Feodor Dostoevsky, Prophet of a God-Resisting Revolution

Robert L. Nichols

Article Type: Article

Publication Date: 4/1/1993

Issue: Literature (Vol. 13, No 2, Spring, 1993)

Dostoevsky’s heroic God-resisting rebels become like the Satan of the parable of Job. Satan grants the existence of God, but seeks to test him, provoke him, place him in a contest to see who is better, stronger, more just. And the answer the God-resister, the compassionate God-substitute, reaches is that he is more just, more concerned, more truly capable of attaining human salvation. Not the eternal life of the kingdom of God, of course, that would be a fantasy—the one to which Ivan Karamazov turns in his ticket—but the material happiness and security of the kingdom of Man.

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