The Idiot

Is the perfect Christian nothing more than an idiot?

Dostoevsky’s sketch of the prince.

The protagonist in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The idiot, is his portrayal of the perfect Christian - of the positively good and completely beautiful human being. This man, prince Myshkin, represents true Christian love in contrast to Russian society and the world at large.

Dostoevsky wrote the novel in 1867, having fled Russia to escape his creditors. He was living with his new wife Anna in extreme poverty, largely because of his alcohol and gambling affiliations.¹ Financial circumstances were so dire that Anna apparently pawned her underwear.² Dostoevsky knew well what perfection does not look like.

The Idiot tells the story of the prince’s life when he travels to Russia over his 27^th birthday. It maps how the prince responds to the world, and how the world responds to him.

The novel piqued my interest because I heard that it is about a perfect Christian, yet he is called an idiot. Is this not one of our greatest fears, to realize that all I have been striving for turns out to be in vain, or worse, to my detriment? To realize that I am far from the party. If I do the absolute best in my mind, am I just an idiot?

I initially had a page of adjectives to describe the prince’s character. It is easier to rather say this: the prince possessed all the obvious Christian virtues that come to mind. A friend of his says, ‘Prince, you are the ideal of nobility! What are other men beside you?’ The less obvious Christian virtues that he possessed are, however, worth focusing on.

The prince laughs easily. He says, ‘you can still laugh like a child, you know?’ On many occasions he was ready to laugh at anything. And what comes with this is his ability to have a ‘rollicking good time’, to be ‘drunk with happiness’, to be garrulous, and perhaps often a little too calm. Others say, ‘He was so happy that one could not help feeling happy looking at him.’ And he says, ‘what do my grief and my troubles matter, if I have the power to be happy? … Every blade of grass grows and is happy!’

The prince is childlike. He is drawn to the company of children, and in his troubles, his help is to remember his childhood. He says, ‘it is through children that the soul is cured.’ Being with children, he forgot all about his hardships.

He is never afraid.

The prince has an extraordinary craving for solitude. He desires to run away and to be alone, but he knows not where. His place is not in society. ‘What banquet was it, what grand everlasting festival, to which he had long felt drawn, always – ever since he was a child, and which he could never join?’ He is aloof. No one knows what he’s after. He’s not all there. He doesn’t belong.

The prince is a deep thinker. ‘A great thought, as great as the universe, dwells in his eyes, his face is sad.’ He has never been able to cope with the cravings of his heart. He longs to find his motherland.

He is self-effacing, unselfconscious, and he doesn’t take offence. He’s not so simple as people make him out to be. Someone describes him as the cleverest man in the world. People want to be friends with him.

And yet in spite of these admirable qualities, the prince is an idiot. He is described as clumsy, ridiculous, strange, inexperienced, and simple. He gets cheated by most characters in the book… ‘anyone who wished could deceive him, and that whoever deceived him, he would forgive afterwards, and that is why I fell in love with him.’ The prince’s closest friend steals his bride on the wedding day. Many of his friends end up turning against him.

But he doesn’t mind being called an idiot. He doesn’t mind being cheated.

Dostoevsky communicates many of his philosophical ideas in the novel. The prince thinks that beauty will save the world. I understand this as the beauty of a family eating dinner together, of two lovers walking by a river, of a long-awaited sunrise, will save the world. In a deeper sense, the beauty of Christ’s character and truth has already saved the world.

In one scene, the prince sees a painting of Hans Holbein’s. It shows Jesus’ body in the tomb.

The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb.

There is no trace of beauty. The prince says that looking at it could make one lose their faith. ‘How could they have possibly believed that that martyr would rise again? … I mustn’t be too quick to condemn a man who has sold his Christ.’ Another character, who represents atheism and nihilism, posits that the painting represents the triumph of a blind natural force over everything, including the perfect and beautiful.

Christ’s eyes and mouth remain open. No one bothered to close them. Perhaps this is Holbein’s message to us that Jesus still speaks and sees through death.³ Perhaps he was emphasizing the brutality and finality of a crucifixion.

Dostoevsky saw this painting in 1867, and Anna had to drag him away from it.⁴ He saw in it the fortitude that Christians must have in facing the realities of nature and death - in facing real challenges to our faith.

The novel’s melancholic themes are trumped by optimism and hope. At one point, a character suffering from a fatal illness exclaims, ‘whose fault is it that they are unhappy and do not know how to live, though they have sixty years of life ahead of them? … He is alive, so everything’s in his power! Whose fault is it if he doesn’t understand that? … I cling to life, and I wanted to live come what may.’

Like many today, Dostoevsky thought that people have ‘grown flabby.’ What would he say now! The prince says, ‘show me an idea that binds mankind together today with half the strength that it had in those centuries.’ His advice to us is to focus more on less ideas, instead of loosely following many ideas. The prince focused on one idea, and that was Jesus.

Reflecting on the prince’s character, I conclude that while he appeared to be an idiot, he wasn’t one in reality. The Biblical heroes often appeared idiotic. Moses in front of the Red Sea, Daniel in the lion’s den, David in front of Goliath, and lest I say, Jesus on the cross.

But they were by no means idiots. The fact that people saw Jesus as an idiot says nothing about Him, but only about them. Perfection, Holiness, Humility, and Greatness might well be called idiotic by imperfection, sin, arrogance, and smallness.

Christ calls us to be as wise as serpents.⁵ He doesn’t call us to be idiots. But we are told that we will be persecuted if we live a Godly life in Jesus Christ.⁶ Christ was born in a stable. He grew up in a farming village. He was rejected by His own people. He was cheated to death by His best friend. He died alongside criminals.

But Jesus lived the perfect life. He was ‘one with God.’⁷ He is the most influential person and the greatest ‘thinker’ to ever live, despite what people thought of Him. Jesus’ life shows Christians that we will appear to be idiots, and we will suffer for His name. But that is very different from being idiots.

Either Jesus was the Messiah, or He was a madman. He could never have been just a spiritual teacher, because what spiritual teacher would proclaim to be God?

Christ’s life reveals the paradox of Messiah appearing as madman, of ultimate wisdom appearing as idiocy, of ultimate surrender appearing as weakness, and of ultimate life leading to death.

We acknowledge the inevitability of death. We acknowledge that Jesus was, in the realest sense of the word, dead. But that was all that this blind force could do to Him. God took death’s most powerful weapon and turned it into the greatest force for good on record. Jesus is, in the realest sense of the word, alive.

Indeed, beauty will save the world. It already has. And we all have a main part to play in this beauty: ‘my worthless life, the life of an atom, may simply have been needed for the completion of some universal harmony…’

We are all personally invited to the grand everlasting festival. Jesus has welcomed us to our motherland, and it is in His presence.

1. Morson, Gary Saul, “‘The Idiot’ savant.” The New Criterion. 36 (10). 2018.

2. Joel J Miller, ‘Russian Roulette: The Woman Who Bet on Dostoevsky’, 2022.

3. Onfray, Michel. ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521) Archived 2009-05-13 at the Wayback Machine.’ Tate Etc., 2006.

4. Onfray, Michel. ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521) Archived 2009-05-13 at the Wayback Machine.’ Tate Etc., 2006.

5. Matthew 10:16

6. 2 Timothy 3:11-12

7. John 17:20-23