Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/376

 in grace. Either may be proved with a certain degree of consistency, but Russian theology never takes the trouble to analyze thought and to go consistently from deduction to deduction. It says: You say it is grace, then we will generalize it and say: it is both works and grace, and it does not in the least trouble itself about the fact that one excludes the other. It strings out a few unintelligible sentences, quotes the fathers of the church, and comes to a conclusion, imagining that the question is solved. Proof from Scripture.

“4. The doctrine about the unconditional predestination of God is contrary to common sense, Common sense is convinced that God is just and that, consequently, he cannot without any cause preordain some to eternal happiness, and others to eternal damnation. It is convinced that God is infinitely good and, consequently, can not without any cause condemn any one to eternal perdition. It is convinced that God is infinitely all-wise and, consequently, cannot give man freedom and yet embarrass it by his unconditional predetermination and take away the whole moral value of its actions.” (p. 286.)

This discussion directly ignores everything which has been said against it in the previous articles. And with this obvious contradiction the whole argument is closed.

Art. 193 still more mixes up the matter. Here there is a contradiction in every word: “Though God worketh in us to do of his good pleasure (Phil. ii. 14), and we are not able without his grace to undertake anything, nor accomplish anything truly good: still that divine power, working in us and through us, in no way embarrasses our freedom and does not draw it invincibly to the good.” (p. 286.)

What does that mean? Translating the sentence into intelligible language, it turns out that grace does not embarrass our freedom, but we can do nothing good without it. Where is the freedom? According to this defi-