Excerpted from The Russian Idea; bold added
A very original feature in Dostoevsky is that freedom is to him not a right of man but an obligation, a duty. Freedom is not an ease, it is a burden.
I have formulated this idea in this way, that it is not man who demands freedom from God, but God who demands freedom from man, and in this freedom He sees the worth and dignity of the God-likeness of man.
On this account the Grand Inquisitor reproaches Christ on the ground that He has proceeded as though He did not love man, by laying upon him the burden of freedom.
The Grand Inquisitor himself desires to bestow upon millions and millions of people the happiness of feeble infants, by withdrawing from them the burden of freedom which is beyond their strength, taking from them freedom of spirit.
. . .
The denial of freedom of the spirit is to Dostoevsky the temptation of the antichrist.
Authoritarianism is the principle of antichrist. This is the most extreme form of the rejection of authority and compulsion which the history of Christianity knows, and Dostoevsky here passes beyond the frontiers of historical Orthodoxy and historical Christianity in general an eschatological Christianity and a Christianity of the spirit, and discloses the prophetic side of Christianity.
A very original feature in Dostoevsky is that freedom is to him not a right of man but an obligation, a duty. Freedom is not an ease, it is a burden.
I have formulated this idea in this way, that it is not man who demands freedom from God, but God who demands freedom from man, and in this freedom He sees the worth and dignity of the God-likeness of man.
On this account the Grand Inquisitor reproaches Christ on the ground that He has proceeded as though He did not love man, by laying upon him the burden of freedom.
The Grand Inquisitor himself desires to bestow upon millions and millions of people the happiness of feeble infants, by withdrawing from them the burden of freedom which is beyond their strength, taking from them freedom of spirit.
. . .
The denial of freedom of the spirit is to Dostoevsky the temptation of the antichrist.
Authoritarianism is the principle of antichrist. This is the most extreme form of the rejection of authority and compulsion which the history of Christianity knows, and Dostoevsky here passes beyond the frontiers of historical Orthodoxy and historical Christianity in general an eschatological Christianity and a Christianity of the spirit, and discloses the prophetic side of Christianity.
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