Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/127

 For we walk by faith, not by sight, that is, we live. Here again nothing is said about the knowledge of God in part, but about living by faith. All these texts are adduced in order to prove that God is incomprehensible and comprehensible only in part. Again we find here an intentional mixing up of ideas. The author purposely mixes up two ideas: the comprehensibility of the existence of God and the comprehensibility of God himself. When we speak of the beginning of everything, of God, we evidently recognize and comprehend his existence. But when we speak of God’s essence, we obviously cannot comprehend that. Why then prove that he is comprehensible in part? If nothing in the world is completely comprehensible to us, then it is evident that God, the beginning of all beginnings, is absolutely incomprehensible. Why prove it? and why prove it in such a strange manner, by adducing incorrect words from John, which prove that no man has ever seen God, and inexact words from Paul, which refer to something quite different, to the proof of the comprehensibility of God in part?

These strange texts and the strange proofs arise from this, that the word “comprehensibility” is used here and elsewhere in a double sense: in its natural sense of understanding and in the sense of knowledge taken on trust. If the author had understood comprehensibility as comprehensibility, he would not have tried to prove that we comprehend God in part, but would have admitted at once that we cannot comprehend him; but he understands here by the word “comprehensibility” knowledge taken on faith, purposely mixing up this conception with the conception of the recognition of the existence of God. And so it turns out with him that we can comprehend God in part. When he adduces the text about our comprehending God through his creations, he has in mind the recognition of God’s existence; but when he quotes the text that “God spoke to the fathers through