Hello and welcome to classical stuff. You should know a classical podcast, but on by some classy dudes. That's us Hey, those dudes are Graham Donaldson. Hi and AJ Hanover.
That is me. Yeah, indeed Would you I don't feel very classy right now? We're in like shorts and summer wear my t-shirt literally says like a boss And then boss this crossed out and then it says teacher below it. It was a gift It was a gift don't judge me.
It's very soft. It's pretty late Cuz yeah, you could have gotten away with it if you hadn't just told our entire millions of people listening right now I mean, let us pop another bottle of champagne. Wait what and I need to sound and we fulfill my pipe with the finest taco. Would you like some more caviar?
I would like caviar. Please open that fish and I will eat whatever beads fall out of it. It sounds horrible. Hey Caviar, speaking of horrible things.
I'm usually choosy with my fish beads AJ, you have a topic for us. All right, so today I wanted to chat a little bit about Dostoevsky an author that many people know about but nobody usually reads Because his books are long and just the most Russian thing ever So he was a Russian guy himself and when he was young he kind of fell in with a bad crowd and ended up getting it Indicted and convicted for kind of like sedition and rebellious practices and he was gonna bring this mother down He was gonna rip he was gonna totally rip that system and then they caught him and got him in trouble for they had like a Disgushing group where they you know discuss all kinds of things and he got he would have been a podcast had it been Oh, yeah, now it would definitely have been a podcast one that one that you can only find on the deep web Kind of like this one, right? Yeah, so he was calm listeners little do you know that there is a Classical stuff you know podcast on the deep nose kiddings Classical stuff only a select So he was convicted and part of his punishment was that he was sentenced to death. Oh that is part of the punishment Yeah, weirdly.
Yes, I would think he was pretty much the bulk of the punishment But he was set up to go and space firing squad and so they're driving He doesn't really know what's happening He's like dude to do it and then they show up and they are lined up and they're told that they are going to be killed and he Kind of has a last chat with his friends and he is terrified out of his mind And he has like two minutes to live and then he at the last minute Someone comes in and says the czar has Commuted your punishment you will not be killed but rather be sent to exile in Siberia and do work camps So he eventually did go to these work camps and it was a horrible horrible place. Well, was that a set up? Like was that just what they normally did be like alright? Let's mess with this guy look at his face and we told him yes Yeah, I was there was never gonna actually be an execution.
It was part of the punishment that they scare the you know Scared straight straight. Yeah, really scared straight and then they send him to Siberia work in the work camps and then he like he hated jail He thought it was terrible. He thought well It wasn't commensurate with what happened and there was so much disease and so much horror and so much pain and it was an awful place and he came out and he was for the rest of his life he was a believer, but he'd always throw up really big questions about who God was and Just you know like any Christian does or you know any any thinking Christian will deal with these big questions and deal with doubts every now And again and I think that's just part and parcel of having a faith is that you need to put it through the crucible every now And again when it comes out that is what makes your faith stronger So he not only had his faith developed But he got a taste for just the preciousness of life and living right just standing in a square looking at a church looking at the Sun It actually echoes what Gilgamesh said in the Epic Gilgamesh where he said, you know Let me be no better than a dead man still let me feel the Sun on my face right here Still let me see the Sun and be tired with looking at those momentum more in moments, right? Yeah, those near-death experiences will refocus the mind did he have one of those where he was tied the pole to the pole?
He's like alright God, I don't really believe in you, but if you get me out of this I'm on your team and then the guy runs in wait he is not to be shot So I read it and I don't think there was any over like promise to God's I will dedicate my life I don't I don't find any of that anywhere, but it was kind of that same sort of experience where he just it shocked him out of whatever it was was going on and then he went on to be a successful writer and And he wrote some really important books and we teach one of them in our senior English class We teach crime and punishment Which is about a fella named Raskolnikov that decides he wants to put the philosophy of utilitarianism into practice And see if he can't kill an old woman take her money use it to make his good start and then help a bunch of people And he thinks that because he is going to help you know in theory help a gazillion people after he makes his start Then killing her is worth it especially because she's kind of terrible anyway And he's reading the world of what he calls a louse She's this terrible money lender and she sort of prays on people, but she's kind of a nasty person He says alright if I just kill her take her money and like then do good things with the money It's like a net positive right and people like Napoleon wouldn't even think twice about this right Napoleon killed Thousands of people to get what he wanted and he would not think twice about stepping on an old woman taking her money And so he wants to know like the real question is he's asking himself is am I Napoleon cuz this theory is that there's you know One in ten thousand is a great man one in a million is a Napoleon and he fancies himself a Napoleon What is what makes them an Napoleon or a great man? So they are they go against society and are willing to champion a value and they are typically punished for it in their era Right Napoleon was killed all the great men who make these big great strides are killed But since society's job is to punish them their job is to because they can make great strides forward in society Shun the the mores of society make their own choices do their own thing and that thereby forwarding society and making progress But then being killed for it, right? So he fancy himself as one of these people and then lionized for it in future generations exactly spill them down I was wondering why would you do it if he's expecting yeah? They're probably gonna kill me for this, but it's because it'll be praised later praise later and you sort of move the ball forward You are a great man right he would consider himself greater than all of the rest of the millions of rabbled and don't follow their own compass so to speak He sounds horrible.
I don't know. He's not a pleasant person He spends most of the book hold up in his apartment like a spider And he's actually very very bad at murdering like he thinks you know Murders have this like feeling of fever right when the act happens and they can't handle it and I am a thinker And I will do so much better and he does awful Oh, he takes an axe and bonks your lady on the head and then accidentally timed it wrong and so her sister's there Who pregnant sister and so he bonks her and kills her and the kid and that doesn't seem to bother him so much as intentionally killing The old woman and then he has all these problems and he thinks he's covered in the blood when he's not oh and and like forgets to take off the bloody pieces of his socks and like there's just he's just not very good at it and the rest of the novel is About the rending of his soul because of what he's done and what it does to a human person when they have committed that great crime So I want I don't know that makes me want to read this book, but you're talking about punishment So that was crime and punishment. I was only I'm sorry about that. No, yeah, I was gonna ask maybe this will come later But which one you would recommend listeners pick up and read all of them.
Oh, really? I mean yeah, sorry before I would say start with crime and punishment. It's a good murder mystery That's not like a second chapter. Yeah, but it's like a good But then it's just it's a great story of like his paranoia after the fact and it's got one of my favorite literary characters of all time Poor for the detective.
Oh, he's awesome. Yeah, okay So there are his other book of the brothers kermans off or koramans off. I think is how it's pronounced. Okay, man brothers Okay, that's the short version of it.
It's about a family of the word. They use his sensualists So they come from this father and he he's kind of a horrible human person like all together He's got money that he doesn't want to give his money to his kids And he oh man, he just you drink a lot. He drinks a lot. He gives himself license to do whatever he wants to do He hangs out with women of ill repute as much as he possibly can like that's all he wants He wants to cheat everybody.
He doesn't think they're morals He loves making a spectacle of himself to embarrass other people. He's all around not the kind of guy that you want to hang out with So he gives birth to Wow three maybe four kids. How did you know because he gave birth to them? That's just oh this is a Russian thing time for different back then mid-wife for you was on the rise It's a you know only a modern thing that women are the only ones to give pressure.
Oh, man. I don't know my science I'm only Alright, so anyway, he has a gram he has three maybe four boys So he has three he's got several wives I forget which one comes from which doesn't really matter the wives aren't that important to the story But he has and again, I'm probably gonna struggle with these names So he has Ivan the second son who's kind of an intellectual he has Demetri also known as Mitya who is his oldest son Who's kind of like a chip off the old block. Yeah, he's kind of a chip off the old block. He's crazy He's not he's a he's what in the in the biz we call a bum stoker.
He's either bummed or he stoked He's like he goes at a hundred percent and everything if he's feeling sad then he goes a hundred percent sad if he's drinking It's to the nth degree if he's spending money. He's gonna spend like a crazy person So there's those two brothers and then there's al-Yosha alexa the youngest son who ends up in a monastery and he pursues the same Things of the spirit so we've got Ivan the intellectual the second son We have Demetri the oldest I'm doing some weird order so Demetri oldest He's the bum stoker and we have Ivan the middle son who's intellectual and then we have al-Yosha the kid who's studying to be a priest Right, so that is kind of the backdrop. We have this family They are all sensualists in their own way they pursue things of the senses right al-Yosha pursues things of the spirit Ivan pursues things of the mind Demetri more things of the appetite and I hesitate to relate this to the tripartite soul Does the esky would certainly have known about this and I read a paper where they assumed this was how they had designed the brothers right? Each one was a piece of the tripartite soul one after mind one after appetite one after spirit But I'm not sure that's entirely true It's not overt and the characters are really complex to of course you don't think that's entirely true you hate like theories like that No, I think it's a I think it's a really good way to understand his characters And he certainly could have built them that way and showed the the excesses of each of those problems right what comes of having too much of One or the other and the fourth son is actually an interesting study of this because he almost refuses all three pieces and says I am not human But I think to say that is what they are and nothing else is perhaps a reduction of the work and the characters and the complexity of the characters So the fourth son Smeary a cough we always call him Smearnoff because his name is just so impossible to say his is his full name Pavel Fyodorovitch Smeary a cough of course it is yes, it's impossible So he was maybe the son of the dad and his he was like the bastard child, right?
Yeah, so there's this woman named stinking lies of that and stinking lies of that is this she's homeless She's homeless. She's kind of a simpleton and she money she gives it away Right and people take care of her sometimes out of pity and she's a very sympathetic character And she ends up just dying one night because I think wasn't it that somebody beat her up or something? I don't remember because you give birth terrible before that. Yeah, so the rumor is that the father Fyodorovitch caramel is off That's it that Fyodor that he was joking with some friends one night They're like what if somebody did that with her and so he stayed behind and did that and that's where her you know His fourth son is Smeary a cough came from so Smeary Cobb doesn't ever really get the inheritance He stays in the home as a servant he is raised by one of Fyodor's other servants and he is kind of a pseudo-intellectual he likes to think he's really smart, but he just kind of takes impressions from Ivan He he's kind of a hanger on and that's why I say that he kind of refuses all the pieces, right?
He doesn't take things for himself. He doesn't seem interested in things of the appetite. He only gathers impressions He doesn't think through anything for himself, so he's not really going for the mind. He's not very spirited He bows out of everything.
He never really takes a stand on anything. This is Smeary Cobb, right? He's almost the opposite of the other three brothers Yeah, right and while crime punishment is a murder like isn't a murder mystery because it's very clear who's a murder This one kind of is a murder mystery and we only find out fairly near the end of the book what happened right in the first few pages It's like Fyodor's gonna die. Yeah, and then he doesn't actually die until about midway and then it goes on So it basically follows the four brothers.
Do we need a spoiler warning or you're gonna ruin anything? I might in the end but not yet so it's gonna follow these four brothers as they change and And what I want to focus on is perhaps one of the it's the most famous chapter or series of chapters in the books And it's where Ivan is getting to know Aliyosha the brothers don't really spend that much time together when they're young Some are often boarding schools like it's just they're not very close And so Aliyosha wants to get to know his brother Ivan and Ivan is a skeptic at one point He produces a paper in front of a one of the father monks that pretty much says like if there is no God everything is permissible There is no morals. We are all unhinged and Smeri God here's all this and actually argues that there are no morals even though for Ivan It's kind of a lark right he's like kind of arguing it even though he doesn't really believe in it So they sit down over some some ails and Ivan says I'm going to give you what I believe or what I don't believe and he never really Says what he believes says whether or not he believes there is a God, but he does it does give criticisms of God and again you know for our non-Christian listeners I This is again gonna focus on something kind of overly Christian, but it's it is the most important and popular passage in the book It's whenever you say hey the brothers K. This is kind of where they go they go to this piece Which is the central crux and for Dostoevsky this would have also been sort of the central crux right this was the thing Everybody worried about it's the thing everyone to talk about this is kind of a big piece of the book So I'm going to present Ivan's criticism of Christianity as as best I can It's gonna be hard for me to do it really well partially just because he does it when he's been drinking right and I'm serious There are no paragraph breaks like I'm looking at three or four pages here with Naria paragraph And so it's kind of like he's ranting and whenever you capture somebody's rant about what they believe it's gonna wander It's gonna be all over the place.
He's almost frantic He's yelling and so I cannot convey this as well as perhaps you would get it reading the book But he begins in the chapter right before the grand Inquisitor Which is the most important chapter with a chapter called rebellion and this is sort of the beginning criticism is that he says children suffer and that alone should be enough to say that God doesn't exist or if it does He's cruel because it's something like detailed examples of ways specific children have been put things that happen in wars You know and I want to say that they're true stories that yeah He's using things that actually happen in the real world Yeah, there's one where he talked about this fellow named Richard that grew up was given to a family almost as a slave They sent out to take care of the pigs that never taught him never fed him They were doing anything for him they treated him like material and he ended up killing someone and then as he was sitting in jail waiting To be executed he became a Christian a believer and was like I'm going to your my death and what a great day for me This is the best day of my life And then as he's going all of the other Christian Russians say like go brother you die for us and they don't give him mercy They whack off his head even though he didn't know anything he was abused from childhood He was not taught and when he was you know finally ended up shedding blood He went and learned something and then they still kill him for the thing that like is absolutely not his fault So that's the first picture The second one is or one of them is a little girl who was forced because she couldn't hold her bladder when she slept To go and spend all night in an outhouse after being smeared in her own feces and being forced to eat it by her mother Um and she's like crying and weeping because she's five years old and she doesn't understand what's happening to her And there's no way she could control that right he goes on that one He talks about another boy who and I think with the reason he was got in trouble is because he hit a hound with a rock And the Lord that was in charge of this ended up hunting the kid and having him torn apart by torn apart by his dogs in front of his mother And that's a lot that's a lot to handle. Why is he concluded therefore God doesn't exist here conclude that people are Jack Waggons But that's kind of the point let me read this Can you understand that a small creature who cannot even comprehend what is being done to her? This is the girl that was in the outhouse in a vile place in the dark in the cold beefs herself on her Strain little chest with her tiny fists and weeps with her anguished gentle meek tears for dear God protector Can you understand such a nonsense my friend and my brother my godly and humble novice? Can you understand why this nonsense is needed and created without it They say man could not even have lived on earth, or he would not have known good and evil who wants to know this?
Darned I'll say darned. It's the other word darned good and evil at such a price The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little child to dear God I'm not talking about the suffering of grown-ups. They ate the apple and to help them let it double take them all But these little ones I'm from it. You know look yourself I'll stop if you wish so the theologian would argue that good and evil and suffering are are needed for us to know Good and evil are needed for us for you know some of the the ends of the divine But his point is that yeah, but these are kids like they didn't do anything They're not complicit and if your world design requires that a five-year-old spend all night in our house smeared in our own feces Is it worth it?
And he asks his brother later. Let's see if I can Find the spot He basically says would you would you have created this? Oh, yeah right here? One cannot live right by rebellion.
I want to live it. Tell me straight out I call on you answering imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the Finale of giving them peace and rest at last but for that you must inevitably and Unavoidably torture just one tiny creature that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist and raise your edifice on the foundation of her Unrequited tears would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth and Alio she says no Like if I was building a world with the aim of making men happy in the end and to do that I had a torture a tiny five-year-old girl I would not do it and so his point is that the whatever the ends are whatever God's ends in creating the world are they require that children Undergo torture and pain and whatever it is It's not commensurate to what's going on and it doesn't require It doesn't require it anymore. Oh, it's just well.
Let's let's get to the answers in a little while I have to I have to go all the way so he also says listen if everyone must suffer in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering Pray tell me what have children got to do with it It's quite incomprehensible that they should have to suffer and why should they buy harmony with their suffering? Why do they get thrown on the pile to me? Where's someone else's future harmony with themselves? While there's no time I hasten to defend myself against it and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony and then here I'd rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation even if I'm wrong besides they've put too high a price on harmony We can't afford to pay so much for admission and therefore I hasten to return my ticket If I'm not if it's not that I don't accept God alioshua I just most respectfully return the ticket so I get what he's doing and even talks about yes The mother of the child that was torn apart by the part by the dogs She can for like the kid can forgive the man, right?
She can forgive the kid She can forgive the dogs, but how can how can she in her right mind forgive the torture of her son? Like he says and what's more she shouldn't she should never forgive that man for torturing her son The son and the man may be reunited in heaven, but how dare she how dare she forgive him and that's his point Right is that the suffering of children does not commensurate with whatever ends God has right? So that is only the first chapter and then he like that's not even the biggest crux of it And then he goes on and and I will try to summarize this as best I can It's a lot of sort of ranting but the next piece he says look I composed this poem Which is funny because he's an amateur and he says like you'll be my first listener, but he never even sorry listener But he never even gives the poem right he sort of says it Here's what I was going to write but he never wrote it and it sort of evokes Ivan as this pseudo-intellectual where he has a lot of big ideas But he doesn't affect them ever he just sort of toys with them So the poem goes like this so during the height of the inquisition Jesus comes back and it's not his Triumphant return. He's not coming with blaze and fire.
He's not destroying anything or anybody he comes back and he's checking in He just wants to visit and so on the day when they've just burned a thousand heretics He walks through and everybody knows that it's him every person in that whole square is like that's Jesus He heals a guy with his blindness He raises a girl from her death and then the inquisitor comes out and he's like a 90 year old man with glittering eyes And he says guards take him so guards take Jesus and they put him in jail and the inquisitor comes and he says it's it's you isn't it? It is you all right Well, don't speak here's what I have to say and he accuses Jesus of some things and it all centers around the temptation in the desert And he takes the temptations of Christ by the devil Yeah, he takes these things to mean a little bit different than we took them to me So the first temptation the temptation of bread, right? We all understand that to mean that Satan was like here I just run through the temptations because so first temptation is this Jesus had been the desert for 40 days And so Satan comes hey like you hungry man turn these stones in a bread and then Jesus says men you not live by bread alone, right? And then the next one is he says yeah He takes in the top of the temple and he says see all of these lands, right?
I threw yourself off So he says chuck yourself off this and angels will all come and save you and won't that be amazing and there'll be a big miracle And he pretty much says no and then he says if you bow down to me I will give you all of the nations that you can see right because clearly I'm in charge and Jesus says no Yeah, get out of here get behind me. It's not where he says get behind me. It's where he says he's saying that to Peter He says what does he say basically Satan in all three is quoting scripture at him in all three of the temptations in Christ's quote scripture back Essentially telling Satan that he is Misquoting scripture and then the last one. Yeah, he just basically tells Satan to buzz off.
Yeah So the Inquisitor says look when you when he offered you bread what you could have done was taken bread and given it to everyone He assumes that the temptation is not for Christ himself But that he could turn everything into bread and provide for man give him give him something tangible to eat and Yeah, you would have what is it? How do you accept the loaves you would have answered the universal and everlasting anguish of man as an individual being and of the whole of mankind together Namely before whom shall I bow down? There's no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man as long as he remains free than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible Right one of the like bread is tangible. It will feed you and so if he would have said yes I will provide provide bread for man They would have followed you to the ends of the earth, right?
Man would have followed you for sure, but you didn't you wanted man free You promised the bread in heaven and the only people that can get after bread and heaven are the strong ones Maybe tens of thousands right, but then there's hundreds of thousands and millions that because they don't have bread cannot follow you And are not strong enough to follow someone if they're not taking care of their needs You didn't take care of their needs that therefore they they are not going to follow you Right and that's the chart and the Inquisitor says that is the chart one of the first charge I have against you The first charge is that you didn't provide for their needs and you didn't give them someone to follow you had the power to do it You had the power to do it. You you absolutely didn't do it with bread You were given an indisputable banner give men bread and he will bow down to you for there is nothing more indisputable than bread But at the same time someone else takes over his conscience Oh, then he will even throw down your bread and follow him who seduces conscience in this you were right for the mystery of man's Being is not only living but in what one lives for basically men men are too weak to handle their freedom What they need is bread they need someone to follow you didn't give that to them You didn't provide for their needs. They don't have someone to follow then so only the strong can follow you well What about the rest of them the next piece is The the miracle of throwing himself off So he says you did not come down because again You did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free not miraculous You thirsted for love that is free and not for the servile raptures of a slave before a power that has left him permanently terrified But here you here to you overestimated mankind for of course They are slaves though. They were created rebels you hold and judge now that 15 centuries have passed take a look at them Whom have you raised up to yourself?
I swear man is created weaker and baser than you thought him how can you ever accomplish the same thing as you so you did not give him the mystery that he needed he cannot choose you freely right man man is feeble and Only the strongest can follow you right without a miracle. They need some sort of miracles follow and without you they will follow Something else they're gonna follow women. They're gonna follow wizard. They're gonna follow anything else that can offer them this power to follow And you didn't give it the last one is unity, right?
Exactly, let's see exactly eight centuries ago We took from him what you saw indignantly rejected that him there referring to Satan that last gift He offered when you showed when he showed you all the kingdoms of the earth We took Rome and the sort of Caesar from him and proclaimed ourselves soul rulers of the earth and the inquisitors speaking for the church here The only rulers though We have not yet succeeded in bringing our cause to its full fruition for the need for universal union is the third and last torment of men mankind in its entirety has always yearned to arrange things so that they must be universal and That's the last accusation is that we needed unity and you didn't give it You have earned all this summer in the hours to say look I'm in charge I am I will provide for your needs I will give you a miracle and I will give you unity and and join all of you forever And instead what you did is you gave them freedom and this horrible freedom and this is this is the best the biggest accusation It is too much for man, right? You expect too much from us men are small. We are petty We cannot follow we are too weak and in refusing these to do these three things give us bread give us miracle and give us unity You have condemned us all and so the church and still this is the inquisitor speaking The church has done this for you. We have taken your banner and we yes We are lying to them We are going to take their freedom from them and promise them freedom and return and not give it But they will give but we give them bread we give them your cool We give them unity and that's nothing not what you could give them And so he says like what do you say this and Jesus kisses him on the mouth and then I think he exiles him I think he just says you get out of town you No, he kisses him on the mouth and then Jesus leaves the room and then yeah He takes off inquisitor tells him not to return.
Yeah, yeah He essentially exiles him so the inquisitor aligns himself with Satan and says we have unified the world and yes We will suffer for it But how many hundreds of thousands will be saved because we give them bread and unity? So we've taken the deal that you gave up. Yeah, you know, we're working towards the deal that you gave up and I can and I condemn you for the fact that you didn't take up the steel is a good deal and Satan offered it so you should have done it Yeah, so to review one big Argument is that whatever whatever God's ends are it is not worth the suffering of these children, right? He might be there, but I'm gonna return my ticket and also that God did not provide what weak man needed He needed bread He needed something to believe in and follow and he needed unity with his fellow men and you gave none of those three things and because man Is too weak you have condemned us all that is the argument and it is one that like it kind of borders on ones I've heard before right the problem of evil like if God is good, then why is the world bad?
It's a very simplistic way to put the the first argument about the children the second one I've had like everyone kind of feels it, but no one's put it into words that matter too weak to follow and then This troubled so to step back from the argument for a sec This really troubled those these publishers. They're like they got the chapter and it was published in cereal Which is one of the reasons it's so long I think right if you're gonna publish it and get paid every time you publish something You're gonna make a long book So there's they're like are you gonna answer this like you give this whole thing and are you really gonna take care of it? And he said he would take care of it artistically And so the way that he solves this is by giving us the picture of Zosim of the elder who's a great spiritual man and basically says like We are all guilty before all you must love everyone You must sacrifice for their needs and for the earth and Aliyosha takes up this torch and basically spends the entire novel sacrificing himself for everyone else Ivan ends up having brain fever because he was kind of complicit in his father's death I'm not gonna tell you whether he was the actual murderer or not I can leave that up you know up to whatever but he was implicated he had a hand in it whether he wanted to or not and He ends up hallucinating the devil and dealing with these questions even more and then lapsing in the brain brain fever and he might die at the end of the Novel and then Aliyosha ends with this beautiful Idyllic picture where he's they've just buried one of the boys right one of the children and it has ended in him kind of Commiserating with all the boys in the town and saying like we are having this great day This is a great moment We can all look look back on this and have a moment of purity that could counteract an entire lifetime of evil So that's how he doesn't artistically he doesn't answer it directly Jesus's answer is just up because on the lips And then the answer we see in Aliyosha and Zosim who are good men and then end in this beautiful picture We're saying like small pieces of good can it counteract whole worlds of bad? So that's that is like I think the central pivoting point of the brother's care is off So gentlemen thoughts you were done that Graham So we got well Just the first thing where he says that where he gives Aliyosha that choice where he says alright Aliyosha If you were building a world and you could have a world of everybody created But you had to torture one little kid to do it would you do it now?
Aliyosha says no, and it's kind of a false choice because the world God created it did not necessitate the need of sin and evil it It was a choice. It was it was an option Presumably the option presumably the way it was set up mankind could have continued to turn the world into a garden Which is what our job is supposed to be we could have You know can fill the earth and subdue to it like we were asked to while every day not Becoming to the temptation of the fruit so I mean like it was possible But I'm gonna play the devil's advocate here literally and and say that I feel like that's a cop out because our fall did not surprise God That was not a whoops the tree was in the garden for a reason and just because Adam and he felt does that necessitate that every single One of their progeny have the same curse But we were we were sufficient to stand though free to fall as a land of Milton uses and that's the problem free to fall Yeah, and and Dostoevsky makes the same point that one of my friends Daniel and I doubt you're listening But if you are anybody I he had walked away from the faith and he we're talking about free will and I said I would rather have all the evil in the world and my free will and he said why I would much rather know that I'm going to heaven And lose my free will every second of it like I if I had the assurance of heaven I would lose my free will on a heartbeat and that's that's I think it's yeah We're free to fall but God created a world in which we're free and which he knew we would fall That was not a surprise to him He could have created a different world in which we didn't but that world would have had no free will and therefore that world would not have had Love and therefore that world would not he would not have been giving his creatures the ability to freely love God So it would be a world. It would be a I mean if loving God is is to love us to glorify God I love God and join forever chief end of man Then he would be creating universe where that couldn't happen. So again, we would be love robots I will play that was advocate doesn't necessitate that we actually sin or simply that we have the possibility of it for love to exist Because love exists in the Trinity those three could in theory sin They are free to do so although those sin would mean the negation of nature So I'm not even sure if that's true right God's nature is to do good whenever he does good So can he sin is a different question, but love exists there love will presumably exist in heaven where there is no sin So is sin necessary for love?
It is sin necessary for love? No free will is necessary for love Then he could have created a world in which free will existed with no sin No, because there was there's there's always the option of not doing the thing that we should be doing right So the freedom oblique he could have created a world that he knew where we would choose to continue to do the right thing He created a world in which he knew we wouldn't no no no no how could he create a world? How could he create a world of free will? Without possibility of what I'm saying is that the possibility is there but he could have created a world in which we didn't eat the fruit I if we hold to the three-will argument we have to posit that The possibility of sitting is still open in heaven That's a fun one first of all and sure but my point my point is that the actuality of sin is not necessary for the possibility of sin He could have created a world in which the tree was always there.
We always had free will we always had the option But he knew that we never would no no no it's fine that world How can he create a world and say the tree is always here and you have free will but we never eat it It's a choice Graham made different choices But then but he doesn't he doesn't force our hand sure but Graham you're saying he was good at it He could have created a world in which Adam like he creates the same kind of world But he creates one in which Adam and Eve don't make that silly mistake. He warns them against the snake He said he was down at the moment the snake is talking to us. Hey, don't listen to this fool He's an idiot. I'm God.
I created you make the right choice easy for example You have the option to abuse students sure you never will ideally sure is there another world in which you do maybe? But my point is that you have your free will you still don't do it So we can have free will and not actually the actuality of sin but the possibility of it the possibility of it that's my point But that was the world he created that is the world where that is the world that Ivan has a problem with no No, no, no, he created a world of a possibility of sin He did not create a world of an actuality of sin We created the world the actuality of sin when he created a world in which he knew because he has foreign knowledge that we would Effect sin we did it. He knew we would I'm saying he could have created a world where we had the possibility But he knew that we would not like heaven. No, you cannot have free will unless you actually do not have free will and a determined outcome You can't do it so so we're getting I feel like reading too far into the weeds of free will here because then we immediately have to ask the question Was our sitting a determined outcome and if God knew that it was you decided what you said it was sure I'm a good Calvinist I believe in foreign knowledge.
So but but so that that like it is required for free will like we immediately get into really big questions about Like God's intentions greater world in which sin existed or was going to exist He did not create the sin and is there for not necessarily complicit in it, right? But he allowed us to certainly and he created a world in which he knew that we would So those are those would probably be Ivan's answers. Yeah, so I mean Ivan Ivan is more comfortable in a world where Mankind is not free mankind does not have love mankind does not have the capacities of you Yeah, if you don't you can be not free and still have love you can't you can't why not because you need his love is a choice Real love is a choice. You can't be forced to love if you're forced to come back to my point about heaven Right, it's a place where no sin exists yet.
We still love and have free will so he could have created that world Why didn't he just create heaven in the first place? Um, no, no because there was I mean He did and someone did fall and it was Satan fell so presumably so in Explained to me how heaven is a place where there is love and free will but no, no, uh, I feel like that's a good You you you are saying both free will and love exists in heaven Yes, is that true both love and free will exist in heaven because you're saying love can exist without free will there Are free will must happen in heaven. Yeah, there is no sin There's the possibility for it. There's the possibility of sin.
Why didn't God just create that world in the first place? He did and And he created one wish he knew we would send and I want to go over this I mean, right great heaven and earth is what exactly so I think my answer would be different, right? So yes, that is that is a piece of the puzzle that God didn't want to give us free will so my answer is two fold And it even comes out in the brothers K The first answer is that I think Ivan is weighing too heavily the sufferings of of man later in the book He talks about a supposition where a guy ends up having to walk a quadrillion miles before he can go to heaven Yes, it has a quadrillion years to do it takes forever But he does it and then the five minutes in heaven He's like I would have done it quadrillion to the power of quadrillion It's worth every moment of my walking and everyone and he goes overboard I was like who is this guy and so there's that's the joke is that he kind of goes a little overboard But I think if we look like here are suffering ways very heavily on the scale because we know nothing else I think the amount of of joy and goodness found in heaven will more than make up for that weight on the scale, right? It's a it's a longevity problem.
We're looking too short. It's where it's like the I want the cookie thing I cannot deal with the suffering now So I want to eat the cookie even though my mom says if I can wait an hour I'll have ten right this small suffering way so heavily on me that I must take care of it now And so I think that it's it is weighing Far far too heavily on the scale my other answer is that yes while it is a problem Why didn't why didn't God do something my answer is that he did right as if we look at God as a timeless being The moment that he knew we would sin was also the moment that he was dying for it and the moment that he was returning to cleanse the world of it So it's it's it's a problem. That's already been solved and yes We have to live through it, but yeah, so so the Grand Inquisitor's second second demand on Jesus is already bunk like you could have given us a miracle Well, he did he was risen from dead Yeah, so I so I was talking more about the children, but if we want to tackle the Grand Inquisitor So those might kind of two answers to the the children Yes, we suffer but does bring free will and a lot of things that come along with suffering and sin personal growth Comradery like there's a lot of things that come from sin that we wouldn't know otherwise Also, I think the goodness is gonna weigh heavier on the scale and we think it will we tend as humans to suffer to think of the problems Like we've got a great day with one really bad experience We're gonna focus on the bad right so it weighs heavier than it should and it's a problem that solved if we're talking about the The Grand Inquisitor. I think there answers to each of those that are relatively simple So first first accusation you didn't create bread.
You didn't provide for our needs So do we have an answer to that didn't give something then something to follow because you because bread is the most tangible thing I was thinking sorry I was just thinking the Grand Inquisitor is in this chapter more a critique of the church than it is of Christ It feels like the way you just walk through it feels like he's the thing he's saying is the church is making it The church wants to deal with the devil But but I deal with the devil that takes care of the millions of people that aren't strong enough to live a life of freedom and Genuineness a life of total free will which is what Christ wanted I think it is a direct accusation of Christ and doubt of the Christian faith in this one the church almost comes out looking like the good Yes, they must align themselves with the devil to do it But they save the people who are too weak to save themselves I mean that's that's the problem I have with it is the low view of human right that we are weak and stupid and you can't can't fend for ourselves The answer for the first one would be that we were placed in an environment where Like food can grow like like we were not placed in an environment where we cannot survive we were placed in an environment where we can And the fact that we don't comes down to man being that jerks to man But but the capacity the potential for all of us to be fed and have our needs met is here And we have the potential like because we don't have bread we have potential for charity We have potential for working together right to make that happen like if you just provided for our needs I mean, I think there's like there's something to be said for entitlement right if he had provided forever need that we had Does an entitled kid follow his father fearlessly. Mm-hmm. No, I mean like there's there's that piece of it and what's wrong to say That if if Christ had given food to everyone that they would have followed I think so maybe and I also think that like the accusation that he didn't Give us something to follow is demonstrably hogwash right right? Maybe yes that we have a hard time with the freest of wills but like that the only the strong can follow Jesus I think that that's not born out in churches either I actually find that the strong will they're usually the one who the ones who usually walk away and it is the weak and those people who are In dire need and those who are in poverty that turn most readily to God Yeah, I feel like there's gonna be something about the Eucharist here of like the bread that Christ does provide a bread But it's his body.
It's not merely literal loads of bread Well, that says he says you promise to heavenly bread, but we need earthly bread Like we need I need a full loaf of bread to eat for sandwiches not just the the bread of future heaven Which only the strong can wait for yeah, I don't think like even in the weekly Sunday church You're given a physical food and I know now we use like a little way and it's not enough to even get your past lunch time But it is the symbol that the grand inquisitor says he's not providing is given to the church every Sunday But then again, we're pulling the church back into it, which which is the other thing is the grand inquisitor says like we give the people What you weren't willing to well, it's what Christ gave and the truth is like if the church is the body of Christ Well, they like Christ is giving it. He's giving it through us We are involved in the south if it work of the gospel, right? There's it's not that he left and oh the job wasn't done So we're gonna have to do it separate from him That's not how it works He left us a job to do and said you guys need to feed each other you guys need to take care of each other He's not a lot about that caring for the poor caring for the homeless caring for people who need it the widows and orphans right what is pure Christianity and Like that's what he told us and so what the inquisitor should have said is we have carried the mantle It's not that we are going against you or what you refuse to do. We carried on the work you gave us And as far as not giving us miracles well, you know, you gave plenty of them And giving unity I think that the church has been a unifying force for a long time and yeah, there's always some Inviting and stuff, but it's not maybe not universal unity I mean the story of the church is a story of like deep fragmentation over time Like on the one hand is is God's kingdom continuing to march forth with the gospel and the spirit entering the hearts and minds and transforming individual lives But then institutionally it is a fragmenting body where you know, we we started with the you know the church and acts and then over now we have like what 600 Christian denominations in the United States and three major expressions of Eastern Orthodoxy Catholicism and And Protestantism and even Protestantism.
It is not a uniform thing. It is this I know so it's like It's like very Defining human in that way right like you've got the unifying message of the gospel and then and I always whenever we travel Whenever my wife and I travel we go to a different city and we go to a church and we meet Christians We had this experience when we lived in Holland and there's just feeling of like oh my goodness You have like them you come across as Christy the way that you know Like it was you we are family and I can tell that, you know, we're different cultures different language But there is just so there's a unity there, but then on the other hand, there's also there is also the disunity of of of yeah, all the denominations and all the fighting and that kind of thing but Yeah, and I mean are we any more disunified than a state? No, no, no, we're at least more lasting than many of them So I mean what other Christians have been around longer than probably any state on earth. Yeah, it doesn't have to be true.
Yeah, well Rome I was gonna say Rome still technically exists, but not not the same. Yeah, it's not the same kind of party anyway Like taking it taken as a whole I think the inquisitors a little short-sighted right? He sees himself as separate from Christ rather than taking on the work of Christ And I was just looking up what you were I'll talk about that even his second one about if you had done miracles people would it the God and being God would be cemented even an axe when Pentecost is happening people think that they're drunk as they're speaking like But miracles do not always bring people to the faith Yeah, Jesus is not falling and like surviving and the angels coming down and seeing the multitude angels is not going to like cause Generations over a thousand years to continuously like believe in this thing But I think the main crux is that he says you didn't do this for everyone you gave us a choice You gave us freedom and we are too like that's that is the big deal is that we are too weak for freedom And I think that's kind of understanding man as a whole and it makes me think of the classical education thing Yeah, this this is such a low view of man to say that the only thing that motivates us is food and that we are too weak to make Our own decisions, so we need like the big boys to do it for like the when you read the the ancients They don't look at it that way like when there's the portrayal of the heroes and the ilias in the Odyssey Like you might not be born with the same favor of the gods as those people but like you can still mirror aspects of what they're doing in your daily life I don't know. I just see yeah the low view of man is the thing.
I just keep thinking of over and over I think there's something to be said for dealing with your Mortality and your existence in a way that is honest and a lot of people don't deal with it like they But in that way, I think that God has provided or Jesus provided a refuge from that like people who have trouble dealing honestly with their Existential crises and maybe you've never had never even had one right They were born warmly into the church and stayed warmly in the church until they died and never had to deal with that And that's my point is that yeah, they're the strong who have these deal with these big existential questions But sometimes that leads them away from the faith and the faith is often a refuge for people who just don't operate at that level, you know I don't know What what is just asking his view of is this his argument or these his problems with I think probably him before his conversion Yeah, this is probably the that was probably convincing to him as a young socialist a revolutionary, right? I think this was the honest doubts of does the F's key and then the only way that he could refute them in his book was to show us the live the life of Al-Yosha who lived well and honestly and sacrificed himself for everyone that he possibly could and ended in this wonderful place laughing with children and Ivan who dealt with these big doubts and lived primarily for himself and did with brain fever loosening the devil who was also by the way Sort of a manifestation of these questions hounding him and taunting him and making fun of him So that's also interesting that Al-Yosha is rewarded for that could be a beer He is not punished for it. I think that would be the more Probably the even more modern take would be that he is noble and he does the right thing, but then killed for it But yeah, it's good to know on a brother's gay I guess the tension I'm having is like so there's there's maybe some virtue to going through and asking hard questions But like not everyone is ready for them That was the thing that you just said yeah So in a way that it's not always a good thing just to ask hard questions for the sake of hard questions But does he ask he's kind of doing both he brings it up but then provides an answer for it sort of a lot of people weren't satisfied with Yeah, they were mad when the book came out. I mean he never answers it overtly and maybe people didn't draw the Like they weren't there enough enough with it to draw the conclusions and think through his answer His answer is artistic more than logical And we were talking about that the other night when we finished this book and some you know the dialects will meth We were talking about this last podcast you keep on asking questions and eventually nothing's there You can ask what is a good man and tear apart what a good man is and tell you and it nothing one of the best answers That is well I know what when I see it and most most all of us can point at a good man They've known and say this was a good man This is a good person and that is Al-Yosha and it's awesome In the book they are very clearly good people that have a good influence on the people around them And that that's his answer is like you can ask questions And you can get into these logical problems and have issues and do like we did and talk about free will and heaven And is there a lot possible when really we know good men when we see them?
And this is the belief in sections of Catholicism but in Eastern Eastern Orthodoxy that I mean it's awesome in the book His body does not corrupt after death. He actually does It does the end that that's the thing that that a lot of the I don't know a lot of the priests were expecting the miracle of him smelling sweet after death But he started to stay and so like he must have been a liar all along and they immediately concluded that everything he taught was lies because he Stunk after he died. I kid you not. It's this big goofy thing.
He doesn't he obviously doesn't have a very high view of the monk My point was that like that is part of the that nature reflects the spiritual goodness of individuals because their bodies do not corrupt After death. I know it's a wacky crazy process. Probably you know we that is not something that we Definitely there's something that we sort of adhere to but it's out there and there are you know The incorruptible saints out there. You think there's somebody somebody's that have not decomposed that that is the claim After there are you know Catherine and there's a bunch of them anyway But the theological quite argument to that is that they have lived lives of purity and goodness that That they have sort of bridged or they have sort of pierced the veil of heaven on earth that it had a physical effect on their bodies They are decaying but it is a slowed down decaying than sort of the regular people because they've had that sort of life of purity and goodness But anyway, I'm still spinning from the whole like freewill and heaven thing Fun stuff it's all hard to talk about because So like the Isaiah I'm probably gonna get a classical stuff The image of the line laying down with the lamb like the fundamental nature of how everything's gonna relate to each other will be so Different like it's hard to even discuss like I'll be me but without the sin and me so I can't even talk about rightly organized desires I've talked with some students before who are like really worried about losing that sin cuz they're like well I'm funny because of those things and they're like it's so tied to my personality Like what would it mean to have that ripped out of me?
That's like one day you will desire that well I think you could just tell them like it won't be ripped it will be redeemed like you're thinking of it cut out What's this one where the thing on the shoulder? It's less so he's got this little lizard on his shoulder That's always whispering these horrible the civius things to him and be like that and he says I don't want to get rid of it I love it and I want to keep it in the guys like look if you want to if you want to be here You got to kill that thing and once it's killed it'll be better And so he like kills the lizard and the lizard dies in terms of this huge beautiful styling and he rides off on his brand new sexuality Which is such a fun picture of the redemption of the simple part of you like that kid isn't funny because of the sin He's funny because it's funny. The sin is the cheap way to get to those jokes Yes, that's 100% it like a humor that honors God like what a great thing to aim at Well clearly that's just puns, right? Only puns.
All right, so we yeah, we're drawn this to a close so you open us right? I think I did so thank you for listening if you have any classical stuff We got wrong which we never make mistakes So please don't or if you have thoughts on topics or you just want to say hello We are classical stuff at veritasacademy.net. We're on Twitter at kliscoll stuff clc yet I probably shouldn't say this before actually knowing what it is just google it C L S S C A L close Kyle C L Scott our logo. He just said yeah C L S S C Wait, it has our logo.
You want them to search Twitter for a logo? No, it's all you'll know when you find it It's awesome If you have enjoyed this episode would love if you would give us a review that'd be really cool And I think that's it. No one else have anything to say any commonplace quotes Didn't I read enough from a book today? I'm off the hook For years I still think about like sufficient to stand though free to fall a line from Milton as like a good as a good descriptor All right, what's the name classical stuff?
You should know this is Thomas Graham and AJ signing off signing off. Bye