Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/285

 for ever (Rom. ix. 4-5), God’s own (dov) Son (Rom. viii. 32), who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God (Phil. ii. 6); he ascribes to him divine attributes: eternity (Heb. xiii. 8), unchangeableness (Heb. i. 10-12), almightiness (Heb. i. 3; Phil. iii. 21), and says: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist (Col. i. 16, 17).

In these Epistles Christ is in three places called God (Rom. ix. 4-5; Tit. ii. 11-13; 1 Tim. iii. 16). I examine the texts, and I discover that all three indications by St. Paul that Christ is God are based on the addition of words to the old texts, and on the incorrectness of the translations and the punctuation. The passage in Timothy is read in various ways. In the oldest texts the word “God” does not occur at all, but instead of it there is a relative pronoun, now of the masculine, and now of the neuter gender. In any case this whole verse refers to Christ, and not to God, and the substitution in later texts of the word “God” for the pronoun cannot serve as a proof of the divinity of Christ. Then follows the passage Tit. ii. 11-13. The verse stands as follows: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” The conjunction “and” is taken by the Theology to be the same as a colon and an equality, and, instead of understanding the passage, as many similar passages are understood, as speaking of the glory of God and of Jesus Christ, these words are taken as a proof of the divinity of Christ. Finally, the last passage is Rom. ix. 5. This passage is read in such a way that Christ is called a blessed God, only because the punctuation mark which ought to stand after “flesh Christ came,” has been changed from a period to a comma.