The Grand Inquisitor Essay

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In Ivan Kamarazov’s poem “The Grand Inquisitor,” the titular character arrests Christ during his Second Coming and argues, almost in a religious ecstasy, against his teachings. You should have, the Inquisitor tells Christ while they encounter each other in a cell, taken the temptations offered by the Devil. In performing miracles, Christ would have definitively proven the truth of Christianity, and would have established a unified Christian world. Christ’s failure to do so has doomed humanity to constant religious despair and conflict. To solve these problems, the Inquisitor argues for a strong church, much like Ivan argued for a form of ultramontanism earlier in Brothers. Christ does not speak in the poem, and the Inquisitor justifies …show more content…
Just as a select few people might be able to live without bread, a select few people (and the Grand Inquisitor counts himself among them) might be able to arrive at the proper Christian beliefs without being hit over the head with a miracle. But, as the Inquisitor’s argument goes, most humans are spiritually weak and will not be able to leverage their spiritual freedom into true salvation. The typical person will create new miracles of his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft” (222). Most people would prefer to surrender their spiritual freedom to a strong church in order to five their lives substance. Christ’s error, says the Inquisitor, is thinking too highly of humans, and expecting that humans will be capable of using their spiritual freedom for good ends.

Christ should have performed a miracle when tempted by the devil, the Grand Inquisitor argues, to remove human spiritual freedom. Miracles that clearly demonstrate the truth of Christian doctrine enslave humanity, according to the Inquisitor, and enslaving humans is the only solution to the anxieties and violence that are attendant to human spiritual
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