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The Grand Inquisitor thinks that what matters is earthly happiness, but that Christ’s message does not bring happiness to this world. This is the debate between believing in heaven or believing in heaven on earth. Socialism is the attempt to create heaven on earth. It is the attempt to apply the Christian message to politics, but to do so in an unchristian way. Whereas Jesus says that we ought to share and love our neighbour, socialism says we must. It turns morality into a matter of law. If I reject the methods by which socialism will enforce equality, then I will not be burned at the stake, but I will soon find the forces of law ranged up against me. Human happiness in this way depends on man losing his freedom. This I think is the parallel that Dostoevsky wants to make. But let’s look further.
The Grand Inquisitor looks at Jesus being tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4 1-11). The temptations given to Jesus by the Devil are to turn stones into bread, throw himself off a cliff relying on angels to rescue him and to rule over the whole world on condition that he worships the Devil. Jesus rejects all three temptations.
The inquisitor thinks that he was wrong to do so for “Turn them into bread and mankind will run after you like sheep, grateful and obedient, though eternally trembling lest you withdraw your hand and your loaves cease for them” (p. 251).
Will man be willing to give up freedom for bread? Well, look at our own society. Our government has the power to provide bread to those who lack the means to find their own bread. What are benefits but the bread that the government gives? Those who receive this bread do indeed eternally tremble that it might be withdrawn. Are they willing to exchange their freedom for this bread?
Jesus objects to the Devil that man does not live by bread alone. The inquisitor takes the Devil’s side “do you know that in the name of this very earthly bread, the spirit of the earth will rise against you and fight with you and defeat you … do you know that centuries will pass and mankind will proclaim with the mouth of its wisdom and science that there is no crime, and therefore no sin, but only hungry men?” (p. 252-253).
But this is where we are now. Christianity has been all but defeated by secularism. Communism defeated Christianity in Russia and promised a new religion of heaven on earth with a new Messiah called Lenin. Stalin was indeed the Devil incarnate and his ideology was the opposite of Christianity. But Christianity was less under threat from communism than it is under threat from indifference and the wisdom of science. What matters to us today is indeed earthly bread. What matters to us is heaven on earth, pleasure and putting off the evil day of death for as long as possible. We no longer believe in sin. Everything is permissible. If you think that the Grand Inquisitor is a figure from long ago, think again. He is now. He is with us.
The Grand Inquisitor points out that the people will eventually tire of the promise of heavenly bread. They will then go to the Church and say “Feed us, for those who promised us fire from heaven did not give it” (p. 253). The Church will give the bread on the condition that man loses his freedom for “No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet” (p. 253).
The Grand Inquisitor is the equivalent of Lenin. You are poor and hungry, you need food banks to survive. We will give you bread. This is the promise of heaven on earth that socialism gives us, but we must all be aware of the price that we need to pay. It is a bargain with the devil and leads to the loss of freedom. It leads to the loss of freedom because I do not accept that I am responsible for my bread. I give the responsibility to the Church or the Government to provide me with what I need to live. But I do not need to give this responsibility. People have lived in the wilderness. The pioneers in the United States made their own bread without the help of the Government. But then they really were free. The Grand Inquisitor is a socialist. The auto-da-fé was not so long ago. It happened throughout the 1930s. It happened after 1789. It happens today when people vegetate and lose their souls because they depend completely on the government and this eventually leads them to live a life which only seeks transient pleasure. Sex, alcohol, shopping. Whatever I want to do I will do. This is to lose your soul. This too is an auto da fe.
The Grand Inquisitor thinks that people face a choice “They will finally understand that freedom and earthly bread in plenty for everyone are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share among themselves” (p. 253). We are not then really looking back to Seville in the 15th century but looking forward to Russia in the 20th-century. The Christian ideal of loving our neighbour, plus altruism to a great extent contradicts human nature. Which of us really would give up our cloak to a robber? Which of us really would respond to a slap by turning the other cheek? This has always been the challenge of Christianity. None of us, apart from saints, can even begin to imitate Christ. We fail every day in living as Christ asks us. Are you really ready to leave your mother and your father, your husband or your wife? Are you ready today to give all you have to the poor and follow Jesus? Our freedom of choice is what makes the Christian ideal inconceivable. The Grand Inquisitor would take away that choice and impose equality by law and by threat. But this is exactly what Russia faced some decades later. People will not share unless they are forced to. Socialism is only possible if freedom is taken away from the masses. Above all else this chapter is prophetic. The greatest inquisition of all was undertaken in the 1930s by the NKVD. Only with terror could collective farming be introduced to the Soviet Union. There was equality of course, but it was an equality of starvation.
The Grand Inquisitor goes still further. The people “will also be convinced that they are forever incapable of being free, because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and rebels. You promised them heavenly bread but … can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, eternally depraved, and eternally ignoble human race” (p. 253).
But when did the Catholic Church provide anyone with equality, when indeed did it set out to provide bread? People living in Seville in the 15th-century were not given equality by the Church. There then were nobles and the poor. The poor frequently did not have enough to eat. The conflict during the Reformation was not about creating heaven on earth, rather it was about salvation and how to obtain it. Was it not all about whether I can obtain salvation by works or by faith alone? So again it is not really that we are looking backwards but rather forwards. The Grand Inquisitor is saying that people will prefer heaven on earth to the promise of an eternal reward and they will be willing to give up their freedom for this earthly heaven. Moreover they will have to give up their freedom as heaven on earth is incompatible with choice. The people must be forced to be free. The task of socialism then is to convince the people that they are incapable of being free. This is what the welfare state does. If you are dependent on the government for your existence, if you live this way for a few years, you will lose all sense of self, all sense of being capable of earning a living. At this point you will have no sense of being properly free. So too in communism. Everything depends on the party. There is little or no room for initiative. Bringing Christianity down to earth, making an earthly heaven requires that we lose our freedom. It is for this reason that earthly Christianity or socialism is not Christianity at all. For Christianity above all depends on a choice. A leap of faith. It is for this reason that socialism is incompatible with Christianity. Socialism is the attempt to force others to live a Christian life. But the force means that it ceases to be Christianity at all. Rather it is the temptation that the Devil gave to Jesus. It is for this reason that socialism always ends in terror and monstrosity. It is quite literally the work of the Devil.
Sources
Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky, Vintage, 1992.
Come back soon for Part 3 of Chapter 10: Grand Inquisitor.