On the Trinity, Book 11

In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle reviews the full and perfect mystery of the Gospel in its many aspects, and among his other instructions in the knowledge of God he includes the following: Just as you were also called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is through all and in us all. He does not leave us on the vague and misleading paths of an indefinite teaching, or abandon us to the shifting notions of the imagination; instead, he sets up barriers to restrain the unchecked license of intellect and desire. He gives us no opportunity to be wiser than what he preached, but defines in exact and precise language the faith fixed for all time, so that there can be no excuse for unstable belief. He declares one faith, just as he preaches one Lord, and he proclaims one baptism, just as he declares one faith of one Lord, so that, as there is one faith of one Lord, there may also be one baptism of one faith in one Lord. And since the whole mystery of baptism and faith lies not only in one Lord but also in one God, he brings our hope to its fulfillment by confessing one God. The one baptism and the one faith belong to one God, just as they belong to one Lord. Lord and God are each one, not by a union of person but by a distinction of properties. On the one hand, it is the property of Each to be one, the Father in His Fatherhood and the Son in His Sonship; on the other hand, that property of individuality which Each possesses constitutes for Each the mystery of His union with the Other. So the one Lord Christ cannot take His Lordship away from God the Father, nor can the one God the Father deny the one Lord Christ His Godhead. If Christ is not also divine by nature because God is one, then we cannot grant that the one God is Lord, because there is one Lord Christ; that is, if we suppose that by their oneness' what is meant is not the mystery but an exclusive unity. So there is one baptism and one faith of one Lord, just as of one God.

But how can it still be one faith if it does not steadfastly and sincerely confess one Lord and one God the Father? And how can a faith that is not one faith confess one Lord and one God the Father? Besides, how can the faith be one when its preachers disagree so sharply? One comes teaching that the Lord Jesus Christ, being in the weakness of our nature, groaned in anguish when the nails pierced His hands, that He lost the strength of His own power and nature, and that He shrank back, shuddering, from the death that threatened Him. Another even denies the central doctrine of the Generation and declares Him a creature. Another will call Him God but not think of Him as God, on the grounds that religion allows us to speak of more Gods than One; but He Whom we recognize as God must be conscious of sharing the divine nature. Again, how can Christ the Lord be one, when some say that as God He feels no pain, while others make Him weak and fearful; when to some He is God in name and to others God in nature; to some the Son by Generation and to others the Son by title? And if this is so, how can God the Father be one in the faith, when to some He is Father by His authority and to others Father by generation, in the sense that God is Father of the universe? And yet who will deny that whatever is not the one faith is no faith at all? For in the one faith there is one Lord Christ, and God the Father is one. But the one Lord Jesus Christ is not one in the truth of the confession as well as in name unless He is Son, unless He is God, unless He is unchangeable, unless His Sonship and His Godhead have been eternally present in Him. Whoever preaches Christ as other than He is, that is, as other than Son and God, preaches another Christ. Nor is he in the one faith of the one baptism, for in the Apostle's teaching the one faith is the faith of that one baptism in which the one Lord is Christ, the Son of God Who is also God.

Yet no one can deny that Christ was Christ. It cannot be that He was unknowable to mankind. The books of the prophets have set their seal on Him; the fullness of the times, which grows every day, bears witness to Him; the tombs of Apostles and Martyrs proclaim Him by the working of wonders; the power of His name reveals Him; the unclean spirits confess Him, and the devils, howling in their torment, cry out His name. In all of this we see the dispensation of His power. But our faith must preach Him as He is, namely, as one Lord, not in name but in confession, in one faith of one baptism; for our confession of one God the Father depends on our faith in one Lord Christ.

But these teachers of a new Christ, who deny Him everything that is His, preach another Lord Christ as well as another God the Father. The One is not the Begetter but the Creator; the Other is not begotten but created. So Christ is not true God, because He is not God by birth, and faith cannot recognize a Father in God, because there is no generation to make Him Father. They do glorify God the Father, as is His right and due, when they ascribe to Him a nature that is unapproachable, invisible, inviolable, ineffable, and infinite, endowed with omniscience and omnipotence, filled with love, moving in all things and permeating all things, immanent and transcendent, sentient in all sentient existence. But when they go on to ascribe to Him the unique glory of being alone good, alone omnipotent, alone immortal, who does not sense that this pious praise aims to exclude the Lord Jesus Christ from the blessedness that the qualifier 'alone' restricts to the glory of God? Does it not leave Christ in sinfulness and weakness and death, while the Father reigns in solitary perfection? Does it not deny that Christ has a natural origin from God the Father, for fear that He might be thought to inherit a blessedness natural to God the Father alone, through a birth that gives the Begotten the same power of nature as the Begetter?

Ignorant of the teaching of the Gospels and Apostles, they extol the glory of God the Father, not, however, with the sincerity of a devout believer, but with the cunning of impiety, in order to twist it into an argument for their wicked heresy. Nothing, they say, can be compared with His nature; therefore the Only-begotten God is excluded from the comparison, because He has a lower and weaker nature. And they say this of God, the living image of the living God, the perfect form of His blessed nature, the only-begotten offspring of His unbegotten substance, Who is not truly the image of God unless He has the perfect glory of the Father's blessedness and reproduces exactly the likeness of His whole nature. But if the Only-begotten God is the image of the Unbegotten God, the truth of that perfect and supreme nature resides in Him and makes Him the image of the true God. Is the Father omnipotent? The weak Son is not the image of omnipotence. Is He good? The Son, Whose divinity is of a lower grade, does not reflect the image of goodness in His sinful nature. Is He incorporeal? The Son, Whose very spirit is confined within the limits of a body, is not in the form of the Incorporeal. Is He ineffable? The Son, Whom language can define and Whose nature the tongue can describe, is not the image of the Ineffable. Is He the true God? The Son has only a fictitious divinity, and the false cannot be the image of the True. The Apostle, however, does not ascribe to Christ a portion of the image or a part of the form, but declares Him without reservation the image of the invisible God and the form of God. And how could He declare the divine nature of the Son of God more expressly than by saying that Christ is the image of the invisible God even with respect to His invisibility? For if the substance of Christ could be seen, how could He be the image of an invisible nature?

But, as we pointed out in the earlier books, they seize on the Dispensation of the assumed manhood as a pretext for dishonoring His divinity, and twist the Mystery of our salvation into an occasion for blasphemy. If they had held fast to the Apostle's faith, they would neither have forgotten that He Who was in the form of God took the form of a servant, nor used the servant's form to dishonor the form of God (for the form of God includes the fullness of divinity); instead, they would have noted, reasonably and reverently, the distinction of occasions and mysteries, without dishonoring the divinity or being misled by the Incarnation of Christ. But now that we have, I am convinced, proved everything as fully as possible, and pointed out the power of the divine nature underlying the birth of the assumed body, there is no longer room for doubt. He Who was at once man and the Only-begotten God did all things by the power of God, and in the power of God accomplished all things through a true human nature. As begotten of God He had the nature of divine omnipotence; as born of the Virgin He had a perfect and complete humanity. Though He had a real body, He subsisted in the nature of God, and though He subsisted in the nature of God, He remained in a real body.

In our reply we have followed Him up to the moment of His glorious death, and, taking the statements of their unholy doctrine one by one, we have refuted them from the teaching of the Gospels and the Apostle. But even after His glorious resurrection there are certain things that they have dared to interpret as proofs of the weakness of a lower nature, and we must now reply to these. Let us use once more our usual method of drawing out the true meaning from the words themselves, so that we may discover the truth exactly where they think they can overthrow it. For the Lord spoke in simple words to instruct us in the faith, and His words cannot need support or comment from foreign and irrelevant sayings.

Among their other sins, the heretics often use as an argument the Lord's words, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God. His Father is also their Father, His God their God; so He is not in the nature of God, for He declares God to be the Father of others as of Himself, and His unique Sonship ceases when He shares with others the nature and the origin that make Him Son and God. But let them also add the Apostle's words, But when He says, All things are put in subjection, the One Who subjected all things to Him is excepted. And when all things have been subjected to Him, then He Himself shall be subjected to Him Who subjected all things to Himself, so that God may be all in all, and with these words, since they regard that subjection as a proof of weakness, they may strip Him of the power of His Father's nature, on the grounds that His natural infirmity subjected Him to the rule of a stronger nature. And after that, let them take up their very strongest position and their impregnable defense, before which the truth of the Divine birth is supposed to be demolished: namely, that if He is subjected, He is not God; if His God and Father is ours as well, He shares everything in common with creatures, and so is Himself also a creature, created by God and not begotten, since the creature has its substance from nothing, but the begotten possesses the nature of its author.

Falsehood is always disgraceful, for the liar either throws off the bridle of shame and dares to contradict the truth, or else at times hides behind some veil of pretext, so that he may seem to defend with modesty what is shameless in intention. But in this case, when they sacrilegiously use the Scriptures to degrade the dignity of our Lord, there is no room for a blush or a false excuse; for there are occasions when even the pardon granted to ignorance is refused, and willful misinterpretation is exposed in its naked profanity. Let us put off for a moment the explanation of this passage in the Gospel, and first ask them whether they have forgotten the preaching of the Apostle, who said, Beyond dispute, great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. Who is so dull that he cannot understand that the mystery of godliness is simply the Dispensation of the flesh assumed by the Lord? From the outset, then, whoever does not agree with this confession is not in the faith of God. For the Apostle leaves no doubt that all must confess that the hidden secret of our salvation is not the dishonor of God but the mystery of great godliness, a mystery no longer kept from our eyes but manifested in the flesh, no longer weak through the nature of flesh but justified in the Spirit. And so the justification of the Spirit removes from our faith the idea of fleshly weakness; through the manifestation of the flesh what was secret is revealed, and the unknown cause of what was secret contains the only confession, the confession of the mystery of great godliness. This is the whole system of the faith, set out by the Apostle in its proper order. From godliness comes the mystery, from the mystery the manifestation in the flesh, from the manifestation in the flesh the justification in the Spirit; for the mystery of godliness that was manifested in the flesh, in order to be truly a mystery, was manifested in the flesh through the justification of the Spirit. Again, we must not forget what kind of justification in the Spirit this manifestation in the flesh is: for the mystery that was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, and believed on in this world, this same mystery was taken up in glory. So it is in every way a mystery of great godliness when it is manifested in the flesh, when it is justified in the Spirit, when it is seen by angels, when it is preached among the nations, when it is believed on in the world, and when it is taken up in glory. The preaching follows the seeing, and the believing follows the preaching, and the completion of all is the taking up in glory; for the assumption into glory is the mystery of great godliness, and by faith in the Dispensation we are prepared to be taken up and to be conformed to the glory of the Lord. So the assumption of flesh is also the mystery of great godliness, for through the assumption of flesh the mystery was manifested in the flesh. But we must believe that the manifestation in the flesh is also this same mystery of great godliness, for His manifestation in the flesh is His justification in the Spirit and His assumption into glory. And now what room does our faith leave for anyone to think that the secret of the Dispensation of godliness is the weakening of the divinity, when the mystery of great godliness is to be confessed through the assumption of glory? What was 'infirmity' is now the 'mystery'; what was 'necessity' becomes 'godliness.' And now let us turn to the meaning of the Evangelist's words, so that the secret of our salvation and our glory may not be turned into an occasion for blasphemy.

You treat that saying of the Lord as carrying irresistible authority, heretic: I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God. The same Father, you say, is His Father and ours, the same God His God and ours. So He shares our weakness, for in having the same Father we are not inferior as sons, and in serving the same God we are equal as servants. Since, then, we are of created origin and have a servant's nature, but have a common Father and God with Him, He shares our nature as a creature and a servant. That is how this senseless and unholy teaching runs. It also cites the words of the Prophet, God, Your God has anointed You, to prove that Christ does not share in the glorious nature that belongs to God, since the God Who anoints Him is ranked above Him as His God.

We do not know Christ the God unless we know God the Begotten. But to be born God is to belong to the nature of God, for the name Begotten does indicate the manner of His origin, but does not make Him different in kind from the Begetter. And if so, the Begotten does owe the source of His being to His Author, but is not deprived of that Author's nature, for the birth of God can arise from only one origin and have only one nature. If its origin is not from God, it is not a birth; if it is anything but a birth, Christ is not God. But He is God from God, and so God the Father stands to God the Son as God of His birth and Father of His nature, for the birth of God is from God and in the specific nature of God.

Notice in everything He said how carefully the Lord balances the pious acknowledgment of His debt, so that neither could the confession of the birth be taken as reflecting on His divinity, nor His reverent obedience as infringing on His sovereign nature. He does not withhold the homage He owes as the Begotten, Who owed His very existence to His Author, but by His confident bearing He shows His awareness of sharing in that nature which belongs to Him by virtue of the origin by which He was born as God. Take, for instance, the words, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father also, and, The words that I say, I do not speak from Myself. He does not speak from Himself; therefore He receives from His Author what He says. But if anyone has seen Him, they have seen the Father also; by this evidence, given to show that God is in Him, they become aware that a nature one in kind with God's was born from God to subsist as God. Take again the words, What the Father has given Me is greater than all, and, I and the Father are one. To say that the Father gave is to confess that He received His origin; but His unity with the Father is a property of His nature derived from that origin. Take another instance: He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He acknowledges that the judgment is given to Him, and so He does not push His birth into the background; but He claims equal honor with the Father, and so He does not give up His nature. Yet another example: I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me, and, The Father is greater than I. The One is in the Other: recognize, then, the divinity of God, the Begotten of God. The Father is greater than He: see, then, His acknowledgment of the Father's authority. In the same way He says, The Son can do nothing of Himself except what He has seen the Father doing; for whatever things He does, the Son also does these in the same way. He does nothing of Himself: that is, in keeping with His birth, the Father prompts His actions. Yet whatever things the Father does, the Son also does these in the same way; that is, He subsists as nothing less than God, and by the Father's omnipotent nature residing in Him, He can do all that God the Father does. Everything is spoken in keeping with His unity of Spirit with the Father and with the properties of that nature which He possesses by virtue of His birth. That birth, which brought Him into being, made Him divine, and His being reveals the consciousness of that divine nature. God the Son confesses God His Father because He was born of Him; but also, because He was born, He inherits the whole nature of God.

So the Dispensation of the great and godly mystery makes Him Who was already Father of the divine Son also His Lord in the created form that He assumed, for He Who was in the form of God was also found in the form of a servant. Yet He was not a servant, for according to the Spirit He was God the Son of God. Everyone will also agree that there is no servant where there is no lord. God is indeed Father in the Generation of the Only-begotten God, but only if the Other is a servant can we call Him Lord as well as Father. The Son was not a servant by nature at first, but afterward began to be by nature something He was not before. So the Father is Lord on the same grounds on which the Son is servant. By the Dispensation of His nature the Son had a Lord when He made Himself a servant by assuming manhood.

Being, then, in the form of a servant, Jesus Christ, Who before was in the form of God, said as a man, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God. He was speaking as a servant to servants: how then can we separate the words from Christ the servant and transfer them to that nature which had nothing of the servant in it? For He Who remained in the form of God took on the form of a servant, and this form was the necessary condition of His fellowship as a servant with servants. It is in this sense that God is His Father and the Father of men, His God and the God of servants. Jesus Christ was speaking as a man in the form of a servant to men and servants; what difficulty is there, then, in the idea that in His human aspect the Father is His Father as He is ours, and in His servant's nature God is His God as He is all men's?

These, then, are the words with which He introduces the message, Go to My brothers, and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God. I ask: are they to be understood as His brothers with reference to the form of God or to the form of a servant? And does our flesh have kinship with Him in regard to the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him, so that we should be counted His brothers with respect to His divinity? No, for the Spirit of prophecy recognizes clearly in what respect we are the brothers of the Only-begotten God. It is as a worm and not a man that He says, I will declare Your name to My brothers. Like a worm, which is born without the ordinary process of conception, or else comes up into the world already living from the depths of the earth, He speaks here to show that He had assumed flesh and also brought it up, living, from Hades. Throughout the Psalm He foretells by the Spirit of prophecy the mysteries of His Passion; so it is with respect to the Dispensation, in which He suffered, that He has brothers. The Apostle also recognizes the mystery of this brotherhood, for he calls Him not only the firstborn from the dead, but also the firstborn among many brothers. Christ is the Firstborn among many brothers in the same sense in which He is Firstborn from the dead; and as the mystery of death concerns His body, so the mystery of brotherhood also refers to His flesh. So God has brothers according to His flesh, for the Word became flesh and dwelt among us: but the Only-begotten Son, unique as the Only-begotten, has no brothers.

By assuming flesh, however, He took on our nature in its entirety and became all that we are, but did not lose what He was before. Both before, by His heavenly origin, and now, by His earthly constitution, God is His Father. By His earthly constitution God is His Father, since all things are from God the Father, and God is Father to all things, since all things are from Him and in Him. But God is Father to the Only-begotten God not only because the Word became flesh; His Fatherhood extends also to Him Who was, as God the Word, with God in the beginning. So, when the Word became flesh, God was His Father both by the birth of God the Word and by the constitution of His flesh; for God is the Father of all flesh, though not in the same way that He is Father to God the Word. But God the Word, though He did not cease to be God, really did become flesh; and while He dwelt in this way He was still truly the Word, just as when the Word became flesh He was still truly God as well as man. For to 'dwell' can be said only of one who remains in something, and to become flesh only of one who is born. He dwelt among us; that is, He assumed our flesh. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; that is, He was God in the reality of our body. If Christ Jesus, the man according to the flesh, robbed God the Word of the divine nature, or was not also God the Word according to the mystery of godliness, then the fact that God is His Father and our Father, His God and our God, reduces His nature to our level. But if God the Word, when He became the man Christ Jesus, did not cease to be God the Word, then God is at the same time His Father and ours, His God and ours, only with respect to that nature by which the Word is our brother; and the message to His brothers, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God, is the message not of the Only-begotten God the Word but of the Word made flesh.

The Apostle speaks here in carefully guarded words, which are so precise that they give the ungodly no opening. We have seen that the Evangelist has the Lord use the word 'Brothers' at the start of the message, which shows that the whole message, since it is addressed to His brothers, refers to His sharing in the nature that makes Him their brother. In this way he makes it clear that the mystery of godliness proclaimed here in no way degrades His divinity. The fellowship with Him by which God is our Father and His, our God and His, belongs to the Dispensation of the flesh: we are counted His brothers because He was born into the body. No one disputes that God the Father is also the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, but this reverent confession gives no opening for irreverence. God is His God, but not as though He had a different order of divinity from His. He was begotten God of the Father and born a servant through the Dispensation: so God is His Father because He is God from God, and God is His God because He is flesh of the Virgin. The Apostle confirms all this in one short, decisive sentence: Mentioning you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation. When he speaks of Him as Jesus Christ, he names His God: when his theme is the glory of Christ, he calls God His Father. To Christ as the one who has glory, God is Father: to Christ as Jesus, God is God. For the angel, speaking of Christ the Lord, Who was to be born of Mary, calls Him by the name 'Jesus:' but to the prophets Christ the Lord is 'Spirit.' Many find the Apostle's words in this passage somewhat obscure because of the Latin, since Latin has no articles, which Greek uses in its beautiful and logical way. The Greek reads, ὁ Θεὸς τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ πατὴρ τῆς δόξης, which we might translate into Latin, if the article were allowed, 'Ille Deus illius Domini nostri Jesu Christi, ille pater illius claritatis' (The God of the Lord [of us] Jesus Christ, the Father of the glory). In this form, ' The God of the Jesus Christ,' and ' the Father of the glory,' the sentence expresses certain truths of His nature, as far as we can comprehend them. Where the glory of Christ is concerned, God is His Father; where Christ is Jesus, the Father is His God. In the Dispensation by which He is a servant, He has as His God the One Whom He has as Father in the glory by which He is God.

Time and the passing of ages make no difference to a Spirit. Christ is one and the same Christ, whether in the body or dwelling by the Spirit in the prophets. Speaking through the mouth of the holy Patriarch David, He says, Your God, O God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your companions, and this refers to nothing less than the mystery of the Dispensation by which He assumed flesh. He Who now sends His brothers the message that their Father is His Father, and their God His God, announced Himself then as anointed by His God above His companions. No one is a companion of the Only-begotten Christ, God the Word: but we know that we are His companions through the assumption that made Him flesh. That anointing did not exalt the blessed and incorruptible Begotten One, Who remains in the nature of God, but it established the mystery of His body and sanctified the manhood He assumed. The Apostle Peter bears witness to this: Truly in this city they gathered together against Your holy Son Jesus, Whom You anointed: and on another occasion, You know the word that was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism that John preached: namely Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power. So Jesus was anointed in order that the mystery of the regeneration of the flesh might be accomplished. Nor are we left in doubt about how He was anointed in this way with the Spirit of God and with power, when we listen to the Father's voice speaking as He came up out of the Jordan: You are My Son, today I have begotten You. This testifies to the sanctification of His flesh, and in this testimony we must recognize His anointing with the power of the Spirit.

But the Word was God, and with God in the beginning, so the anointing could be neither narrated nor explained if it referred to that nature, of which we are told nothing except that it was in the beginning. And in fact He Who was God had no need to anoint Himself with the Spirit and power of God, since He Himself was the Spirit and power of God. So He, being God, was anointed by His God above His companions. And although there were many Christs (i.e. anointed persons) under the Law before the Dispensation of the flesh, Christ, Who was anointed above His companions, came after them, for He was preferred above His anointed companions. Accordingly, the words of the prophecy bring out the fact that the anointing took place in time, and fairly late in time. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness: therefore Your God, O God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your companions. Now a fact that comes later than other facts cannot be dated before them. Deserving a reward presupposes that someone exists who can deserve it, for merit earned implies that there has been someone capable of earning it. If, then, we attribute the birth of the Only-begotten God to this anointing, which is His reward for loving righteousness and hating wickedness, we will be regarding Him as the Only-begotten God not by birth but by promotion through anointing. But then we imply that He advanced by gradual progress and promotion to perfect divinity, and that He was not born God but was later anointed God for His merit. In this way we make Christ, as God, Himself subject to conditions, whereas He is the final cause of all conditions; and then what becomes of the Apostle's words, All things are through Him and in Him, and He is before all, and in Him all things hold together? The Lord Jesus Christ was not deified because of anything or by means of anything, but was born God: God by origin, not promoted to divinity for some cause after His birth, but God as the Son; and one in kind with God because begotten of Him. So His anointing, though it is the result of a cause, did not enhance what in Him could not be made more perfect. It concerned the part of Him that was to be made perfect through the perfection of the Mystery: that is, our manhood was sanctified in Christ by anointing. If, then, the prophet here too teaches us the dispensation of the servant, for which Christ is anointed by His God above His companions, and that because He loved righteousness and hated wickedness, then surely the prophet's words must refer to the nature in Christ by which He has companions through His assumption of flesh. Can we doubt this when we see how carefully the Spirit of prophecy chooses His words? God is anointed by His God; that is, in His own nature He is God, but in the dispensation of the anointing God is His God. God is anointed: but tell me, is the Word Who was God in the beginning anointed? Clearly not, for the anointing comes after His divine birth. So it was not the begotten Word, God with God in the beginning, Who was anointed, but the nature in God that came to Him through the dispensation, later than His divinity: and when His God anointed Him, He anointed in Him the whole nature of the servant, which He assumed in the mystery of His flesh.

So let no one defile with his godless interpretations the mystery of great godliness that was manifested in the flesh, or count himself equal to the Only-begotten in His divine substance. Let Him be our brother and our companion, in that the Word made flesh lived among us, in that the man Jesus Christ is Mediator between God and man. Let Him, as servants do, have a common Father and a common God with us, and as anointed above His companions, let Him be of the same nature as His anointed companions, though His anointing is one of special privilege. In the mystery of His work as Mediator let Him be at once true man and true God, Himself God from God, yet sharing a common Father and God with us in the fellowship by which He is our brother.

But perhaps that subjection, that handing over of the kingdom, and finally that end mean the dissolution of His nature, or the loss of His power, or the weakening of His divinity. Many argue this way: Christ is included in the common subjection of all things to God, and by being subjected He loses His divinity: He hands over His Kingdom, so He is no longer King: the end that overtakes Him brings with it the loss of His power.

It will not be out of place here to review the full meaning of the Apostle's teaching on this subject. Let us, then, take each sentence by itself and explain it, so that we may grasp the entire Mystery by understanding it in its fullness. The Apostle's words are, For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also came through a man. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all are made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then those who belong to Christ at His coming. Then comes the end, when He has handed over the Kingdom to God the Father, when He has emptied all authority and all power. For He must reign until He puts all enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be conquered is death. But when He says, All things are put in subjection, the One Who subjected all things to Him is excepted. But when all things have been subjected to Him, then He Himself also will be subjected to the One Who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.

The Apostle who was chosen not from men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ, to be the teacher of the Gentiles, explains the secrets of the heavenly Dispensations in language as explicit as he can command. He who had been caught up into the third heaven and had heard inexpressible words, reveals to human understanding as much as human nature can receive. But he does not forget that there are things that cannot be understood at the moment of hearing. Human weakness needs time to review, before the true and perfect tribunal of the mind, what pours into the ears without distinction. Comprehension follows spoken words more slowly than hearing does, for it is the ear that hears but the reason that understands, though it is God Who reveals the inner meaning to those who seek it. We learn this from the words written, among many other exhortations, to Timothy, the disciple who had been instructed in the Holy Scriptures from infancy by the glorious faith of his grandmother and mother: Understand what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in all things. The exhortation to understand arises from the difficulty of understanding. But God's gift of understanding is the reward of faith, for through faith the weakness of the senses is repaid with the gift of revelation. Timothy, that 'man of God?' as the Apostle testifies of him, Paul's true child in the faith, is urged to understand because the Lord will give him understanding in all things: so let us, knowing that the Lord will grant us understanding in all things, remember that the Apostle urges us also to understand.

And if, through an error natural to human beings, we are clinging to some preconception of our own, let us not refuse the advance in knowledge that comes through the gift of revelation. If until now we have relied only on our own judgment, that should not make us ashamed to change its decisions for the better. Guiding this advance wisely and carefully, the same blessed Apostle writes to the Philippians, Let those of us who are perfect, then, think this way: and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal this also to you. Only, let us keep walking in the same way in which we have hurried forward. Reason cannot anticipate God's revelation with preconceptions. For the Apostle has shown us here what the wisdom of those who have perfect wisdom consists of, and for those who think otherwise he awaits God's revelation, so that they may obtain perfect wisdom. If any, then, have understood this profound dispensation of hidden knowledge differently, and if what we offer them is in any respect more correct or better approved, they should not be ashamed to receive perfect wisdom, as the Apostle advises, through God's revelation, and if they hate to remain in untruth, they should not love ignorance more. If God has revealed this also to those who had another wisdom, the Apostle urges them to hurry on along the road on which they have started, to cast aside the notions of their former ignorance, and to obtain the revelation of perfect understanding by the path they have eagerly entered. So let us keep on along the path on which we have hurried forward: or, if our wandering steps have strayed and delayed our eager haste, let us nevertheless start again, through God's revelation, toward the goal of our desire, and not turn our feet from the path. We have hurried toward Christ Jesus the Lord of Glory, the King of the eternal ages, in Whom all things in Heaven and on earth are restored, by Whom all things hold together, in Whom and with Whom we shall remain forever. As long as we walk in this path we have perfect wisdom: and if we have another wisdom, God will reveal to us what perfect wisdom is. Let us, then, examine the mystery of the words before us in the light of the Apostle's faith: and let our treatment be, as it always has been, a refutation, from the actual truth of the Apostle's confession, of every interpretation that they would irreverently impose on his words.

Three assertions are disputed here, which, in the order in which the Apostle makes them, are first the end, then the handing over, and last the subjection. The aim is to prove that Christ ceases to exist at the end, that He loses His kingdom when He hands it over, and that He strips Himself of the divine nature when He is subjected to God.

Note at the outset that this is not the order of the Apostle's teaching, for in that order the handing over of the Kingdom comes first, then the subjection, and last the end. But every cause is itself the result of its own cause, so that in every chain of causation each cause, while producing a result, inevitably has its own underlying antecedent. So the end will come, but when He has handed over the Kingdom to God. He will hand over the Kingdom, but when He has abolished all authority and power. He will abolish all authority and power, because He must reign. He will reign until He has put all enemies under His feet. He will put all enemies under His feet, because God has subjected everything under His feet. God has subjected them in such a way as to make death the last enemy to be conquered by Him. Then, when all things are subjected to God, except Him Who subjected all things to Him, He too will be subjected to the One Who subjects all to Himself. But the cause of the subjection is nothing other than that God may be all in all; so the end is that God is all in all.

Before going any further we must now ask whether the end is a dissolution, or the handing over a forfeiture, or the subjection a weakening of Christ. And if we find that these are contraries that cannot be linked as causes and effects, we will be able to understand the words in the true sense in which they were spoken.

Christ is the end of the law; but tell me, has He come to destroy it or to fulfill it? And if Christ, the end of the law, does not destroy it but fulfills it (as He says, I have not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it ), then is not the end of the law, far from being its dissolution, the very opposite, namely its final perfection? All things are moving toward an end, but that end is a state of rest in the perfection that is the goal of their advance, not their abolition. Further, all things exist for the sake of the end, but the end itself is not a means to anything beyond: it is an ultimate, all-embracing whole that rests in itself. And because it is self-contained and serves no time or object other than itself, the goal is always what our hopes are directed toward. So the Lord urges us to wait with patient and reverent faith until the end comes: Blessed is He who endures to the end. It is not a blessed dissolution that awaits us, nor is non-existence the fruit and annihilation the appointed reward of faith: but the end is the final attainment of the promised blessedness, and those are blessed who endure until they reach the goal of perfect happiness, when faithful hope has nothing further to expect. Their end is to remain in unbroken rest in the state toward which they are pressing. Similarly, as a warning, the Apostle tells us of the end of the wicked, Whose end is destruction,..... but our expectation is in heaven. Suppose, then, that we interpret the end as a dissolution: we are forced to admit that, since there is an end for both the blessed and the wicked, the outcome puts the godly on a level with the ungodly, for the appointed end of both is a common annihilation. What becomes of our expectation in heaven, if for us as well as for the wicked the end is a cessation of being? But even if an expectation remains for the saints, while the end they have deserved awaits the wicked, we cannot conceive of that end as a final dissolution. What punishment would it be for the wicked to be beyond feeling avenging torments, because dissolution had removed their capacity to suffer? So the end is a culminating and irrevocable state that awaits us, reserved for the blessed and prepared for the wicked.

So we can no longer doubt that the end means an ultimate and final state, not a dissolution. We will have more to say on this subject when we come to explain this passage, but for now this is enough to make our meaning clear. Let us turn now, then, to the handing over of the Kingdom, and see whether it means giving up rule, whether the Son, by handing it over, ceases to possess what He hands over to the Father. If this is what the wicked contend in their irrational folly, they must admit that the Father, by handing over, lost everything when He handed over everything to the Son, if handing over implies giving up what is handed over. For the Lord said, All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and again, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. If, then, to hand over is to give up possession, the Father no longer possessed what He handed over. But if the Father did not cease to possess what He handed over, neither does the Son give up what He hands over. So if He did not lose by handing over what He handed over, we must recognize that only the Dispensation explains how the Father still possesses what He handed over, and the Son does not forfeit what He gave.

As for the subjection, other facts come to the aid of our faith and keep us from insulting Christ on this account, but above all this passage contains its own defense. First, however, I appeal to common reason: is the subjection still to be understood as the subordination of servitude to lordship, weakness to power, lowliness to honor, qualities opposed to one another? Is the Son subjected to the Father in this way, through the distinction of a different nature? If we are indeed inclined to think so, we will find in the Apostle's words a safeguard against such errors of the imagination. When all things are subjected to Him, He says, then He must be subjected to Him Who subjects all things to Himself; and by this 'then' he means to indicate the temporal Dispensation. For if we interpret the subjection any other way, Christ, though He is to be subjected then, is not subjected now, and so we make Him an insolent and impious rebel, whom the necessity of time, breaking, as it were, and subduing His profane and arrogant pride, will reduce to a belated obedience. But what does He Himself say? I have not come to do My own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me: and again, So the Father has loved Me because I do all things that please Him: and, Father, Your will be done. Or listen to the Apostle: He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to death. Although He humbled Himself, His nature suffered no humiliation: though He was obedient, it was a voluntary obedience, for He became obedient by humbling Himself. The Only-begotten God humbled Himself and obeyed His Father even to the death of the Cross: but as what, as man or as God, is He to be subjected to the Father when all things have been subjected to Him? This subjection is truly no sign of a new obedience, but the Dispensation of the Mystery, for the allegiance is eternal, while the subjection is an event in time. So the subjection, in its meaning, is simply a demonstration of the Mystery.

What that is must be understood in light of this same hope of our faith. We cannot be unaware that the Lord Jesus Christ rose again from the dead and sits at the right hand of God, for we also have the Apostle's testimony: According to the working of the strength of His might, which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in the one to come, and put all things in subjection under His feet. The Apostle's language, as befits the power of God, speaks of the future as already past: for what is to be done when time is complete already exists in Christ, in Whom is all fullness, and 'future' refers only to the temporal order of the Dispensation, not to a new development. So God has put all things under His feet, though they are still to be subjected. Their subjection, conceived as already past, expresses the unchangeable power of Christ: their subjection as future signifies their completion at the end of the ages, as the result of the fullness of time.

The meaning of the abolishing of every power that is against Him is not obscure. The prince of the air, the power of spiritual wickedness, will be handed over to eternal destruction, as Christ says, Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire that My Father has prepared for the devil and his angels. Abolishing is not the same as subjecting. To abolish the enemy's power is to sweep away his prerogative of power forever, so that the abolition of his power brings the rule of his kingdom to an end. The Lord testifies to this when He says, My kingdom is not of this world: just as He had testified once before that the ruler of that kingdom is the prince of the world, whose power will be destroyed by the abolition of the rule of His kingdom. A subjection, on the other hand, which implies obedience and allegiance, is a proof of submission and changeability.

So when their authority is abolished, His enemies will be subjected: and subjected in such a way that He will subject them to Himself. Moreover, He will subject them to Himself in such a way that God will subject them to Him. Do you think the Apostle was unaware of the force of these words in the Gospel, No one comes to Me unless the Father draws Him to Me which stand side by side with those other words, No one comes to the Father except through Me: just as in this Epistle Christ subjects His enemies to Himself, yet God subjects them to Him, and throughout his work of subjecting He testifies that God is working in Him? There is no approach to the Father except through Him, but there is also no approach to Him unless the Father draws us. Understanding Him to be the Son of God, we recognize in Him the true nature of the Father. So when we come to know the Son, God the Father calls us: when we believe the Son, God the Father receives us; for our recognition and knowledge of the Father are in the Son, Who shows us in Himself God the Father, Who, if we are devout, draws us by His fatherly love into a mutual bond with His Son. So the Father draws us when, as the first condition, He is acknowledged as Father: but no one comes to the Father except through the Son, because we cannot know the Father unless faith in the Son is active in us, since we cannot approach the Father in worship unless we first adore the Son, while if we know the Son, the Father draws us to eternal life and receives us. But each result is the work of the Son, for by the preaching of the Father, Whom the Son preaches, the Father brings us to the Son, and the Son leads us to the Father. This Mystery had to be stated for a more complete understanding of the present passage, to show that the Father draws us and receives us through the Son, so that we might understand the two aspects: the Son subjecting all to Himself, and the Father subjecting all to Him. Through the birth, the nature of God lives in the Son and does what He Himself does. What He does, God does, but what God does in Him, He Himself does: in the sense that where He Himself acts we must believe that the Son of God acts, and where God acts we must perceive the properties of the Father's nature existing in Him as the Son.

When authorities and powers are abolished, His enemies shall be subjected under His feet. The same Apostle tells who these enemies are: As regards the Gospel they are enemies for your sake, but as regards the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. We remember that they are enemies of the cross of Christ; let us also remember that, because they are beloved for the sake of the fathers, they are being kept for the subjection, as the Apostle says, I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you are not wise in your own estimation: a hardening in part has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel shall be saved, just as it is written, There shall come out of Sion a Deliverer, and He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: and this is the covenant from Me to them, when I have taken away their sins. So His enemies shall be subjected under His feet.

But we must not forget what follows the subjection, namely, Last of all death is conquered by Him. This victory over death is nothing other than the resurrection from the dead: for when the corruption of death is halted, the revived and now heavenly nature is made eternal, as it is written, For this corruptible body must put on incorruption, and this mortal body must put on immortality. But when this mortal body has put on immortality, then the saying that is written shall come to pass, Death is swallowed up in strife. O death, where is your sting? O death, where is your strife? In the subjection of His enemies death is conquered; and once death is conquered, immortal life follows. The Apostle also tells us of the special reward gained by this subjection, which is made perfect by the subjection of belief: Who shall refashion the body of our humiliation, so that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the works of His power, by which He is able to subject all things to Himself. There is, then, another subjection, which consists in a transition from one nature to another, for our nature ceases, as far as its present character is concerned, and is subjected to Him into Whose form it passes. But by 'ceasing' is meant not an end of being but a promotion into something higher. So our nature, by being merged into the image of the other nature that it receives, becomes subjected through the imposition of a new form.

This is why the Apostle, to make his explanation of this Mystery complete, after saying that death is the last enemy to be conquered, adds: But when He says, All things are put in subjection except Him Who subjected all things to Him, then He must be subjected to Him Who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all. The first step of the Mystery is that all things are subjected to Him: then He is subjected to Him Who subjects all things to Himself. As we are subjected to the glory of the rule of His body, so He too, reigning in the glory of His body, is in turn subjected by the same Mystery to Him Who subjects all things to Himself. And we are subjected to the glory of His body so that we may share the splendor with which He reigns in the body, since we shall be conformed to His body.

The Gospels are not silent about the glory of His present reigning body either. It is written that the Lord said, Truly, I say to you, there are some of those standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom. And it happened that after six days Jesus takes Peter and James and John His brother with Him, and brings them up a high mountain by themselves. And Jesus was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became like snow. In this way the glory of the body of Christ coming into His Kingdom was shown to the Apostles: for in the form of His glorious Transfiguration, the Lord stood revealed in the splendor of His reigning body.

He also promised the Apostles a share in this glory of His. So it shall be at the end of the world. The Son of Man shall send out His angels, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and those who do iniquity, and He shall send them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous shall shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Were their natural, bodily ears closed to hearing the words, so that the Lord needed to urge them to hear? Yet the Lord, hinting at the knowledge of the Mystery, commands them to listen to the doctrine of the faith. At the end of the world all things that cause stumbling shall be removed from His Kingdom. So we see the Lord reigning in the splendor of His body until the things that cause stumbling are removed. And we see ourselves, as a result, conformed to the glory of His body in the Kingdom of the Father, shining as if with the splendor of the sun, the splendor in which He showed the form of His Kingdom to the Apostles when He was transfigured on the mountain.

He shall deliver the Kingdom to God the Father, not in the sense that He gives up His power by delivering it, but in the sense that we, being conformed to the glory of His body, shall form the Kingdom of God. It does not say, He shall deliver up His Kingdom, but, He shall deliver up the Kingdom, that is, deliver up to God us who have been made the Kingdom by the glorifying of His body. He shall deliver us into the Kingdom, as it says in the Gospel, Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The just shall shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father, and the Son shall deliver to the Father, as His Kingdom, those whom He has called into His Kingdom, to whom He has also promised the blessedness of this Mystery, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. While He reigns, He shall remove all things that cause stumbling, and then the just shall shine like the sun in the Kingdom of the Father. Afterward He shall deliver the Kingdom to the Father, and those whom He has handed over to the Father as the Kingdom shall see God. He Himself testifies to the Apostles what kind of Kingdom this is: The Kingdom of God is within you. So it is as King that He shall deliver up the Kingdom, and if anyone asks Who it is that delivers up the Kingdom, let him hear, Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of those who sleep; since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. All that is said on the point before us concerns the Mystery of the body, since Christ is the firstfruits of the dead. Let us also learn from the words of the Apostle by what Mystery Christ rose from the dead: Remember that Christ has risen from the dead, of the seed of David. Here he teaches that the death and resurrection are due only to the Dispensation by which Christ was flesh.

In His body, the same body though now made glorious, He reigns until the authorities are abolished, death is conquered, and His enemies are subdued. The Apostle carefully preserves this distinction: the authorities and powers are abolished, the enemies are subjected. Then, when they are subjected, He, that is, the Lord, shall be subjected to Him Who subjects all things to Himself, so that God may be all in all, the nature of the Father's divinity imposing itself on the nature of our body, which was assumed. This is how God shall be all in all: according to the Dispensation He becomes, by His Godhead and His manhood, the Mediator between men and God, and so by the Dispensation He acquires the nature of flesh, and by the subjection He shall obtain the nature of God in all things, so as to be God not in part but wholly and entirely. The end of the subjection, then, is simply that God may be all in all, that no trace of the nature of His earthly body may remain in Him. Although until this time the two were combined within Him, He must now become God only; not, however, by casting off the body but by translating it through subjection; not by losing it through dissolution but by transfiguring it in glory: adding humanity to His divinity, not stripping Himself of divinity by His humanity. And He is subjected, not so that He may cease to be, but so that God may be all in all, since in the mystery of the subjection He has to continue to be what He no longer is, not having to be robbed of Himself by dissolution, that is, to be deprived of His being.

We have a sufficient and sacred guarantee for this belief in the authority of the Apostle. Through the Dispensation, and within time, the Lord Jesus Christ, the firstfruits of those who sleep, is to be subjected so that God may be all in all, and this subjection is not the debasement of His divinity but the promotion of His assumed nature, for He Who is God and Man is now altogether God. But some may think that, when we say both that He was glorified in the body while reigning in the body and that He is later to be subjected so that God may be all in all, our belief finds no support in the Gospels or in the Epistles. We will therefore produce testimony for our faith not only from the words of the Apostle but also from our Lord's mouth. We will show that Christ first said with His own lips what He later said through the mouth of Paul.

Does He not reveal to His Apostles the Dispensation of this glory by the explicit meaning of the words, Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God has been glorified in Him, God has glorified Him in Himself, and immediately He has glorified Him. In the words, Now the Son of Man is honored, and God is honored in Him, we have first the glory of the Son of Man, then the glory of God in the Son of Man. So what is signified first is the glory of the body, which it borrows from its association with the divine nature; and then follows the promotion to a fuller glory, derived from an addition to the glory of the body. If God has been honored in Him, God has honored Him in Himself, and immediately God has honored Him. God has glorified Him in Himself because He has already been glorified in Him. God was glorified in Him: this refers to the glory of the body, for by this glory the glory of God is expressed in a human body; in the glory of the Son of Man the divine glory is seen. God was glorified in Him, and therefore God has glorified Him in Himself: that is, by His promotion to the Godhead, whose glory was increased in Him, God has glorified Him in Himself. Even before this He was reigning in the glory that springs from the divine glory; from now on, however, He Himself is to pass into the divine glory. God has glorified Him in Himself: that is, in that nature by which God is what He is. So that God may be all in all: so that His whole being, leaving behind the Dispensation by which He is man, may be eternally transformed into divinity. Nor is the time of this hidden from us: And God has glorified Him in Himself, and immediately He has glorified Him. At the moment when Judas got up to betray Him, He described as already present the glory that He would obtain after His Passion through the Resurrection, but assigned to the future the glory with which God would glorify Him with Himself. The glory of God is seen in Him in the power of the Resurrection, but He Himself, out of the Dispensation of subjection, will be taken eternally into the glory of God, that is, into God, the all in all.

But what absurd folly it is for the heretics to regard as unattainable for God the goal that man hopes to attain, implying that He is powerless to accomplish in Himself what He is mighty to accomplish in us. It is not the language of reason or common sense to say that God is bound by some necessity of His nature to look after our happiness but cannot bestow the same blessings on Himself. God does not, of course, need any further blessedness, for His nature and power stand firm in their eternal perfection. But although in the Dispensation, that mystery of great godliness, He Who is God became man, He is not powerless to make Himself entirely God again, for without doubt He will also transform us into what we are not yet. The final outcome of man's life and death is the resurrection: the assured reward of our warfare is immortality and incorruption, not the ceaseless persistence of everlasting punishment but the unbroken enjoyment and happiness of eternal glory. These bodies of earthly origin shall be exalted to the form of a higher nature and conformed to the glory of the Lord's body. But what, then, of God found in the form of a servant? Though He was already glorified in the body while still in the form of a servant, shall He not also be conformed to God? Shall He bestow on us the form of His glorified body, and yet be able to do nothing more for His own body than what He does for Himself in common with us? For the most part the heretics interpret the words, Then He shall be subjected to Him Who subjected all things to Himself, so that God may be all in all, as if they meant that the Son is to be subjected to God the Father in order that by the subjection of the Son, God the Father may be all in all. But is God still lacking some perfection that He is to obtain by the subjection of the Son? Can they believe that God does not already possess that final addition of blessed divinity, because it is said that by the coming of the fullness of time He shall be made all in all?

To me, since I hold that God cannot be known except by devotion, even answering such objections seems no less unholy than supporting them. What presumption it is to suppose that words can adequately describe His nature, when thought is often too deep for words, and His nature transcends even the conceptions of thought! What blasphemy even to discuss whether anything is lacking in God, whether He is Himself full or still has to become fuller than His fullness! If God, Who is Himself the source of His own eternal divinity, were capable of progress, so that He would be greater today than yesterday, He could never reach the time when He would lack nothing, for a nature that can still advance must always, as it progresses, leave some ground ahead still untrodden: if it is subject to the law of progress, then though always progressing it must always be capable of further progress. But for Him Who remains in perfect fullness, Who exists forever, there is no fullness left by which He can be made more full, for perfect fullness cannot receive an addition of further fullness. And this is the attitude of thought in which reverence contemplates God: that He lacks nothing, that He is full.

But the Apostle does not neglect to say with what kind of confession we should bear witness to God. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways beyond tracing out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has first given to Him, and it shall be repaid to him? For of Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever and ever. No earthly mind can define God; no understanding can penetrate with its perception to sound the depth of His wisdom. His judgments defy the searching scrutiny of His creatures: the trackless paths of His knowledge baffle the zeal of all who pursue them. His ways are plunged in the depths of incomprehensibility: nothing in the things of God can be fathomed or traced to the end. No one has ever been taught to know His mind; no one besides Himself has ever been permitted to share His counsel. But all this applies only to us men, and not to Him through Whom are all things, the Angel of mighty Counsel, Who said, No one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son has willed to reveal Him. It is to restrain our own feeble intellect, when it strains to fathom the depth of the divine nature with its descriptions and definitions, that we must echo the language of the Apostle's exclamation, so that we do not attempt by rash conjecture to snatch from God more than He has been pleased to reveal to us.

It is a recognized axiom of natural philosophy that nothing falls within the scope of the senses unless it is subjected to their observation, for instance an object placed before the eyes, or an event later than the birth of human sense and intelligence. The first we can see and handle, and so the mind is qualified to pass a verdict on it, since it can be examined by the senses of touch and sight. The second, which is an event in time, produced or constituted since the origin of man, falls within the limits in which the discerning sense may claim to pass judgment, since it does not come before our perception and reason in time. For our sight cannot perceive the invisible, since it distinguishes only what is seen; our reason cannot project itself into the time when it did not exist, because it can judge only what it precedes in time. And even within these limits, the weakness bound up with its nature robs it of absolutely certain knowledge of the sequence of cause and effect. How much less, then, can it go back behind the time when it began, and grasp with its perception things that existed before it in the realms of eternity?

The Apostle, then, recognized that nothing can fall within our knowledge unless it is later in time than the faculty of sense. So, when he had asserted the depth of the wisdom of God, the infinity of His inscrutable judgments, the secret of His unsearchable ways, the mystery of His unfathomable mind, the incomprehensibility of His unshared counsel, he went on, For who has first given to Him, and it shall be repaid to him again? For of Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things. The eternal God is not subject to limitation, nor did human reason and intelligence exercise their functions before He had His being. His whole being is therefore a depth that we can neither examine nor penetrate. We say His whole being, not to define it as limited, but to understand it in its unlimited boundlessness: because He has received His being from no one, no earlier giver can claim service from Him in return for a gift bestowed: for of Him and through Him and in Him are all things. He does not lack things that are of Him and through Him and in Him. The Source and Maker of all, Who contains all, Who is beyond all, does not need what is within Him: the Creator does not need His creatures, nor the Possessor His possessions. Nothing is prior to Him, nothing derived from anyone other than Him, nothing beyond Him. What element of fullness is still lacking in God, which time will supply to make Him all in all? From where can He receive it, if there is nothing outside Him, and while nothing is outside Him, He is eternally Himself? And if He is eternally Himself, and there is nothing outside Him, with what increase shall He be made full, by what addition shall He be made other than He is? Did He not say, I am and I do not change? What possibility of change is there in Him? What room for progress? What is prior to eternity? What is more divine than God? So the subjection of the Son will not make God all in all, nor will any cause perfect Him from Whom and through Whom and in Whom are all causes. He remains God as He always was, and He needs nothing further, for what He is, He is eternally of Himself and for Himself.

But neither is it necessary for the Only-begotten God to change. He is God, and that is the name of full and perfect divinity. For, as we said before, the meaning of the repeated glorifying, and the cause of the subjection, is that God may be all in all: but it is a Mystery, not a necessity, that God is to be all in all. Christ remained in the form of God when He assumed the form of a servant, not undergoing change but emptying Himself; hiding within Himself, and remaining master of Himself even though He was emptied. He confined Himself even to the form and appearance of a man, so that the weakness of the assumed humility would be able to bear the immeasurable power of His nature. His unbounded might contracted itself until it could fulfill the duty of obedience, even to the point of enduring the body to which it was yoked. But since He was self-contained even when He emptied Himself, His authority suffered no diminution, for in the humiliation of the emptying He exercised within Himself the power of the authority that was emptied.

It is therefore for our promotion, the promotion of the assumed humanity, that God shall be all in all. He Who was found in the form of a servant, though He was in the form of God, is now again to be confessed in the glory of God the Father: that is, without doubt He dwells in the form of God, in Whose glory He is to be confessed. All is therefore a dispensation only, not a change of His nature; for He still dwells in Him in Whom He always was. But a new nature intervenes, which began in Him with His human birth, and so all that He obtains is on behalf of that nature which before was not God, since after the Mystery of the Dispensation God is all in all. It is we, therefore, who gain, we who are promoted, for we shall be conformed to the glory of the body of God. Further, the Only-begotten God, despite His human birth, is nothing less than God, Who is all in all. That subjection of the body, by which all that is fleshly in Him is swallowed up into the spiritual nature, will make Him God and all in all, since He is Man as well as God; and His humanity, which advances toward this goal, is ours also. We shall be promoted to a glory conformed to that of Him Who became Man for us, being renewed to the knowledge of God and created again in the image of the Creator, as the Apostle says, Having put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new man, which is being renewed to the knowledge of God, after the image of Him Who created him. So man is made the perfect image of God. For, being conformed to the glory of the body of God, he is exalted to the image of the Creator, after the pattern assigned to the first man. Leaving sin and the old man behind, he is made a new man to the knowledge of God, and arrives at the perfection of his constitution, since through the knowledge of his God he becomes the perfect image of God. Through godliness he is promoted to immortality; through immortality he shall live forever as the image of his Creator.