Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/128

 the prophets” and then “through the Son,” he has in mind the knowledge which is taken on faith, as we shall see later on. For the same reason he quotes Paul’s text, that “we walk by faith,” as a proof of comprehensibility, by which he means the knowledge taken on faith. By comprehensibility the author does not understand a more or less firm conviction of the existence of God, but a greater or lesser quantity of knowledge about God, though entirely incomprehensible, taken on faith. Farther on he says:

“The holy fathers and the teachers of the church have disclosed this truth in detail, especially in reference to the heretical opinions which have arisen in regard to it.”

The heretical opinions consist, in the author’s opinion, in this, that God is entirely comprehensible and absolutely incomprehensible; but the truth, in the author’s opinion, consists in this, that God is incomprehensible, and at the same time comprehensible in part. Although the word “in part” is not at all used in what the author is talking about, and has not even external authority; although the word, in the sense in which it is used here, is not even used in Holy Scripture, the author insists that God is comprehensible in part, meaning by it that he is known in part. How can something comprehensible be known fully or in part? There is an exposition of two opinions of what is supposed to be extreme heresy: of those who maintained that God was absolutely comprehensible, and of others who maintained that God was absolutely incomprehensible, and both opinions are rejected and an argument is adduced in favour of comprehensibility and incomprehensibility. In reality, it is clear that neither opinion, about the absolute comprehensibility and the absolute incomprehensibility, has ever been expressed, or ever could be expressed. In all these seeming arguments pro and con we find this expressed, that God, by the very fact that he is mentioned, that he is thought and spoken of,