Ephesians 1:10Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Heavenly and earthly things had been torn away from one another and did not have one head. With respect to creation there was one God, but with respect to their union this was not so. When pagan delusion overflowed, men were torn away from obedience.

"For the dispensation," he writes, "of the fullness of times." He called the divine economy itself the fullness of times. Notice how distinctly he speaks. He shows that the beginning of our salvation, the purpose, the desire, and the first impulse are in the Father, while its fulfillment in action is through the Son. Yet nowhere does he call the Son a servant.

"In the dispensation of the fullness of times."

He purposed and predestined this good pleasure and consent beforehand for the dispensation and establishment of the fullness of times. For the fullness of times, that is, the last times, required punishment and vengeance, since human wickedness had then multiplied.

But the manifestation of the Son in these last times, on the contrary, brought salvation. This belongs to incomprehensible wisdom.

"That He might unite all things under Christ as Head, both heavenly and earthly."

The heavenly, he says, was separated from the earthly and did not have one head. For although, with respect to creation, God is one for all, yet with respect to moral union this did not yet exist.

The wise Paul explains to us the one true and most universal cause of the becoming man of the Only-begotten, saying: "For God the Father was pleased to recapitulate all things in Christ" (Eph 1:10).

The truly learned in the Law and most sacred Paul, who perceived beforehand the mystery of salvation through Christ, says that in Him "all things in heaven and on earth" will be recapitulated according to the good pleasure and will of God the Father (Eph 1:9).

For in the fullness of times all things are ordered and restored in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth in Him. This means the luminaries, which are renewed in our mind and in our understanding of them. They enlighten us that they are creatures, not gods. Likewise the idols that are on earth are more clearly disclosed before us as works of hands, not as creators. They are renewed in the renewal accomplished with us. They are renewed not in themselves, but in the true knowledge of their nature.

By "the fullness of times" the Apostle means the time appointed by God. So also in the Epistle to the Galatians he said: "when the fullness, πληρομα, of the time had come" (Gal 4:4).

"To recapitulate all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth, in Him."

He sets this forth more clearly in the Epistle to the Romans, for he says: "the whole creation groans and labors together until now" (Rom 8:22). And again: "the earnest expectation of creation waits for the revelation of the sons of God" (Rom 8:19).

He says the same in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "that He, apart from God, might taste death for everyone" (Heb 2:9).

Those who know Holy Scripture say that, since according to the testimony of Dionysius the Areopagite there are nine ranks of angels, the Lord, ascending to heaven in His human nature, allotted a special day to each rank. In His Godhead He is everywhere present. The angels too needed the coming of the Lord. For, according to the Apostle, all things are summed up in Christ, "things in heaven and things on earth" (Eph 1:10).

The Lord leads those who have heeded His call, uniting in Himself all things in heaven and on earth. What is in heaven is spiritual, and what is on earth, namely man, is the vessel. Thus He united these in Himself, joining man with the Spirit and placing the Spirit in man. Through Him, the Spirit, we see, hear, and speak.

Not everything that exists in heaven and on earth is restored in Christ, but what is in Christ is restored. For there is also something else, alien to Christ. Therefore all that abides in Christ is restored and born anew, whether heavenly or earthly. For He is salvation itself, renewal itself, eternity itself.

"In the dispensation of the fullness of times." The expression is compressed. The Apostle wishes to say that, after the completion of the appointed time, God was pleased to order the recapitulation of all things in Christ.

"To recapitulate," α̉νακεφαλαιώσασθαι. According to the meaning of the Greek word used here, Christ is the summary of all that exists. Άνακεφαλαιώσις means a heading, a condensed presentation of what has been said.

St. John Chrysostom expresses the Apostle's thought here more closely in this way: "In Christ according to the flesh, God established one Head for all, both for angels and for men."

Through man's fall, division arose between the heavenly and the earthly. Now this division is destroyed through Christ, and all are united.

Second, this is with regard to the chief and common purpose of election (Eph 1:10). This purpose is the union, under one Head, Christ, of human beings in heaven and on earth who had previously been divided by human sin: "to sum up all things in Christ."

Together with the great wealth of divine gifts, there was opened to men a great knowledge of the mystery of the divine will. This mystery embraces the whole fullness of the ages, from the beginning of the ordering of salvation to its completion in the age to come.

The essence of this mystery is the summing up of all things, heavenly and earthly, in Jesus Christ. Through sin there entered the division of the worlds: angelic, human, and the rest of earthly creation.

“When God the Word assumed human nature, then He united in Himself, as in brief, all that exists, and returned it to Himself, their Creator” (St. Irenaeus).

Dispensation, oikonomia, means divine economy in general, the ordering of the whole course of affairs in a household, in which everything is directed toward one goal, well-being. The Lord has a special economy in ordering the salvation of the human race. The plan of what is to be and when is sketched in the divine counsel from eternity. But one thing or another comes into fulfillment when its own time arrives. This arrival of time is here called by the Apostle the fullness of the times, pleroma ton kairon. In the Epistle to the Galatians it is called pleroma tou chronou, the completion of time. By such an expression one may designate the time of any special divine dispensation in the ordering of our salvation. But in the Apostle it designates exclusively the coming to earth of the Only-begotten Son of God. He indicates this directly in Galatians: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son” (Gal 4:4). Here the thought is the same. Only he speaks not of the sending of the Son of God, but of the significance it has within the whole circle of existing things. “By the fullness of times the Apostle means the time appointed by God for the coming of the Lord to earth” (Theodoret). Saint Chrysostom, having said that the fullness of times was His coming, or the divine economy itself, adds: “Notice how precisely the Apostle speaks. Showing that the beginning of our salvation, the intention, the first desire and impulse, is in the Father, and that its execution in deed is through the Son, he nowhere calls the Son a servant. The Father willed. The Son fulfilled the will. But if the Father had not willed, the Son would not have acted. Likewise, if the Son had not acted, the Father would have been without will, for all things are common to the Father and the Son. ‘All Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine,’ says the Son (Jn 17:10).” The Apostle mentions this fullness of times here not to dwell on it especially, but only for the fullness of his depiction of the whole work of ordering salvation in the Lord. Having said that God showed the abundance of His grace toward us by revealing to us the mystery of His will, the chief hidden goal of all the good pleasure set forth in the Lord Jesus Christ, he now shows what this mystery is. He shows what this hidden goal of God is: namely, according to the divine economy, or God’s pre-eternal dispensation for the fulfillment of the time already due, to sum up all things in Christ. Yet when we read these words, it is never needless for us to pause our attention on the thought expressed in them. It introduces us into the mysteries of God’s wisdom, whose contemplation is always edifying. Saint Paul here points to the predestined time of the appearance of the Son of God on earth. He also expresses that this time has already been fulfilled in the appearance of Jesus Christ, God incarnate. Mankind, and especially the people of God, had already lived through the period of time which Divine Providence appointed for their preparation to receive the powers of redemption. All history before Christ the Lord was pedagogical in character. Everything there tended toward preparing mankind for the greatest work of God, manifested in Christ. The experiences of five and a half thousand years were sufficient to instruct man that he had nothing to expect from his own efforts and wisdom with regard to salvation. He could not reach it by the way of the Law, as Judaism showed. Nor could he reach it by the way of properly human efforts, as paganism showed. Thus there was formed the consciousness of one’s own powerlessness, the feeling of need for deliverance from without, and the seeking and expectation of a Deliverer from above. This is the predestined fruit of the course of events, the fullness of times. Saint Chrysostom depicts it thus: “The fullness of times was His coming, the coming of the Son of God. Therefore, when He had done everything through Angels, Prophets, and the Law, and had in no way succeeded, but was rather still in danger of repenting that He had created man in vain, and that He had in vain brought into being the one who had progressed so greatly in evil; when all without distinction were perishing, and perishing in greater number than at the flood, then He found the means of saving man in grace. By this it is shown that He did not create him irrationally or in vain. Thus men were saved precisely when they most deserved to perish.” The miserable condition of man reached its extreme limits. Then the Lord came, and He was received like rain by thirsty earth. With His manifestation, preparation for Him ended, and a new era of mankind’s spiritual life began. The holy Apostle characterized this era as the summing up of all things in Christ. Mankind rightly regards this moment of the fullness of times as the central point of its history, from which it looks backward and foresees forward. The whole course of events tends toward it as the circumference to the center. Toward it converge all the radii of the circle of times. To sum up all things, things in heaven and things on earth, in Him. This is the goal of all God’s good pleasure toward us, the final limit to which the divine economy of our salvation extends. It is the mystery by whose revelation the Lord greatly multiplied His grace toward us, already exceedingly full. Christ the Lord is the head of saved mankind, predestined from eternity. But since sin introduced discord and dissolution among earthly and heavenly creatures, the Lord, by destroying sin, removes the wall of separation. He reunites all things, returns all things to peace in Himself, and becomes the head of things earthly and heavenly (Col 1:20). The things in heaven are the angelic world. The things on earth are the human race and the material world. These three worlds were originally in perfect and manifest harmony and formed one Kingdom of God. Man’s sin, his falling away from God, disordered this harmony. According to his idea, man was to be the center of the worlds, of the whole realm of created being, both of the Angels and of the material world. With his fall, the center of union was lost, and everything fell into discord. The world, whose powers and elements he contains in himself, he dragged down in his own person. According to the Apostle, it groans for deliverance (Rom 8:22). And the Angels themselves stood apart because man had gone on an entirely different path. In Christ Jesus everything is now raised again toward union, and the original harmony of creatures is restored. Through His human body He introduces life-giving powers into the world. He holds the whole world in Himself and penetrates it by His own powers from Himself. He also draws the Angels to Himself through the human spirit, giving them room to act and thereby blessing them. By sin they had been fenced off and constrained, as though enclosed by a barrier in their own realm alone. Now, in the person of the Lord, the door into the realm of man and nature is again opened to them. They have access everywhere, rejoicing in the return of the full circle of their good activity, to which they had been appointed from the beginning. But the full summing up of all things will be accomplished, or will appear in power and glory, at the end of the ages. Now it is only seeded in the person of the Lord and appointed to ripen in the course of the events of the world and of mankind until the end of the world. Since this subject is of first importance, let us make somewhat fuller excerpts from the holy fathers concerning it. Saint Chrysostom says: “Heavenly and earthly things had been torn away from one another and did not have one head. This head ought to be God alone, the Creator and Provider. But in fact this was not so, because men had torn themselves away from obedience.” Then, after explaining other words contained in this verse, Saint Chrysostom again returns to the summing up and says: “What does it mean to sum up? It means to unite. Among us, recapitulation, anakephalaiosis, is usually called the presentation in brief expressions of what would need to be spoken at length, or a condensed exposition of everything that has been said extensively. Thus this word may also mean the following: He summed up in Himself what had been ordered for so long, that is, He condensed it. Or, speaking briefly while preserving the truth, He both embraced the former and added the new.” All prophecies and prefigurations were fulfilled in Him, as Blessed Jerome explains at length, and the Law ceased. New grace-filled powers were laid down, which, like leaven, began to penetrate, enliven, and re-create everything. But this thought is not the chief one in Saint Chrysostom. The chief thought is the reunion of creatures. “But there is also something else,” he says, “which is likewise signified by this word. In Christ according to the flesh, God set one head for all, for Angels and men. That is, He gave one supreme principle both to Angels and to men: to the one, Christ according to the flesh; to the other, God the Word. It is as though someone said of a house that one part was rotten and another firm, and renewed it, that is, made it stronger by laying down the strongest foundation. So also here, He brought all under one head. Only then is union possible. Only then will there be this perfect union, when all things, having a certain necessary bond above. Are brought under one head.” Blessed Theodoret completes this thought by introducing nature also into the restorative action accomplished in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ: “To sum up all things.” He expounds this more clearly in the Epistle to the Romans, for he says: “The whole creation groans and labors together until now” (Rom 8:22). And again: “The earnest expectation of the creation waits for the revelation of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19). He says the same in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “That, apart from God, He might taste death for all” (Heb 2:9). “The one divine nature has no need of anything. But every creature had need of the healing of the divine economy. For the elements, created by God for the use of men, He made subject to corruption, because transgression was to make man mortal. And the invisible powers too probably grieved, seeing wickedness taking up its dwelling among men. For if they rejoice over one sinner who repents, as the Lord said (Lk 15:7), it is clear that they suffer when they see the opposite. But the becoming man of the Only-begotten, by crushing death, showing the Resurrection, and giving the pledges of the general Resurrection, scattered this gloomy cloud. Therefore the Apostle calls this sudden change of things a summing up. For by the divine economy of the Master Christ, human nature is raised up and clothed in incorruption. The visible creation, freed from corruption, receives incorruption. And the choirs of the invisible powers will now remain in gladness, because sorrow and sadness and sighing have fled away (Is 35:10). This is what the divine Apostle teaches in the words being explained. For he did not simply say heaven and earth, but things in heaven and things on earth. And, showing the mystery of the divine economy, he added: in Him, that is, in Christ.” Cornelius a Lapide cites the words of Blessed Augustine: “In Christ, what is in heaven is restored by the fact that what fell in the fallen angels is returned from men who are saved in the Lord. What is on earth is also restored by the fact that men predestined to eternal glory are renewed, being delivered from the old corruption” (Enchiridion LXII). He also cites Saint Gregory the Great: “Men are raised by humility to the place from which the apostate angels fell through pride. Now both men and Angels are called into one house, under one head. This house was ruined through Adam’s sin. One wall remained whole, namely the Angels. The other fell, namely men, who fell away from fellowship with the Angels and fell under the yoke of demons. Christ has now raised up this fallen wall again, and through this He has restored the whole house.