The ultimate limits of man

Eduard Tourneisen (1888-1974), pastor of the Evangelical Church in German-speaking Switzerland, studies the works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky and grasps his meaning. Inspired by Tourneisen, Karl Barth reads Dostoyevsky, gets excited and transmits his thoughts in his own writings. The meeting of both of them with Dostoyevsky led them, in their ignorance, to be imbued with the teaching of Abba Isaac the Syrian, which is pervasive in Dostoyevsky's work.

"Dostoyevsky's works are full of a message, full of indications for the absolute final transformation towards the transformation of everything on earth, towards the emergence of ultimate answers, towards a truly eternal life. Clues and message, nothing more! Dostoyevsky is not a romantic. In order to defend the purity, the meaning and the power of this ultimate conversion, he resisted, more than anything else, every effort, so that this exclusively divine possibility could become a human possibility again. This effort means deceiving God".