In the Poem of the Grand Inquisitor, included in The Brothers Karamazov ( 1880), Dostoevsky constructs a universal scene. Christ returns to earth during theSpanish Inquisition, but is immediately arrested by the cardinal who recognises him. “You have given us freedom”, he tells him, “but men do not want it: they want bread, miracles and authority”. The Grand Inquisitor’s monologue is perhaps the greatest parable ever written on the relationship between faith and power. But it is also, today, an invitation to re-read the mystery of freedom in a world that no longer knows what to do with it. Dostoevsky does not condemn religion: he saves it by restoring its kenotic foundation, its ’emptying out’ to make room for the other (Phil 2:7).

The retreating God

In his theological vision, the Creator does not dominate, but withdraws. As in the tzimtzum of Hebrew mysticism (Luria, Etz Chaim, I, 2), God ‘opens in himself’ a void to make room for the world. And as in the Gospel, the kenosis of the Son renews that creative act: God empties himself out of love, not weakness. This ‘making room’ is the hidden law of freedom. But it is also its drama. Why did God give the strong man the freedom to choose evil, and not give the helpless man the freedom to escape it? It is the question that Dostoevsky entrusts to Ivan Karamazov, and which no theology has yet closed: the disproportion between freedom and vulnerability.

Out of this disproportion comes violence, fear and the need for a scapegoat (Girard, 1972). Yet it is only within it that faith as gratuitous love – not as imposition – can also be born.

Gratitude and mystery

Dostoevsky invites us to a twofold gratitude: towards the Son, for redemption, but first of all towards the Father, for creation.
Thanking the Son means accepting forgiveness; thanking the Father means accepting life itself as a gift ( Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, V, pref.).
Only by uniting the two gratitudes can man approach the mystery of innocent pain and transform rebellion into compassion.

The pain of the other – of Ivan’s child, of the offended and defenceless little ones – is the very centre of his negative and inverted theodicy: the place where man does not explain God, but waits for Him. It is the moment of dialogue with the sentinel of the Psalm: “Sentinel, how much is left of the night? – Dawn comes, but it is still night” (Is 21:11-12). Yet, on this night, the spiritual brotherhood between the three religions of Abraham begins.

A new alliance

Jews, Christians and Muslims – three different paths, one expectation.
TheJew reminds the Christian that history is not complete; the Christian reminds the Jew that the Law is now transfigured into love; the Muslim, finally, reminds both of the greatness of obedience and the dignity of prayer (Borisova, 2009).

This is not a syncretism, but analliance of modesty and silence before the inequality of fate and the wounding of the innocent. An alliance that stems from the awareness that secularly and before the world, no faith monopolises the truth, but all can serve it, because the believer’s faith in recognising his own revelation as unique must not translate into a claim to monopolise that love which is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus and Mohammed.

Beauty that saves and transfigures

Dostoevsky’s response to Ivan ‘s despair and the power of the Inquisitor is therefore ‘the beauty that saves the world ‘(Dostoevsky, Idiot, 1869, p. 313): not aestheticism, but the beauty of free love. “God became man so that man might become God” (Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, V, pref.): Christianity in particular is not only the religion of Redemption, but, in a broader sense, of the Transfiguration, which makes man a creative collaborator of the Father. This truth of faith, valid above all for the Christian, however, says something universal about the need for beauty. It is not the gold of triumphant glory, but the transparency of the gift of self, which, moreover, in the mystery of eternal life is not, for the believer, the sacrifice, even the painful one experienced on earth. And the mystery of beauty lies precisely in the fact that it in turn must be defended and is associated with vulnerability: if it triumphed by its very nature, we would have a world without contradictions in which human work and effort would be useless.

Instead, recognising this responsibility and this task of man gives way to the beauty of reconciling, without confusing them, freedom and vulnerability, faith and doubt, pain and hope in the same tenderness. And in this awareness is born the possibility of walking together as children of Abraham speaking the same language of hope: the language that unites faith and reason, justice and mercy, silence and speech.

Essential references

• Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, 2007.
• Borisova, V. V., Достоевский и и исламский мир, Moscow, 2009.
• Dostoevsky, F. M., Братья Карамазовы, 1880.
• – Идиот, 1869.
• Girard, R., La violence et le sacré, Paris, 1972.
• Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus haereses, ca. 180 AD.
• Luria, I., Etz Chaim, Safed, 1573.