Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/158

 words: Anathema on those who say that God is not spirit, but flesh!”

That ends all we know about the substance of God, namely, that he is a spirit. What is the deduction from all that? That God is not an essence, but a spirit: all that results from the conception of God, and all believers cannot help thinking otherwise. This is partly confirmed by this article. But, in addition to that, we have the statement that this spirit is something special, separate, almost incomprehensible. In this verbal blending of the contradictions consists the subject matter of Art. 18. What the purpose is, appears clearly from the following 18th article.

“18. The idea of the essential properties of God,—their number and division.—The essential properties in God (τὰ οὐσιώδη ἰδιώματα, proprietates essentiales), or, in one word (ἀξιώματα, δόγματα, ἐπιτηδεύματα, attributa, perfectiones), are such as belong to the divine essence alone and distinguish him from all other beings, and so they are properties which are equally applicable to all the persons of the Holy Trinity, who form one in their essence, for which reason they are also called general divine properties (ἰδιώματα κοινά) in contradistinction to special or personal attributes (τὰ προσωπικὰ ἰδιώματα, proprietates personales), which belong to each person of the Deity taken separately and thus distinguish them among themselves.” (p. 102.)

It turns out that God, a simple spirit, has properties which distinguish him from all other beings. More than that: in addition to the general, divine attributes, there are others, which distinguish the same God in the three persons, though nothing has as yet been said about what the Trinity, and what a person is.

“It is impossible to define the number of essential or common properties of God. Though the church, in giving us a sound idea about God, mentions some of these