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What does the Grand Inquisitor himself believe about death? Is there only death for him too? But he cannot save himself of course. If there is immortality and a God or a Jesus who judges, why would they choose the Inquisitor and his friends over the innocent?
But it is important to remember who has written this poem. It is Ivan. The idea of there being no sin, for there is no knowledge of good and evil, is simply his idea that everything is permitted. But this is the idea that there is no God. The Inquisitor is an atheist for he is Ivan.
The Grand Inquisitor is not a Christian for he is not teaching the Christian message. Freedom of choice is the essence of that message. Jesus does not want to force anyone to follow him. It is always a choice. More and more it becomes clear that the point of Ivan’s poem is to condemn Christianity and the Church. The Inquisitor plans to burn Jesus. But how could a Christian do this? Even if he really was an Inquisitor in Seville, if he saw the risen Christ would he really condemn him to death, knowing that he was the risen Christ. Would he not at the very least be scared to do so, knowing that in time he would be judged. The story only makes sense from the point of view of atheism. Otherwise the Inquisitor would never act in this way.
How are we to suppose that the Grand Inquisitor prevented the masses finding out the real Christian message? Someone would have been able to read the Bible even if it was untranslated. Someone could explain the teaching to others. The Church can of course for a time act in an authoritarian way, but the seeds of the destruction of this point of view are already there. The Christian message itself undermines the auto da fe.
If the Inquisitor believed in life after death only for the elite he would not act in the way that he is acting. Moreover it is not his choice as to who is saved, therefore to say that there is only death for the masses is to say that there is only death for everyone for what really is the distinction? They are all human. It is not for the elite to save themselves.
The story then is not about heaven in heaven, but only about attempts to create heaven on earth by means of taking away freedom, knowledge and by enforcing this heaven on earth by fear and punishment. This is to describe communism. This is because the distinction between Christianity and socialism is the idea that what matters is heaven on earth rather than heaven in heaven. Socialism wants to make my kingdom on this earth, because there is no other world.
Does the Inquisitor believe in Jesus? How can he not when he is sitting there in the same prison cell and talking to him? But then must he not realise that he will be punished for the way that he is treating Jesus? The Grand Inquisitor’s story depends on the idea that Christianity is a way of pacifying the masses (the opium of the masses), but it also depends on the idea that Christianity is not true (when someone dies, there is only death). But the presence of Jesus in the cell contradicts this.
This may be pushing the logic of Ivan’s poem too far. Taken literally it finally does not make sense. The Grand Inquisitor might have used the Church cynically to control the people while himself not believing a word of the Church’s message. This is familiar enough from history. People have used all sorts of ideas they didn’t believe in order to maintain power and privilege. But now he must believe. He is confronted with Christ. He has no doubt that He is the genuine article. The Grand Inquisitor is a witness to the truth. Given that he witnesses to the truth and knows that the Christian message is true, how could the Grand Inquisitor dare continue to behave as he does? Jesus after all is the son of God. He is the truth. It is not for the Inquisitor to say there is only death, but for Jesus and Jesus’ message is “he who believes in me shall never die.” This is without limitation. There is no elite. We come back then to the idea of what the Inquisitor. Does he believe in traditional Christianity? But then he must realise that he is going to be judged for condemning Jesus.
The behaviour of the Grand Inquisitor implies that he does not really believe that he is talking to the risen Christ. I think the story is not to be taken literally. The Inquisitor really is an atheist. He is Ivan. The story is of Ivan talking to himself. We will meet this again later in the novel when he talks to the devil. The clue is in the way the Inquisitor uses a really unusual word. He writes “having begun to build their Tower of Babel without us, they will end in anthropophagy” (p. 258). This rather unusual word both in English and in Russian is repeated later in the novel. The Devil is talking to Ivan and he says “they propose to destroy everything and begin with anthropophagy” (p. 648). This is Ivan talking to himself. So then we can deduce that the whole of the Grand Inquisitor dialogue is Ivan talking to himself and that the Inquisitor is the Devil. He is what results from giving into the temptation of the Devil.
Ivan is an atheist and so is the Grand Inquisitor. What’s more, he is the Devil himself. But what is a Christianity plus atheism? It is socialism. It is the idea of creating heaven on earth, because there is no heaven in heaven. What is socialism plus the devil? It is communism and the red terror of the thirties. The Grand Inquisitor is not living in the past in Seville, he is living in the future in Moscow. He is in the Lubyanka, developing ingenious methods of extracting a confession. Dostoevsky may think that he is criticising Catholicism, but really he is not. His is the most prophetic of dialogues. The Grand Inquisitor is that most awful of inquisitors, the worst one that ever lived. He is Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s fellow Georgian and the one who did his dirty work. The horror of the story is not that it might have happened in Seville hundreds of years ago, but it quite literally did happen in Moscow and happened repeatedly.
The chapter continues for a few pages, but it is mainly about plot. The set piece Grand Inquisitor finishes with the word “dixi.” Ivan adds a postscript about Jesus kissing the Grand Inquisitor and the Grand Inquisitor letting him go on the condition that he never comes back. Alyosha makes some objections. Ivan confirms that the Grand Inquisitor is an atheist. This is the nature of all Ivan’s arguments. Even when he uses a theological argument it is to undermine the Church. But even Ivan is not quite aware of how his poem points forwards rather than backwards. For him to realise this he would of course have to be able to see into the future and which of us can do this apart from God for whom there is neither future nor past.
Sources
Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky, Vintage, 1992.