Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism. Paul J. Contino
of the Divine Liturgy:
Remembering this commandment of salvation,
And all those things which for our sakes were brought to pass,
The Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection on the third day,
The Ascension into Heaven, the Sitting on the right hand,
The Second and glorious Advent—
Thine own of thine own we offer unto Thee,
In behalf of all and for all . . . .
(cited by Schmemann, 41; emphasis added)92
“For all”: the phrase is crucial in understanding how the salvific image of Christ is represented in the novel. Alyosha’s and Zosima’s utterances link two complementary claims: first, Christ offers redemption for all; second, we must respond to Christ’s work by working in active love for all.
Christ forgives all and yet we are responsible for all. How can the weight of redemption be removed and imposed at the same time? Zosima clarifies the paradox by pointing to the “precious image of Christ” which stands “before us” (276) as both sublime model and gracious ground. In his invective, Ivan refers to Christ as “the Word to Which the universe is striving” (203). His tone is bitter but his words are true: the Word creates, enters, and sustains the world in all its groaning and travail. Through grace, “in contact with other mysterious worlds” (276), our responsible example may challenge others to go and do likewise. Responsibility entails the work of active love, including the work for justice for the weak victimized by the strong. Grace fosters persevering through that work, and the suffering it often entails. Furthermore—and given Ivan’s description of tortured innocents, this is crucial—suffering retains an integral meaning when understood as a participation in the salvific suffering of Christ (see Col 1:24).
Recall Charles Taylor’s imperative: “We have to struggle to recover a sense of what the Incarnation means” (Secular Age 754). Earlier in his book, Taylor had suggested that a Christocentric understanding of suffering remains a live option, a “divine initiative” available even in our “secular age.” Like Dostoevsky, he recognizes that the invitation can be willfully rejected or willingly accepted:
God’s initiative is to enter, in full vulnerability, the heart of [human] resistance to be among humans, offering participation in the divine life. The nature of the resistance is that this offer arouses even more violent opposition, . . . a counter-divine one.
Now Christ’s reaction to the resistance was to offer no counter-resistance, but to continue loving and offering. This love can go to the very heart of things, and open a road even for the resisters. . . . Through this loving submission, violence is turned around, and instead of breeding counter-violence in an endless spiral, can be transformed. A path is opened of non-power, limitless self-giving, full action, and infinite openness.
On the basis of this initiative, the incomprehensible healing power of this suffering, it becomes possible for human suffering, even of the most meaningless type, to become associated with Christ’s act, and to become a locus of renewed contact with God, an act that heals the world. The suffering is given a transformative effect, by being offered to God.
A catastrophe thus can become part of a providential story, by being responded to in a certain way. . . . (Secular Age 654; emphasis added)
Unflinchingly, The Brothers Karamazov represents a world of “human suffering.” But the Sinai icon illuminates the ways in which a “providential story” can be discerned in that world. Both ancient icon and modern novel suggest that the person who would conform to “the precious image of Christ” must nurture both trust in divine grace and the responsive work of love. To borrow terms from Bakhtin, the icon calls its viewer to respect the unfinalizability of the other person, to retain a hope in the other’s capacity to change, to surprise (Problems 63). But it also insists that persons must embody intentions in concrete, responsible deeds (Act 51–52).
Given human fallibility, such deeds often commence in the action of confessing past faults to confessors. In their deep respect for the personhood of their confessants, both Elder and “monk in the world” are able to integrate the openness promised by mercy with the closure demanded by responsibility. In so doing they mediate “the precious image of Christ.”
Dostoevsky’s Theodrama: The Open and Closed Dimensions of Personhood
Dostoevsky depicts what von Balthasar calls the great “theo-drama” of salvation: gifted with finite freedom, persons are called to respond to God’s infinitely free initiative with either receptivity or refusal, either cross or gallows. When characters resist, the door remains open: the beauty of another’s Christ-like action may inspire a conversion that begins with the resolve to confess.93 In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin recognizes the “enormous importance in Dostoevsky [of] the confessional dialogue” (262), and observes the way the novelist’s best confessors respect the freedom of those whom they counsel.94 They resemble their author, who refuses to stand in a controlling position above his characters, but treats them as persons, descending and dwelling among them. Dostoevsky “affirms the independence, internal freedom, unfinalizability, and indeterminacy of the hero” (63). But he is not a relativist. He has his own voice (often channeled through his narrator) that “frequently interrupts, but . . . never drowns out the other’s voice” (285). Dostoevsky’s polyphony reflects his incarnational realism: like God, he respects the open freedom of his characters, his “creatures.”
But he is also rigorously unsentimental in depicting the consequences wrought by his characters’ decisions. Like his author, Alyosha respects the unfinalizability of persons,95 but also insists that they must, finally, decide, and accept responsibility for that which they decide upon. Alyosha’s mercy attracts others to him: “There was something about him which said and made one feel at once (and it was so all his life afterwards) that he did not want to be a judge of people, that he would never take judgment upon himself and would never condemn anyone for anything” (22). He takes up Zosima’s mantle, and as a “monk in the world,” serves as a confessor to many.
Alyosha is often compared with Prince Myshkin, hero of The Idiot, Dostoevsky’s earlier attempt at creating a Christ-like character. I see the two characters in stark contrast. Myshkin’s “stubborn reductive benevolence” sees only the open: the inner potentiality for good in others.96 Myshkin refuses to decide between Nastasha and Aglaya and accept the closure of commitment. Myshkin lacks realism, and brings disaster upon himself and others. In contrast, Alyosha is “more of a realist than anyone” (28). He grows in discernment and decisiveness, and thus learns to better assist others who experience anguish in their “freedom of conscience” (221).97 Through Zosima’s example, and his own experiences of failure, Alyosha learns to practice “active love.” He learns to see, accept, and act within the contours of reality. Active love can’t simply be imagined or accomplished in a single, epiphanic moment, “some action quickly over” (270). Of course, at unexpected moments, Dostoevsky’s characters do receive the gifts of sudden illumination and unbidden ecstasy. But active love prepares the ground for such moments—the slow, habitual grind over the rough ground. It tills the soil and sows seeds yet to sprout. Zosima stresses this reality when he counsels doubt-stricken Madame Khokhlakova:
Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. Insofar as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and the immortality of your soul. . . . It is much, and well that your mind is full of such dreams and not others. Sometime, unawares, you may do a good deed in reality. . . . Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed, in the sight of all. . . . But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. (54–55)
Active love is hard; it takes time. A person can’t practice it while anticipating applause or obsessing over the fruits of his actions.98 And active love is impossible without grace, as Zosima makes clear: “just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting further from your goal instead of nearer to it—at that very moment I predict that you will