Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/283

 acknowledging Christ to be God; immediately it goes on to say: “No man hath seen God at any time,” so that the words, “We beheld his glory,” can by no means be referred to Christ the God, whereas this very passage is regarded as the best proof of the divinity of Christ.

“Farther on,” says the Theology: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared (v. 18), that is, he shows that Jesus Christ is the only-begotten Son in the proper sense, as existing in the bosom of the Father.” (p. 52.)

If the only-begotten Son of the Father professed the God whom no man can ever see, then it is evident that this Son is not God. But the Theology makes the opposite deduction:

“And concluding his Gospel,” says the Theology, “the evangelist remarks that the purpose of his writing was to prove the Godhead of Jesus Christ: But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name (John xx. 31).”

That is simply untrue. John’s remark does not intend to prove the divinity of Christ, but speaks only of Christ’s sonhood to God.

“The same apostle in the beginning of his first Epistle calls Christ the Word of life (1 John i. 1), that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us (v. 2), and at the end of the Epistle he says: And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life (1 John v. 20), calling here the true Son of God and true God him whom before he had called the eternal life.” (p. 52.)

This discussion is simply unscrupulous. The words, “he that is true,” can apparently not be referred to Christ,