Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/247



Of God as the Provider.

The Theology says of Adam that God aided him, leading him toward the good, but Adam, endowed with freedom, did not wish that good and so became unhappy. After the fall and after the redemption, God has not ceased cooperating with the good in all creatures; but the creatures, through the freedom which has been given to them, do not want that good, and commit evil.

Why has God created men who commit evil and so are unhappy? Why, if God cooperates with the good in the creatures, does he cooperate so feebly that men, in spite of this cooperation, become unhappy? Why does this condition, which leads man to misfortune, persist after the redemption, which was to free him from it, and why do men, in spite of the cooperation of God the Provider, again do evil and perish? To all these simple questions there is no answer. The only answer is the word “allow.” God allows the evil. But why does he allow the evil, since he is good and almighty? To this the Theology does not reply, but carefully prepares in this chapter the way for the teaching about grace, about prayer, and, strange to say, about submission to the worldly powers.

Here is the exposition of the dogma:

“Section I. Of divine providence in general.

“96. Under the name of divine providence has since antiquity been understood that care which God has for all the beings of the world, or, as this idea is more circumstantially expressed in the Larger Christian Catechism: