How the Roman Empire Humiliated Monotheists
A meditation on Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor poem
In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky presents what’s become known as the Grand Inquisitor poem, about the perils of organized religion. The inquisitor represents the established Church and criticizes the second coming of Jesus for being obsolete.
According to the inquisitor, Jesus erred in playing coy with people by protecting their freedom of choice to worship God or to oppose him with secular ventures. The devil tempted Jesus by challenging him to reveal his full divinity with miracles that would compel the masses to worship of him, but Jesus declined and although he performed some smaller-scale miracles, he kept his power hidden enough to allow for reasonable doubt about whether God had ever visited our world.
Eventually, after Jesus resurrected and left the scene, ascending to Heaven, and after the memory of his exploits and of his moral purity faded, his followers would have to exercise faith in him. This is to say that they could only trust they weren’t wasting their life following a crucified spiritual leader.
But due to the vicissitudes of history, including the destruction of Jerusalem and the collapse of the Roman Empire, the followers of Jesus eventually prevailed, establishing a Christian…
