"They Were Renewed by Love"

"How it happened he did not know.  But all at once something seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet.  He wept and threw his arms round her knees.  For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she turned pale.  She jumped up and looked at him trembling.  But at the same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her eyes.  She knew he had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the moment had come...

"They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes.  They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life.  They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other..."

One of my most memorable college classes was a course on the Christ figure in fiction, taught by Professor Bob Russell at Dartmouth in the 80s.  Bob had us reading Kazantazkis and Graham Greene and Dostoevsky's The Idiot.  I loved the course, though I was young.  And over the years, I've found my way back to the reading list.  As I live longer, and ache later into life, the great novelists on Bob's list speak to me with deeper passion and greater urgency.

Dostoevksy's Crime and Punishment wasn't on that reading list.  But re-reading it this winter, I'm persuaded that Sofya Semyonovna is something like a 'christ-like' figure in Dostoevsky's story.  In the novel's bleak landscape of pain, violence and despair, Sofya shines with courage and compassion.  She loves her family sacrificially, even though her painful choices incur the scorn of many.  She stays with Raskolnikov (who's committed murder) through his tortured journey to confession, punishment and beyond.  Her unfailing love is something like grace, a grace he cannot accept and even resents for a good while.

Interestingly, Sofya (which means "wisdom"--often the female spirit of Christ) is both lover and loved in Dostoevsky's story.  She's hardly one-dimensional.  Scorned and shunned for the choices she's made in prostitution, she is moved and encouraged and even strengthened by Raskolnikov's care.  He refuses to condemn her, as she will refuse, finally, to condemn him.  

He recognizes her purity in love, but refuses to take advantage.  In this, biblical roles are almost reversed.  She's something like Jesus whose feet are anointed by an unexpected guest at the table in John 12.  As that scandalized woman helps Jesus discern his calling, so does Raskolnikov help Sofya fully accept her calling as a 'christ-figure'--a beloved and loving embodiment of grace.

Raskolnikov confesses his crime, of course, at Sofya's urging.  She lingers in his weakness, in his indecisiveness, urging truthfulness and confession.  And when he's sent to prison in Siberia, she goes with him and makes a new life for herself in the town where he's incarcerated.  In the stunning last pages of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov is at last moved to repentance, moved by love and grace and the seeds of resurrection sown long before by Sofya.    "They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other..." 

Theosis is the Greek Orthodox notion of 'becoming like god' on the journey of faith.  It's not about perfection, and not really salvation in the Puritanical sense.  Instead, it's about the 'becoming' that comes with loving God with all heart and strength, and one's neighbor in a similar way.  It's a hugely important notion in Orthodox faith, and in Dostoevsky's writing.  It takes Raskolnikov 430 pages to taste its fruit, and it takes immeasurable suffering and dread and even loss.  It's a strange, sad and piercing struggle.  But in loving "wisdom" at last--and Sofya, his friend--he turns toward the "dawn of a new future..."  Loving Christ, he lives again.