Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/173

 part. Here it says that the essence and the essential properties of God are not distinguished or divided, and immediately on p. 147 it says:

“The essence and the essential properties of God, without being distinguished or divided between themselves in fact, are, none the less, distinguished in our ratiocination, and not without foundation in God himself, so that the concept of any one property of his is not at the same time a concept of his essence, or a concept of any other property.” (p. 147.)

This proposition, in the author’s opinion, necessarily results from Holy Scripture, and there are quoted the words of Basil the Great that “our distinctions of the divine properties are not merely purely subjective, no, their foundation is in God himself, in his various manifestations, actions, relations to himself, such as the creation and providence, though in himself God is one, simple, uncompounded.” (p. 149.)

Do you imagine that this palpable contradiction of the holy fathers is accidentally collated? Do you think that it is solved in any way? Not in the least. That is precisely what the author needs, and in that lies the meaning of this 22d article. It begins like this:

“This question has been raised in the church since antiquity, but especially during the Middle Ages, both in the West and the East, and in solving it men have frequently fallen into extremes. The first extreme assumes that between the essence and the essential properties of God, as well as between the properties themselves, there is a real difference (τῷ πράγματι, realis), so that the properties form in God something distinct from the essence and from each other; the other extreme, on the contrary, affirms that the essence and all the essential properties of God are absolutely identical among themselves, and that they are not separated, either in fact, or even in our ratiocination (ἐπίνοια νοήσει, cogitatione).” (p. 144.)