The Inquisitor
The Inquisitor told Jesus that there was a fundamental error in the Gospel message. Jesus had preached that humans should freely give up the flesh and follow him. The freedom of the act of faith is dramatized byt the three temptations by Satan. Jesus could have secured the loyalty of his followers by giving them bread, by leaping from a precipice only to be saved by angels, by becoming the ruler of Jeruselem. Instead, he forced his followers to take him or leave him just as he was. And this was, in the eyes of the Inquisitor, his error.
In fact, only a few have the strength to follow this word. In a passage strikingly reminiscent of Nietzsche, the Inquisitor desribes the error to Jesus. "Thou didst crave for free love and not the base raptures of the slave before th emight that has overawed him forever. But Thou didst think too highly of men therein, for they are slaves, of course, though rebellious by nature." What is to become of them? They cannot make their way on their own and can find happiness only by foresaking their freedom and turning their affairs over to the Church. "But with us all will be happy and will no more rebel nor destroy one another as ubnder Thy freedom. Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us."
The Inquistor's claim to have "corrected" the teaching of Jesus might be interpreted as a cynical expression of his lust for power. While Dostoyevsky in general condemned the Catholic Church for its pursuit of temporal ends, Ivan creates a picture of an ascetic priest, one who has suffered in the wilderness and who is taking on the sufferings of all as his own, just as did Jesus himself. "Suppose that there was one such man among all those who desire nothing but filthy material gain -- if there's only one like my old Inquisitor, who had himself eaten roots in the desert and made frenzied efforts to subdue his flesh to make himself free in perfect.
It always maintained that taking someone’s God given right of freedom was against the church preaching’s and beliefs. In addition, some of the first emigrants to the newly discovered land (North America) were slaves themselves and they were white. One of the main reasons they immigrated to North America was to escape religious persecution. The political situation did not help either; too much support to antislavery and the church could lose the much needed support of wealthy churchgoers. The institution stopped short of actively going against the problem of slavery, instead they focused their efforts in making slavery more “tolerable” for slaves. After all, most of the church goers in the south were white slave owners and/or in some way or another supported slavery and the economic factors in benefitted. In the North, the Presbyterian Church had deplored the issue of black and religion; they were never unable or unwilling to tackle the problem from its source. In the North the free blacks had more religious freedom and were allowed to participate in churches or form their own congregations. There was another phenomenon that affected the lives of slaves in the plantations. Most owners controlled all aspects of their slaves to include religion. The owners used the Gospel as a social control method to tell the slaves why they had to obey their masters (according to God) and inculcate and foster the belief of having to serve and be faithful to their
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman was from Randolph, Massachusetts, born on October 31, 1852. As an American writer, she was best known for her stories and writings depicting characters who endured frustrated lives in New England. In 1867, Mary Wilkins relocated with her family to Brattleboro,Vermont. After studying for a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which now is Mount Holyoke College, Freeman lived at home where she spent most of her time reading, and writing stories for children. In 1883, soon after the death of her parents, she decided to live with friends, returning back to her hometown of Randolph, Massachusetts. Also, during that same year, she published her first adult story in a Boston newspaper. The best of her work was done while
Because it offers them the possibility of community and identity, many slaves find themselves strongly attached to religion. They cannot build a family structure and they cannot be identified by family name, but through the church, they can build a community and identify themselves as Christians. This comfort becomes virtually non-existent for it too is controlled by the slaveowners who “came to the conclusion that it would be well to give the slaves enough of religious instruction to keep them from murdering their masters” (57). The fact that one person could have the ability to control the amount of religion another person has and his purpose for having it diminishes any sense of community or identity that it may have initially provided.
How can the particularly monstrous slave owners who possess such a despicable stance towards slaves portray themselves to be fully devoted Christians? In this interpretation, Frederick Douglass attempts to address the issues between slavery and Christianity that he had to undergo during his era as a slave. He reveals how the slaveholders during that time span aimed to make a connection by linking the two in order to justify their misbehavior and wickedness towards slaves. Their behavior was undeniable to him and he was repulsed by the way they had no courtesy for the truth of religion. This made him interrogate his faith and judgment in Christianity an insufficient number of times.
Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a reminder that books can provide answers to questions we never asked, but yearned to know. For that reason alone, The Death of Ivan Ilyich should be considered a work of art. However due to the many subtle hints and clues pointing at the underlying Christian nature of the book, it deserves to be added to the list of great modern Christian literature.
... “Prior to [Captain Auld’s] conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for the slaveholding cruelty” (Douglass 883). This means that slaveholders use Christianity as a tool to show that they are good at heart and are doing God’s work, but they use it as a divine right to brutally beat slaves. This is what Frederick wants other abolitionists to recognize, especially the abolitionist women.
2. Orthodox Christianity has a history of trying to deceive humanity. In her book, Ellerbe proclaims that: "Orthodox Christianity fostered humanity's shift towards a world view that pays little heed to the idea of divinity." (Ellerbe 165). In addition, the Grand Inquisitor "...claims it as a merit for himself and his Church that at last they have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy." (Dostoevsky 1081).
...’s disbelief in God, indeed justifies Smerdyakov for murdering Fyodor, and when Ivan realizes it, he loses his mind. It is certain that Ivan’s philosophy may represent Dostoevsky’s thoughts and feelings at times but ultimately, his faith in God remains stronger than ever.
“...this religion is saying that every person, man, woman, child, slave, barbarian, no matter who, is made in the image of God and is therefore of enormous value in the eyes of God…”(Document C). “Now the Christian community, as we have it particularly in the letters of Paul, … says in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male or female, neither slave nor free… . Here is a community that invites you, which makes you an equal with all other members of that community,” (Document D). This was beneficial to a wide range of people, especially peasants because they could have a part in society and be equal to their Christian peers.
While he was studying and learning the scriptures he became exceedingly fearful of God and was quite concerned about how he would ever be forgiven for his sins. This weighed heavily on him to the point that he became eccentric in his attempts and methods to be forgiven. He eventually left for Wittenberg and became a theology lecturer while he was studying for his doctorate. It was that during this time his manner of thinking started to change. He started to read and interpret the scriptures on his own instead of blindly following the message that the church preaches about it. One day while working on a lecture he came across the phrase “the just shall live by faith,” (Christ pp195) which transformed the way he thought about God and the good works doctrine of the church. He now started to believe that God was a just and a benevolent God, and that forgiveness did not depend on his own righteousness. He started to see that humankind could not be righteous because we were prone to sin from the beginning and that all it took was for one to place his faith in Jesus Christ and God would pronounce that sinner
One aspect of his teaching that brought adverse attention to him was his repeated assertion that he was the Son of God sent to the Earth to redeem humankind. This was in direct violation of Jewish law. For this he was condemned to die. Betrayed by one of his apostles, Judas, Jesus did not resist his imprisonment he saw it as the fulfillment of his purpose.
Ligon writes, “… and so quite gave over his questions, and desired me, that he might be made a Christian; for, he thought to be a Christian was to endure with all those knowledges he desired” (50). This passage is referring to when Ligon is speaking about how a negro that is struck in awe by the compass moving on its own, going so far as to believe that the needle was alive. With this supernatural encounter, the negro wanted to convert to Christianity in order to harness such powers. However in order to do so, he had to comply with the masters’ demands, for not anyone could gain conversion. Ligon suggested that by slaves converting to Christianity, they gain several opportunities. “…the substance of this, in such language that they had, they delivered, and poor Sambo was the orator; by whose example the others were led both the discovery of the plot and the refusal of the gratuity” (54). In this passage, Ligon talked about how a negro told the master about the other slaves’ plot to rebel. This slave did so out of love for his Christian brother, the master. It is in the slaves’ best interest to convert, for doing so gives them abnormal opportunities; not only can the gain the master’s favor by converting to the true religion, but they are able to be educated and
Christianity is that slave revolt. The problem for Nietzsche is the New Testament - the introduction of Jesus. He thinks that linking the Old Testament with the New Testament is very cheeky. They are two different books with complete different ideas and so should not be linked together. The Old Testament is full of power - Nietzsche likes that.
Slave-owners forced a perverse form of Christianity, one that condoned slavery, upon slaves. According to this false Christianity the enslavement of “black Africans is justified because they are the descendants of Ham, one of Noah's sons; in one Biblical story, Noah cursed Ham's descendants to be slaves” (Tolson 272). Slavery was further validated by the numerous examples of it within the bible. It was reasoned that these examples were confirmation that God condoned slavery. Douglass’s master...
Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky was among those philosophical thinkers who grappled with the task of explaining why evil exists in a world created by a perfect god. Despite the powerful influence of Christianity in his early childhood and throughout his life, Dostoevsky encountered difficulties in answering this question, which he described, “Nature, the soul, God, love – all this is understood by the heart, not by the mind” (Gibson 1973, 9). Nevertheless, Dostoevsky not only felt obligated to discover a solution to the problem, but also “responsible to his fellow believers for its success or failure” (Gibson 1973, 169). This quest for a solution to the problem of theodicy ultimately led Dostoevsky to write The Brothers Karamazov, a novel that attempts to explain the need for evil in the world. In posing his solution to this problem, Dostoevsky explains the necessity of suffering for the realization of human redemption, as well as the role of Christ’s atoneme...