On the Christian Faith 5.13–5.15

But if the Father and the Son have one name and one right of God, since the Son of God too is true God and eternal king, then the Son of God is certainly not subject according to divinity. So, august Emperor, let us consider how we ought to understand “subject.” For how is the Son of God subject? As the creature is to futility? But it is impious to think any such thing of the substance of the divinity. Or as every creature is to the Son of God, because it is equally written: “You have put all things under his feet”? But Christ is not subject to himself. Or as a woman to a man, as we read, “Let wives be subject to their husbands,” and elsewhere, “Let a woman learn in silence with all subjection”? But it is sacrilege to compare either the Father to a husband or the Son of God to a woman. Or as Peter said: “Be subject to every human creature”? Certainly not so in the case of Christ. Or as Paul wrote: “Being subject to one another, to God and the Father, in the fear of Christ”? But the Son is not subject either in his own fear or in the fear of another Christ, because Christ is one. Consider the force of these words: that we are subject to the Father while we also fear Christ. How, then, do we understand “subject”? Let us review the whole chapter of the Apostle, so that nothing may seem to have been withheld by fraud or curtailed by stealth: “If in this life only,” he says, “we hope in Christ, we are more to be pitied than all men. But now Christ has risen from the dead, the firstfruits of those who sleep.” You see that the discussion concerns the resurrection of Christ. “For as through one man,” he says, “came death, so through a man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; then those who are Christ’s, who believed at his coming. Then the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God and the Father, when he has destroyed every rule and power and might. For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death; for he has put all things under his feet. But when he says, All things are subjected to him, it is clear that he is excepted who subjected all things to him. And when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subject to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.” The same Apostle also said to the Hebrews: “But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him.” We have received the sequence of the Apostle’s reading. How, then, do we speak of his being subject? The Sabellians and the Marcionites say that this subjection of Christ to God the Father will be such that the Son is poured back into the Father. If, then, the subjection of the Word will be such that God the Word is dissolved into the Father, then whatever things are subject to the Father and the Son will be dissolved into the Father and the Son, so that God may be all and in all creatures. But it is absurd to say this; the subjection, then, is not by pouring back. For the things that are subjected, namely the things that were created, are one thing, and he to whom that subjection is made is another. Let the interpreters of this savage pouring back fall silent, then. And would that those too were silent who, since they cannot prove that the Word of God and the Wisdom of God can be dissolved, ascribe the weakness of subjection to the divinity, saying that it is written: “And when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subject to him.” We see, then, that Scripture speaks of him as not yet subject but as one to be subjected; so now the Son is not subject to God the Father. In what, then, do you say that the Son will be subject? If in the divinity, he is neither disobedient, for he is not at variance with the Father, nor subject, for he is not a servant but the only Son of his own Father. Indeed, when he created heaven and founded the earth, he exercised both power and love. There is, then, no servile subjection in Christ’s divinity. And if there is no subjection, his will is free. But if they think that the Son’s subjection lies in the fact that the Father does all things with his will, let them learn that this itself is a proof of undivided power, because it is a unity of will, which did not begin in time but always existed. And where there is a perpetual unity of will, there is certainly not the weakness of a temporal subjection. For if he were subjected by nature, he would remain always subject; but since he is said to be subjected at a point in time, that subjection will belong to the dispensation he undertook, not to a perpetual weakness; especially since the everlasting power of God cannot change its state with time, nor can a right of power accrue to God the Father in time. For if the Son will at some time be changed, so as to be subjected according to divinity, then God the Father too, if at some time he will be able to do more, so as to have the Son subject according to divinity, must, according to your interpretation, be reckoned to be able to do less in the meantime. And what fault did the Son commit, that he should be believed to be capable of being subjected according to divinity afterwards? Did he, according to the flesh, snatch the seat at the right hand of the Father and, against the Father’s will, claim for himself the prerogative of the Father’s throne? But he himself says: “I always do the things that please him.” If, then, the Son pleases the Father in all things, why will he be subjected who was not subjected before? Let us see, then, whether that subjection is not that of the divinity but ours, in the fear of Christ, full of grace and full of mystery. So let us weigh the Apostle’s words again: “And when all things are subjected to him, then he himself will be subject to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.” What, then, do you say? Are not all things subject to him now? Are not the choirs of the saints subject? Are not the angels, who ministered to him when he was on earth? Are not the archangels, who were sent even to Mary as heralds of the Lord’s coming? Is not all the heavenly host? Are not the Cherubim and Seraphim, the Thrones and Dominions and Powers, which venerate and praise him? How, then, will they be subjected? Surely as the Lord himself said: “Take my yoke upon you”; for the untamed do not carry the yoke, but the humble and meek. This plainly is a subjection that is not base even for men themselves, but glorious: “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father.” And all things were not subject before, because they had not yet received the wisdom of God, and did not yet carry the easy yoke of the Word on the neck of the mind. “But as many as received him,” as it is written, “to them he gave power to become sons of God.” Someone will say: “Then Christ is already subject, since very many have believed?” Not at all; for the subjection of Christ is not in a few but in all. For as, if in me the flesh still lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, I do not seem to be subject, even if I am partly subdued; so, since the whole Church is the one body of Christ, as long as the human race is at variance, we divide Christ. Christ, then, is not yet subject, since his members are not yet subject. But when we are not many members but one spirit, then he too will be subject, so that through his subjection God may be all in all. But as Christ is not yet subject, so the Father’s work is not yet completed; for the Son of God said: “My food is to do the will of my Father who sent me, and to complete his work.” What question is there, then, that the Son’s subjection will be in me, in whom the Father’s work is incomplete, because I myself am not perfect? Do I, then, who leave the Father’s work incomplete, make the Son himself subject? But this is not an injury but grace; for in our being subjected, the advancement is certainly ours, not the divinity’s: that we may be subject to the Law, subject to grace. For before, as the Apostle himself said, the wisdom of the flesh was hostile to God, for it was not subject to the Law; but now it is subject through the passion of Christ.

And yet, lest anyone raise a false charge, see what Scripture, by divine inspiration, has guarded against; for it shows us in what respect Christ will be subject to God, while it teaches in what respect he subjected all things to himself. And so it says: “But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him. For we have seen Jesus made a little lower than the angels because of the suffering of death.” It shows, then, that he was made lower in taking flesh. What, then, prevents it from signifying subjection too in his taking of flesh, through which he will subject all things to himself, while in it he himself is subject to God the Father? Let us consider, then, his subjection: “My Father,” he says, “if you will, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.” That subjection, then, will be according to his assumption of human nature; for, as we read, “found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death”: subjection certainly belongs to obedience, obedience to death, death to the humanity he assumed; that subjection, then, will belong to the humanity he assumed. It is by no means a weakness of the divinity, but a dispensation of love. See how little I fear their propositions. They object that he is to be subject to God the Father; I read that he was subject to Mary his mother, for it is written of Joseph and Mary: “And he was subject to them.” Or if they think this, let them say that the divinity was subject to human beings. Let it not prejudge him, then, that he is said to be subject, as it does not prejudge him that he is read of as a servant, declared to have been crucified, proclaimed to have died. When he was dying, he was living; when he was subjected, he was reigning; when he was buried, he was raising the dead; and while he offered himself subject to human power, elsewhere he declared himself Lord of eternal majesty. He stood under a judge, and as the everlasting judge he claimed for himself the throne at the right hand of God. Indeed it is written: “Hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power of God and coming on the clouds of heaven.” He was beaten by the Jews, and he commanded the angels; born of Mary he was under the Law, before Abraham he was above the Law. On the cross he was revered by nature: indeed the sun fled, the earth trembled, the angels fell silent. Could the elements, which feared to see his passion, have borne to see his generation? And would they, who did not bear to see the subjection of his body, endure the subjection of his venerable nature? But since the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one nature, the Father certainly will not be subject to himself. And so the Son will not be subject in that in which he is one with the Father, lest through the unity of divinity the Father too should seem to be subject to the Son. So, as on that cross it was not the fullness of divinity but our frailty that was subjected, so also afterwards the Son will be subject to the Father in his sharing of our nature; so that, when the allurements of the flesh have been subdued, there may be in the heart no riches, no ambition, no pleasure, but God may be all things to us, if in all things, as far as we can grasp, we live according to his image and likeness. The benefit, then, passed from the one to all in common, because in his own flesh he subdued the nature of all human flesh. And so, according to the Apostle: “As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of the heavenly”; and this certainly cannot come about except through the inner man. Putting away, then, all these things, that is, the things we read of, anger, wrath, blasphemy, foul speech, and, as is said further on, “stripping off the old man with his deeds, let us put on the new, which is renewed unto knowledge according to the image of him who created him.” And so that you might know that when he says, “that God may be all in all,” he does not separate Christ from God the Father, he himself says to the Colossians: “Where there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor free; but Christ is all and in all.” So in saying to the Corinthians too, “that God may be all in all,” he included both the unity and the equality of Christ with God the Father, since the Son is not separated from the Father. And likewise, as the Father is all and in all, so Christ too works all things in all. If, then, Christ too works all things in all, he is certainly not subject in the majesty of divinity, but in us. And how is he subject in us, except in the way in which he was made lower than the angels, that is, in the mystery of the body? For in this respect all things did not yet seem subject to him, though from their beginning they certainly served their Creator. But if you ask how he is subject in us, he himself shows, saying: “I was in prison, and you came to me; I was sick, and you visited me. For what you did to one of the least of these, you did to me.” You hear “sick” and are not moved; you hear “subject” and are moved; though he is sick in that in which he is subject, in that in which he was made sin and a curse for us. As, then, he was made sin and a curse not for his own sake but for ours, so he will be subject in us not for himself but for us; not subject in his eternal nature, nor accursed in his eternal nature; for “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” He is accursed because he took on our curses; subject too, because he himself took on our subjection, but in assuming the form of a servant, not in the majesty of God; so that, while he offered himself in the flesh as a sharer of our frailty, he might make us in his power sharers of the divine nature. Not that we have a natural fellowship with the heavenly generation of Christ, or that that subjection belongs to the divinity in Christ; but as the Apostle said that in him, through that flesh which is the pledge of our salvation, we sit in the heavenly places (though we certainly are not sitting there), so he too, through his assumption of our nature, is said to be subject in us. For who is so mad as to think, as we said above, that a seat at the right hand of God the Father is owed to himself, when, although it is granted by the Father to Christ even according to the flesh, it is granted to one of heavenly generation and equal power? The angels worship, and do you, in sacrilegious presumption, set out for yourself the throne of God? “It is written,” you will say, “that when we were dead in sins, he made us alive together in Christ, by whose grace you are saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” I acknowledge what is written; but it is not that God allows men to sit at his right hand, but to sit in Christ; for he is the foundation of all, and he is the head of the Church, in whom our common nature according to the flesh has won the prerogative of the heavenly seat. For in Christ the flesh is honored as God’s flesh, and in the flesh the nature of the human race, which all men share. As, then, we sit in him through the fellowship of bodily nature, so he who through taking our flesh was made a curse for us (though a curse certainly does not fall upon the blessed Son of God), so, I say, he too will be subject in us through the obedience of all: when the pagan has believed, when the Jew has acknowledged him whom he crucified, when the Manichaean has worshiped him whom he did not believe to have come in the flesh, when the Arian has confessed as almighty him whom he denied; when, finally, the wisdom of God, righteousness, peace, love, and resurrection are in all. Through his own works, then, and the various kinds of virtues, Christ will be subject to the Father in us; when vices are renounced and sin is at rest, and the spirit of all peoples begins to cling to the one God in all with one mind, then God will be all in all.

Let us, then, briefly gather the conclusion of the whole answer. Unity of power excludes the notion of a degrading subjection; the destruction of the powers and the victory won over death certainly do not diminish the power of the triumpher; obedience works subjection; Christ took on obedience, obedience to the point of the cross, and the cross for salvation. So where the work is, there is also the author of the work. When, then, all things have been subjected to Christ through the obedience of Christ, so that all bend the knee in his name, then he himself will be all in all; for now, since not all believe, not all seem to be subject. When all, then, have believed and done the will of God, Christ will be all and in all; and when Christ is all and in all, God will be all and in all; for the Father abides always in the Son. How, then, is he charged with weakness who redeemed the weak? And lest you should perhaps refer this too to the Son’s weakness, that it is written that God subjected all things to him, learn that he himself also subjected all things to himself; for it is written: “But our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also await a Savior, the Lord Jesus, who will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able to subject all things to himself.” You have learned, then, that he is able to subject all things to himself, certainly according to the working of his divinity. Learn now that according to the flesh he receives all things as subjected, as it is written: “Who worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and setting him at his right hand in the heavenly places, above every principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come; and he put all things under his feet.” According to the flesh, then, all things will be handed over to him in subjection, the flesh according to which he was also raised from the dead; and according to the human and rational soul the subjection is to be understood. Many interpret devoutly what is written: “Shall not my soul be subject to God?” He said “soul,” not divinity; “soul,” not majesty. And so that we might know that the Lord spoke through the prophet of the human nature he assumed, he added: “How long will you set upon a man?” according to what he says in the Gospel: “Why do you seek to kill me, a man?” And he added: “But they sought to reject my price; they ran in thirst; with their mouth they blessed, and with their heart they cursed.” For the Jews, when Judas brought back the price, would not receive it, running in the thirst of madness, because they refused the grace of the spiritual drink. This is the devout interpretation of the subjection. For since this is the gift of the Lord’s passion, he will certainly be subject in us in that in which he suffered. Do we ask why? So that neither angels nor powers nor height nor depth nor things present nor things to come nor any other creature may be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. We see, then, from what we have said, that no creature is excepted, but that every creature, whatever there may be, is included among those he named above. At the same time we must also consider that, when he had said earlier, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” he set down below: “Neither death nor life nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.” We see, then, that the love of God is the same as the love of Christ. Indeed it was not idly that he put “the love of God which is in Christ Jesus,” lest you should understand the love of God and of Christ as separate. But there is nothing that love divides, nothing that the eternal divinity cannot do, nothing that escapes the truth, deceives justice, or passes by wisdom.