There's been much discussion on Catholica recently as to the nature of truth. By serendipity or God-incidence Andrew Kania's commentary today is also related to this question of what is "truth" and how do we find it. Andrew examines the issue from two perspectives: the first is the plot of that great classic of Russian literature, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov; the second is through the thoughts of Cardinal Newman in the struggle he went through in his conversion from the Anglican Church to Catholicism.

The saga of Aloysha in Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov…

Alyosha, is the hero of Fyodor Dostoevsky's (1821-1881) novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1880). To say the very least, a man from a dysfunctional family, Alyosha seeks to be a Russian Orthodox monk. Devotedly the young man sits at the feet of an elder of the monastery, a man named Zosima. To many, Alyosha included, Zosima is a living Saint.

Movie poster for a Russian film of The Brothers Karamazov.

As Zosima's life comes to a close, he orders his devoted pupil to go back into "the world". Alyosha is horrified, for he has no wish to return to a family diseased by lust, atheism, fratricide and corruption. Despondent, Alyosha sits bedside of Zosima, the old monk's spirit slowly leaving his body. There, then, in the cell of the now dead monk, Alyosha faces an extra heartache; Zosima's body has begun to putrefy, the smell being almost unbearable.

Alyosha questions how this man could indeed have been a Saint, if decay has set in so quickly to his corpse. The once spiritually confident Alyosha is now at his lowest point. Without a mentor, and ordered to leave the monastery walls by dying request of Zosima, Alyosha is now the easy prey of Raktin, a degenerate who has been jealous of Alyosha's pure motivations. Raktin is close friends with the town harlot, Grushenka, and Grushenka, for her part, has always had a perverse fascination with Alyosha, a man seemingly impervious to her charms.

Raktin has suspected all along that Alyosha has carried in his heart a secret apprehension about Grushenka's power to seduce. To Grushenka's house, Raktin delivers the young man. Near swooning with joy, Grushenka sits Alyosha down, offering the abstinent man a glass of alcohol, which he quietly slips, and then seating herself on his lap. Beginning to giggle and flirt with Alyosha, something very odd occurs – Grushenka breaks down, and like a little girl, overcome, she cries, and in her every sobbing breath, she extols Alyosha's virtues.

To Raktin's horror, Grushenka wants nothing from Alyosha — just his prayers; she has had a meeting with the Truth. For his part Alyosha, once fearful of Grushenka, now leaves her home, a spiritually charged individual. As Dostoevsky wrote of the scene: "It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his mind – and it was for all his life and for ever and ever. He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy. And never, never, all his life long, could Alyosha forget that minute". (Dostoevsky, 1992, p. 200)

The moral of the story…

In the story of Alyosha, we see an individual whose soul is imprisoned by falsehood — running in fear to the monastery, running away from a world that he thought would take not only his body, but his soul as well. Yet during the event at Grushenka's home, Alyosha discovers that the welfare of his soul is held in the grasp of his own hand, and can only be handed over, if he chooses to do so. Alyosha's tears flow from a similar reason to those of Grushenka, who in meeting Alyosha has had a meeting with a higher wisdom, a facing of a Truth that has set her free as well. Grushenka will still live in her certain circumstances, Alyosha, shall still be a member of a wicked family, yet they will not be victims, they have both learnt by their meeting with one another, that a person can make the best of the world in which they are by Providence born.

Plato has Socrates say in Meno, that "the truth about reality is always in our soul". (Plato: The Complete Works, 1997, p. 886)

So it is with both Alyosha and Grushenka, the Truth existed within them prior to their meeting; their meeting only brought it to the forefront — the Truth rising as the sun above the horizon, now also above Alyosha's fears and Grushenka's sinfulness. Alyosha's eyes are also opened to the Truth that the strength of Zosima's teaching lay not in the incorruptibility of his body, but rather in the ability to give Alyosha sufficient training to live in the real world by facing his fears. It is as Schweitzer once wrote, that Africa is filled with those who seek to run away from the hurly-burly of Europe, but the man or woman who should truly seek missionary life, is that individual who leaves no fear of the fast-paced city behind them. Ironically, Alyosha has proven himself worthy of a monastery, by proving himself worthy of living in the world. He has discovered the Truth about himself and of God, and by so doing he is now free to live in a world of sin, knowing that he cannot be tainted by sin — unless he so chooses.

Another example of the struggle for truth: Cardinal Newman…

Cardinal Newman — struggled with his decision to convert to the Catholic Church

In 1845, John Henry Newman (1801-1880), was in the throes of his own purgation of self. Born into Protestantism, Newman had become one of the Church of England's shining lights, only to find himself in a precarious grey area as a baptized 'hereditary' Anglican but intellectually as a Catholic. For Newman, each day saw him draw closer to the Catholic Church, but his whole being pined to somehow remain within the Church of England, the Church of his family and friends. As he wrote to a friend, Mrs. Froude: "The pain I suffer from the thought of the distress I am causing cannot be described — and of the loss of kind opinion on the part of those I desire to be well with. The unsettling so many peaceable, innocent minds is a most overpowering thought, and … my heart literally aches". (Ker, 1988, p. 293)

To face the Truth, Newman required courage, a courage which required him to stand against decades of prejudice and bias which had built up within him against the Catholic Church. Perhaps he could secretly become a Catholic, but this would in some way require him from not fully embracing the Truth. On this notion, Newman writes, too often, "when it comes to the point, when particular instances of change are presented to us, we shrink from them, and are content to remain unchanged". (Ker, 1988, p. 95) Yet Newman made his decision, and thus began against him a storm of condemnation from family and friends, from clerics, atheists, politicians and academics. Yet in all this Newman remained steadfast: "since I made the great sacrifice, to which God called me, He has rewarded me in ten thousand ways, O how many! But he has marked my course with almost unintermittent mortification". (Ker, 1988, p. 520)

For Newman the choice became a simple, although painful one to make; either to live a lie in material comfort, and not be able to look at oneself in the mirror — or to embrace the Truth as one sees it, and live a life of harmony with one's spirit, but of adversity with the world; in sum, to live life as a rich slave or a poor free man.

Recognizing where the Truth lies in our lives is a process necessary to discover who we are, and what we were first created by God to be. For some individuals a crisis may occur on a dusty road leading to Damascus — for others, it may indeed be a racist altercation on a first class train carriage to Pietermaritzburg, or a similar event on a bus in Alabama. In any case we must discern at what point in our lives we decide to take hold of our destiny by letting go of fear, ignorance or sin, and taking hold of God. For as sin, fear and ignorance act as a millstone weighing down a man who may appear to be walking freely in a forest, so too the man who is chained and fettered by heavy iron manacles, is in fact free, if he is master of his own soul, and if he refuses to let go the grasp that he maintains over his soul. For as Plato writes in Laws V: "Of all the things a man can call his own, the holiest … is his soul, his most intimate possession". (Plato: The Complete Works, 1997, p. 1410) It is the soul which stands unashamed before God, that makes a person truly free — irrespective of the ugliness or beauty of the body that is married to it; irrespective of the circumstances in which this body finds itself.

Image Credits: The headline background image is a photograph by an anonymous photographer based in Sofia, Bulgaria sourced from stock.xchng. Click the other images for the original sources if available.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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