Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/325

 them. But heretofore there has been no definition of the church, of what is to be understood by the word. From everything which I knew before, from everything which had been expounded so far, I assumed that the church was a collection of believers, established in such a way that it can express and determine its decrees. But now begins the teaching about the church as being an instrument for the sanctification of men. It says that the church is Christ’s kingdom of grace, that it communicates to us the grace of the Holy Ghost, and that it has sacraments, but nothing is said about the church on which the dogmas which have been expounded heretofore are based; on the contrary, the church receives here an entirely different meaning from what I ascribe to it as the foundation of the whole teaching about faith. Then follows:

166. The different meanings of the word “church.” The sense in which the teaching about it will be expounded here, and points of view on the subject. The various meanings of the word “church” are explained. All three meanings which are ascribed to the word “church” are such that with them is impossible the conception of that church which has established the dogmas.

The first meaning of the word “church” is, according to the Theology, “a society of all the rational and free beings, that is, of the angels and of the men who believe in Christ the Saviour, and of the men who are united in him as in their one head.” (p. 187.)

Such a definition of the church not only does not make clearer the conception of the church which establishes dogmas, but imparts in advance to the forthcoming definition of the church certain symptoms, with which it is still harder to understand how such a church could ever have established any dogmas. The further elucidations of this first meaning do not clear it up. All it says is: “that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in