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Strauss’s Machiavelli and Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor1 4 5betraying thus its founding principles. The indicators of this transformation,according to Dostoyevsky, were the acquisition of temporal power by the popeand his proclamation of universal jurisdiction over the church, later followedby the proclamation of infallibility. While, ever since, the Roman CatholicChurch has pursued its ambition of establishing a universal empire ruled bythe pope, Eastern Orthodoxy has continued to pursue the initial Christian“utopia,” with the belief that one day the utopia will triumph over all theworld, a belief that persists despite the awareness expressed by Father Zosimathat “Christian society is not yet ready for this and merely stands upon theshoulders of the seven men of honest report.” 113 Dostoyevsky declares his ownadherence in the Diary of a Writer to this “Utopia”: “If the belief in this ‘newword’ which may be uttered by Russia, heading united Orthodoxy, is a ‘Utopia’worthy of nothing but ridicule,” then “let people class me, too, amongthese Utopians.” 114 In the same work, Dostoyevsky summarizes the differencesbetween Eastern and Western Christianity: on one hand, “we have inthe Eastern ideal—first the spiritual communion of mankind in Christ, andthereafter, in consequence of the spiritual unity of all men in Christ and as anunchallenged deduction therefrom—a just state and social communion.” Onthe other hand, “in the Roman interpretation we have a reverse situation: firstit is necessary to achieve firm state unity in the form of a universal empire,and only after that, perhaps, spiritual fellowship under the rule of the Pope asthe potentate of this world.” 115The idea that political power, not Christian love, is the basis for solidsocial unity is, of course, a Machiavellian idea. Thus, Dostoyevsky appearsas an antimodern Christian utopianist. Moreover, like Machiavelli, Dostoyevskyblames the loss of faith in the West on Christianity’s departurefrom its founding principles, or otherwise said, on Christianity’s Machiavellianization,as reflected in the papacy’s blessing “of every means for Christ’scause.” 116 In this sense, for Dostoyevsky, as for Strauss, modernity begins with113Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov, 90.114Dostoyevsky, Diary, 1:365. Dostoyevsky’s so-called utopianism has led some to claim that hisreligious thought is marked by chiliasm. But, in accordance with the Orthodox concept of deification(theosis), Dostoyevsky simply insists that by virtue of the unity of transcendence and immanencein Christ, Christian devotion to transcendence brings with it the transfiguration of immanence, asopposed to secular antitheological devotion to immanence which leads to nihilism and dehumanization.For the conformity of Dostoyevsky’s views with Orthodox theology see Richard S. Haugh, “ACritique of the Dostoevsky and Hawthorne Comparison” and “Dostoyevsky’s Vision of the GoldenAge and Human Freedom,” in Theology and Literature, vol. 11 of The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky,ed. Richard S. Haugh (Belmont, MA: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1989), 168, 182, 186.115Dostoyevsky, Diary, 2:728–29.116Ibid., 2:911.