Here is an interesting essay with comments – If there is a God, then anything is permitted. It is a response to a saying attributed to Dostoevsky to the effect that if there is not belief in God, there is no morality or restraint to evil deeds. Here is an argument for evil having been legitimised by belief either in God or some substitute justifying ideology. I don’t endorse such a point of view, but we need to study and understand it. It challenges our certitudes, and can thus only be a good thing.

What I find most fascinating is the analysis of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. It is tempting to think it is simply an attack against the Roman Catholic Church. The indictment against the Inquisitor is less about torturing people to make them conform to the Church’s teaching, but the idea that his mission is to correct Christ’s errors. Christ got it wrong by giving us freedom rather than being happy and secure under constraint and total control. In a way, Dostoevsky was a kind of “nineteenth-century George Orwell”.

If happiness is only possible through loss of freedom and the Orwelian dystopia, it would follow that the Church would follow the Devil who can give the means to end suffering caused by freedom and responsibility. In such a view, it is better for man to be ignorant. We find here the dilemma I discussed yesterday, whether we should sacrifice the weak for the strong, use the weak to make the strong stronger or base all life on compassion and self-sacrifice. Then we need to consider the purity of motives, notably that the Welfare State can be a front for greed and self-interest – for example of companies making drugs for use in bureaucracy-heavy hospitals, and the whole system being milked dry by corrupt officials, each getting his slice of the cake.

Is this not Dostoyevsky’s version of “If there is no God, then everything is prohibited”? If the gift of Christ is to make us radically free, then this freedom also brings the heavy burden of total responsibility.

The answer is not easy, but I encourage reflection and comments.