The Grand Inquisitor

In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) tells the story of The Grand Inquisitor.
In the story, Jesus Christ returns to earth at the time of the Inquisitions in Spain, healing the sick and comforting those who mourn. Dostoevsky pictures Jesus coming to the people of Spain who were afflicted and encumbered with man-controlled religion as much as the Jews to whom Jesus came in the first century.
The story relates how Jesus was received by organized religion, whether it was first century Judaism or 16th century religion posing as Christianity. It’s a parable of the ongoing battle between man-made religion and God’s true Christianity of grace.
The day after nearly a hundred heretics have been burned alive in the town square, Jesus is walking by the cathedral in Seville just as a funeral procession is leaving, bringing with it a little white coffin. The mother of the child who has just died appeals to Jesus to raise her little girl from the dead. Jesus does so.
Just at that moment the Grand Inquisitor passes through the crowd, coming to the doors of the cathedral. Dostoevsky describes him: “He is an old man, almost ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and sunken eyes, in which there is still a gleam of light. He is not dressed in his gorgeous cardinal’s robes, as he was the day before, when he was burning the enemies of the Roman Catholic Church – at this moment he is wearing his coarse, old, monk’s cassock.”
The Grand Inquisitor orders his guards to take Jesus and throw him into the prison of the Holy Inquisition. Dostoevsky paints a picture of the war between hierarchy-power religion and Jesus. In so doing he sets the stage for a confrontation between the Grand Inquisitor, representing visible religion, and Jesus, who is the head of the visible and invisible body of Christ on earth.
The Grand Inquisitor visits Jesus in prison, and in a monologue explains how he once believed in the glorious grace of the gospel, but eventually came to see that the only way to control humans is to take away the freedom of God’s grace. He tells Jesus that the Roman Catholic Church rules over the people in Jesus’ name, and that it is a good thing that they do.
The Grand Inquisitor admits that he tried to follow Jesus in his youth, but as the years went by he concluded that Jesus’ gospel was impractical. The masses will never follow Jesus’ ways, he says.
The Grand Inquisitor concludes that Jesus’ return to earth is getting in the way of the mission of the church that bears his name, and that he will have to be burned as a heretic in order to control the people. Jesus does not audibly respond, but instead kisses the old man, who is so moved that he releases Jesus from the prison. Grace responds to grace.
The big issue for legalism is control. Religion has its grand inquisitors today who seek to control you and your life. Legalism is so successful in keeping people under its thumb that many do not want to leave the “earn your way to heaven” in which they exist. Dostoevsky has his Grand Inquisitor explaining to Jesus that humans are anxious to hand over their freedom and are easily persuaded into believing that true freedom comes through submission to human religious authority. He tells Jesus that the masses long to obey, and will sell their freedom for bread. For the Grand Inquisitor, the humans he rules are his slaves.
Grand inquisitors still roam this earth and continue, in Christ’s name, to deceive and seduce the masses who gullibly believe their corruption of the gospel. The masses want to believe that they must earn God’s favor – some try as hard as they can and become frustrated with themselves, and others refuse to even try to please God because it interferes with their own lifestyle.
Some people are so beguiled and mesmerized by performance-based religion that they simply cannot leave. They are comfortable. They like their status quo. They don’t know any other world, other than the narrow and restricted performance of the ideology that controls them.
I am thankful for God’s grace and the fact that He has not appointed any special private religious investigators or grand inquisitors to help Him. God’s grace is sufficient. God’s grace is all we need.
Because human beings have made such a mess out of misrepresenting God, should we all head for our own subjectively determined theological hills and find a cave where we can get away from all of the sin in the world? Should we all subjectively determine what we need by picking and choosing elements we like from a variety of religious traditions?
Don’t let bad experiences sour you on God. Don’t let human beings who have given God a bad name (and that can include all of us, at one time or another) cause you to decide that everything in God’s name is corrupt and perverted. Don’t give up on God because someone did a less than adequate job of representing Him. There are church congregations out there where you will hear lots of sermons about grace. Listen and look for grace. You will even witness and enjoy some gracious behavior there. You will see and hear Jesus, not “earn your way to heaven by trying to please God” type of religion. The health of a church is directly related to its emphasis and insistence on God’s grace.

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