W: LP: LG: FD: BK

Tonight our literary group is meeting to begin our trip through this last major novel by Dostoevsky. For plot synopsis, criticism, and pithy comments, (I freely admit) one can easily do a google search for some brilliant blogs, columns, articles, etc. I am only going to make comment on passages that have some interesting bearing on various topics. Perhaps after our discussion I will gain some insights to share. I am deliberately not doing a search on what others are writing on this book as I want to go into the experience without preconception. (BTW we are using the newer Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, my edition being ISBN-13# 978-0-374-52837-9).

Anyway...

Toward the beginning of the book we have the following passage about an elder (a secondary character introduced near the beginning):

"For Alyosha there was no question of why they loved him so much, why they prostrated before him and wept so tenderly just at the sight of his face. Oh, how well he understood that for the humble soul of the simple Russian, worn out by toil and grief, and, above all, by everlasting injustice and everlasting sin*, his own and the world's, there is no stronger need and consolation than to find some holy thing or person, to fall down before him and venerate him: 'Though with us there is sin, unrighteousness, and temptation, still, all the same, there is on earth, in such and such a place, somewhere, someone holy and exalted; he has the truth; he knows the truth; so the truth does not die on earth, and therefore someday it will come to us and will reign over all the earth, as has been promised**.' Alyosha knew that this was precisely how the people felt and even reasoned; he understood it; and that the elder Zosima was precisely that very saint, that keeper of God's truth in the eyes of the people--this he himself did not doubt at all, any more than did those weeping peasants and their sick women who held out their children to the elder. The conviction that the elder, after death, would bring remarkable glory to the monastery, reigned in Alyosha's soul perhaps even more strongly than in anyone else's in the monastery. And generally of late a certain deep, flaming inner rapture burned more and more strongly in his heart. He was not at all troubled that the elder, after all, stood solitary before him: 'No matter, he is holy, in his heart there is the secret of renewal for all, the power that will finally establish the truth on earth, and all will be holy and will love one another, and there will be neither rich nor poor, neither exalted nor humiliated, but all will be like the children of God, and the true kingdom of Christ will come.' That was the dream in Alyosha's heart."

Two things: The dream of lasting peace and equity is universal and can only come as the kingdom of Christ arises in human hearts (a true Christian-ness, not the counterfeits that occur in every generation). The other point is that if elders of churches lived such exemplary lives as this fictional character is made out to be, the kingdom of Christ would grow in many hearts and lives. With reformed lives come reformed families from which reformed societies arise--this is what is dreamed about among the Christian community, not brutal subjection that unbelievers think that we advocate (or that can be seen whenever Islamo-fascists get the upper hand). Well, faith is...

*Romans 8:22=For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
**The hope: Hebrews 11:1=Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.