Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/260

 ness and their interpretation of the words of Scripture. The dogmas which are expounded here are: (1) the dogma of the redemption, (2) the dogma of the incarnation, (3) the dogma of the manner of redemption, (4) the dogma of the church, (5) the dogma of grace, (6) the dogma of the mysteries, (7) the dogma of the particular retribution, (8) the dogma of the general judgment and of the end of the world. All these dogmas are answers to questions which a man seeking the path of life has not put and cannot put. These dogmas receive an importance only from the fact that the church asserts that it is necessary to believe in them, and that he who does not believe in them will perish. All these are propositions which are in no way connected with questions of faith, and are independent of them. All of them are based only on the demand of obedience to the church.

Composition of division I. Of God the Saviour. The central dogma of this part is the dogma of the redemption. On this dogma is based the whole doctrine. of this part. It consists in this, that in consequence of the supposed fall of Adam his descendants fell into actual and spiritual death, their reason was dimmed, and they lost the image of God. For the salvation of men from this supposed fall the necessity of redemption is proposed,—paying God for Adam’s sin. This pay, according to the teaching of the church, takes place by means of the incarnation of Christ, his descent upon earth, his suffering and death. Christ the God descends on earth and by his death saves men from sin and death. But since this death is only imaginary; since after the redemption men remain actually the same as was Adam, as they were after Adam, as they were in the time of Christ and after Christ, and as men have always been; since in reality there remain the same sin, the same propensity to do evil, the same death, the same labour pain, the same necessity of working in order to support oneself, which are all peculiar to