crime and punishment and grace
finishing dostoevsky on easter sunday
Happy Easter, everyone! The Lord is risen indeed.
It was a perfect Easter weekend in the Coffman house. Friday was snowy and bleak (and our kids were sick). Saturday was slightly better (as were my kids). Sunday was glorious (and people were healthy). It was perfect Easter weather. Green has returned to our property. New life awaits. Well-timed, Paschal full moon.
One of the coolest parts of my resurrection Sunday was finishing Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. It’s my third time through the book, so I can’t exactly claim to be surprised by the ending. But it gets me every time, and I pray that it always does so.
*****Spoiler alerts follow for a novel published the year after the American Civil War concluded.*****
The book’s main character, a sickly and nihilistic former university student named Rodion Raskolnikov, is hard to bear. And that’s true even before he murders two old women in cold blood.
Raskolnikov is imprisoned by an idea: he theorizes that a Great Man ought to be able to commit crimes with impunity because of his greatness. What’s the life of a pawnbroker to a future Napoleon? There is, it must be admitted, some inconsistency in the way we think about these things. We are pretty forgiving of “great” men, to the point where I think the concept ought to be quietly retired. There is only one great man.
Raskolnikov quickly finds out that he is no Napoleon. He panics after the crime, hides the loot under a rock, and has a tendency to pass out or become flustered anytime someone mentions the crime around him. Not a great poker face. Oh yeah, and he also wrote an article before his crime about how great men should be able to murder the little people. It’s not exactly If I Did It material, but it’s definitely confession-adjacent.
And, it must be said, the dude is insufferable. He’s arrogant and alienating. He demeans people. He rejects kindness and is blind to the love and graciousness around him. Yet, he is also kind, at times. He is generous. He gives money away to a distressed widow so she can host a funeral for her alcoholic, abusive, and newly dead husband. The book proper ends with his confession. He finally admits to his crimes.
The Epilogue picks up 18 months later. Raskolnikov is serving an eight-year sentence of hard labor in Siberia. His sister has married his best friend, Razumikhin. They are plotting a move to Siberia to be close to Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov has been followed to Siberia by a woman named Sonya, the daughter of the dead alcoholic and a prostitute. She ingratiates herself with the other prisoners, who all love her, and she has pledged their devotion to Raskolnikov.
By this point, we are 549 pages into a novel, and Raskolnikov’s redemption arc seems very incomplete. He is still sullen and despondent.
And then, grace enters Raskolnikov’s life. Here is how Dostoevsky describes the moment, while the convict is out walking with Sonya:
How it happened he himself did not know, but suddenly it was as if something lifted him and flung him down at her feet. He wept and embraced her knees. For the first moment she was terribly frightened, and her whole face went numb. She jumped up and looked at him, trembling. Infinite happiness lit up in her eyes; she understood, and for her there was no longer any doubt that he loved her, loved her infinitely, and that at last the moment had come. . . They were resurrected by love; the heart of each help infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.
Grace is strange. In one sense, everything changes in a moment. In another, the recipient embarks on a long struggle of redemption, which Christianity calls sanctification.
Later that day, Raskolnikov is tormented by guilt over his previous actions, including the way he had treated Sonya. The book ends with him finding a copy of the Gospels she gave to him earlier in the book. He doesn’t open it or read a word, but he reflects to himself, “Can her convictions not be my convictions now? Her feelings, her aspirations, at least. . .”
The novel ends with the narrator reflecting on Raskolnikov’s altered spiritual state:
At the beginning of their happiness there were moments when they were both ready to look at those seven years as if they were seven days. He did not even know that a new life would not be given him for nothing, that it still had to be dearly bought, to be paid for with a great future deed. . .
But here begins a new account, the account of a man’s gradual renewal, the account of his gradual regeneration, his gradual transition from one world to another, his acquaintance with a new, hitherto completely unknown reality. It might make the subject of a new story—but our present story is ended.
Grace is mischievous like this. It alters everything in an instant, but it also demands a lifetime of repentance and growth and work. Christians believe that God saved us by grace for good works. He wants us to glorify Christ through what we do.
Crime and Punishment II, if Dostoevsky had ever written it, would have been a much different story. The first edition involves, well, crime and punishment and concludes with the inbreaking of grace. The second edition would narrate Raskolnikov’s back-and-forth, sin-and-repent, grow-and-recede life of becoming more like his Savior.