Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/185

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CRITIQUE OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY
165

source; holiness offering sanctification. To him appears God the Father, who is above all and in all, and God the Son, who is through all. Trinity, perfect in glory and eternity, indivisible and inseparable in dominion. And so there is in the Trinity neither created, nor ancillary, nor additive, which has not been before, or which will come later. The Father has never been without the Son, nor the Son without the Holy Ghost; but the Trinity is invariable, unchangeable, and always one and the same.’

“(2) In the Nicæo-Constantinopolitan symbol: ‘I believe in one God the Father—and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, born from the Father before all ages, light of light, true God of true. God, born, uncreated, of one substance with the Father—and in the Holy Ghost, the life-creating Lord, who proceedeth from the Father; who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.’

“(3) In the symbol which is known under the name. of that of St. Athanasius of Alexandria: This is the Catholic creed: Let us worship the one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in the One, neither blending. the hypostases, nor separating the essence. For different. is the hypostasis of the Father, different that of the Son, and different that of the Holy Ghost. But that of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is one Deity, an equal glory, a coeval grandeur. As the Father, so is the Son, and so is the Holy Ghost— Thus: God is the Father, God is the Son, and God is the Holy Ghost; and yet not three Gods, but one God— God is not created by any one, nor born. The Son was not created by the Father himself, nor made, nor born, nor issued from him— And in this Trinity nothing is first or last; nothing more or less; but the three hypostases are complete, coeval with each other and equal.” (PP. 158 and 159.)