Raskolnikov and resurrection
The greatest of literature points us to the One who was raised from the dead that we too might live eternally.
Many years ago, when I was still a graduate student, I decided to read some of the major Russian novels of the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s taken me decades, but I finally got to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866). The story is set in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov has recently abandoned his university studies and is living hand to mouth in a rented room. Intellectually gifted, he is subject to frequent bouts of fever and depression. He has published an article arguing for dividing humanity into two classes: the ordinary, who must submit to the laws, and the extraordinary, who have the right to commit acts that would be criminal for the ordinary.
Following his own philosophy, he murders an elderly woman, a predatory pawnbroker who makes her living off the backs of the poor. Ridding the world of such a person, Raskolnikov reasons, is a greater good that justifies his action.
The remainder of the book takes the reader through subsequent developments that illustrate a complex character, one who willingly gives up his rent money to enable a poor widow, Katerina Ivanovna, to give her husband a decent burial, but who steadfastly refuses to repent of the murder.
The greatest of these
Later in the book, a near witness to the murder, a painter named Nikolai Dementev, falsely confesses to the crime. We learn that he is a member of the Old Believer sect, dissidents from the 17th-century reforms of Patriarch Nikon who isolated themselves in remote forests. He is a schismatic, in Russian raskolnik, two letters short of Raskolnikov, and a faux murderer. His confession could allow the real murderer to get off scot-free.
The climax to the novel comes in Part 4, chapter 4, when, at Raskolnikov’s insistence, Katerina’s daughter Sonya reads aloud from John 11 the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Although Raskolnikov has contempt for believers, it seems that a seed is planted in his heart – one that will bear fruit at book’s end.
“Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
“And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?
“She saith unto him” (and drawing a painful breath, Sonya read clearly but strongly, as though she herself were confessing her faith for all to hear), “Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”
Great literature faithfully testifies to realities that may escape our notice when communicated in other ways. The greatest of literature points us to the One who was raised from the dead that we too might live eternally.
