In the following excerpt, Ward discusses "The Grand Inquisitor" as Dostoevsky's exposition of the his final Western formula—"The Pope—the leader of communism"—through the three temptations of Jesus in the Wilderness.

Dostoyevsky presents his definitive elucidation of the final Western social formula in "The Grand Inquisitor." This short writing, considered by him to be the "culminating point" of The Brothers Karamazov, can be regarded as the culmination also of his religious and political thought—his "final statement" concerning the question of human order. The importance which he attached to his critique of the West is perhaps most conclusively established by the fact that his final statement about human order is also his final statement about the West. The thought about human order contained in "The Grand Inquisitor" is of universal import. But clearly, for Dostoyevsky, this thought is at least initially...