Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/159

 (‘God is a Spirit, eternal, all-good, omniscient, all-just, almighty, omnipresent, unchangeable, all-sufficing to himself, all-blessed’), it at the same time remarks that God’s general properties are endless, for everything which is said in revelation about God, one in essence, in a certain sense forms the properties of the divine being. Consequently we, following the example of the church, shall limit ourselves to the analysis of some of them, the chief ones, such as more than any others characterize the. essence of God and embrace or explain the other, less perceptible properties, and such as are more clearly mentioned in the divine revelation.” (p. 102.)

The attributes of God are numberless, and so we are going to speak of some of them. But, if they are numberless, a few of them are an infinitely small part, and so it is unnecessary and impossible to speak of them. But not so judges the Theology. Not only of some, but of the chief ones among them! How can there be a chief one in an endless number? All are equally infinitely small.

“We shall speak of such as more than any other characterize the Deity.”

Characterize how? God has a character, that is, the distinction of one god from others. No, it is clear that we are talking about something else and not about God. But let us proceed.

“In order to have distinct ideas about the essential properties of God and to expound the teaching about them in a certain system, the theologians have since antiquity tried to divide them into classes, and of such. divisions, especially in the medieval and modern period, many have been invented, and all of them, though not in the same degree, have their virtues and their defects. The main reason for the latter is quite comprehensible: the attributes of the divine being, like the essence itself, are entirely incomprehensible to us. Therefore, without making a vain attempt to find any one most perfect divi-