Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/203

 this dogma, when, immediately after the article about the Tradition, there was revealed to me Art. 29, and as the crown of the whole: The relation of the dogma about the Trinity of the persons in one God to common sense,—“we shall now take the liberty to say a few words about its relation to common sense, in order, on the one hand, to overthrow the false opinions in respect to this subject, and, on the other, to point out and elucidate to ourselves the true opinion. Since antiquity there have existed two false opinions in respect to this matter. Some have asserted that the teaching of the triune God is contrary to common sense, because it is contradictory in itself, but they assert so without any foundation: (a) Christianity teaches that God is one and trine not in the selfsame relation, but in different relations, that he is one in essence, but trine in person, and gives us one conception about the divine essence, and another about the divine persons, so that these concepts in no way exclude each other: where then is the contradiction?”

Christianity gives us one conception about the essence, and another about the divine persons. That is precisely what I have been looking for, namely, what these different conceptions about the persons and the essence are, but that is not to be found anywhere. Not only is it absent, but there can be no answer, because the words ουσία and ὑπόστασις now mean something different, and now mean one and the same, and are used indiscriminately.

“If Christianity taught that God is one in essence and trine in essence, or that there are in him three persons and one, or again, that person and essence in God are identical, then there would indeed be a contradiction. But, we repeat, Christianity does not teach that, and he who does not intentionally mix the Christian conceptions of the essence and the persons in God will never think of looking for an internal contradiction in the teaching about the Holy Trinity.” (p. 204.)