Download - Plough

Dostoyevsky is to me both the greatest novelist, as such,and the greatest Christian storyteller, in particular, of all time.His plots and characters pinpoint the sublimity, perversity, meanness,and misery of fallen human adulthood in an archetypal waymatched only by Aeschylus and Shakespeare, while his dramaticvision of God’s amazing grace and of the agonies, Christ’s andours, that accompany salvation, has a range and depth that onlyDante and Bunyan come anywhere near. Dostoyevsky’s immediateframe of reference is Eastern Orthodoxy and the culturalturmoil of nineteenth-century Russia, but his constant theme isthe nightmare quality of unredeemed existence and the heartbreakingglory of the incarnation, whereby all human hurts cameto find their place in the living and dying of Christ the risenRedeemer. In the passages selected here, a supersensitive giant ofthe imagination projects a uniquely poignant vision of the plightof man and the power of God. If it makes you weep and worship,you will be the better for it. If it does not, that will show that youhave not yet seen what you are looking at, and you will be wise toread the book again.Regent College, VancouverJ. I. Packervii