43. But what absurd folly is it of the
heretics to regard as unattainable for God that goal to which man hopes
to attain, to imply that He is powerless to effect in Himself that
which He is mighty to effect in us. It is not the language of
reason or common sense to say that God is bound by some necessity of
His nature to consult our happiness, but cannot bestow the like
blessings upon Himself. God does not, indeed, need any further
blessedness, for His nature and power stand fast in their eternal
perfection. But although in the Dispensation, that mystery of
great godliness, He Who is God became man, He is not powerless to make
Himself again entirely God, for without doubt He will transform us also
into that which as yet we are not. The final sequel of
man’s life and death is the resurrection: the assured
reward of our warfare is immortality and incorruption, not the
ceaseless persistence of everlasting punishment, but the unbroken
enjoyment and happiness of eternal glory. These bodies of earthly
origin shall be exalted to the fashion of a higher nature, and
conformed to the glory of the Lord’s body. But what then of
God found in the form of a servant? Though already, while still
in the form of a servant, glorified in the body, shall He not be also
conformed to God? Shall He bestow upon us the form of His
glorified body, and yet be able to do for His own body nothing more
than He does for Himself in common with us? For the most part the
heretics interpret the words, Then shall He be subjected to Him that
did subject all things to Himself, that God may be all in all, as
if they meant that the Son is to be subjected to God the Father, in
order that by the subjection of the Son, God the Father may be all in
all. But is there still lacking in God some perfection which He
is to obtain by the subjection of the Son? Can they believe that
God does not already possess that final accession of blessed divinity, because it is said that by
the coming of the fulness of time He shall be made all in all?