Do you disagree with any of this?:
When (the Father) Will Subject All Things to (the Son),
Then (the Son) Himself Will Be Subjected to Him (the Father) Who Subjects All Things to Him (the Son)
A treatise on First Corinthians 15.28
by
Gregory of Nyssa
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Paul adds to this fact that as all have died in Adam, all will be restored to life in Christ.
Clearly does Paul here reveal the mystery of the Resurrection.
Anyone who looks at what results from the Resurrection readily sees its consequence, that is, the goal for which all men hope and for which they direct their prayers.
[M.1313] Here then is the object of our treatise.
I will first set forth, however, my own understanding of the text, and will then add the Apostle Paul’s words as applied to my understanding.
What therefore does Paul teach us?
It consists in saying that evil will come to nought and will be completely destroyed.
The divine, pure goodness will contain in itself every nature endowed with reason; nothing made by God is excluded from his kingdom once everything mixed with some elements of base material has been consumed by refinement in fire.
Such things had their origin in God; what was made in the beginning did not receive evil.
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It is time now to quote the apostle himself on these matters.
“For as in Adam all die,
so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
But each in his own order:
Christ the first fruits,
then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father
after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
‘For God has put all things in subjection under his feet’ [a reference to Ps 8.6].
But when it says, ‘All things are put in subjection under him,’ it is plain that he is accepted who put all things under him.
When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who puts all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone” [1 Cor 15.22-28].
In the last of his words [above], Paul plainly speaks of the nonexistence (anuparktos) of evil by stating that God is in all things and present to each one of them.
It is clear that God will truly be in all things when no evil will be found.
It is not proper for God to be present in evil; thus, he will not be in everything as long as some evil remains.
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Paul shows, by the words quoted above, that God becomes all things for us.
He appears as the necessities of our present life, or as examples for partaking in the divinity.
Thus, for God to be our food, it is [M.1317] proper to understand him as being eaten; the same applies to drink, clothing, shelter, air, location, wealth, enjoyment, beauty, health, strength, prudence, glory, blessedness and anything else judged good which our human nature needs.
Words such as these signify what is proper to God.
We therefore learn by the examples mentioned above that the person in God has everything which God himself has.
To have God means nothing else than to be united with him.
Unity then means to be one body with him as Paul states, for all who are joined to the one body of Christ by participation are one body with him.
When the good pervades everything, then the entirety of Christ’s body will be subjected to God’s vivifying power.
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Christ eternally builds himself up by those who join themselves to him in faith.
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Subjection to God is our chief good when all creation resounds as one voice, when everything in heaven, on earth and under the earth bends the knee to him, and when every tongue will confess that has become one body and is joined in Christ through obedience to one another, he will bring into subjection his own body to the Father.
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Paul says of himself that
“with Christ I am crucified.
It is no longer I who live,
but Christ who lives in me” [Gal 2.20].
If Paul no longer lives, but Christ lives in him, everything which Paul does and says is referred to Christ living in him.
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Paul claims that the good works of the Gospel are not his; rather, he attributes them to the grace of Christ dwelling within him.
If Christ living in Paul works and speaks those things as a result of this indwelling, Paul has relinquished everything which formerly dominated him when he was a blasphemer, persecutor and behaved arrogantly.
Paul looked to the true good alone, and by it made himself submissive and obedient.
Once Paul has been subjected to God, he is brought to the One who lives, speaks and effects good things.
The supreme good is subjection to God.
This fact which occurred in one person [Paul] will be harmoniously applied [M.1324] to every human being “when,” as the Lord says, “the Gospel will be preached throughout the world” [Mk 16.15].
All who have rejected the old man with its deeds and desires have received the Lord who, of course, effects the good done by them.
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1 Corinthians 15:28 is statement describing co-omnipotence. (Equal power)
The Godhead, which includes co-omnipotence, is created and begotten. The Holy Trinity is not either. The Godhead and Holy Trinity are not synonyms.
God is life, and more. Life is the opposite of evil. Where God is there cannot be evil.
😇
People see what they perceive as evil and ask “where is God?”
The Godhead is an adjective part of speech.
I’m not going to comment on what part of speech God truly is. I don’t know. The Godhead cannot be escaped in thought. Mostly a noun I guess. I think it requires another Greek case. I think of it as the Vocative Case of the Genitive Case. A form of Sound.
T. W. Manson (1893-1958), _The Teaching of Jesus: Studies of its Form and Content_ (1935), 351pp., on 234-235
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The result of this discussion may be summarised as follows.
The Kingdom of God is manifested on earth and in the present in the existence of human subjects who own God as their King, who look to him for protection, guidance, and a rule of life, who offer to him their absolute loyalty, complete trust, and willing obedience.
That is the ideal.
Wherever it is to any extent realised, there we have the Remnant.
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Over against the Kingdom of God stands the kingdom of Satan:
and between the two kingdoms there is war.
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The warfare against the forces of evil continues– the Church is the Kingdom at war– but the decisive battle has been fought and won at the cross, and the time must come when Christ shall subdue all enemies and hand over the Kingdom to God.
Do you believe “there is fundamental discontinuity between the ‘son of man’ of Dan 7:13 and the ‘son of man’ of the NT”?
Michael B. Shepherd, “Daniel 7:13 and the New Testament Son of Man” (2006)
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The linguistic and exegetical tools of modern scholarship have been wielded for every conceivable interpretation of Dan 7:13 with the exception of what has been called by James Montgomery the earliest and past prevailing interpretation among Jews and Christians– the messianic interpretation.
Although a point of interest will occasionally be addressed by a scholar who holds to the messianic interpretation, a sustained argument based on all the contextual evidence is nowhere to be found.
This situation creates a host of problems for understanding the relationship between Dan 7:13 and the NT.
The overwhelming consensus among critical scholars is that there is fundamental discontinuity between the “son of man” of Dan 7:13 and the “son of man” of the NT.
Here the proposed solution to the problem is that the “son of man” of Dan 7:13 is in fact an individual figure as identified by Jesus and the NT authors.
Whatever else may be said about discontinuity between the testaments, a significant line of continuity is in view with the use of Dan 7:13 in the NT.
Daniel 7:13.
Son of Man.
Gentile Messiah i.e. son of man.
The ongoing and present Systematic Scribe of Manipulations of Interpretation.
*Monkery of the Scribes*
The publishing date of the Tanakh Canon has a mostly unknown history and purposely vague fundamental discontinuity of when it was Canonized: 400 years as 200BC to 200AD 🙄
What I believe is that after the Jewish Roman Wars the Roman Courts had enforced it upon the Rabbis to produce a Latin Canon, much like the Greek Courts had enforced the creation of the LXX. Once a Canon in the native tongue of the foreign Court is produced the native Scribes greatly lose the ability to alter the VETUS LATINA if so desired, i.e. that which existed before Saint Jerome’s VULGATE.
The Gentile Courts provide justice to matters of Jewish Law with the official copy of the in their native tongue.
The Greeks had by then lost the Empire to the Romans and so the LXX was no longer the standard in the Court. When Saint Jerome made his VULGATE the texts of Daniel had already been manipulated and revealed within phenomenon called the
*Monkery of the Scribes*
Do you see anything erroneous here?:
Witness to God’s mercy: Conference of Br. Sabino Chialà on Isaac of Nineveh (June 14, 2008)
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After Ephraim, Isaac of Nineveh, also known as Isaac the Syrian, is the most well known and best loved of the Syrian writers and his works have been translated into many languages.
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Isaac tells us that we cannot know God as He is but only through the economy, through salvation history, and this economy is nothing other than love.
God’s entire activity in the past, the present and the future is motivated by only one feeling, namely love.
Even when Scripture speaks of God’s wrath we need to understand this correctly.
Even when God allows us to suffer, He still acts out of love and never out of wrath or justice but rather out of fatherly wisdom.
Even the last judgement must be understood as a purification and as an act of love.
It is only this love that can account for the Cross of Christ:
“Why did Christ stretch himself out on the cross for sinners and why did He give His holy body over to suffering for the sake of the world?
I suggest that God did this for only one reason:
to make His love known to the world, so that our ability to love, increased by such a discovery, would be the prisoner of His love.
As such, the exceptional power of the Kingdom of Heaven, which consists of love, found an opportunity to express itself in the death of His Son.
Our Lord did not die in order to redeem us from sin, or for any other reason, but purely and only so that the world would see and perceive the love of God for His creation.
If this wonderful act was only in order to forgive sins, then another means could have been found to realise it.” (Cent IV, 78)
Sebastian Brock, _Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian): The Second Part, Chapters 4-41 (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium)_ (1995), 207pp., 162-173; 174-180
Isaac of Nineveh: Mystic Treatises II
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**Summary of Chapter XXXIX: “Contemplation on the topic of Gehenna, in so far as grace can be granted to human nature to hold opinions on these mysteries” (Isaac of Nineveh, *The Second Part*, trans. Sebastian Brock)**
In this profound and cautious eschatological chapter (one of three final homilies in the Second Part devoted to the Last Things), St. Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian, 7th century) meditates on the “difficult matter of Gehenna” (Hell) within the framework of God’s infinite, unchanging love and goodness. He writes with deep humility, emphasizing that human understanding of such mysteries is limited by grace, and he rejects any view that would compromise the divine nature.
### Key Themes
– **Rejection of Retributive Punishment**: Isaac strongly opposes the idea that Gehenna involves divine anger, wrath, resentment, or vengeful retribution. Such passions are incompatible with God’s nature. Even if Scripture sometimes speaks of punishment in seemingly retributive terms, this is on the “outer surface”; the deeper reality is God’s fatherly, medicinal, and educational providence aimed solely at the ultimate good of rational beings. Attributing spite or endless punitive torment to God is blasphemous, as it implies weakness or changeability in the divine Nature.
– **Gehenna as Part of God’s Salvific Plan**: Gehenna is not an afterthought or a failure of God’s love but was foreseen and included within His eternal goodness and mercy from before creation. It serves a remedial and purifying purpose. Isaac expresses the opinion that God will manifest “some wonderful outcome” from Gehenna’s torments — revealing even more profoundly the wealth of His love, power, wisdom, and the “insistent might of the waves of His goodness.” The Kingdom will ultimately triumph over Gehenna.
– **The Scourge of Love**: Those in Gehenna are tormented not by the absence of God but by the painful awareness of having sinned against infinite Love. This “scourge of love” (a famous motif from Isaac’s First Part, here deepened) causes bitter regret sharper than any external fire. Yet this very suffering is transformative and temporary, leading the wicked to knowledge, repentance, and eventual participation in divine felicity. Punishments are measured according to sins and have an end (echoing patristic authorities like Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore of Tarsus, whom Isaac cites).
– **God’s Unchanging Love**: Divine love is equal, eternal, and impartial toward all rational beings (just or wicked). God created humanity out of love, foreknowing sin, and His providence — including Gehenna — always looks to future advantage and restoration rather than past requital. There is no “before or after” in God’s love or intentions.
### Tone and Approach
Isaac approaches the topic with awe, silence, and adoration before the unfathomable wisdom of God. He warns against infantile or blasphemous conceptions that limit God’s compassion. The chapter reflects his mystical experience: profound knowledge of divine love makes eternal conscious torment unthinkable. It aligns with (and radicalizes) hints in his First Part while remaining rooted in Scripture and earlier Eastern Fathers.
This chapter is a cornerstone for discussions of universal restoration (*apokatastasis*) in the Syriac tradition, emphasizing hope in God’s victorious mercy without diminishing the seriousness of sin or the reality of judgment. For the full text, consult Sebastian Brock’s critical edition and translation in the *Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium* (Second Part, chapters IV–XLI).
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**Summary of Chapter XL (from *The Second Part*, Chapters IV–XLI, trans. Sebastian P. Brock)**
Chapter XL continues and deepens the eschatological reflections begun in Chapter XXXIX on Gehenna (Hell), maintaining the same humble, awe-filled tone while focusing more explicitly on the triumph of God’s Kingdom, the uniform and unchanging nature of divine love, and the ultimately restorative purpose of all divine dealings with rational beings.
### Key Themes
– **God’s Single, Impartial Love**: Isaac emphasizes that God has one consistent ranking of complete and impassible love toward *all* rational creatures — the just and the fallen alike. There is no shift from love to wrath or retribution. God’s caring concern remains identical before and after any “fall.” Attributing anger, vengeance, or eternal retributive punishment to God is incompatible with His nature and borders on blasphemy.
– **Kingdom and Gehenna as Expressions of Mercy**: Both the Kingdom of Heaven and Gehenna belong to God’s merciful providence, conceived from eternity out of His goodness. Gehenna is not an end in itself or a failure of divine love but a temporary, medicinal, and educational reality. Its torments function as the “scourge of love” — a painful awareness of having opposed infinite Love — that leads to repentance, purification, and eventual restoration.
– **Triumph of the Kingdom**: Isaac expresses confident hope that the Kingdom will ultimately prevail over Gehenna. The sufferings of Gehenna have limits measured according to sins and serve a corrective purpose. God’s power, wisdom, and overwhelming goodness will manifest even more gloriously through the resolution of this “difficult matter,” bringing all to participation in divine joy. No rational being is ultimately excluded from the fullness of God’s salvific plan.
– **Humility and Mystery**: As in the previous chapter, Isaac approaches these mysteries with profound caution, relying on grace and spiritual insight rather than speculative certainty. He distinguishes the “outer surface” of scriptural language (which can appear retributive) from its deeper, merciful inner meaning. Human opinions on these matters are provisional; the full reality exceeds our present understanding.
### Overall Character
This chapter (along with XXXIX and XLI) forms part of Isaac’s most sustained treatment of the Last Things in the newly discovered Second Part. It exemplifies his mystical theology: divine love is the beginning, middle, and end of all things. Judgment and Gehenna are real and serious but never ultimate or retributive; they are subsumed within God’s fatherly, healing providence aimed at the restoration and felicity of all. The tone is one of wonder, adoration, and pastoral warning against despair or overly literal, “infantile” interpretations of Scripture.
These ideas align with broader Syriac traditions of *apokatastasis* (universal restoration) while remaining rooted in Isaac’s own contemplative experience of God’s boundless compassion. For the full text, consult Brock’s critical edition and translation in the *Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium*.
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