Finding a Soul in God’s Image (Reflections on a Brothers Karamazov Discussion)

Last updated on: March 29, 2018 at 12:17 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Finding a Soul in God’s Image (Reflections on a Brothers Karamazov Discussion) 2018-03-29T12:17:31-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Pascha is the season of love.

Love is the fundamental passion, the disposition to which I must return. Love created the cosmos and Love sustains all that was, is, or will be. All that is good comes from love and hatred, when it must be used, is a sign of a brokenness. All of this is what divine revelation teaches, reason suggests, and experience confirms.

You cannot hate if you come to see a soul as created in God’s image. In fact, if we go to find a sinner we shall find them, but if we look more closely we will also find a soul created in God’s image. The easiest way, the surest way, to do this is to look in the mirror.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

What to do next is a problem, the tension of world where we can all pray: Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Grace can only exist with a recognition of crime and necessary punishment, but Christians do not rejoice in any brokenness. We hate the sin, call ourselves sinners, and love our enemies even in the pursuit of justice.

Or at least this is what one of the greatest writers seems to believe of Christianity. Fyodor Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov presents his most noble character Alyosha as having decided to sin boldly in anger with God. He will visit a “woman of ill repute” and be destroyed by her wiles. Yet when he talks with her, Alyosha is changed:

“Rakitin,” he suddenly said loudly and firmly, “don’t taunt me with having rebelled against my God. I don’t want to hold any anger against you, and therefore you be kinder, too. I’ve lost such a treasure as you never had, and you cannot judge me now. You’d do better to look here, at her: did you see how she spared me? I came here looking for a wicked soul—I was drawn to that, because I was low and wicked myself, but I found a true sister, I found a treasure—a loving soul … She spared me just now … I’m speaking of you, Agrafena Alexandrovna. You restored my soul just now.”*

Alyosha wanted sin, loved the sinner, but could not find a person who was just a sinner. He found a human and that human became a means of divine grace. Dostoyevsky does not cheat us by presenting this prostitute as prostitute as having a “heart of gold.” He is not writing a trivial Hollywood script! Instead, this woman as woman has harmed her soul and been harmed by others, but she is not merely her profession. She is still a human and so can still be the means of grace and evenn better (at this moment) than the seemingly noble, brilliant Alyosha.

Nothing in these truths mean that we should not seek justice and protect the innocent. Brothers Karamazov does not, after all, ignore that a murder, a parracide, must be punished! Yet Dostoyevsky makes the very Christian point that no one is by nature wicked. Our ontology comes from God and is in God. All humans are fundamentally souls created in the image of God, even if broken through our own choices or the choices of others (including our primal parents). When we see each other, love is the basis for our actions.

Dostoyevsky illustrates the difficulty better than any other author. We live in the tension between the necessary wages of sin and the need for mercy. This is even plainer perhaps in Crime and Punishment, where murder is not justified, but Wisdom recognizes the humanity of the criminal. The murder in that novel is prosecuted, yet humanity is never denied anyone even the killer.

The problem with the ideologue, the person driven only by an idea, is inhumanity. Ideas (even good ideas) become more important than people. The Romans who crucified Jesus did a horrible act, nobody should pass over the injustice, but the Lord forgave from the Cross. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

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*page 351 in Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Doestoyevsky (Peaver and Volokhonsky translation). Thanks to the Gilberts for leading an excellent college class on The Brothers Karamazov. Tip of the hat to Megan Mueller for highlighting his passage for me.

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