Inquisitor chose what seemed to him the only genuinely compassionate course of action:  he must engage in a “noble lie” under the banner of a God in whom he no longer believed, all the while leading “men consciously to death and destruction,” keeping them distracted, fed, and thinking themselves happy in via “so that they may not notice where they are being led.”[10]

Here, as Williams points out, the Inquisitor is “caught in a peculiarly paradoxical stance:  the alienation between Christ and the truth leads to a defense of the truth through pretending that there is no such alienation.”[11] As the Inquisitor re-moulds Christ in his image, He

becomes part of the unquestionable and unchangeable system of the world, a sanction for benevolent power which can manifest itself in “miracle, mystery, and authority,” in the successful management of the social and material environment.  He is the source of rewards and punishments in the context of a sacralized society which can persuade its members that they are in fact truly free because the conditions under which they live and act are secure.[12]

Thus, the Grand Inquisitor becomes the Grand Illusionist, engaging in the very thing that Fr. Zosima so strongly advised against:  lying to oneself and others, for in coming to believe one’s lies, one loses the ability to discern truth from falsehood.[13] Though a somewhat lengthy passage, Williams’ summary of this section of the novel is worth quoting in full:

in the Inquisitor’s great monologue, we see that a “truth” which seeks the definitive exclusion of Christ for the sake of compassionate management of human affairs can only be maintained by deliberate falsehood:  by the denial that freedom is anything more than the choices enabled for reasonable beings in a state of security, by the persuasion that these choices are the same as real freedom, by the appeal to a clear system of rewards and punishments, so that moral choices are constrained by imagined consequences, and finally by the appropriation of religious rhetoric to sanction the static and controlled society that all this implies.  From the Underground Man to the Inquisitor, the persistent theme is that truth “outside” of Christ requires lying about the human condition.[14]

Lastly, I mention briefly the climax of Ivan’s poem, in which, Christ, having listened in silence to the Inquisitor’s lengthy and virulent monologue, responds by kissing the Inquisitor.  We then see the same act of love and restraint carried out by Alyosha, who, having listened to and been emotionally disturbed by Ivan’s story, kisses Ivan before the two depart.  In harmony with Williams’ stress on the dialogical mode of the novel, and his claim that the Grand Inquisitor section is not meant as Dostoevsky’s final word on the God topic, perhaps we might interpret both Christ’s and Alyosha’s kiss as a kind of overturning of Judas’s kiss.  That is, just as Judas’s betrayal by a kiss was not the last word on Christ, neither is Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor the last word on Christ.

Concluding Remarks

As we have seen, both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche share a number of common themes and concerns-an emphasis on embodied living, a critique of rationalism and reductionistic accounts of human beings, and a high view of mystery.  Yet, we have also highlighted the ways in which these authors and their characters differ due to their radically divergent worldviews.  Dostoevsky’s Christian faith, though allowing for and even inviting numerous cognitive and emotional tensions, many of which are purposely left unresolved, ultimately presents a hope-filled picture, as the hope produced springs from a source greater than anything a human being could possibly elicit by a sheer force of will.  In contrast, Nietzsche’s account, though rightly speaking against philosophical systems and theories that denigrate the body and emphasize an other-worldly world at the expense of this world, ultimately leaves us with a sense of despair, particularly when one senses that one’s own will to power is inadequate to meet the very real sufferings of this life.   Nietzsche’s perception of the loss that comes with widespread secularization in which the cultural consciousness has more or less proclaimed, “God is dead,” as well as his negative critiques of rationalism, scient-ism and nihilism, are no doubt insightful, penetrating and well worth contemplating; however, unlike Dostoevsky, Nietzsche is unable to present a positive response or meaningful suggestion as to where we should go from here.  This is not to suggest that Dostoevsky claims to have all the answers or is able to articulate and present a systematic “day wisdom” account. Yet, he does communicate a vision that addresses Nietzsche’s concerns and iconic-ly opens up a space for genuine hope made visible through an active, Incarnate Love, which has a face.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”
has shone in our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ
(English Standard Version)

Notes

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[1] As Williams brings to the surface, we see Dostoevsky’s high view of freedom in Notes from the Underground via the Underground Man’s ardent protest against “the assumption that we can be ordered to surrender our liberty, even when it is liberty for perverse contradiction” (Dostoevsky:  Language, Faith, and Fiction, p. 27).

[2] Brothers Karamazov, p. 234.

[3] Brothers Karamazov, p. 234.

[4] Describing the plight of the weak, the Inquisitor states, “[t]hey are weak and rebellious, but in the end they too will become obedient.  They will marvel at us and look on us as gods, because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have found so dreadful and to rule over them-so awful it will seem to them to be free.  But we shall tell them that we are Thy servants and rule them in thy name.  We shall deceive them again, for we will not let Thee come to us again.  That deception will be our suffering, for we shall be forced to lie” (Brothers Karamazov, p. 234).

[5] Brothers Karamazov, p. 234.

[6] Brothers Karamazov, p. 235.

[7] I do not take Dostoevsky’s critique in the Grand Inquisitor section to suggest that Christians ought not be concerned with social justice, feeding and clothing the poor, or helping insofar as they can to improve social conditions such that the basic needs of individuals are met.  How could he given Christ’s words in Matthew 25?  “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matt 25:31-46, English Standard Version).  Rather, his critique is focused on religious and political leaders who, having set themselves up for all practical purposes as God, knowingly pursue a “noble lie” for the purpose of providing the basic material needs of the masses.  Such a program begins with a reductionistic, materialistic view of human beings, deliberately pursues its goals apart from Christ, and builds its entire edifice on falsehood, which is somehow supposed to bring about the best state of affairs for all humankind.

[8] Brothers Karamazov, p. 235.  The full Russian text reads, “ты взял все, что есть необычайного, гадательного и неопределенного, взял все, что было не по силам людей, а  потому  поступил как бы и не любя их вовсе, - и это кто же: тот, который пришел отдать за них жизнь свою! Вместо того, чтоб овладеть людскою свободой,  ты  умножил  ее  и обременил  ее  мучениями  душевное  царство  человека  вовеки.  Ты  возжелал свободной любви человека, чтобы свободно пошел он за  тобою,  прельщенный  и плененный тобою. Вместо твердого древнего закона, - свободным сердцем должен был человек решать впредь сам, что добро и что зло, имея лишь в  руководстве твой образ пред собою” [2.5.5].

[9] Brothers Karamazov, p. 242.

[10] Brothers Karamazov, p. 242.   One should note that at this point in the narrative, Alyosha, with great emotion, interjects the following concerning the Inquisitor and his elite few:  “They have no such cleverness and no mysteries and secrets…Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that’s all their secret.  Your inquisitor does not believe in God, that’s his secret!”  To which Ivan replies, “What if it is so!  At last you have guessed it.  It’s perfectly true that that’s the whole secret, but isn’t that suffering, at least for a man like that, who has wasted his whole life in the desert and yet could not shake off his incurable love of humanity?”  (Brothers Karamazov, p. 242).

[11] Dostoevsky:  Language, Faith, and Fiction, p. 27.

[12] Dostoevsky:  Language, Faith, and Fiction, pp. 27-8.   Williams continues his thought, adding, “[f]aith is thus no longer a response jolted out of the self by the irruption of something that makes possible what had seemed impossible; it is assent to religious power as simply another face of the power that manages and secures the world” (Ibid., p. 28).

[13] One might point out that the Inquisitor knows that he is engaging in deception and therefore still has the ability to discern truth from falsity. Fair enough.  However, he has firmly come to believe that through explicit deception, he is doing what is best for the masses and can some how feel good about leading them to their destruction so long as they think themselves happy.

[14] Dostoevsky:  Language, Faith, and Fiction, p. 30.

In addition to a positive view of mystery (see part III), both authors offer strong critiques against reductionistic rationalism and scient-ism.   In a section entitled, “The Leech,” Zarathustra introduces us to a man, who identifies himself as “the conscientious in spirit,” and who appears to be a philosopher-scientist of the materialist variety.  He tells Zarathustra that it is “better to be a fool on one’s own than a sage according to the opinion of others.”[1] This philosopher-scientist seeks an Archimedean point upon which to stand.  That is, he wants a solid “ground and foundation” that doesn’t rely on mere authority and misguided tradition, and this requires him to “pursue the leech to its ultimate grounds.”[2] Here it is worth mentioning that Hegel, even more rigorously than Descartes, attempted to construct a philosophical position-more specifically, a presupposition-less logic (cf. Philosophy of Logic-in which one must put all previous philosophical and religious suppositions to the test, questioning even the very principles of logic (e.g., principle of non-contradiction).  The conscientious man, in a way similar to Descartes and Hegel, pursues the “leech,” which is a metaphor for various philosophical, religious and scientific systems whose claims, like the leech, demand or have the potential to demand our life blood.

Interestingly, the conscientious man goes on to say, “in the conscience of science there is nothing great and nothing small.”[3] One wonders why this committed philosopher-scientist would utter such words.  Perhaps the reason is, as Nietzsche says in Human All Too Human (#251, “Signs of a Higher and Lower Culture”), because science is unable to motivate us or move us in the way that religion can.  In the same section from Human All Too Human, Nietzsche speaks of the “two-chambers of the brain,” bringing to our attention the “downside” of living in predominantly scientific, materialistic (philosophically speaking) age.  Scientists, for example, have cast so many doubts on the claims of religion and metaphysics, yet what Nietzsche himself seems to suggest is that which makes us human is tied to religious and even traditional metaphysical claims (e.g., claims about the soul and God).  Consequently, we must develop a “two-chambered brain,” one chamber that allows us to embrace and experience religion, and another that can come to terms with the truths of science and philosophy of the materialist strain.   In other words, as Nietzsche sees things, religion gives us passion and drives us forward.  Science, in contrast, is unable to provide this kind of drive, as its role it to regulate the passions and discern truth from error.   So “truth” in this context, or to use the conscientious man’s term, “honesty,” viz., that which is “hard, strict, narrow, cruel, and inexorable,”[4] lies in science, not in religion and (traditional) metaphysics. Nonetheless, even though he himself has given up on ancient religion (e.g. Judaism, Christianity) and metaphysics, Nietzsche is willing to admit that if all we have is this scientific “truth” and strict, cruel honesty, then something essential to human beings has been lost.  As he says throughout Human All Too Human, the kind of truth science gives is a “humble truth.” Consequently, it cannot satisfy our deepest longings.  As a result, we require a dual-chambered brain in which at least one side, the religion and metaphysics side, gives us what we need to carry on.  With these things in mind, we may interpret the conscientious man’s statement, “where my honesty ceases, I am blind, and I also want to be blind.  But where I want to know, I also want to be honest-that is, hard, strict, narrow, cruel, and inexorable,” as another variation on Nietzsche’s theme of our divided psyche.[5]

Dostoevsky, as well, offers his own critique of rationalism and related forms of reductionism.  Though accused by many scholars of advocating a (so-called) Kierkegaardian irrationalism and extreme voluntarism, as Rowan Williams has convincingly argued, such a conclusion (among other things) fails to take into account (1) what Mikhail Bakhtin coined as the “polyphonic” mode of Dostoevsky’s text-a mode creating both dissonant and consonant extended harmonies-and (2) the way in which Dostoevsky allows Alyosha’s faith to grow and mature, thus exhibiting a picture that reflects more authentically the complexity and struggle involved in living a life of faith in this world.[6] Many critics point to an early statement (Feb. 1854) found in a letter written by Dostoevsky to Natalya Fonvizina, a woman who had gifted him with a copy of the New Testament that he had read avidly while in prison.  The content of the letter is frequently cited as evidence that Dostoevsky’s religious faith is based on irrationalism and exhibits something closely resembling Nietzsche’s will to power (extreme voluntarism).[7] Dostoevsky’s admittedly difficult statement reads as follows:  “if someone were to prove to me that Christ was outside [вне] the truth, and it was really the case that the truth lay outside Christ, then I should choose to stay with Christ rather than the truth.”[8] Williams, having examined and analyzed several of Dosteovsky’s texts and characters-from the Underground Man (Notes from the Underground), to Shatov and Stavrogin (Devils), to Alyosha and Ivan (Brothers Karamazov), offers a plausible (and to this author convincing) way to approach and interpret Dostoevsky’s statement that resonates with Dostoevsky’s own complex understanding of faith as that which “moves and adapts, matures and reshapes itself.” On Williams’s read, even if Dostoevsky’s 1854 confession expresses his own doubts and struggles about how exactly to harmonize faith and reason, belief in the supernatural and the often anti-supernaturalistic bias of science, his confession comes to mean something like the following:

“Truth,” as the ensemble of sustainable propositions about the world, does not compel adherence to any one policy of living rather than another; if faith’s claims about Christ do not stand within that ensemble of propositions, that is not a problem.  It means that they cannot be confused with any worldly power that might assume the right to dictate a policy for living or impose a reconciliation upon unwilling humanity.[9]

Williams goes on to stress that Dostoevsky’s position need not be interpreted as advocating that the claims of faith are contradictory or “arbitrarily willed” and hence, irrational.  Rather,

they represent something that can make possible new motions of moral awareness precisely because they are not generated by the will.  But these new motions generated by the recognition of the claims of faith are a response that moves “with the grain” of things, at least to the extent that it does not lead to literal and spiritual self-destruction.  At this level, response to Christ connects with a “truth” that is more comprehensive than any given ensemble of facts.  The truth of faith is thus something that cannot be reduced to an observable matter of fact:  it is discernable when a certain response is made which creates the possibility of “reconciliation,” and is fleshed out by way of the specific engagements of loving attention.[10]

Even if one became convinced of this interpretation, as Williams points out, it still leaves us with the nagging question of how exactly the claims of faith connect with the “ensemble of facts” of this world?  In other words, do Christ’s claim (the claims of faith) merely have the power to transform a person’s individual, moral “inner space” while leaving the world at large-whether the claims of science, the “facts” of history or the moral chaos and injustice so prevalent in the world-untouched?  Questions like these take us immediately to the famous “Grand Inquisitor,” section of Brothers Karamazov, to which we now turn.

Notes

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[1] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 362.

[2] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 362.

[3] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 362.

[4] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 363.

[5] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 363.

[6] As Williams explains, “What he [Dostoevsky] does in Karamazov is not to demonstrate that it is possible to imagine a life so integrated and transparent that the credibility of faith becomes unassailable; it is simply to show that faith moves and adapts, matures and reshapes itself, not by adjusting its doctrinal content (the error of theological liberalism, with which Dostoevsky had no patience) but by the relentless stripping away from faith of egotistical or triumphalistic expectations.  The credibility of faith is in its freedom to let itself be judged and to grow.  In the nature of the case, there will be no unanswerable demonstrations and no final unimprovable biographical form apart from Christ, who can only be and is only represented in fiction through the oblique reflection of his face in those who are moving toward him” (Dostoevsky:  Language, Faith, and Fiction, p. 10).

[7] Williams, Dostoevsky, p. 15.

[8] From Dostoevsky’s 1854 letter to Natalya Fonvizina (full text in Pol’noe sobranie sochinenii, 30 vols. [Leningrad:  Nauka, 1972-1990] 28.2:  176), as found in Williams, Dostoevsky:  Language, Faith and Fiction, p. 15.

[9] Williams, Dostoevsky, pp. 25-6.

[10] Williams, Dostoevsky, p. 26.

With these things in mind (see part II), we may speculate on some of the connections which Dostoevsky’s polysemous text invites.  Alyosha and Fr. Zosima, both characters noted for their concrete, embodied interaction with people, serve as contrasting figures to Ivan (and the rationalist nihilists whom Nietzsche so often laments). The latter group remains aloof, unable to translate the abstract into their concrete, embodied, communal existence.  On the one hand, we have Ivan, who collects stories about the sufferings of children and theorizes as to why such suffering takes place. On the other hand, we have Alyosha, who personally visits the poor in their homes, stands up for suffering children like Ilyusha and treats those socially ostracized, such as Gryshenka and Snegiryov with respect.  With the contrast between Ivan and Alyosha, Dostoevsky brings to our attention the need to move beyond the abstract (which is not to suggest that abstract ideas are without value) and enter into the concrete through active, personal engagement with individuals.   Insofar as Alyosha represents a Christ-like figure, Dostoevsky uses Alyosha’s exchange with Snegiryov to exhibit in both words (the conversation itself) and act (Alyosha’s actual visit and time spent with the captain and his family) a portrait of God’s love and its transforming effects in this world.

From the passages above (IV.3, 7), we saw Alyosha’s willingness to show Ilyusha compassion.  In stark contrast, Zarathustra holds compassion in low-esteem and views exhibitions of pity with great suspicion.  According to Zarathustra, pitying another person causes resentment in the recipient and is simply a way for the person showing pity to think himself better than others. In the sections entitled, “On the Rabble” and “On Tarantulas,”[1] Zarathustra re-visits this idea of resentment (or ressentiment) with both recalling categories and themes discussed in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals.  For example, in the Genealogy, we are introduced to master and slave morality.  The weak, in their slave morality, resent the power of their masters, as well as their inability to retaliate against their masters.  Because the weak see no justice in this life, they invent an other-worldly realm where God metes out ultimate justice. Slave morality is credited with having invented the concepts of evil and good-concepts which are defined in reference to the masters (those in power).  The great flaw of slave morality is the way in which the weak define themselves in terms their masters rather than carving out their own definition of themselves.  According to Nietzsche, values are constantly in flux; consequently, notions of good and evil are always changing and cannot be fixed.  Whatever the current conceptions of good and evil happen to be, these will remain the dominant way of thinking until a different group comes into power and re-creates new conceptions.  Interestingly, in this genealogical account of morals, Nietzsche concedes that the slave morality ultimately involves a cleverness about it, because it was able to trans-value the then-dominant values of its day.  For instance, the slaves turned the qualities associated with the masters-powerful, wealthy, strong, cruel-into a description of evil characteristics.  Likewise, they transformed their own characteristics-weak, poor, lacking in power, compassionate-into a description of good qualities.  Even though he grants this cleverness to slave morality, ultimately both Zarathustra and Nietzsche despise the ressentiment that drives it, as ressentiment in seemingly deterministic fashion produces nay-sayers who have their eyes fixed on some other-worldly world, and consequently, degrade and devalue the body and this world.  Lastly, in his discussion of the “ugliest man,” who, according to Zarathustra, murdered God because he couldn’t bear God’s constant, ever-present, penetrating gaze, we are told that the one sentiment that the ugliest man could not endure is to be shown pity.[2] One then can only imagine how repulsed he would be at the infinite mercy displayed and offered to all in Christ’s self-giving death-for-others.

The final comparison between these two thinkers (and characters) centers on how each views mystery and in a sense its opposite, rationalism.  Interestingly and perhaps even surprisingly, both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky embrace mystery and reject the rationalistic systems (as well as the “scient-ism”) so prevalent in nineteenth-century.  In the “Drunken Song,”[3] Zarathustra alludes to what many scholars call “night wisdom,” which is a metaphor for the all-encompassing mystery that permeates our lives.  For Zarathustra, “night wisdom” is contrasted with “day wisdom,” with the former clearly preferred to the supposed systematic clarity and scientific precision of the latter.  In a passage contrasting Hegel’s day wisdom and Nietzsche’s night wisdom, Robert Wood provides a helpful elucidation of Nietzsche’s view:

For Hegel the telos of the world-process is to have the Whole come to clear expression.  But the crucial differences are, first of all, the dominance of chance in Nietzsche’s view and, secondly, the superiority of “night wisdom” over Hegelian “day wisdom.”  The latter distinction is most important.  The poetic word is able to bring us into relation with encompassing mystery.  We do not turn our backs on the encompassing darkness that surrounds the sea of light, the world of our senses and what is logically entailed by it.  Through the poet we can gain a sense of the continuity of the manifest and the hidden, and the sheltering of the former in the latter.  We can live out of a sense of encompassing mystery.  In Hegel that is only a moment to be overcome in “day wisdom,” the science of wisdom that reveals the ultimate Logos.[4]

Consistent with his polemic against and abhorrence of other-worldly worlds inhabited by static Forms or Divine Ideas, Nietzsche’s praise of night wisdom exalts the unknown, which by definition cannot be controlled, managed or predicted.  Whereas one knows Being, one experiences Becoming, as knowing it is impossible given its constant fluid condition.

In the section “On Self Overcoming,” Zarathustra’s rebuke of the philosophers on account of their inordinate lust for knowledge is a variation on the theme of night wisdom’s glory.  According to Zarathustra, such philosophers are those driven by a “will to the thinkability of all beings” and a desire to “make all beings thinkable.”[5] In other words, rather than embrace the unknown and that which cannot be penetrated by human reason, these self-proclaimed wise men attempt to mold both reason and the world to fit and reflect their own pre-conceived notions.   Thus, in their very conception of knowledge, such philosophers fundamentally deny “night wisdom,” or at best see it as a moment to be overcome (Hegel).

Dostoevsky, given his Russian Orthodox paradigm, also has a high view Mystery.[6] We see this ready acceptance of mystery, miracles and super-natural irruptions into the natural in the way that Alyosha and Fr. Zosima live, move, and have their being.[7] Yet, the Mystery embraced by Alyosha and Zosima ultimately has a face, the face of Jesus Christ, which then moves Christian Mystery from an abstract ideal to incarnate Person.  Dostoevsky would no doubt agree with Nietzsche that Mystery is something experienced rather than manipulated and managed; yet, ironically, Nietzsche’s “night wisdom,” and ever-elusive Becoming, having no face, remains abstract, impersonal, distant, and dis-embodied.  This is not, however, to suggest that a believer’s union with Christ and ultimate deification somehow brings about total clarity in which God is fully comprehended and all mystery is vanquished.  Rather, Mystery is just as ineradicable as the distinction between Creator and creature, Infinite and finite; yet, these distinctions neither prohibit genuine knowledge nor intimate fellowship with the God who, however paradoxical it may be, becomes in the Incarnation both creature and finite while remaining Creator and Infinite.

Notes

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[1] The first section is found at pp. 208-11, the second at pp. 211-14 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

[2] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 377.

[3] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. 429-36.

[4] Robert Wood, “High and Low in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,” unpublished paper, pp. 21-22.

[5] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 225.

[6] The Russian word for mystery is “тайна,” from which derives the Russian word, “таинство,” meaning sacrament as a holy mystery.

[7] In book one, chapter five, (”Elders”), the narrator describes Alyosha as a “realist,” but a realist who is also a believer. (The term for Christian believer in Russian is “верующий”).  The narrator then proceeds to describe how an unbelieving  realist (”истинный реалист, если он не верующий”) approaches miracles and faith.  “I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than any one.  Oh, no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist.  It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief.  The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact.  Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him.  Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith” (The Brothers Karamazov, pp. 19-20).

[Click here for part I]

We see the manifestations of Nietzsche’s pessimism in contrast with Dostoevsky’s optimism in their widely divergent views of love, compassion and pity.  Operating out of a hermeneutic of suspicion, Zarathustra views the Christian teaching of love thy neighbor as inauthentic-a mere mask for self-aggrandizement due to a lack of self-love.   In criticism of the teaching, Zarathustra proclaims:

You crowd around your neighbor and have fine words for it.  But I say unto you:  your love of the neighbor is your bad love of yourselves.  You flee to your neighbor from yourselves and would like to make a virtue out of that:  but I see through your “selflessness.”[1]

From one perspective, Zarathustra can be seen as challenging Christians to examine their motives and to question themselves as to why they serve, help and spend time with others.   On this read, Zarathustra shares common ground with Fr. Zosima, as the latter regularly warned of the dangers of lying to oneself and how this practice eventually results in a person’s inability to discern truth from falsehood. For example, in Fr. Zosima’s conversation Fyodor Pavlovich, Zosima exhorts Fyodor Pavlovich with the following:

Above all, don’t lie to yourself.  The man who lies to himself and listens to his own life comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.  And having no respect he ceases to love.[2]

As Zosima explains, self-deception is a manifestation of self-hatred, which in turn affects one’s ability to genuinely love others.  A person overcome with self-hatred has nothing to give others. Operating out of emptiness and lack, he ends up using others in an attempt to fill an inner void.  Thus, on Fr. Zosima’s account, truth and love are intertwined.  If one loses the ability to discern truth from falsehood, one loses the ability to love both oneself and others.  On this point, both Zarathustra and Zosima agree-a person must genuinely be “at home with himself” before he can authentically love and serve others.   Zarathustra, however, takes this insight and concludes, given his negative interaction with Christian “actors,” that the Christian doctrine of love thy neighbor is nothing more than a mask of hypocrisy.   Zosima, in contrast, aware of the tendencies in both Christians and non-Christians to deceive themselves through rationalizations, encourages individuals to seek Christ’s forgiveness and to allow His transforming grace to re-structure their habits so that they might learn to love and serve authentically, out of gratitude.  The faith-stance of Zosima and Alyosha allow each to offer critiques of the human situation without falling into a morass of despair.  As despair or something strongly resembling it seems inevitable or at least highly likely, when, like Zarathustra and Nietzsche, suspicion and doubt become the primary lenses through which the world and others are interpreted.

Throughout Nietzsche’s narrative Zarathustra engages in a polemic against any worldview or system of thought that he deems dualistic, that is, one which sets an other-worldly world over against this world.  In his critique, Zarathustra rails against both Platonism and Christianity, claiming that both exalt a realm completely separate from our present world, a realm in which all things embodied have no place.  The Christian, of course, would want to stress the differences between Platonism traditionally understood and the historic Christian faith.  For example, in Orthodox Christianity, given the centrality of the Incarnation and its emphasis on sacramental life and reality, one could establish a strong argument to the contrary, viz., that embodied living is essential to the Christian in this life.  Even so, the Christian ought to pay close attention to Zarathustra’s (and Nietzsche’s) critique of Platonic dualism, being alert to the ways in which such dualistic, dis-emobodied thinking has infected or has the potential to infect its own teachings.  Though we find common ground between Zarathustra and the Christian faith on the importance of valuing physical creation in all its manifestations, or as Zarathustra puts it, remaining “faithful to the earth,” each arrives at this conclusion from completely different motivations.[3] For the Christian, creation itself is a both gift of God and is something that God Himself not only sustains but “becomes” through the Incarnation.  For in the Incarnation, the Word becomes flesh and dwells as a human with humans, opening the way for intimate fellowship between creature and Creator, human and divine, infinite and finite.  Given the Christian understanding of God as the source of all creation, as well as God’s own choice to unite himself to flesh in the Incarnation-not simply during his earthly sojourn but for all eternity-to denigrate creation is to denigrate God.   Here we have both a reverence for that which is Other than creation (God) and an appreciation for the work of that Other (creation). For Zarathustra, however, there is no transcendent Other-there is this world and this world only, and we must embrace it in all of its joys and sufferings.  Moreover, given Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal recurrence, which, on the one hand, encourages us to make our choices count and live fully in this world, one the other hand, produces a nagging fear that the wide-spread mediocrity so frequently encountered in the here and now and best epitomized in the nihilistic “last men” so despised by Zarathustra, is destined to be our recurring fate.

Returning to Zosima and Alyosha, the narrator portrays both men as possessing an uncanny ability to ascertain much about individual through conversation and attentive listening.  As a result of his friendship with Zosima, Alyosha learned how to put into practice the elder’s habit of restraining himself from judging a person in an excessively critical or self-righteous way; yet, neither men hesitated to offer advice, correction, strong exhortation, or to express offense at evil and injustice.  We see this restraint in Alyosha’s interactions with the peasant boy Ilyusha.   Alyosha’s first encounter with Ilyusha and his schoolmates occurs in book IV, chapter 3.[4] Alyosha, who in many ways manifested the innocence, purity and wonder so common to children, found himself drawn to children and was in no way disinclined or reluctant to engage them.  As our narrator informs us, “Alyosha had never from his Moscow days been able to pass children without taking notice of them.”[5] Even with his great admiration of children, Alyosha was also keenly aware of the ways in which young schoolboys tormented one another and often quite mercilessly.  Indeed, when Alyosha is introduction to Ilyusha, he finds the young boy of ten facing a group of six of his schoolmates, all armed with rocks in hand and poised to hurl them in his direction.  Realizing what was taking place, Alyosha immediately approached the group of boys and engaged them as peers.  While talking with the boys, Ilyusha, standing on the other side of the ditch, flung a stone into the group.  This set off an exchange of stone-throwing between the boys and Ilyusha, which resulted in both Alyosha and the peasant-boy Ilyusha receiving direct hits, the former in the shoulder and the latter in the head. Though Alyosha, an innocent bystander, had been struck with a stone from Ilyusha’s hand, he expressed no anger toward the boy but was clearly outraged at the group of six for attacking the younger boy.  Shocked at the group’s behavior, Alyosha cried, “‘What are you about!  Aren’t you ashamed, gentlemen?  Six against one!  Why, you’ll kill him!”[6] Then Alyosha, ran to protect the boy, using his own body as a screen to shield him from the onslaught of stones.  In the midst of a few more stone-throwing exchanges, Alyosha found out that the boys had been teasing Ilyusha for some time and that their teasing had been associated with the (at present) enigmatic phrase, “wisp of tow.”[7] Instead of immediately declaring the boy to be a disturbed, violent, trouble-making youth, Alyosha wonders what might have caused a young boy to act so aggressively.

Some time later while conversing with Katerina Ivanova, Alyosha is informed that his brother, Dmitri, in a fit of rage had recently attacked Ilyusha’s father, Snegiryov, a peasant captain, publicly humiliating him as he dragged him by the beard from a local tavern and beat him.  To make things worse, Ilyusha as well as a group of his classmates, had been walking home just at that moment and had witnessed the event.  After hearing Katerina’s retelling of the story, Alyosha at once put the pieces together and understood why Ilyusha had attacked him-he was after all a Karamazov, the brother of his father’s assailant.  Katerina also told Alyosha of the desperate situation of the peasant captain and his family and asked Alyosha to take two hundred rubles to the captain as a gift to help the family.  Alyosha, of course, happy to comply, took the money, thanked Katerina, and departed to the captain’s home.  At every stage Alyosha is willing to be involved-he doesn’t remain emotionally detached from people and their sufferings.  Rather, he, in Christ-like fashion, meets them in their suffering, choosing to be physically present with them, thus affirming and living out an embodied, incarnational way of being.

As mentioned earlier, Alyosha possessed a rather remarkable ability to discern the complex inner life of his fellow human beings.  For instance, in a subsequent section (IV.7) while conversing with Snegiryov, Alyosha remarked, “[s]choolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels of God, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless (безжалостны).”[8] The Russian word, безжалостны, translated in English as “merciless,” might be better translated as “pitiless,” as the noun from which it derives “жалость” has no active connotation but speaks of a feeling of pity for someone with no suggestion of external action toward that individual implied.  In contrast, the Russian word, “милость,” which is translated in English as “mercy,” expresses a more active meaning that goes beyond an internal feeling.  Though a feeling of pity may indeed be present, mercy contains the additional active aspect that moves a person to act on behalf of another.[9] Applying this distinction in meaning to Alyosha’s comment about the schoolboys, the idea is when banded together and bowing down to negative peer pressure, they adopt the spirit of the group and become so hardened that they lack even a feeling of pity for those whom they have determined are unacceptable to the group.  Lastly, it is also of interest to note that the adjective, милосердный [from the aforementioned noun, милость], translated “merciful” in English, is the word used in the Russian Bible to describe God’s mercy toward human beings.  Thus, if we consider the active aspect of милость when predicated of God as in common biblical phrase, “God is merciful” (Бог милосердный), we are struck with the wonder of God’s act on our behalf.  In other words, beyond feeling pity (analogically speaking), God actively demonstrates his mercy for us in and through the gift of his Son, who became flesh in order to unite us to Himself and bring us into intimate inter-trinitarian life.

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[1] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 172.

[2] The Brothers Karamazov, p. 36.

[3] Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 125.

[4] The Brothers Karamazov, pp. 160-64.

[5] The Brothers Karamazov, p. 161.

[6] The Brothers Karamazov, p. 163.

[7] The Brothers Karamazov, p. 162.  Later, we find out that “wisp of tow” refers to the captain’s beard.