Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/268

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XI.

In this chapter is expounded the teaching about the second person of the Trinity. Chapter II. About our Lord Jesus Christ in particular. Section I. About the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, or about the mystery of the incarnation.

The importance and incomprehensibility of the dogma; a short account of it, the doctrine of the church about it, and the composition of the doctrine.

The redemption was accomplished by God, the second person, the man Jesus Christ. The man Jesus Christ is both a man and God. From everything which has been expounded heretofore, the concepts of man and God are not only quite different, but almost diametrically opposed. God is independence, man is dependence; God is the Creator, man is the created; God is good, man is evil. How is the combination of the two concepts, on which all this is based, to be understood? There follows an explanation, but this explanation, as always, finds its expression in the form of a controversy with those who do not regard Christ as a God, with those who regard him as all God, all Trinity, and with those who regard him as half-God; then with those who did not recognize a human soul in him, with those who said that Jesus Christ was born simple, like anybody else; then with those who separated the man and God in Christ, with those who blended God with the man in Christ, with those who separated God and the man, but said that in him there was but one will, and with those who asserted

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