Sometimes this letter gives me the opportunity to go over again some incomplete thoughts expressed in a sermon. Last Sunday the gospel reading for the 8.00am service described Jesus weeping over the city of Jerusalem.
Earlier on in the week the papers had been full of descriptions of what went on in this city in the council house in Tottenham in which baby Peter died his terrible death. We saw for the first time the faces of the three people who were responsible for his death. On the Today programme on Saturday morning there had been a fascinating discussion between a criminal psychologist and a moral philosopher about whether it was appropriate to use words like evil and redemption in relation to this case. They agreed that, provided it didn’t imply something like demonic possession, the word ‘evil’ is appropriate to describe the extremity of horror and awfulness in this case which goes so far beyond something which is simply against the law. They discussed the possibility of accounting for such behaviour in terms of personality disorder, and psychological dis-function, without implying that such explanations absolve the guilty of responsibility for what they have done. They looked at the possibility of such individuals being helped under very special circumstances to come to terms with what they had done and reconstruct their lives in a way which might be described as redemptive.
The one significant omission from the discussion was the life and death of baby Peter himself. As I listened to what they were saying I was reminded of Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan collects stories of the appalling things that adults have done to children. Though he is drawn to the idea of God and Orthodox Christian teaching about human redemption, Ivan finds that such belief can somehow do damage to our appreciation of fact. He resists what he calls ‘higher harmony’. Such harmony doesn’t expiate the tears of the tortured child here and now. Even the idea of hell for the torturers doesn’t satisfy him. In the end he cannot accept a world in which such things are possible. He cannot accept that everything will be ultimately explained. ‘Too high a price has been placed on harmony.’ ‘I don’t want harmony out of the love I bear for mankind.’ Harmony cannot be built on a foundation of unforgivable atrocity. Ivan accepts the idea of God but not the world he has created and the humans beings he has put here who are capable of such cruelty. Such human beings also test to breaking point the idea that we should love our neighbour as we may have been tested looking at the pictures of those responsible for Peter’s death.
Ivan’s dilemma occurs to us all whenever we hear terrible things on the news – the latest perhaps being what is being done to homosexuals in Iraq at the moment. The question which the Today programme failed to ask concerns the meaning of a world in which such things can happen. It failed to look baby Peter in the face.
So what are we to say or do in the face of such unforgivable atrocity? Ivan’s younger brother Alyosha is a monk. After Ivan has told him the last of his examples of cruelty to a child he asks what should be done to the perpetrator. Alyosha replies, as I suspect we might instinctively reply, ‘Shoot him.’ But then he responds to another question Ivan has asked, ‘Is there in the whole world a being who could or would have the right to forgive?’ His response is to say that Christ’s innocent suffering gives him the right to forgive because he has identified with all who suffer. Ivan finds that hard to accept because Christ, being the Son of God, is in one important sense not like us. His reply comes in the form of the well known story of the Grand Inquisitor.
Christ visits earth once more and comes to Seville at the time when the Inquisition is at its height. He is arrested just as he has raised a little girl from death. The Grand Inquisitor interrogates him but he does not reply. The gist of the Interrogator’s argument is that man does not want to be made free as Jesus promised us freedom; we want just to be happy. He reminds Jesus of the temptations in the wilderness; mankind does want to be fed and can feel all too readily that the greatest sin is that people are hungry, but Jesus refuses to turn stones into bread: and humankind is incapable of being both free and generous enough to make sure everyone is fed equally. Man seeks to worship what is so incontestable that all men will agree to worship it together but Jesus refused in the name of freedom to provide such uncontested truth. Mankind longs for an authority to which they can hand over the burden of making decisions and so put their consciences at ease; but in the name of freedom Jesus refused such authority. We may be allured by the idea of ‘freedom of conscience’ but in the end we find nothing more tormenting than difficult choices between right and wrong. ‘And instead of firm foundations for appeasing man’s conscience once for all, you chose everything that was exceptional, enigmatic and vague, you chose everything that was beyond the strength of men, acting, consequently, as though you did not love them at all – you who came to give your life for them.’ ‘Had you respected (humankind) less you would have demanded of him less, and that would have been closer to love.’
So the Grand Inquisitor claims that the Church as a kind of benevolent dictatorship, has in the name of Jesus lifted that intolerable burden of freedom and given men want they really want, ‘Miracle, mystery, authority.’ There is a lot more in this story which can be found in this chapter of the novel (5, bk 5), but it is the ending which is especially provocative. When the Grand Inquisitor has finished, he waits for Jesus to respond. But Jesus says nothing. He kisses the old man on his ‘bloodless’ lips and the Inquisitor’s response is to tell him to go and never come to earth again. ‘The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man sticks to his idea.’
It looks as though Ivan will from now on lead a life of nihilistic debauchery – if there is no God all is permitted – and he assumes that Alyosha will reject him, but as a final gesture the young monk steals an idea from the poem and simply kisses Ivan.
And what does this all mean for us, troubled by the existence of such evils in our world, troubled by the photos of baby Peter and those responsible for his death? Ivan’s argument is in effect that the truth of the Gospel, beautiful as it is as an idea, doesn’t connect with the reality of the world; human freedom doesn’t enable us heroically to respond to God but does allow us space only to enact the worst side of our nature; the only answer to human vice may be a social order which gives us the illusion of freedom but in effect controls us by making us feel secure being ordinarily happy and moderately good. Christ asks impossible things of us because he is not ‘really’ human. His kiss may glow in the Inquisitor’s heart but it doesn’t change him.
Dostoevsky’s complex mediation on freedom and evil is hard to interpret; but we might at least ask ourselves these questions in the light of that meditation:
Though the church Ivan presents doesn’t control our society to what extent does democratic capitalism provide us with the same controls and illusory freedom envisaged by the Inquisitor?
Is revenge either human (capital punishment) or divine (hell) in any way an adequate response to evil?
Do we use our belief in final harmony to avoid looking at the horrors of the world?
Does Christ change anything here and now and if so how? Does he make impossible demands – is his ethic too uncomfortable for us?
Does the suffering on the cross enable us at least to sense that God is somehow with us in the atrocities of the world even though the cross doesn’t explain anything?
In what sense and in what circumstances could we imagine Christ forgiving those who caused baby Peter’s and what effect could we imagine that having on them?
And finally what of the two kisses – Christ’s for the Inquisitor and Alyosha’s for Ivan – kisses which it has been suggested reverse the kiss of Judas, ‘turning a symbol of betrayal into a symbol of healing’? Though the Inquisitor does not change his policy he lets Christ go. His system cannot defeat the witness of Christ, just as Ivan’s arguments cannot defeat Alyosha’s faith. Ivan is surprised by what his younger brother does, because he thinks his arguments will have turned the young monk against him. Christ does not after all ask the impossible – he opens up new scope for what is possible. He makes possible acts which go against the grain of fallen humanity. He brings about small but unexpected changes which may sometimes have dramatic consequences, not only by his teaching but perhaps more significantly by his example. Alyosha is moved to imitate the kiss and in doing so he counters Ivan’s argument that Christ makes no difference. Christ gives what Rowan Williams calls ‘ a fresh capacity to the moral imagination.’ Christ welcomes every hint, however small, of the human capacity for joy and goodness. The sum of Christian faith is perhaps this – that we trust that Christ’s gift of himself to a world capable of horrific cruelty gives us both the strength to endure it and the hope that it can change as unexpectedly and sometimes heroically we are moved by his example to change.
With my love and prayers,
Fr Stephen
VICAR’S NOTES
This summer our church warden Andrew Penny has completed his training to be a Reader; he will be licensed at the church of St Mary Magdalen Munster Square at 1.30pm on Saturday September 19th. We hope there will be a good representation of the congregation at that service. Readers are licensed to preach, preside at Morning and Evening Prayer, to administer the chalice and to play a part in whatever aspects of parish life are best suited to their gifts and the time allowed by work and family. Until he completes his time as Warden it wont become clear what Andrew will concentrate on but we value enormously all that he does for us already and pray for him as he begins his ministry as a Reader.
The Vicar writes
Stephen Tucker