“The Double” and Romans 7

The Double is one of the earlier and shorter novels of the Russian novelist Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky is a great man not only of literature but also of psychiatry and theology. His descriptions of disturbed people in his novels were so accurate and dramatic that Freud could not read Dostoevsky—he found the characters too disturbingly like his own patients. In many ways Dostoevsky anticipated what is called “depth psychology.”

On the theological side he had an important influence on Thurneysen (who has written a book on Dostoevsky) and Barth. It was Dostoevsky who enabled the neo-orthodox theologians to see the complexity and depth of man’s depravity, and what they saw was an interesting supplement to the kind of view of man they had found in Kierkegaard. Dostoevsky’s view of man was far more pessimistic than the views advanced by the religious liberalism that was cresting in popularity in the early part of the twentieth century.

In The Double, Golyadkin, a clerk, in what seems to be a government office, feels extremely insecure about retaining his job. He is a highly nervous person. His emotions are always at a high pitch, and he continually over-reacts. He takes every remark or event in the office personally. He is hyper-active and rushes hither and thither about town. He is erratic: starting out on one errand, he shifts to another, on his way to see one person, he changes his mind and goes to see a second—or perhaps even changes his mind again and visits a third. Or he might quit in the midst of his trip and rush back home. He spends his money very impulsively, always concerned lest someone get the impression that he has a menial job with a menial salary.

Then in the midst of this frantic desire to be sure he does his job right, is in solid with the head clerk, and need have no fear of the man in the head office (“his Excellency”), his double—his identical twin—is hired. His double immediately gets on the “inside” in the office. The chief clerk likes him, the other clerks respect him, and he is even called into the office of “his Excellency” for consultation. Golyadkin Two, as Dostoevsky calls him, does everything the way Golyadkin One wants to do it.

What has happened is that in his intense anxiety about doing his job well and retaining it, Golyadkin is suffering from hallucinations. He actually has a form of schizophrenia (“the split mind,” or “the split self”). The imaginary double is everything the real Golyadkin wants to be. And Dostoevsky reveals his genius by not telling us when Golyadkin is perceiving reality and when he is hallucinating. Golyadkin goes in and out of his hallucinations with such ease or bewilderment that the reader cannot always distinguish the boundaries and may even begin to wonder if he may at times be as much out of touch with reality as Golyadkin was.

For my money The Double is the best commentary I have ever read on Romans 7. Just as Dostoevsky speaks of a Golyadkin One and a Golyadkin Two, there is in this passage of Scripture a Paul One and a Paul Two.

Romans 7 is a controversial chapter. One group of interpreters thinks that Paul is talking of his preconversion experience with the law and that therefore the chapter is not immediately about Christian experience. The second group takes it as a spiritual struggle of Paul as a Christian as he finds his way experientially from being crucified and risen with Christ in Romans 6 to the life in the Spirit of Romans 8. I accept the second interpretation, for the whole discussion from Romans 6:1 on is about the Christian man and his sanctification. Romans 7 is a very important segment of that discussion and reflects genuine Christian experience. What Christian who has taken the call to sanctification seriously does not recognize himself and his struggles in Romans 7?

(Before going on to the following commentary, the reader would do well to read Romans 7 two or three times, perhaps in different translations.)

Let us now zero in on the point. How does The Double so beautifully illustrate Romans 7?

First, Golyadkin has an intense desire to please “his Excellency,” and the intensity of this desire is at the root of his hallucination. Paul writes: “I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self” (Rom. 7:22). If there is anything that characterizes Paul, it is unbounded spiritual intensity. In First Corinthians 9:24–27, he tells how he likens himself to an athlete who in training subjects himself to the severest exercises and rules. In Philippians 3:15 he pictures himself as a racer bearing down on the finish line with all his energy. It is spiritual intensity that precipitates the kind of conflict of the “I’s” recorded in Romans 7.

Second, Golyadkin engages in a series of frantic activities in order to save face, impress his supervisor, correct his errors, and keep his record with “his Excellency” impeccable. One cannot read Romans 7 without seeing the enormous effort Paul must have put forth in his struggle to please “his Excellency in Heaven”—to fulfill the law of God as he understood it. Like Golyadkin he was on pins and needles wondering if he were pleasing his master.

Third, there is a strong parallel between Golyadkin One and Two, and Paul One and Two. Golyadkin One makes a mess of everything. He tries too hard. He offends people. He does stupid or erratic things. In the end he manages to get himself fired. Golyadkin Two is the perfect clerk, and he is on good terms with the other clerks, the supervisor, and “his Excellency.”

There are two Pauls. There is the Paul who cannot do what he wants to do; there is the other Paul who does the evil he knows is wrong. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (v. 15). There is in Paul One the law of the mind that wants to do the will of God, the right; and there is in Paul Two the desire to please the flesh. Hence in the one Paul are two laws making two Pauls (vv. 21–23). How well Paul and Golyadkin interpret each other at this point!

Fourth, the most unusual thing about Golyadkin’s psychological illness (a point Dostoevsky brings off with consummate skill) is that Golyadkin never really knows what is illusion and what is reality. He feverishly writes a letter, but in the morning there is no letter. He gives his servant an order to go and do something, and when the servant returns he has done something very different on what he claims were Golyadkin’s orders. So skillfully does Dostoevsky weave this pattern of transit from rationality to hallucination and back to rationality that even the reader cannot decide which is which.

Paul wrote: “I do not understand my own actions” (v. 15). Paul One and Paul Two move back and forth from the “old man” to the “new man,” from the “law of God” to the “law of sin and death,” and from spirit to flesh so that Paul does not know the points of transition. Do I hate or is it righteous indignation? Am I sinning or enjoying the fruits of creation? Am I spiritually meticulous or have I lapsed into pharisaism? Is my appetite for something a normal desire or am I rationalizing about sin? Paul One and Paul Two mesh into each other so that Paul himself doesn’t know which is which. He concludes this discussion with the greatest lament of his entire writings: “Wretched man that I am.… I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh” (vv. 14, 18).

Both Dostoevsky and Paul reveal the complexity of man’s depravity and the complications in the quest for holiness. What mature Christian has not occasionally felt, “I’m in Romans 7 again”? Or what Christian after years of Christian experience has not done something very wrong and cried out, “Wretched man that I am!” How well so many of us know that we can’t get to Romans 8 without going through Romans 7. How we rebel against over-simplifications of the Christian life, against unrealistic assessments of the battle for spirituality, against pious counsel that fails to come anywhere near the depths of Romans 7, against the superficial phrase from the mouth of one who has never seen his double. If you want a profound experience, read and study Romans 7 for a week and then read Dostoevsky’s The Double.

Yet Paul is not permanently stuck with the schizophrenic life of Paul One versus Paul Two. As we move into the eighth chapter, a third law is introduced: the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). The Double ends tragically. Romans 7 merges into the victory of Romans 8. Golyadkin ends a confirmed schizophrenic; Paul escapes the spiritual schizophrenia of Romans 7 by the power of the Holy Spirit revealed in chapter 8. The Christian does experience profound spiritual disorder, but he also enjoys the victory of the power of God in the Holy Spirit. Here is where Golyadkin and Paul part company.

Bernard Ramm is professor of systematic theology at American Baptist Seminary of the West, Covina, California. He holds the Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and is the author of about a dozen books.

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