The Gospel in Dostoyevsky

If you are weary with 2021, go back with me 200 years to 1821. That is the year Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born. That famous Russian novelist died 140 years ago this month, in February 1881. He and his writings are certainly worth thinking about.

Dostoyevsky’s Life

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (often transliterated Dostoevsky) was born in Moscow, the son of a doctor. In 1838 he enrolled in a military engineering school in St. Petersburg, but he was more interested in the humanities than in engineering. After graduating in 1843, he resigned from the army.

After 1845, Dostoyevsky became involved in a political and cultural group of rebels, which was severely targeted by the Russian government. Saved from death by a firing squad in 1849, he spent four years at a prison labor camp and then served five years in the army in Siberia.

Dostoyevsky’s major novels were all written between 1860, after his return to St. Petersburg, and 1880. Three days after his death on Feb. 9, 1881, he was buried in the Tikhvin Cemetery of the historic Alexander Nevsky Monastery. His funeral was attended by tens of thousands of mourners.

Dostoyevsky’s Writings

Dostoevsky's oeuvre consists of 11 novels, three novellas, 17 short stories, and numerous other works. His most acclaimed works are

Notes from Underground (1864)
Crime and Punishment (1866)
The Idiot (1869)
Demons (or The Possessed) (1871-72)
The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

The last of these is arguably the best of the five—and it is said to have been the last book that Leo Tolstoy read before his death in 1910. (Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy knew of each other and of each other’s writings, but apparently they never met in person.)

Dostoyevsky’s Gospel Emphases

The Gospel in Dostoyevsky: Selections from His Works, published by Plough Publishing House most recently in 2014, is a delightful book, made even more delightful with the illustrations, including the cover image, by Fritz Eichenberg. (Here is the link to my 11/30/13 blog post about him.)  

The first selection in the book is “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” from The Brothers Karamazov, and certainly that is one of the premier pieces in Dostoyevsky’s writings.

A key assertion here is that “the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.” The Gospel, to Dostoyevsky, unveils that secret.

While the book has four selections from The Idiot and a couple from Crime and Punishment and some from lesser-known writings, those from The Brothers Karamazov are the most powerful, and two lengthy selections are of Elder Zossima (which in other books is sometimes spelled Zosima).

In “From the Life of the Elder Zossima” (Kindle version, pp. 142~182), Dostoyevsky asks through Zossima, “And what is the use of Christ’s words unless we set an example? The people are lost without the Word of God, for their soul is athirst for the Word and for all that is good” (p. 153).

The last selection in the book is “Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima” (pp. 210~226). In the brief introduction, the book’s unnamed editors say, “There is no doubt that here we have before us Dostoyevsky’s religious testament.”

In the Foreword (written for an earlier version of this book) Malcolm Muggeridge (1903~90), an Englishman who was an agnostic until he converted to Christianity in his 60s, wrote,

Supposing one were asked to name a book calculated to give an unbeliever today a clear notion of what Christianity is about, could one hope to do much better than The Brothers Karamazov?

Certainly, in it, as well as in his earlier writings, we find the Gospel in Dostoyevsky presented in many thought-provoking and appealing ways. For both Christian believers and non-believers, Dostoyevsky is unquestionably worth reading and/or reading again.

_____

** Of the several sources consulted, I am particularly indebted to David J. Leigh, a Jesuit professor at Seattle University, for his “The Philosophy and Theology of Fyodor Dostoevsky,” published in Vol. 33. Nos. 1-2 of Ultimate Reality and Meaning, a journal published by University of Toronto.

What about the Jefferson Bible?

The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth was written/extracted by Thomas Jefferson and completed in 1820. Long known as “the Jefferson Bible,” a book by that title was published earlier this year to mark the bicentennial of Thomas Jefferson’s 84-page book. 

The Purpose of Jefferson’s Bible

In spite of what many contemporary conservative evangelical Christians emphasize about the early years of the United States, not all of the “forefathers” were pious evangelical Christians.

In particular, many of Thomas Jefferson’s contemporaries thought that he was anti-Christian and perhaps even an atheist.

It seems clear that Jefferson disliked evangelicalism. But it is also clear that he liked Jesus of Nazareth, at least the teachings of Jesus, which he called “a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man” (in a 10/31/1819 letter to William Short, his lifelong mentee).

It is somewhat of a misnomer to refer to “the Jefferson Bible,” for it contains only what Jefferson extracted from the four canonical Gospels.

Jefferson’s intention was to separate “the diamond from the dung hill,” that is, to free Jesus’ lustrous words from the “dross of his biographers.” The resultant book is a short one of seventeen chapters, beginning with Jesus’ birth and ending with his death and burial.

Jefferson’s purpose was to present the teachings of Jesus unencumbered with anything “supernatural.” Thus, for example, there is no inclusion of Jesus’ “virgin birth,” his miracles, or his resurrection.

In passing, it is interesting to note that in 1902 Tolstoy, about whom I posted a blog article on Nov. 20, published The Gospel in Brief, a book similar to Jefferson’s “Bible”—and similarly deleting the “supernatural” elements surrounding Jesus.

The Value of Jefferson’s Bible

As there are many people—and, no doubt, a far higher percentage today than in Jefferson’s time—whose “scientific worldview” prevents them from considering anything that is unproven/unprovable by natural science to be true or real, Jefferson’s Bible can be commended to such people.

Upon recently reading The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth for the first time, I was impressed not by how much was deleted from the canonical Gospels but rather by how much was included from them.

(In spite of hearing about “the Jefferson Bible” for many years, I was happy to purchase a Kindle copy of it, for only 99 cents, and seeing firsthand what it included. The Introduction is by Cyrus Adler, who in 1895 purchased Jefferson’s book for the Smithsonian and published it for the first time.)

The Problem of Jefferson’s Bible

The Jefferson Bible: A Biography, the bicentennial book mentioned above, is by Peter Manseau, a current curator at the Smithsonian. This smallish book by Manseau (b. 1974) is both scholarly and quite readable.

I found “The Quest for the Jeffersonian Jesus,” the third chapter, to be of greatest interest. There the author says that Jefferson rejected “the supernatural, the miraculous, anything suggestive that Jesus might believe the divine things said about him” (p. 66).

Consequently, in Jefferson’s Bible we have “what Jefferson believed to be the words of Jesus, but no real sense of why anyone would have listened to him. With miracles hinted at but never delivered, forgiveness discussed but never offered . . . .”

Manseau then remarks that Jefferson’s book “often has the feeling of a series of jokes without their punch lines” (p 72).

As is true for so many other people and so many other issues, Jefferson was right in what he affirmed (the great significance of Jesus’ teaching) but wrong in what he denied (the “supernatural” referent to Jesus’ life and teaching).

Further, there is little evidence that Jefferson actually sought to live in any marked manner according to the teachings of Jesus included in his book. He certainly did not do that to the extent that Tolstoy did—but that is the same for most of us, even those of us who claim to believe the canonical Gospels.

In Memory of Leo Tolstoy

It was 110 years ago today that Count Lev Nikolayevich (Leo) Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer, died at the age of 82, a month younger than I am now—and except for the mustache, my covid-19 pandemic beard now looks much like his as seen in the following picture taken near the end of his life. 

Remembering Tolstoy as a Novelist

Leo Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828, about 200 kilometers south of Moscow. The third son of a landowning aristocrat, he inherited an estate consisting of a huge manor house and property with nearly 500 serfs.

After spending his young manhood in profligacy, in 1851 he joined the Russian army. He was an artillery officer during the Crimean War and was a part of the forces the British light brigade charged against, as described in my Oct. 20 post.

Reacting negatively toward that war, Tolstoy left the army and after traveling around Europe for a while, he began founding schools for peasant children in Russia. During the 1850s, even while still a soldier, he began to write novellas.

In the next decade, then, Tolstoy became a full-fledged novelist. War and Peace, his first, and very long and complicated, major novel, was published in 1869. It was followed by another lengthy novel, Anna Karenina, published in 1878.

Tolstoy wrote many novellas and literary works of many kinds, but his only other major novel was Resurrection, which was not published until 1899. Yes, with just three major works, and the third not widely read, Tolstoy is still recognized as one of the best novelists the world has ever seen.

Remembering Tolstoy as a Christian

Although baptized and brought up in the Russian Orthodox Church, Tolstoy wrote that by the age of 18 he had “lost all belief in what I had been taught.” Those are words from Confession (1882), the book he wrote in his early 50s about becoming a follower of Jesus Christ.

So, for the last 30 years of his life, Tolstoy lived and wrote as a Christian believer—but not as a member of the Orthodox Church, which, in fact, excommunicated him in 1901.

Tolstoy’s writings during those years were largely of a man who sought to follow the teachings of Jesus, especially as found in the Sermon on the Mount.

Selections of Tolstoy’s Christian writings are published in a 325-page book under the title The Gospel in Tolstoy (2015), and I much enjoyed reading that book this fall.

“My Way to Faith,” the fourth chapter, is an excerpt from Confession in which Tolstoy wrote, “As long as I know God, I live.” Also, “To know God and to live come to one and the same thing. God is life.”

Chapter 20 is “What Is the Meaning of Life?” from one of Tolstoy’s most theological writings, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894).

Remembering Tolstoy as a Teacher 

Although Tolstoy was never a teacher in a formal sense, through his writings some of the world’s best-known people, and a multitude of unknown people, have learned important lessons from him.

Tolstoy became an important teacher for Mahatma Gandhi, for Martin Luther King Jr., and for Dorothy Day. And although certainly not widely known, he was also a teacher for Nishida Tenko-san, the subject of my 2/24/13 blog post, and I encourage you to (re)read that post.

Actually, Tolstoy has had much influence in Japan and is still seen as a trustworthy teacher there. In 2018 a Japanese woman published an article titled “What Today’s Youth Can Learn From the Great Russian Writer Leo Tolstoy.” She mentions Nishida (1872~1968) in her thoughtful article.

So, even though he died 110 years ago, Tolstoy is still remembered and honored as a brilliant writer—and as one who by his life and writings taught what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.