ACC ~ 1 Corinthians 15 v28c

GOD WILL BE ALL IN ALL. ORIGEN: God will be all things in each person in such a way that everything which the reasoning mind can feel or understand or think will be all God. When purified from all the dregs of its vices and utterly cleared from every cloud of wickedness, the mind will no longer be conscious of anything besides or other than God. That mind will think of God and see God and hold God. God will be the mode and measure of its every movement. In this way God will be all in all. ON FIRST PRINCIPLES 3.6.3.

FINISHING THE WORK GOD GAVE THE SON. ORIGEN: When “he shall have completed” his “work” and brought his whole creation to the height of perfection, then he is said to be “subjected” in these whom he subjected to the Father. In these “he finished the work that God had given him that God may be all in all.” HOMILIES ON LEVITICUS 7.6.

THE MATURITY TOWARD WHICH WE SPEED. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS: “God will be all in all” at the time of restoration—“God,” not “the Father.” The Son will not revert to disappear completely in the Father, like a torch temporarily withdrawn from a great flame and then joined up again with it—Sabellians must not wrest this text. No, God will be “all in all” when we are no longer what we are now, a multiplicity of impulses and emotions, with little or nothing of God in us, but are fully like God, with room for God and God alone. This is the “maturity” toward which we speed. THEOLOGICAL ORATION 30.7.

THE WHOLE CHOIR OF VIRTUES. JEROME: God will be all things in all, so that there will not be only wisdom in Solomon, meekness of soul in David, zeal in Elias and Phineas, faith in Abraham, perfect love in Peter … , zeal of preaching in the chosen vessel [Paul], and two or three virtues each in others. But God will be completely in all. The whole number of the saints will be glorified in the whole choir of virtues, and God will be all things to all. AGAINST THE PELAGIANS 18.

THE VISION OF HIS OWN FORM. AUGUSTINE: The vision itself is face to face, which is promised to the just as their supreme reward. This will come to pass when he shall deliver the kingdom to God the Father. There, he wants it understood, will also be the vision of his own form, when the whole creation, together with that form in which the Son of God has been made the Son of Man, has been made subject to God. According to this form, the Son himself will be made subject to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all. ON THE TRINITY 1.12.28.

ALL WILL SHARE. AUGUSTINE: God will be the consummation of all our desiring—the object of our unending vision, of our unlessening love, of our unwearying praise. And in this gift of vision, the response of love, this paean of praise, all alike will share, as all will share in everlasting life. CITY OF GOD 22.30.

ALL THINGS SUBJECTED TO HIM. AUGUSTINE: Even if there is no chance of manumission, slaves are now to make their slavery a kind of freedom by serving with love and loyalty, free from fear and feigning, until injustice becomes a thing of the past and every human sovereignty and power is done away with, so that God may be all in all. CITY OF GOD 6.15.

FROM SHADOWS TO LIGHT. AUGUSTINE: The allusion here is to the transformation of the saints when they pass from the old shadows of time into the new lights of eternity. CITY OF GOD 20.22.

FILLED WITH GOD. AUGUSTINE: In heaven we shall not experience need, and on that account we shall be happy. We shall be filled, but it will be with God. He will be for us all those things which we here look upon as being of great value. EASTER SERMON 255.8.