The following article, written by Caryl Emerson, was first published in Christian History issue 146 and is republished here with the permission of the author. “When cruelty is the norm, love is an act of rebellion.” This thesis, applied to Christ’s response to the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov (1880), belongs to Dostoevsky scholar
This paper was part of a roundtable discussion at the international symposium, “Russian Literature and Philosophy: Religion, Nationalism and Dissidence,” which took place at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil, November 2022. The roundtable included Paul Contino, Gary Saul Morson, and the author of this paper, Caryl Emerson. It is an honor