Treatise on the words, "Then the Son Himself will also be subjected to Him who subjected all things to Him" (1 Cor 15:24-28).
All the words of the Lord, as the prophet says, are holy and pure. When the mind has been cleansed of every heretical speculation, these words give it the natural illumination of truth, as silver is purified in fire.
It is first necessary to bear witness to the clarity and purity of all Saint Paul's teachings. He had been in Paradise, had become practiced in the knowledge of ineffable things, and had Christ speaking in him.
Therefore he spoke as one ought to speak who had grown by these teachings under the guidance and instruction of the Word.
Fraudulent men try to render God's silver counterfeit. They strip the Word of its brightness by mixing it with heretical and spurious notions.
So too, either failing to understand the apostle's mystical thoughts, or wickedly interpreting them as they please, they absurdly defend their fraud.
To destroy the glory of the Only-begotten God, they claim that their thoughts agree with the apostle's saying: "Then the Son will be subjected to Him who subjected all things to Him" (1 Cor 15:28).
They say that this text expresses some servile obedience. It is therefore necessary to examine it carefully, to prove that the apostolic silver is free from every stain and unmixed with heretical thought.
We know that Holy Scripture uses this word in many senses. It does not always agree with its proper meaning. At one time it has one sense, and then it points to another.
For example: "Let servants be subject to their masters" (Tit 2:9). Again, concerning irrational nature, which God subjected to man, the prophet says, "He subjected all things under his feet" (Ps 8:7).
Of those conquered in war he says, "He subjected peoples and tribes under our feet" (Ps 59:10). But of those saved through knowledge, he says as if in God's person, "Strangers were subjected to me" (Ps 59:10).
I think the words found in the sixty-first psalm are in some way close to this: "Shall not my soul be subject to God?" (Ps 61:2).
Above all there is the passage from Corinthians with which our enemies reproach us, that the Son Himself will then be subjected to Him who subjected all things to Himself (1 Cor 15:28).
Since the word suggests many thoughts, it is well to examine each meaning. We must learn which sense of subjection is close to the apostle's saying.
Concerning those forcibly captured in war by those who rule them, we say that subjection means unwilling and constrained submission to the victor.
If the captives receive some opportunity that gives hope of overcoming their rulers, they count subjection to enemies an insult and disgrace. Then they rise again of themselves against those in power.
In another example, the irrational is subject to the rational, because its nature lacks the greatest good, reason. By the good ordering of nature, what has less must be subject to what has the advantage.
Likewise, those who by law cannot resist the law, even if equal by nature, are under the yoke of slavery. They receive the status of the subjected and are led to subjection by inexorable necessity.
The purpose of our subjection is salvation. We learn this from the prophecy: "Be subject, my soul, to God, for my salvation is from Him" (Ps 61:6, 2).
When our enemies reproach us with the apostolic word that the Son will be subjected to the Father, we should ask them which meaning they judge worthy of the Only-begotten God.
Plainly they will say that the Son's subjection cannot be understood in any of the ways mentioned.
He is not an enemy brought into bondage by war, who might later rise with hope and zeal against the victor.
Nor is the Word one of the irrational creatures, lacking the good named above. He has no natural necessity of subjection such as sheep, herds, and oxen have in relation to man.
Nor does He hope to be freed from the yoke of slavery by favor or grace, like slaves bought with silver or born in the house and bound by law.
Let no one say that the Only-begotten God is subjected to the Father for the sake of salvation, as though salvation were not wrought by God through Him, because of His likeness to men.
For mutable nature must be subjected to the Father if it is to participate in the good. In this way we have communion in the good.
But in the immutable and unalterable power, in which every good is contemplated, there is no place for subjection. There are name and reality, eternity, incorruption, blessedness, and the ability always to remain the same.
There is also the impossibility of becoming either better or worse. Such a nature admits neither increase in good nor inclination toward evil.
He who pours forth salvation to others has no lack in what belongs to salvation.
What meaning of subjection, then, do they piously invite us to consider fitting for Him? All the examples examined are far removed from what is understood as fitting for the Only-begotten Son.
If one must add the kind of subjection spoken of in Luke, that the Lord at twelve years old was subject to His parents (Lk 2:51, 41-42), this still does not fit the 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, received our nature and led it through growth.
He became as a child, to whom a child's food is fitting, feeding on butter and honey. Thus He reached the age appropriate to youth and did not refuse what suited those years.
He thereby became an image of exemplary life. In other men, thought at that age is imperfect, and guidance by those more mature helps the young toward what is better.
Therefore the Twelve-year-old is subject to His mother. He shows that before maturity is reached through gradual growth, it is useful to accept subjection as guidance toward the good.
Those who speak rashly can hardly say to whom the Son is subjected. He is always perfect in all good things, and by His self-sufficient and undiminished nature He cannot receive either growth or diminution.
Yet, living in human nature through the flesh, in childhood He prescribed subjection to His youth in all He did.
Certainly, when He reached mature age, He no longer looked to maternal authority. When His mother urged Him at Cana of Galilee to show power over what was lacking at the wedding feast, He did not refuse to aid those in need.
Yet He rejected her counsel as untimely, saying, "What is that to Me and to you, woman? Do you wish to direct Me at such an age? Has not My hour come, which gives independence and freedom to age?" (Jn 2:4).
If in life according to the flesh the due measure of age leaves behind subjection to a parent, one can hardly say what subjection means for Him who rules this age in His power.
It belongs to divine and blessed life always to abide in Him and not to undergo change by alteration.
Since the Word who is from the beginning, the Only-begotten God, is foreign to every growth and alteration, how can what does not exist now come to exist later?
The apostle does not say that the Son has always been subjected. He says that He is to be subjected at the end of the fulfillment of all things.
But if subjection is called good and worthy of God, how can the good now be absent from God? The good is equal for both the Son who is subjected and the Father who receives the Son's subjection.
Will this good now be lacking to both Father and Son? Will what neither Father nor Son had before the ages be added to both at the fulfillment of time?
Would one undergo subjection, while the other receives some increase and enlargement of His own glory, which He did not previously possess?
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.
Yet 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 purpose. The meaning of the word is far removed from the poverty of the heretics' thought.
What is that word? Perhaps we may better perceive the concept by means of the expression written in this passage.
The epistle is a dispute with the Corinthians. They had accepted faith in the Lord, yet thought the doctrine of human resurrection a myth.
They said, "How will the dead rise, and with what body will those return whose bodies after death disappeared in many ways? Some decayed, while others were consumed by flesh-eating, creeping, swimming, or flying creatures."
Therefore he offered them many arguments. He persuaded them not to compare God's power with their own, nor to think that what is impossible for man is impossible for God.
He urged them to compare the greatness of God's authority with examples known to us. Thus he directs their attention to a marvel concerning bodies, seeds continually transformed by divine power.
He shows that divine wisdom is not wearied in finding many bodily forms in all things. There are rational, irrational, aerial, earthly, and heavenly forms visible to us.
The sun and the other stars each came into being by divine power. This proves to us that God has no difficulty concerning the resurrection of our bodies.
If all existing things were not changed from some hidden matter into visible form, but God's will became the matter and substance of creation, then the return of bodies to their own form is far more possible.
For He shapes what already exists, rather than bringing into being and substance what did not exist at all.
In his words to them he shows that through sin the first man died in the earth and is therefore called earthly.
According to his image, all who came from him, all born of him, also had to become earthly and mortal.
A second sequence must also be established, by which man is restored again from death to immortality.
In like manner he speaks of the good that appeared in nature by spreading from one to all. So evil also spread through one to many, extending through inheritance among descendants.
Expressing this doctrine, he uses these apostolic words: "The first man," says the apostle, "was from the earth, earthly. The second is from heaven. As was the earthly, so are the earthly. As is the heavenly, so are the heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly" (1 Cor 15:47-49).
Thus he establishes the doctrine of resurrection by these and the foregoing arguments. By many other arguments he binds the heretics' conclusions, showing that one who disbelieves human resurrection does not accept Christ's resurrection either.
By joining related arguments, he expresses the necessary conclusion: "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not risen. And if Christ has not risen, your faith in Him is vain" (1 Cor 15:13, 17).
If the first statement is entirely true, namely that Christ rose from the dead, then what is joined to it must also be true, namely that there is resurrection of the dead.
For through the particular proof, the universal is proved. Conversely, if someone says the universal is false, namely that there is no resurrection of the dead, he will not find the particular wholly true.
That particular is that Christ rose from the dead. If the universal is impossible, then it is utterly impossible that any particular should exist.
But for those who receive the Word, Christ's rising from the dead is faith and certainty. Whoever believes the particular, Christ's resurrection, will necessarily also have faith in the universal.
Thus he reasonably compels them to accept the doctrine. If the universal does not exist, no particular can exist. If we believe that He rose, faith in this becomes proof of the universal, the resurrection of men.
He then adds the statement that completes the full expression of this doctrine: "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor 15:22).
THEOSIS