Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881) by Vasily Perov
Very few have looked into the near-infinite abyss of evil as deeply as the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. And no one, ever, has produced a finer statement of atheism than the one he put in the mouth of Ivan, the middle brother in his masterwork Brothers Karamazov.
Yet Dostoevsky himself believed. Faith certainly did not come easy for him; it required hand-to-hand combat with unbelief. On one occasion he remarked, “It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.”
