Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/296

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276
CRITIQUE OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY

worship, both according to his Godhead and according to his humanity.”

“IV. In Jesus Christ there are two wills and two actions.” There follow long controversies about the two wills and the two actions. Refutals and proofs from Scripture and from common sense. The mental morbidity has so increased in this chapter that it is painful to read it, if you read with the desire to understand what the author is talking about. Then, in accordance with the subdivision made in the beginning of the chapter, where it said that the consequences of the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ are of two kinds, in relation: (a) to himself, (b) to the Virgin Mary, and (c) to the Most Holy Trinity.

140. (b) In relation to the Most Holy Virgin, the Mother of our Lord Jesus. The consequences of the hypostatic union in relation to the Virgin Mary are analyzed. Contents: a polemic with the Macedonians and the Nestorians. The subdivision about the consequences in relation to Christ and to the Virgin Mary is made only in order to dispute against Nestorius, who called the Virgin Mary the Mother of Christ.

141. (c) In relation to the Most Holy Trinity. It is proved that, in spite of the incarnation, the Trinity remained a Trinity. This is the way it is to be understood:

“The words of St. John Damascene: ‘I do not introduce a fourth person into the Trinity, which it shall not be; but I profess the one person of God the Word and of his flesh. The Trinity remained the Trinity even after the incarnation of the Word. The flesh of God the Word did not receive an independent hypostasis, and did not become a hypostasis different from the hypostasis of God the Word; but in it, having received the hypostasis, it became rather received into the hypostasis of God the Word than an independent hypostasis. For this reason it