Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/215

 created the world not from eternity, but in time, or together with time.” (p. 360.)

The farther one reads the book, the more one has to marvel. It looks as though the problem and purpose of the book consisted in keeping out rational comprehension, not the comprehension of the divine mysteries, but simply the comprehension of what is being said. I can imagine a man who admits that God created the world. Well, what more do you want? He does not care to inquire any farther into the teaching. No, they demand of him that he should recognize that the world is created not from something, but from nothing, not from eternity, but in time. On this point there is a controversy, and it is proved to him that the world was created in time or, more correctly, with time. “Prescience or predetermination were in God before existence.” It says, “At one time the world did not exist,” that is, it says, if God’s prescience be admitted, that when there was no time, God knew the future. And when it says, “At one time the world did not exist,” and time did not exist, it says that there was time (for “at one time” means time) when there was no time. And when it says that “God created time,” it says (since the verb is used in the past tense), there was a time when God created time.

57. The world was created by all three persons. This is proved by Holy Scripture, and is expressed thus:

“The Father created the world through the Son in the Holy Ghost;” or “everything is from the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost;” however, not in the sense that the Son and the Holy Ghost performed some instrumental and slavish service at the creation, but that constructively they performed the Father’s will. (p. 365.)

58. The manner of the creation. The world was created (1) through reason, (2) through willing, and (3) through the word:

“God created the world according to his eternal ideas