Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/183

 That is the very reason why I thirst so much, if not for an explanation, at least for an expression which would be comprehensible. If it is entirely incomprehensible, there can be no answer.

“We saw a number of incomprehensible things when we expounded the doctrine about God one in essence and about his essential attributes, especially about his self-existence, eternity, omnipresence.” (p. 167.)

There was nothing incomprehensible about that. All those were expressions from various sides of the first concept about the existence of God,—a concept which is familiar to every believer in God. These expressions were for the most part incorrectly used, but there was nothing incomprehensible in them.

“Many incomprehensible things shall we also see later on, in disclosing the dogma of the incarnation and person of our Saviour, about his death on the cross, about the ever-virginity of the Mother of God, about the action of grace upon us, and so on. But the mystery of Christian mysteries is indisputably the dogma about the Most Holy Trinity just as there are three persons in one God, so the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, however not three Gods, but one God,—all this surpasses all understanding.” (p. 157.)

That is precisely what I want to know. A father of the church says:

“What manner of reasoning, what power and might of the intellect, what vivacity of the mind and perspicacity of imagination will show me—‘How does the Trinity exist?’ And in another place: ‘However, what it is, is unspeakable; no tongue of the angels, much less of men, can explain it.’” (p. 157.)

The Trinity is God. What is God and how does he exist? that surpasses my imagination. But if the essence of God surpasses my understanding, I can know nothing about the essence of God. But if we know that