Abstract: This paper highlights Dostoevsky’s contrasts between the differing theodicies of Ivan Karamazov and Father Zosima in The Brother Karamazov . Dostoevsky forces the reader to consider not only their individual merits but also how to reconcile them. Ivan protests against the world and God because the presence of pernicious evil in it makes the world unlovable. However, Zosima exhorts Alyosha to love all things and to seek in rapture and ecstasy the mystical bond that connects all of reality. The way the New Testament book of Colossians describes the coherence and redemption of creation but also the elimination of pernicious evil in creation gives us a way to reconcile Zosima’s theodicy of love with Ivan’s protest theodicy.
Dennis Sansom (Mon,) studied this question.