4. Can a man judge his fellow creatures? — Zossima believes that no one can judge a criminal. First, one must recognize that no man is only a criminal, and perhaps more than all other men, the seemingly innocent, and not the allegedly guilty, is most to blame for whatever crime has been committed. Alyosha uses such a theory when he refuses to judge Dmitri; furthermore, during his brother's trial, he forgives him. From a realistic point of view, Zossima's views on the criminal are too ideal. Zossima would allow a criminal to go free and hope that he would come to condemn his acts. Such idealism is touchingly naive.
And with the same sort of idealism, Zossima advocates kissing the earth, "love it with an unceasing, consuming love." Love of the mother earth, one might note, is central to many of Dostoevsky's novels. In Crime and Punishment, the murderer Raskolnikov is told to go and bow down to the earth, which he has defiled because of his crime. In the poem from Schiller that Dmitri often recites, there is a hymn of praise for the earthly existence. In total loving, then — loving even the earth — Zossima says that man can realize an ecstasy that is a "gift of God," not given to many but certainly to the elect. The ideal of a spiritual elite is foreign to Ivan's thinking, but Zossima believes in such a minority and stresses that they should be proud of being elect; their examples will lead others to God's light.
5. Of hell and hell fire, a mystic reflection. — Zossima's views on this subject do not conform with the orthodox views of the church. Later Ferapont will allude to this fact when he drives the devils from Zossima's cell. Zossima absolutely does not believe in a material hellfire, one that burns and punishes. To him, hell is spiritual agony, growing out of the inner conscience of the damned. If there were material punishment, he says, it would alleviate the spiritual punishment because of its intense physical pain. The greater punishment, the spiritual punishment, is the sinner's recognition that he is forever separated from God. Zossima strays even further from the teachings of the church by his prayers for the condemned. He prays for them because "love can never be an offense to Christ."
