The essence of Christianity after F.M.Dostoevsky. Miracle & Liberty.

1. The miracle

The miracle won’t be regarded here as a compulsory component of Christianity. My intent is definitely other: showing how the attitude towards it reveals the true Christian belief.
There’re essentially 2 ways: 1. from the wonder towards the divinity 2. Vice-versa. To be clear, the one who believes grace to the marvels, because he is overwhelmed and astonished by them, won’t have the true, profound vision of the higher world. He would continue living as before, as nothing changed inside, even if one will probably feel something new from the start. But this is not a pure way towards Christ. Any religion could show infinite miracles and speculate on them, so people would be easily gained by that. Thus, this belief is not a genuine Christianity.

The second way is deeply Christian as long as it begins with the revelation (that has nothing to do with miracles) so it will admit, only grace to the insight of the Godly power, the happening of the wonder. But they won’t seek them and won’t be based in their spiritual living on the unusual happenings.

We could watch out even in the Bible the hunger for miracles the society has. The gray mass needs to be testimony to such an event for being “assured” in the Godly nature of Christ. Even when Jesus is crucified they want to see him descending from the cross, for in this way, they think, he would prove his fundamental nature. Now, the true believer, the one who lives for immortality and is close to the essence would probably find this naïve and even stupid, because the divine spiritual transformation is far beyond any miracles of outside. Even if Christ would have descended then, after a while this fact would’ve been regarded as something unimportant. (For how could be explained then, the fact that he was crucified despite the so many wonders he did in front of the people?)

We have an exhaustive example in “The Karamazov Brothers”. Ivan Karamazov had composed a poem about the second arrival of Christ, which virtually has happened in the 15th Century, during the Inquisition. Here, the Inquisitor meets Jesus and talks to him. What he says is absolutely touching: after having been in the desert as anchoret, after having cleaned himself from the worldly desires and felt closer to God, he thought about the rest of mankind, the so many simple people driven by only miracles (which give them happiness, for they feel divinity closer through that) and then, renounced to God and to the saint life in favor of lying the people through wonders and making them happy this way. Ivan explains: “He is one of those who ate roots in the desert and tortured himself, triumphing over his flesh, for making himself free and perfect, but, in the same time, loving humanity his entire life, and seeing in the end that there’re millions of creatures that would never have the power to deal with their liberty…” The Inquisitor chose “hiding the mystery from the weak and unhappy people, for making them content”. The outline of his speech contains one single, essential word: freedom. He says: “You (Christ) didn’t descend from the cross back then only because you didn’t want to concern people by the miracle and desired for a free belief, but not a miraculous one” Through this – liberty enters the game, being situated between the 2 ways.

2. Liberty

Dostoevsky says: "There's nothing as great for the man as liberty of his conscience, but, also, there's nothing as torturing."
First idea, out of that, would be that liberty is a predefined state for the man, a "gift", we might say. But this is the greatest test, too - if one finds God through his own will, the reward he takes is proportional to his urge to attain divinity. Otherwise one receives nothing. But here we come into contradiction: revelation can only happen to the "chosen" ones in Christianity, and what does it mean to be "chosen"? Secondly, why do exist so many "weak and unhappy" creatures that would never find God? (as the Inquisitor says in his speech.)
Ivan talks about liberty, but we find from his words that freedom is to be attained. (The Inquisitor found it through being anchoret in the desert - but many, the majority would never attain it, as they don't owe the will for doing the same.) There's liberty on one side, and there's bread on the other, and the author points out that both liberty and bread would never happen to be sufficient sincronically.
The same could be discerned from the words of Zosima: "Perceiving the freedom as a multiplication and a quick fulfillment of needs, the man distorts his nature, because he implants in himself a lot of senseless and stupid desires, habits and absolutely brainless inventions. And thus we’ve come to a moment when man has gathered more, but happiness turned less."

Therefore:
We've lost freedom as initial state in favor of bread. Now, only those who deserve would free themselves and only those would be eligible to receive the enlightenment and true happiness.