V. So Be It! So Be It!

The elder’s absence from the cell lasted about twenty-five minutes. It was already past half past twelve, and Dmitri Fyodorovich, for whose sake they had all gathered, had still not come. But he had almost been forgotten, as it were, and when the elder came back into the cell he found the liveliest general conversation going on among his guests. Taking part in the conversation were, first of all, Ivan Fyodorovich and the two hieromonks. Miusov too was joining in, and apparently very heatedly, but again he had no luck; he was evidently in the background, and people hardly even answered him, so that this new circumstance only increased his ever-growing irritability. The thing was that even before this he had crossed swords with Ivan Fyodorovich a little in matters of learning, and could not coolly bear a certain carelessness toward himself on Ivan’s part: “Until now, at least, I have stood at the height of everything that is progressive in Europe, and this new generation decidedly ignores us,” he thought to himself. Fyodor Pavlovich, who had himself given his word to sit on his chair and be quiet, had indeed been quiet for some time, but he watched his neighbor Pyotr Alexandrovich with a mocking little smile and was visibly delighted at his irritability. He had long been meaning to pay him back for one thing and another, and now he did not want to miss his chance. At last he could not hold out; he bent to his neighbor’s shoulder and teased him once more in an undertone:

“Why didn’t you leave just now, after ‘lovingly kissed it,’ and why did you agree to stay in such indecent company? Because you felt humiliated and insulted, and you stayed to show off your intelligence by way of revenge. Now you won’t leave until you’ve shown them your intelligence.”

“Again? On the contrary, I’m leaving this minute.”

“Later, you’ll be the last of all to go!” Fyodor Pavlovich needled him once more. This was almost at the very moment of the elder’s return.

The argument died down for a minute, but the elder, sitting down in his former place, looked around at them all as though kindly inviting them to go on. Alyosha, who had studied almost every expression of his face, saw clearly that he was terribly tired and was forcing himself. Lately, in his illness, he had had fainting spells from exhaustion. Almost the same pallor as before a faint was spreading over his face now, and his lips had turned white. But he evidently did not want to break up the gathering; he seemed, besides, to have some purpose of his own. What purpose? Alyosha watched him intently.

“We are discussing a most curious article of his,” said the hieromonk Iosif, the librarian, addressing the elder and pointing to Ivan Fyodorovich. “He draws much that is new, but the idea, it seems, is a stick with two ends. On the question of the ecclesiastical-social court and the scope of its rights, he has answered in a magazine article a certain clergyman who wrote a whole book on this question…”

“Unfortunately I have not read your article, but I have heard of it,” answered the elder, looking intently and keenly at Ivan Fyodorovich.

“He takes a most curious position,” the Father Librarian went on. “On the question of the ecclesiastical-social court he apparently rejects completely the separation of church and state.”

“That is curious, but in what sense?” the elder asked Ivan Fyodorovich.

Ivan at last answered him, not with condescending politeness, as Alyosha had feared the day before, but modestly and with restraint, with visible courtesy and, it seemed, without the slightest ulterior motive.

“I start from the proposition that this mixing of the elements, that is, of the essences of church and state taken separately, will of course be eternal, despite the fact that it is impossible and that it can never be brought into a normal state, or even into any sort of reconcilable state, because there is a lie at the very foundation of the matter. A compromise between state and church in such questions as, for instance, the courts is, in my opinion, impossible in its complete and pure essence. The clergyman with whom I was arguing asserts that the church occupies a precise and definite place in the state. I objected to him that, on the contrary, the church must contain the whole state within itself, and not merely occupy some corner in it, and that if this is for some reason impossible now, then in the essence of things it must undoubtedly be set as the direct and chief goal of the whole further development of Christian society.”

“Perfectly right!” Father Paisy, the taciturn and learned hieromonk, said firmly and nervously.

“The purest ultramontanism!” cried Miusov, impatiently crossing his legs the other way.

“Ah, but we don’t even have any mountains around here!” exclaimed Father Iosif, and turning to the elder, he went on: “He is answering, among other things, the following ‘fundamental and essential’ propositions of his opponent, a clergyman, mind you. First: that ‘no social association can or should arrogate to itself power to dispose of the civil and political rights of its members.’ Second: that ‘criminal and civil judicial power should not belong to the church and is incompatible with its nature both as a divine institution and as an association of people for religious purposes’; and finally, third: that ‘the church is a kingdom not of this world’…”

“A most unworthy play on words for a clergyman!” Father Paisy could not restrain himself and interrupted again. “I have read the book you were answering,” he turned to Ivan Fyodorovich, “and I was astonished at the clergyman’s words that ‘the church is a kingdom not of this world.’ If it is not of this world, then it cannot be on earth at all. In the holy Gospel, ‘not of this world’ is not meant in that sense. It is impossible to play with such words. Our Lord Jesus Christ came precisely to establish the church on earth. The kingdom of heaven, to be sure, is not of this world but is in heaven, but it is entered in no other way than through the church, which is founded and established on earth. And so worldly puns in this sense are impossible and unworthy. The church is truly a kingdom and is ordained to reign, and in the end it must undoubtedly appear as a kingdom over all the earth; for this we have the promise…”

He suddenly fell silent, as though checking himself. Ivan Fyodorovich, having listened to him respectfully and attentively, went on with extraordinary calm, but as willingly and simply as before, addressing the elder:

“The whole idea of my article is that in ancient times, in the first three centuries of Christianity, Christianity on earth appeared only as the church and was only the church. But when the pagan Roman state desired to become Christian, it inevitably happened that, having become Christian, it merely included the church within itself, but itself went on remaining a pagan state as before, in a great many of its functions. In essence this was undoubtedly bound to happen. But in Rome, as a state, too much remained of pagan civilization and wisdom, as, for instance, the very aims and foundations of the state. Christ’s church, on entering the state, could undoubtedly yield nothing of its own foundations, of the rock on which it stood, and could pursue no aims but its own, aims once firmly set and shown it by the Lord himself, among them: to turn the whole world, and therefore the whole ancient pagan state as well, into the church. Thus (that is, with a view to the future) it is not the church that must seek a definite place for itself in the state, like ‘every social association’ or like ‘an association of people for religious purposes’ (as the author I am answering puts it about the church), but, on the contrary, every earthly state must in time be turned completely into the church and become nothing but the church, having renounced all its aims that are incompatible with those of the church. All this will in no way humble it, will take from it neither the honor nor the glory of a great state, nor the glory of its rulers, but will only turn it from a false, still pagan and mistaken road onto the right and true road, which alone leads to eternal goals. That is why the author of the book on The Foundations of the Ecclesiastical-Social Court would judge rightly if, in seeking out and proposing these foundations, he regarded them as a temporary compromise, still necessary in our sinful and unfinished time, but nothing more. But as soon as the author of these foundations dares to declare that the foundations he is proposing now, part of which Father Iosif has just listed, are foundations unshakable, elemental, and everlasting, he is going directly against the church and its holy, everlasting, and unshakable destiny. That is my whole article, a complete summary of it.”

“That is, in two words,” Father Paisy said again, stressing each word, “according to certain theories that have become all too clear in our nineteenth century, the church must be transformed into the state, as if from a lower into a higher form, so as afterward to vanish into it, giving way to science, to the spirit of the age, and to civilization. And if it does not want this and resists, then for that it is allotted, as it were, only a certain corner in the state, and even that under supervision; and this is so everywhere in our time in the countries of modern Europe. But according to the Russian understanding and hope, it is not the church that must be transformed into the state, as from a lower into a higher type, but, on the contrary, the state must end by being found worthy to become solely the church and nothing else besides. So be it, so be it!”

“Well, sir, I confess you have somewhat reassured me now,” Miusov smiled, crossing his legs the other way again. “As far as I understand, then, this is the realization of some ideal, infinitely remote, at the Second Coming. As you please. A beautiful utopian dream of the disappearance of wars, diplomats, banks, and so on. Something even resembling socialism. And here I was thinking it was all serious, and that the church, for instance, was now going to try criminal cases and sentence people to the birch and to penal servitude, and perhaps even to capital punishment.”

“But even if there were now only an ecclesiastical-social court, the church would not send people to penal servitude or to capital punishment even now. Crime and the view of it would then undoubtedly have to change, little by little, of course, not suddenly and not at once, but still fairly soon…” Ivan Fyodorovich said calmly, without batting an eye.

“Are you serious?” Miusov looked at him intently.

“If everything became the church, then the church would excommunicate the criminal and the disobedient, and would not chop off heads,” Ivan Fyodorovich went on. “I ask you, where would the excommunicated man go? He would then have to depart not only from people, as now, but from Christ as well. For by his crime he would have risen up not only against people but against the church of Christ. That is so even now, of course, in the strict sense, but all the same it is not declared, and the conscience of the present-day criminal very, very often bargains with itself: ‘I’ve stolen, so to say, but I’m not going against the church, I’m not Christ’s enemy’; that is what the present-day criminal tells himself as often as not. But then, when the church takes the place of the state, it would be hard for him to say that, unless he denied the whole church over the whole earth: ‘Everyone, so to say, is mistaken, everyone has strayed, it’s all a false church, I alone, a murderer and a thief, am the just Christian church.’ That is a very hard thing to say to oneself; it requires enormous conditions, circumstances that do not occur often. Now, on the other hand, take the church’s own view of crime: must it not change from the present one, which is almost pagan, and be transformed from the mechanical cutting off of an infected member, as is done now for the protection of society, into the idea, and this time fully and not falsely, of the regeneration of the man anew, of his resurrection and salvation…”

“What on earth does that mean? Again I cease to understand,” Miusov interrupted. “Again some sort of dream. Something formless, and one cannot even understand it. What is this excommunication, what sort of excommunication? I suspect you are simply amusing yourself, Ivan Fyodorovich.”

“But in truth it is the same even now,” the elder suddenly began to speak, and they all turned to him at once. “For if there were no church of Christ now, there would be nothing at all to restrain the criminal in his villainy, and even no punishment for it afterward, that is, real punishment, not mechanical, as he called it just now, the kind that in most cases only embitters the heart, but real punishment, the only effective one, the only one that strikes fear and brings peace, which lies in the awareness of one’s own conscience.”

“How is that, may I ask?” Miusov asked with the liveliest curiosity.

“It is like this,” the elder began. “All these sentences of exile to hard labor, and formerly with flogging, reform no one, and above all they hardly deter any criminal, and the number of crimes not only does not decrease but grows the further we go. You must agree with that, surely. And so it turns out that society is not protected at all in this way, for though the harmful member is cut off mechanically and packed off far away, out of sight, at once another criminal appears in his place, perhaps even two others. If anything protects society even in our time, and even reforms the criminal himself and regenerates him into another man, it is, again, only the law of Christ, which makes itself felt in the awareness of one’s own conscience. Only by recognizing his guilt as a son of Christ’s society, that is, of the church, does he recognize his guilt before society itself, that is, before the church. Thus it is only before the church that the modern criminal is capable of recognizing his guilt, not before the state. Now, if the court belonged to society as the church, then society would know whom to bring back from excommunication and receive into itself again. But now the church, having no active court, but only the possibility of moral condemnation, withdraws of its own accord from actively punishing the criminal. It does not excommunicate him, but only does not abandon him with its fatherly admonition. More than that, it even tries to keep up all Christian communion with the criminal: it admits him to church services, to the Holy Gifts, it gives him alms, and treats him more as a captive than as a guilty man. And what would become of the criminal, O Lord! if Christian society, that is, the church, rejected him as well, as the civil law rejects him and severs him? What would happen if the church too punished him with its excommunication at once, every time, right after the punishment of the state’s law? Why, there could be no higher despair, at least for the Russian criminal, for Russian criminals still believe. But then, who knows: perhaps a terrible thing would happen then; there would perhaps be a loss of faith in the criminal’s despairing heart, and then what? But the church, like a tender and loving mother, withdraws of its own accord from active punishment, since the guilty man is punished all too painfully by the state’s court even without its punishment, and someone must surely pity him. And it withdraws chiefly because the court of the church is the only court that contains the truth within itself, and for that reason it cannot essentially and morally combine with any other court, even in a temporary compromise. Here one cannot enter into bargains. The foreign criminal, they say, seldom repents, for even the most modern teachings confirm him in thinking that his crime is no crime but only a rising up against an unjustly oppressive force. Society cuts him off from itself quite mechanically by a force that triumphs over him, and accompanies this excommunication with hatred (so at least they say of themselves, in Europe), with hatred and with the most complete indifference to his further fate as their brother, and with oblivion. Thus everything takes place without the slightest compassion on the part of the church, for in many cases there are no longer any churches there at all, only churchmen and magnificent church buildings remain, while the churches themselves have long been striving there to pass from the lower form, as church, to the higher form, as state, so as to vanish into it completely. So it is, it seems, at least in the Lutheran lands. And in Rome, for a thousand years now, the state has been proclaimed in place of the church. And so the criminal himself is no longer aware of being a member of the church and, excommunicated, remains in despair. And if he returns to society, it is often with such hatred that he, as it were, now excommunicates society itself from himself. How this will end you can judge for yourselves. In many cases, it would seem, it is the same with us; but the point is that, besides the established courts, we have, in addition, the church, which never loses communion with the criminal, as with a dear and still precious son of its own; and besides that there exists and is preserved, if only in thought, the court of the church as well, which though not active now, nonetheless lives for the future, if only in a dream, and is undoubtedly recognized by the criminal himself, by the instinct of his soul. What was said here just now is also true, that if the court of the church really came, and in all its force, that is, if the whole of society were turned into the church, then not only would the court of the church influence the reform of the criminal as it never does now, but perhaps crimes themselves would really diminish to an incredible degree. And the church, there is no doubt, would understand the future criminal and the future crime in many cases quite differently than it does now, and would be able to bring back the excommunicated, to forestall the one who is plotting, and to regenerate the fallen. True,” the elder smiled, “now Christian society is not yet ready itself and rests only on seven righteous men; but since they never fail, it remains unshaken all the same, in expectation of its complete transfiguration from a society as an association still almost pagan into the one universal and reigning church. So be it, so be it, if only at the end of the ages, for this alone is destined to come to pass! And there is no need to trouble oneself about times and seasons, for the mystery of times and seasons lies in God’s wisdom, in his foresight and his love. And what by human reckoning may still be very remote may by God’s predestination already be standing on the eve of its appearing, at the very doors. So be it, so be it.”

“So be it! So be it!” Father Paisy confirmed reverently and sternly.

“Strange, strange in the highest degree!” said Miusov, not so much heatedly as with a sort of hidden indignation.

“What seems so strange to you?” Father Iosif inquired cautiously.

“But what on earth is this, really?” exclaimed Miusov, as though suddenly breaking out. “The state is abolished on earth, and the church is raised to the level of the state! This isn’t just ultramontanism, it’s arch-ultramontanism! Pope Gregory the Seventh never dreamed of it!”

“You are pleased to understand it exactly the other way around!” Father Paisy said sternly. “It is not the church that turns into the state, understand that. That is Rome and Rome’s dream. That is the devil’s third temptation! But, on the contrary, the state turns into the church, rises up to the church and becomes the church over all the earth, which is the complete opposite of ultramontanism, and of Rome, and of your interpretation, and is only the great destiny of Orthodoxy on earth. From the East this star will shine forth.”

Miusov kept an impressive silence. His whole figure expressed an extraordinary personal dignity. A condescending smile from on high appeared on his lips. Alyosha followed everything with a strongly beating heart. This whole conversation had stirred him to the depths. He happened to glance at Rakitin; Rakitin stood motionless in his former place by the door, listening and watching attentively, though with his eyes lowered. But by the lively flush on his cheeks Alyosha guessed that Rakitin too was stirred, it seems, no less than he was; Alyosha knew what he was stirred by.

“Allow me to tell you one small anecdote, gentlemen,” Miusov said suddenly, impressively and with a particularly stately air. “In Paris, some years ago now, soon after the December coup, I happened once, when paying a visit as an acquaintance to a very, very important person who was in power at the time, to meet at his house a most curious gentleman. This individual was not exactly a detective, but something like the head of a whole squad of political detectives, a rather influential post in its way. Seizing the opportunity, I got into conversation with him out of extraordinary curiosity; and since he had been received not as an acquaintance but as a subordinate official who had come with a report of a certain kind, he, seeing for his part how I was received by his superior, honored me with a certain frankness, well, to a certain degree, of course, that is, he was polite rather than frank, precisely as the French know how to be polite, all the more since he saw that I was a foreigner. But I understood him very well. The subject was the socialist revolutionaries, who were being persecuted at the time, by the way. Omitting the main substance of the conversation, I will quote only one most curious remark that suddenly escaped this little gentleman: ‘We,’ he said, ‘are not really very much afraid of all these socialists, anarchists, atheists, and revolutionaries; we keep watch on them, and their moves are known to us. But there are a few special people among them, though not many: these are believers in God and Christians, and at the same time socialists. Those are the ones we fear most of all, they are a terrible people! A Christian socialist is more terrible than an atheist socialist.’ These words struck me even then, but now, here with you, gentlemen, they have somehow suddenly come back to me…”

“That is, you apply them to us and see socialists in us?” Father Paisy asked directly and without beating about the bush. But before Pyotr Alexandrovich had thought of an answer, the door opened and Dmitri Fyodorovich, so very late, came in. They had indeed, as it were, stopped expecting him, and his sudden appearance caused even some surprise at the first moment.