Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/133

 Texts are quoted, and of these some deny the comprehensibility of God, and the others recognize it. It was necessary either to reject one or the other, or to harmonize them. Theology does neither the one, nor the other, nor the third, but simply enunciates that everything which is to follow on the attributes of the divisions of God according to his essence and his persons is the truth, because thus teaches the infallible church, that is, the Tradition. Thus, as in the first case, in discussing the Introduction, all the reasoning appears unnecessary, and all is brought down to this, that whatever is going to be expounded is the truth, because the church teaches it; even thus all the reasoning is unnecessary now, because the foundation of the whole doctrine is the infallible church.

But here, in addition to this repeated method, for the first time appears the teaching of the church itself, the code of that doctrine, and in it we find an absence of unity,—it contradicts itself.

In the Introduction, the foundation of everything was assumed to be the church, that is, the tradition of the men who were united through the tradition, but there I did not yet know how this tradition was expressed. Here appears the Tradition itself, that is, extracts from Holy Scripture, and these extracts contradict each other and are connected by nothing but words.

As I said in the beginning, I believed that the church was the carrier of truth. After having worked through the seventy-three pages of the Introduction and the exposition of how the church teaches about the dogmas and the incomprehensibility of God, I, to my sorrow, convinced myself that the exposition of the subject was inexact, and that into the exposition were accidentally or intentionally introduced irregular discussions about (1) the dogma being an absolute truth and at the same time the instruction in that which the church regards as truth, (2) that the announcement through the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus