E-Book Review: The Gospel in Dostoyevsky

Title: The Gospel in Dostoyevsky 

Authors: Fyodor Maximovich Dostoyevsky, J.I. Packer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ernest Gordon

Date: 2011

Publisher: Plough

Length: 214 pages

Quote: "The true content and context of Dostoyevsky’s great works is man’s struggle to find God, in the face of every imaginable temptation to deny Him."

It has been said, and said by Russians, that the Russian church has emphasized ceremony and neglected individual spirituality. This is one of the errors into which churches can easily fall; but then we must consider the testimony of Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky. He certainly thought a great deal about individual spirituality. His characters are characterized, even defined, by their spirituality or lack of it. Their spirituality is radical, defining their personalities and determining their actions. They are good Christians, or good people who are not yet Christians, or bad people as both a cause and an effect of their not being Christians. Their faith often leads them to do things that were probably more controversial then than they are now; they talk respectfully with sex workers and worry about the plight of abused children, and The Idiot is, of course, an intelligent man who is seen as an idiot because he ignores worldly wisdom and does what he believes Jesus would have done.

Though Dostoyevsky's novels have plots, Muggeridge's claim to have read them "like a thriller" is--not exactly suspect, so much as a reminder of what an unusual student Muggeridge must have been. In Dostoyevsky what catches people's attention, what is anthologized, and what is commented on, are the long speeches in which characters express Dostoyevsky's philosophical and religious ideas. Such passages may be considered flaws in the modern novel but Dostoyevsky's fans seem to read the stories, such as they are, for those long digressive speeches.

This book is a compilation of the scenes in Dostoyevsky's novels where the Christian characters expound their beliefs at length. They are not orthodox, though their denomination is presumably Eastern Orthodox. They express ideas like "What Jesus meant by Hell must be the inability to love" and "I'd be frightened to meet a truly godless man...What I have met were restless men." 

If you already have Dostoyevsky's major novels, the short commentaries by Packer, Muggeridge, and Gordon will add only a little to your library. If you've avoided the novels because they are so long, this book contains all the passages that are most often quoted, in their context, and may interest you enough that you'll want to read the novels after all.