Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/270

 God, since an unlimited spirit cannot have any essence. Two essences form one hypostasis. But hypostasis can have no meaning, since hypostasis has no significance in language and has never been defined. There is no rational sense in the dogma, but this dogma, like all the others, is based on the church. The church is holy and infallible, and ever since it has existed, from the very beginning, it has asserted this dogma. It is expressed, the Theology says, in Holy Tradition and in Scripture. Let us see whether it is so.

Though I have decided to pass cursorily all this Second Part, nevertheless, at this spot where it is proved that Christ is God, I feel that it is necessary to stop, since this place, though inserted in the middle, as it were, of the disclosure of further truths, which have been expounded in the beginning, in reality is the foundation of the dogma about the Trinity, which was put forward in the beginning; and if there is a dogma about the Trinity, it results only from recognizing Christ as God. Only later is the third person of the Holy Ghost attached to it. The beginning of the assertion that God is not one, but has persons, is due to the deification of Christ. This is what Art. 133 says: “Our Lord Jesus has a divine essence and is the Son of God.” This article has for a purpose the proof that Jesus Christ has the divine essence, but not in the sense in which any man created by God has it, but differently from all other men,—he is the second person of God. The same meaning is ascribed to the words “the Son of God.” It is proved that Jesus Christ is not a son of God in the sense in which other men are, but an especial Son of God, the only one, the second person of the Trinity. Here are the proofs from the Old Testament:

“In Psalm ii., which all the holy apostles (Acts iv. 24-28; xiii. 32-34; Heb. i. 5; v. 5) and the ancient Jews themselves refer to the Messiah. The Messiah witnesses about himself: The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my