Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/289

 that Christ is not God, it is useless to prove that,—for to him who believes in God, Christ cannot be God. That was already evident in the exposition of the dogma of the Trinity and of the whole consequent inevitable tangle, but I have dwelt on this part as on one in which lies the source of all the preceding monstrosities and absurdities. It is evident to me that after Christ’s death, his disciples, who were profoundly affected by his teaching, in speaking and writing of him, of the man who taught that all men were the sons of God and must blend with God in life, and who in his life up to his death carried out this subjection of himself to the will of God and this union with him, it is evident to me that his disciples called him divine and the beloved Son of God on account of the elevation of his teaching and of his life, which fully realized his teaching; and it is explicable to me how ignorant people, listening to the teaching of the apostles, did not understand it, but instead understood the mere words and on these ignorantly conceived words built up their own teaching and, with the stubbornness which generally goes with ignorance, stuck to their comprehension, denying every other interpretation, even because they were unable to understand it, and how later such ignorant people confirmed this terrible error at the first and the second Ecumenical Councils.

In the dogma of the original sin I can admit the comprehension of those people who in the story of the fall of man can see nothing but that there was an Adam and that he did not keep God’s command not to eat of the forbidden fruit. This comprehension is not wrong, it is crude. Even thus I can admit the comprehension of men who say that Jesus was God and by his death and sufferings saved men. This comprehension is not wrong, it is only crude and imperfect. The conception of man’s fall as due to the fact that he did not obey God is correct in so far as it expresses the idea that man’s dependence,