A treatise on how the Son Himself will also be subjected to Him who subjected all things to Himself (1 Cor 15:24-28).
All the words of the Lord, as the prophet says, are holy and pure words. When the mind is purified from every heretical speculation, it receives from these words the illumination of truth proper and natural to it, as silver is purified in fire.
I think it is necessary first of all to attest the clarity and purity of all the teachings of holy Paul. For, having been in paradise (cf. 2 Cor 12:2), he was trained in the knowledge of ineffable things and had Christ speaking within him.
He spoke what is fitting for one who had grown through the instructions given, under the guidance and teaching of the Word.
Fraudsters try to make God’s silver worthless by depriving the Word of its radiance through mixture with heretical and counterfeit notions.
In the same way, either not understanding the apostle’s mystical thoughts or wickedly interpreting them as they think best, they absurdly defend their fraud.
In order to destroy the glory of the Only-begotten God, they claim that their thoughts agree with the saying of the Apostle, who says, “Then the Son will be subjected to Him who subjected all things to Him” (cf. 1 Cor 15:28).
They say this text reflects a kind of servile obedience.
Therefore it seems necessary to examine this text carefully, to prove that the apostolic silver is indeed free from every stain and unmixed with heretical thought.
For we know that Holy Scripture uses this word in many senses, and it does not always agree with the proper meaning. At one time it has one sense, and then it indicates another.
For example: “Let slaves be subject to their masters” (cf. Tit 2:9). Of irrational nature, which God subjected to man, the prophet says, “He subjected all things under his feet” (cf. Ps 8:7).
Of those defeated in war, he says, “He subjected peoples and tribes under our feet” (cf. Ps 59:10). But when mentioning those saved through knowledge, he says, as from the person of God, “Foreigners were subjected to me” (cf. Ps 59:10).
I think what we find in the sixty-first psalm is, in a certain sense, close to this: “Shall not my soul be subject to God?” (cf. Ps 61:2).
Above all, there is what our enemies use to reproach us from the epistle to the Corinthians: that then the Son Himself will be subjected to Him who subjected all things to Himself (1 Cor 15:28).
Since the meaning of this word suggests many thoughts, it would be good to examine each of them, to understand which sense of the word subjection is close to the Apostle’s saying.
Concerning those forcibly captured in war by those who rule over them, we shall say that the word subjection indicates submission to the victor unwillingly and by compulsion.
If any opportunity is given to the captives that offers hope of gaining the upper hand over those who rule them, they count it an insult and disgrace to be subject to enemies.
They rise up again on their own against those who hold power.
According to another example, the irrational is subject to the rational, because its nature lacks the greatest of goods, namely reason.
By the good ordering of nature, what has less must be subject to what has the advantage.
Likewise those who, because of some law, could not oppose the law even if they had equality by nature, are under compulsion beneath the yoke of slavery.
They receive the status of the subjected, being led to subjection by inexorable necessity.
But the goal of our subjection is salvation, as we learn from the prophecy that says, “Be subject, my soul, to God, for from Him is my salvation” (cf. Ps 61:6, 2).
Therefore, when the apostolic word saying that the Son will be subjected to the Father is raised against us by enemies, it would be consistent to ask them, in view of the variety of meanings, which sense they deem worthy to apply to the Only-begotten God.
It is clear what they will say: that the Son’s subjection cannot be understood according to any of the examples given.
He is not an enemy who was forced into slavery in war, so as to rise again with hope and zeal against the victor.
Nor is He one of the irrational creatures, as though through the absence in Him of the above-mentioned good the Word had a subjection necessary by nature, such as sheep, herds, and oxen have toward man.
Nor does He hope to be freed from the yoke of slavery by good pleasure or grace, like slaves bought with silver or born in the house and enslaved by law.
Let no one say that the Only-begotten God is subjected to the Father for the purpose of salvation, as though salvation, because of His likeness to men, were not accomplished by God through Him.
For mutable nature to participate in the good, subjection to the Father is necessary. In this way we have participation in the good.
But in the immutable and uncorrupted power, in which every good is beheld, together with name and concept, eternity, incorruption, blessedness, the ability always to be the same, and the inability to become either better or worse, there is no place for subjection.
For it admits neither increase in the good nor inclination toward evil. He who pours forth salvation to others does not Himself lack what serves unto salvation.
What sense of subjection, then, do they piously call fitting for Him? All the examples examined are acknowledged to stand far from what is understood and considered fitting for the Only-begotten Son.
If to this one must add the form of subjection spoken of in the Gospel according to Luke, that the Lord, having reached twelve years of age, was subject to His parents (cf. Lk 2:51, 41-42), this would not agree with what is said of the pre-eternal and true Son in relation to His true Father.
In that passage He who was tempted in all things according to our likeness, except sin, took our nature and brought it through growth.
He became as a child, to whom children’s food is proper, being nourished with butter and honey, and thereby reaching the age appropriate to youth.
Not refusing what belongs to such years, He becomes an image of exemplary life.
Since in other men thought at that very age is imperfect, and guidance by those more mature toward the better benefits the youth, the Twelve-year-old is subject to His Mother.
He thereby shows that before attaining maturity through gradual growth, it is useful to accept subjection as guidance toward the good.
Those who speak rashly can scarcely say to whom the Son is subjected, since He is always perfect in all goods.
By His self-sufficient and undiminished nature, He could receive in Himself neither development nor diminution.
For while living in human nature through the flesh, He prescribed subjection for His youth in everything He did during childhood.
Of course, after reaching the maturity of His age, He no longer looked to maternal authority.
When she urged Him in Cana of Galilee to show His power over what was lacking at the wedding feast and to make the feast pleasant by the use of wine, He did not refuse the service of giving what was needed to those in want.
But He rejected the counsel of His Mother as given to Him out of season, saying, “What is that to Me and to you, woman? Do you wish to direct Me when I am of such an age? Has not My hour come, giving independence and freedom to this age?” (Jn 2:4).
Therefore, if in life according to the flesh the measure of proper age leaves behind subjection to a parent, one could scarcely say what subjection means in Him who reigns in His might over this age.
For it belongs to the divine and blessed life always to remain in Him and not to undergo change through alteration.
Therefore, since the Word who is from the beginning, the Only-begotten God, is alien to every development and alteration, how can what does not now exist come to exist afterward?
The Apostle does not say that the Son has always been subjected, but that He is to be subjected at the end of the fulfillment of all things.
Yet if subjection is called good and worthy of God, how can good now be absent in God?
The good is equal for both: for the Son who is subjected and for the Father who receives the Son’s subjection.
Does this good, then, now lack in both Father and Son? Will what neither Father nor Son had before the ages be added to Father and Son at the fulfillment of times?
The one would undergo subjection, while the other would thus receive some addition and increase of His own glory, which He did not possess until then.
Where, then, is immutability in all this? What appears later and does not now exist is by itself a mutable nature.
Either subjection is good, and one must believe that the good exists for God, or it is unworthy of God, both now and at any other time.
But the Apostle says that then the Son will be subjected to God and the Father, not that He has now been subjected.
In truth, the apostolic word has another aim, and the meaning of the word stands far from the meagerness of the heretics’ thought.
What is this word? Perhaps, with the help of the expression written in this passage, we may better discern its meaning.
The epistle is a dispute with the Corinthians, with those who accepted faith in the Lord but considered the teaching about the resurrection of men a myth.
They said: “How are the dead raised, and with what body do those return whose bodies after death have disappeared in various and diverse ways, either through decay or by being consumed by flesh-eating, creeping, swimming, or flying animals?”
Therefore he offered them many arguments, persuading them not to compare God’s power with their own, nor to think that what is impossible for man is also impossible for God.
He persuades them to compare the greatness of God’s authority with examples known to us.
Thus he draws their attention to the wonder concerning bodies: seeds, forever transformed by divine power.
He shows that divine wisdom does not grow weary in finding many bodily forms in everything: rational, irrational, aerial, earthly, and those appearing to us in heaven, the sun and the other stars.
Each of these appeared through divine power. This is proof for us that God experiences no difficulty concerning the resurrection of our bodies.
If all existing things were not changed from some hidden matter into visible form, but the will of God became the matter and essence of what was created, it becomes far more possible to restore them again to their own form.
For He shapes what already exists, rather than bringing into being and essence what initially did not exist.
Therefore, in the words addressed to them, he shows that through sin the first man died in the earth and for this reason was called earthly.
According to his image, all who came from him, all who were born of him, likewise had to become earthly and mortal.
A second successive order had to be established, through which man is restored again from death to immortality.
In a similar way he speaks of the good that appeared in nature by spreading from one to all, just as evil spread through one to many, extending through inheritance to descendants.
Expressing this teaching, he uses the following apostolic words: “The first man,” says the Apostle, “was from the earth, earthly; the second is from heaven. As was the earthly, so are those who are earthly. As is the heavenly, so are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (cf. 1 Cor 15:47-49).
Thus he establishes the teaching on the resurrection by these and the preceding arguments.
He binds the inferences of the heretics by many other arguments, in which he shows that one who does not believe in the resurrection of men does not accept the resurrection of Christ either.
By combining arguments close to one another, he states the inevitable conclusion: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith in Him is vain” (cf. 1 Cor 15:13, 17).
THEOSIS