Dostoevsky portrait circa 1872. Photo: By Vasily Perov.
Witness to truth: Dostoevsky and George Fox had something in common, says Jonathan Wooding
‘They were both seeking to re-discover an authentic source of religious authority.’
When Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist responsible for Crime and Punishment, wrote about ‘truth’, he meant, rather confusingly, something like ‘the political and ecclesiastical reality of nineteenth century Europe’, and not the truth that, say, early Quakers (Friends of Truth) were seeking and proclaiming. He wrote in a letter of 1854: ‘If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.’ This version of Christ, one can be fairly confident in saying, however, is reminiscent of ‘the inward Light’ or ‘the Seed’, offered up by George Fox. Both Dostoevsky and Fox were seeking to re-discover an authentic source of religious authority – a new religiosity. Both, it seems, were hard-pressed to distinguish themselves from the revolutionaries and ranters on the one side, and the royalists and theocrats on the other.
