The Gospel in Dostoyevsky. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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      THE GOSPEL IN DOSTOYEVSKY

      The Gospel in Dostoyevsky

       Selections from His Works

      Introduced by J.I. Packer, Malcolm Muggeridge, & Ernest Gordon

       Illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg

      PLOUGH PUBLISHING HOUSE

      Published by Plough Publishing House

      Walden, New York

      Robertsbridge, England

      Elsmore, Australia

       www.plough.com

      Copyright ©2014, 1988 by Plough Publishing House

      All rights reserved.

      PRINT ISBN: 978-0-87486-634-6

      PDF ISBN: 978-0-87486-629-2

      EPUB ISBN: 978-0-87486-627-8

      MOBI ISBN: 978-0-87486-628-5

      Essentially an English translation of Das Evangelium in Dostojewski, edited by Karl Nötzel (1870–1945) and published by the Eberhard Arnold-Verlag, Sannerz and Leipzig, 1927. Nötzel, a Russian-born German, was known for his German translations of Russian authors.

      The English translations of Contance Garnett were revised and edited for this edition. The excerpt from The Adolescent (The Raw Youth) was translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew and reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Co. The illustrations are reprinted by courtesy of Fritz Eichenberg, Associated American Artists, The Heritage Club, and the Limited Editions Club. The cover and frontispiece “Portrait of Dostoyevsky” is from a Fritz Eichenberg wood engraving 4 x 2¾ inches.

      The editors wish to express gratitude for the essential help and advice received from Ernest Gordon, Philip Yancey, and C.J.G. Turner.

       Contents

       Foreword

       Introduction

       FAITH IN GOD

       The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov

       REBELLION AGAINST GOD

       Rebellion

       The Devil from The Brothers Karamazov

       The Failure of Christendom from The Idiot

       ON THE WAY TO GOD

       The Story of Marie

       A Fool for Christ from The Idiot

       The Awakening of Lazarus from Crime and Punishment

       Hymn of the Men Underground from The Brothers Karamazov

       Reprieve and Execution from The Idiot

       The Onion from The Brothers Karamazov

       The Last Judgment from Crime and Punishment

       The Crucifixion from The Idiot

       From the Life of the Elder Zossima

       The Wedding at Cana from The Brothers Karamazov

       LIFE IN GOD

       Talks With an Old Friend of God from The Adolescent (The Raw Youth)

       Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima from The Brothers Karamazov

       Afterword

       Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Biographical Sketch

      DOSTOYEVSKY IS TO me both the greatest novelist, as such, and the greatest Christian storyteller, in particular, of all time. His plots and characters pinpoint the sublimity, perversity, meanness, and misery of fallen human adulthood in an archetypal way matched only by Aeschylus and Shakespeare, while his dramatic vision of God’s amazing grace and of the agonies, Christ’s and ours, that accompany salvation, has a range and depth that only Dante and Bunyan come anywhere near. Dostoyevsky’s immediate frame of reference is Eastern Orthodoxy and the cultural turmoil of nineteenth-century Russia, but his constant theme is the nightmare quality of unredeemed existence and the heartbreaking glory of the incarnation, whereby all human hurts came to find their place in the living and dying of Christ the risen Redeemer. In the passages selected here, a supersensitive giant of the imagination projects a uniquely poignant vision of the plight of man and the power of God. If it makes you weep and worship, you will be the better for it. If it does not, that will show that you have not yet seen what you are looking at, and you will be wise to read the book again.

       Regent College, Vancouver

       J. I. Packer

Foreword

      LIKE SO MANY of my generation, I first read Dostoyevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, when I was very young. I read it like a thriller, with mounting excitement. Later, when I came to read Dostoyevsky’s other works, especially his great masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, I realized that he was not just a writer with a superlative gift for storytelling, but that he had a special insight into what life is about, into man’s relationship with his Creator, making him a prophetic voice looking into and illumining the future. I came to see that the essential theme of all his writing is good and evil, the two points round which the drama of our mortal existence is enacted.

      Dostoyevsky was a God-possessed man if ever there was one, as is clear in everything he wrote and in every character he created. All his life he was questing for God, and found him only at the end of his days after passing through what he called “the hell-fire of doubt.” Freedom to choose between good and evil he saw as the very essence of earthly existence. “Accept suffering and be redeemed by it” – this was Dostoyevsky’s message to a world hurrying frenziedly in the opposite direction, seeking to abolish suffering and find happiness. Since Dostoyevsky’s time, the world has known much trouble and found little happiness, and so may be the better disposed to heed his words.

      Dostoyevsky, who normally stayed as far away as possible from museums and art galleries, paid a special visit to the Museum of Art in Basel to see a painting, “Christ Taken Down from the Cross,” by Hans Holbein the Younger. He had heard about this picture, and what he had heard had greatly impressed him. His wife Anna in her diary described Dostoyevsky’s reaction to seeing the original:

      The painting overwhelmed Fyodor Mikhailovich, and he stopped in front of it as if stricken…On his agitated face was the sort of frightened expression I had often noted during the first moments of an epileptic seizure. I quietly took my husband’s arm, led him to another room and made him sit down on a bench, expecting him to have a seizure