Ivan’s story presents the Inquisitor, a man who considers
himself an ally of Satan, as an admirable human being, acting against
God but with humanity’s best interest at heart. Ivan does not believe
that God acts in the best interest of mankind, but the implication
that human nature is so weak that people are better off succumbing
to the power of Satan is a radical response to the problem of free
will. Ivan’s attitude stems from the psychology of doubt. Ivan’s over-riding
skepticism makes it impossible for him to see anything but the bad
side of human nature. As a result, he believes that people would
be better off under the thumb of even a fraudulent religious authority
rather than making their own decisions. Even though his argument
is pessimistic, his reasoning is compelling.
Just as Alyosha is unable to offer a satisfactory
response to Ivan’s critique of God, Christ says nothing during the
Inquisitor’s critique of him, one of several parallels between Alyosha
and Christ during this chapter. But Christ’s enigmatic kiss on the
Inquisitor’s lips after his indictment completely changes the tenor
of the scene. Recalling Zosima’s bow before Dmitri at the monastery
in Book I, the kiss represents an overriding act of love and forgiveness
so innate that it can only be expressed wordlessly. On its deepest
level, it defies explanation. The power of faith and love, Dostoevsky
implies, is rooted in mystery—not simply in the empty and easily
digestible idea that God’s will is too complex for people to understand,
but in a resonant, active, unanswerable profundity. The kiss cannot
overcome a logical argument, but at the same time there is no logical
argument that can overcome the kiss. It represents the triumph of
love and faith, on their own terms, over rational skepticism. In
having Ivan end his poem on a note of such deep and moving ambiguity,
Dostoevsky has his major opponent of religion acknowledge the power
of faith, just as Dostoevsky himself, a proponent of faith, has
used Ivan to acknowledge the power of doubt. Alyosha’s kiss for
Ivan indicates how well the young Alyosha understands the problems of
faith and doubt in a world characterized by free will, and just
how committed his own will is to the positive goodness of faith.
