Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/269

 “that Christ according to his human substance was not the proper son of God the Father, but a son by grace and adoption—”

“Amidst all these numberless heresies in regard to the person of the Lord Jesus, the Orthodox Church has since the apostolic days constantly defended and disclosed one and the same teaching, which it has with peculiar force expressed at the Fourth Ecumenical Council in the following words: ‘Following our Divine Father, we all unanimously teach men to profess the one and selfsame Son our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in divinity and perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, composed of soul and body; consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in everything like us, except sin; born before all ages of the Father according to the Divinity, but in the latter days according to the manhood of Mary the Virgin, the Mother of God, for the sake of us and of our salvation; the one and selfsame Christ, the Son, the Lord, the only-begotten, unblendingly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably recognized in two essences (no distinction of the two essences being removed by the union, but the attribute of each essence being preserved, as concurring in one person and one hypostasis); not cut or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and the only-begotten God, the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as anciently the prophets and our Lord Jesus Christ himself have taught us, and as the symbol of our fathers has transmitted it to us.’ From this we see that the whole teaching of the Orthodox Church about the person of our Lord Jesus consists of two chief propositions: I. of this, that in Jesus Christ there are two essences, the divine and the human, and II. of this, that these two essences form in him one hypostasis.” (pp. 46 and 47.)

It is impossible not to stop here. The words of this definition are a series of contradictions. The concept of essence, as connected with God, excludes the concept of