The Grand Inquisitor

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1880

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Burden of Free Will

To the Grand Inquisitor, Christ’s rejection of the first temptation—the temptation to create bread to feed himself—represents his choice to grant human beings free will rather than using miracles to impose his authority upon them. This free will, in the Inquisitor’s eyes, is a terrible burden:

You want to go into the world, and you are going empty-handed, with some promise of freedom, which they in their simplicity and innate lawlessness cannot even comprehend, which they dread and fear—for nothing has ever been more insufferable for man and for human society than freedom! (252).

Humans do not want freedom, according to the Inquisitor. They want to be fed and given rules that they can follow: “[I]n the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: ‘Better that you enslave us, but feed us’” (253). Their very nature prevents humans from making the most of their free will “because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and revels” (253). This presents humans as not suited to the burden of free will because they are not divine like Christ. By championing free will, Christ essentially gave permission to humanity to live in error and sinfulness and effectively barred most of them from ever finding happiness and redemption.

But the Church has corrected Christ’s mistake by giving humans bread—the bread Christ denied them—and forcing humanity to submit to the authority of the Church. By taking away people’s freedom, the Church authorities have become martyrs, experiencing the burden of their own freedom so that they can rule over the rest of humanity and thus provide them with happiness and redemption.

The Relationship Between Faith and Reason

Running through “The Grand Inquisitor” is a battle between faith and reason. The Grand Inquisitor, the hero of the prose poem composed by the skeptical Ivan Karamazov, represents the role of reason in ordering the human world, as opposed to the faith espoused by the teachings of Christ. According to the Inquisitor, Christ expected too much faith from humanity. This is well illustrated by Christ’s rejection of the second temptation—to prove his identity as the son of God by throwing himself from the temple in Jerusalem so that angels would come to save him. Christ refused to prove his divinity in this way, just as he would later refuse to publicly come down from the cross, because he “did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous” (256). But with no rational evidence for Christ’s identity, the Inquisitor claims that it would not be long before humans would reject Christ: It is not in human nature to accept God on pure faith without reason: “[A]s soon as man rejects miracles, he will at once reject God as well, for man seeks not so much God as miracles” (255).

The Inquisitor, rejecting Christ’s teachings, represents the triumph of dogma based on pragmatism and earthly power, and thus on a rational theory of human nature rather than on faith. Because Christ would not prove himself through miracles, Ivan’s version of the Church has done away with faith and rationalized his teachings, basing their power on the only things that can command humanity’s obedience: miracle, mystery, and authority.

The Weakness of Human Nature

In Ivan’s poem, the Grand Inquisitor and the Church maintain the principle that humans are by nature weak. Humans, says the Inquisitor, “w[ere] made a rebel” (251); humans are “feeble, depraved, nonentities and rebels” (253); they are “weak, eternally depraved, and eternally ignoble” (253); and they are also “slaves, though they were created rebels” (256). According to the Inquisitor, Christ’s rejection of the three temptations betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of these weaknesses of human nature. In rejecting bread and thus giving humanity free will, Christ forgot that humans are incapable of putting the burden of free will to good use and will instead choose their own unhappiness. In refusing to test God by throwing himself from the temple in Jerusalem, Christ forgot that humans require miracles as proof and cannot have “blind faith.” Finally, in rejecting the kingdoms of the earth, Christ forgot that humans are enslaved by nature, needing to submit to worldly authority if they are to be happy. Thus, the Inquisitor says:

There are three powers, on three powers on earth, capable of conquering and holding captive forever the conscience of these feeble rebels, for their own happiness—these powers are miracle, mystery, and authority (255).

Christ refused these “three powers,” but the Church has remedied his mistake, above all by accepting earthly power from Satan rather than Christ. This is the only way, the Inquisitor insists, that humanity can find happiness—that is, by submitting to an earthly power, even if that power leads only to “death and destruction” (261).