ABSTRACT
In his great novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky includes a short novel within the novel, the story of Christ’s return to earth in the time of the Holy inquisition in Spain. The Grand Inquisitor had Christ arrested and visits him in the jail, telling him that they will have to burn him at the stake because he represents a danger to the Church. The story is told by the nihilist Ivan Karamazov, who is normally considered to side with the Inquisitor, which seems strange because Ivan represents a movement that had also questioned the position of the Church. Perhaps there are more layers represented in this novel than appear at first sight. The Brothers Karamazov was written around 1879–80, in a period that was theologically divided in its view of the historical person Jesus. The heated discussion reached a climax when David Friedrich Strauss, in 1835–36, published his Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet, denying Jesus’ divine origins. 1 Is Ivan Karamazov and the Grand Inquisitor of his story right in their assertion that Christ would destroy the Church? In what capacity could Christ represent a danger to the Church? As ‘Christ’, or as ‘Jesus’ the mere carpenter’s son from Nazareth?
