Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/286

 The whole verse ought to read: “Whose (the Jews’) are the fathers, and whose Christ is according to the flesh.” After that there ought to be a period. Then follows the usual praise to God: “Who is over all, God, is blessed forever” (and not “blessed for ever”). This intentional error is regarded as a proof of the divinity of Christ. In the whole book Christ is mentioned as a prophet, and the words “Son of God (υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ) are not even used, but instead, παῖς τοῦ Θεοῦ, that is, more correctly, servant of God. Those are all the proofs.

It is evident that those are not proofs, but juxtapositions of words which may serve as a confirmation of a proposition which has no foundation whatever in the Gospels and the Epistles. For any man who studies Holy Scripture in the original, who is acquainted with the criticism of Scripture and of the history of the church, it is evident that in the first century of Christianity, when the Epistles and Gospels were written, there was not even any mention made of the divinity of Christ. The best refutal of the proofs of the church about the Godhead of Christ is found in the vain endeavours which it makes to find anything resembling a proof. Everything which might have looked as an indication, every such a phrase, every juxtaposition of words, every blunder, every chance for an incorrect reading, is taken as a proof, but no real proof exists or can exist, because that idea was foreign to Christ and to his disciples. This is especially apparent from the reading of the Acts of the Apostles in the original. Here is described the teaching of the apostles, and here Christ is mentioned many times, and not only is he not spoken of as God, but no special meaning above any saint is ascribed to him; he is called saint, prophet, messenger of God, and not even υἱός, as John and Paul call him, but παῖς τοῦ θεοῦ, which can in no way be connected with the present teaching of the church about Christ the God. But in order to have clear and manifest proofs of