{"id":66761,"date":"2017-12-31T07:30:11","date_gmt":"2017-12-31T12:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=66761"},"modified":"2017-12-30T16:47:02","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T21:47:02","slug":"simon-critchley-the-freedom-of-faith-a-christmas-sermon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=66761","title":{"rendered":"Simon Critchley&#8211;The Freedom of Faith: A Christmas Sermon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an essay in The Times\u2019 Sunday Book Review this week the writer Paul Elie asks the intriguing question: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/12\/23\/books\/review\/has-fiction-lost-its-faith.html\">Has fiction lost its faith<\/a>? As we are gathered here today, let us consider one of the most oddly faithful of all fiction writers, Fyodor Dostoevsky. More specifically, I\u2019d like focus pretty intensely on what some consider to be the key moment in his greatest novel \u2014 arguably one of the greatest of all time \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/catalog\/world\/readfile?fk_files=1073265\">\u201cThe Brothers Karamazov.\u201d <\/a>(Elie himself notes the 1880 masterpiece as an example of the truly faith-engaged fiction of yore.) I speak in particular of the \u201cGrand Inquisitor\u201d scene, a sort of fiction within a fiction that draws on something powerful from the New Testament \u2014 Jesus\u2019s refusal of Satan\u2019s three temptations \u2014 and in doing so digs at the meaning of faith, freedom, happiness and the diabolic satisfaction of our desires.<\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/12\/23\/the-freedom-of-faith-a-christmas-sermon\">Read it all<\/a>. Be warned&#8211;this is not short and it is not light bed-time reading; it is, however, well worth the time&#8211;KSH<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an essay in The Times\u2019 Sunday Book Review this week the writer Paul Elie asks the intriguing question: Has fiction lost its faith? As we are gathered here today, let us consider one of the most oddly faithful of<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=66761\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,113,165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas","category-poetry-literature","category-theodicy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66762,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66761\/revisions\/66762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}