Grand Inquisitor's Argument from Brothers Karamazov

After talking to my brother today I found out he was reading The Brothers Karamazov (Did I spell that right? My russian is a bit rusty), a book I actually remember rather fondly. What I found most interesting in that book was Ivan’s argument about God found in the Grand Inquistor chapter (17 or 19?). For those who haven’t read it and IIRC, Ivan tells this story: Jesus has returned, and is promptly imprisoned as a Heretic. The Grand Inquisitor comes in to his cell and accuses him of wrongdoing. He uses the three temptations given to Jesus by Satan in the desert as evidence, saying that Jesus chose wrongly. Man would gladly give up a little freedom in return for any one of these offers, says the GI. Jesus doesn’t say anything in return.

Well, its a bad summary, its been four years since I read it, but I’ll continue. I found this to be an extremely powerful argument. It doesn’t prove or disprove God, but does make one question the value of faith and the value of Christianity in general. I also greatly admire Dostyevsky (Sp?) for creating a villian almost too powerful to overcome, as Dsky spends the rest of the book attempting to do, with questionable results.

I guess I’m just wondering if this argument is taken as a serious in intellectual circles or if it has been successfully combatted? Anyone have a take on it? Anyone know how to spell Dostyevsky?

Why do you say that Man “would gladly give up a little freedom in return for any one of these offers”? Can you be more specific?

Consider the first temptation – turning stones to bread, so that he may break his long fast. In what way would this require giving up part of one’s freedom? And why do you think it was such a grave mistake for Jesus to resist that temptation?

Here’s the complete chapter, if you want to read it.

http://www.ccel.org/d/dostoevsky/karamozov/karamozov.html#B5Ch5

Basically, the Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that the Church’s greatest accomplishment has been in taking away peoples’ freedom, and that Jesus’ big mistake in the temptations is that too high an opinion of human nature, and respected people’s freedom.

In the first temptation, for example, the Grand Inquisitor says, the Devil challenged Jesus to turn stones into bread, telling him, “If you do this, people will flock after you, obedient to whatever you tell them, because you fed them, and they’re afraid that if they disobey, you’ll stop feeding them.” But Jesus refused, believing that his message needed to be accepted freely, and not through promises of food or fear of starvation. Jesus was wrong in that, the Grand Inquisitor says, because, when they hear a message, people don’t care whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad to follow, and people aren’t willing to risk hardship for the promise of some future reward. Only a few people are actually strong enough to do that. Most people, though, aren’t. The church, therefore is nobler than Jesus, because they, by taking away freedom and feeding people, have an easier message for everyone…don’t think, just obey, and by doing that, they’ll gain heaven. The officials of the church, therefore, strip the people of their freedom out of love for them.

To sum it up, the GI thinks that Jesus’s mistake was in thinking that people were basically good and would accept his message of their own free will.

The Inquisitor, in his own bizarre way, is a good man, a man who loves human beings as they are (weak, sinful and pathetic) rather than as Jesus wants them to be.

The Inquisitor realizes that Jesus’ commands (love your neighbor, forgive those who hurt you, be content with little, be ready to suffer and die for your faith) are extremely difficult, and most people aren’t good enough or strong enough to follow them. So, what happens on the last day? A few saintly souls go to Heaven, while the great majority of weak, pathetic, sinful souls are cast into eternal damnation???

The Inquisitor says to Jesus, essentially, “You’re cruel. You offer people salvation and Heaven, but only if they’ll do things you know very well most of them can’t do.” The Inquisitor says, in effect, we, the earthly Church have completely perverted your message, but that was the right thing to do."

People WANT, people NEED something to hope for, something to believe in, something to give them comfort in their miserable lives. And the earthly Church GIVES people that comfort. Jesus told people not to worry where their food or clothing was to come from; the earthly Church gives them food and clothing. Jesus told people to live virtuous lives, not simply to adhere to meaningless, unthinking ritual; the earthly Church provides empty ritual.

The Inquisitor feels that, though he’s disobeyed Jesus and will probably go to Hell, he’s done humanity a favor. In the Inquisitor’s view, most humans are doomed to live short lives of poverty and despair, followed by death and eternal damnation. The corrupt earthly church offers those poor souls a little bit of earthly comfort, and the vain hope of happiness after feath.
If going to Mass and saying meaningless prayers helps poor peasants feel more at peace with their wretched lot, and less fearful of death, the Inquisitor sees that as a good thing.

In sum, this story is Dostoevsky asking God, “I WANT salvation. I WANT Heaven. I WANT to be a good man, worthy of you. But why did you have to make it so HARD? Why did you have to offer us a model of virtue, Jesus, that so few of us can ever live up to?”

The OP asks whether anyone takes the GI’s position seriously. Well, Dostoyevsky disagrees with the GI’s position, so the GI is a caricature of everything wrong with organized religion. Therefore, no one should take the GI’s ideas seriously, except as examples of things one should avoid.

As astorian notes, the GI “has completely perverted” Jesus’ message in that he treats people as sheep and denies their ability to deal with free will, the aspect of humanity that alone can make people like gods.

Dostoyevsky’s point is that every person must look to his own conscience in deciding what is right and wrong. One of the problems that results, if everyone does this, is that we eliminate the common bases of morality which we need to build our legal systems on–if the conscience of a person tells him he must murder abortion doctors, he must follow his conscience. In other words, relying entirely on free thought gives us subjective moralities. I think this problem–how to reconcile the right of conscience with community standards–is a very difficult issue, and one that I come back to often without resolution.

Dostoevsky clearly rejects the Grand Inquisitor’s position, although he does not allow Jesus to respond in his parable.

My own take is that there are many issues here, starting with free willand independence on the one hand, vs benevolent tyranny and dictatorship on the other. Whether the Kindly Tyrant is God/Jesus or a human one, the issue is the same: should you set up a society where all human bodily needs are met, but there is no individual independence?

Long after Dostoevsky, the question bounces around the notions of communism and fascism – all needs provided and all individualism subdued. OK, granted, in our real-life examples, the tyrrany is not so “benevolent” but imagine if it were so.

I meant to mention before in response to JThunder that Dostoyevsky’s formulation of what the 3 temptations consisted of is quite a bit different from what is actually in the Bible and from the usual readings. For instance, the first temptation is the offer of bread–one of the usual readings is that this is a personal “temptation of the flesh” that Jesus rejects even though he is hungry. Dostoyevsky converts this into a temptation for Jesus to gain followers/compliance with morals through providing/withholding food/physical necessities. I remember being quite confused by this at first–D basically rewrites the story wholesale for his purposes.

I lke Dex’s reminder too that politics is often implicated in the big Russian novels. D is concerned both with personal salvation and society. He rejects the idea of governmental salvation–thinks being a bird in gilded cage is no good–but is very concerned that people who have nothing to eat will not be able to afford morality.

And he is not alone, since some of the Greek philosophers said much the same thing. That in order to have a good life one needs the proper fixins (along with the proper inner state).

As for the OP, if you are asking whether Jesus has been questioned, and Christianity in general, I believe that is a definite yes. If you mean whether the exact context of this story has been used to argue the point, I’m not sure. But the point has been argued.

And in English I have seen it spelled D o s t o y e v s k y or D o s t o e v s k y.