Dostoevsky? Hmmmmm....

The Guardian interviews the ABC about his new book, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction.

Cross purposes
His job is to try to hold the Anglican church together through its darkest days for centuries. So why on earth did the Archbishop of Canterbury take last summer off to write about Dostoevsky? He told Stuart Jeffries

Stuart Jeffries

The Guardian, Wednesday October 8 2008

Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA 'There's something about Richard Dawkins which is endearing', says Rowan Williams.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will face questions for only half an hour. So there won't be time to ask him about gay bishops, his touching fondness for early Incredible String Band songs or eyebrow grooming.

Instead, we must focus on his book Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction. It's a learned literary-theological study that suggests not only do the great Russian's novels have a kenotic dimension (kenosis, roughly, is the spiritual emptying of one's will to become receptive to God) but also stresses what Russian Christianity inherited from the apophatic tradition (apophasis, roughly, is an inductive technique used by eastern Christians to demonstrate God's existence). So I scratch the question about who would win a beard-off between him and Dostoevsky.

Instead, I ask why Rowan Williams took three months off last summer to write this book. What is the relevance of Dostoevsky for us Mammon-obsessed westerners in a credit crunch? And is the book the archbishop's riposte to all those monsters of triumphalist atheism such as Richard Dawkins, AC Grayling and Christopher Hitchens?

( Find out... )