Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/292

 now of one essence, and now of another, but always remains a hypostasis of both hypotases indivisibly and inseparably The flesh of God the Word did not assume an independent hypostasis and did not become a hypostasis, different from the hypostasis of God the Word, but having in it received a hypostasis, was rather received into the hypostasis of God the Word than became an independent hypostasis.’” (p. 79.)

It is absolutely impossible to render this into one’s own words: it is simply the delirium of an insane man. The Trinity in one person breaks up into two, and these two are again one.

“III. Holy Scripture presents the firmest foundations of this truth. It teaches: (1) that in Christ Jesus, with two essences, a divine and a human, there is one hypostasis, one person, and (2) that this hypostasis of the Word or of the Son of God, having accepted and united with itself the human hypostasis with the divine, abides inseparably as one hypostasis of either essence.” (pp. 79 and 80.)

All that is confirmed by Holy Scripture, the fathers of the church, and the decrees of the councils.

Finally common sense, too, is invoked:

“IV. And common sense, on the basis of theological principles, cannot help but notice that the Nestorian heresy, which divided Jesus Christ into two persons, absolutely rejects the mystery of the incarnation and the mystery of the redemption. If the divinity and the humanity in Christ are not united into one hypostasis, but form two separate persons, if the Son of God was united with Christ the man only morally, and not physically, and lived in him, as formerly in Moses and the prophets,—then there was no incarnation at all, and it is impossible to say: The Word was flesh, or, God sent his Son, born of a woman; for it would turn out that the Son of God was not born of a woman and did not take upon