Chapter 5
1 Corinthians 15:22–28
Read verse 28 slowly. Let every word land. "That God may be all in all."
All in all.
Not all in some. Not all in the elect. Not all in those who happened to hear the right sermon at the right time. All in all. If God is truly all in all, what is left over? What corner of creation sits outside His reach? What pocket of souls remains forever locked away from Him?
I believe 1 Corinthians 15:22–28 is the single most important passage in the Bible for the hope I am defending. If Chapter 4 laid the foundation with the two Adams, this chapter raises the roof. Paul is not being vague here. He is not tossing out a nice idea. He is mapping the whole sweep of God's plan from the resurrection of Christ to the final moment when God fills everything with Himself. And at the end of that plan, there is no rival kingdom, no eternal colony of the damned, no permanent corner of darkness that God never wins back.
The passage deserves to be read whole. Let us put it on the table.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, 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.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:20–28, ESV)
This is Paul’s map of the end. Christ reigns. Every enemy falls. Death itself is undone. And then God becomes all in all. The question this chapter asks is simple: can that ending include even one soul that is not reconciled to God? I will argue that it cannot.
First Corinthians 15 is the great resurrection chapter. Paul wrote it because some in the church at Corinth were denying the bodily resurrection of the dead (v. 12). His answer is sweeping. He starts with the bedrock fact: Christ has been raised (vv. 1–11). He then draws out the chain of logic: because Christ rose, all who are His will rise (vv. 12–19). And then he pushes the logic further still, past what the Corinthians even asked about, to the consummation of all things (vv. 20–28).1
The key words in this passage carry enormous weight. The word translated "destroy" in verses 24 and 26 is the Greek katargeō. It does not always mean "to wipe out." The literal sense is "to render powerless" or "to nullify."2 The context tells us what kind of nullifying Paul has in mind. The word translated "put in subjection" is hypotassō, meaning "to place under, to bring into proper order."3 Paul uses this word five times in verses 27–28 alone. It is the hinge verb of the whole passage.
Notice the structure. Paul describes a sequence. First, Christ rises (the firstfruits). Then, at His coming, those who belong to Christ rise. Then comes "the end" (Greek to telos), when Christ hands the kingdom to the Father after every rule, authority, and power has been brought under His feet.4 The climax is verse 28. When all things have been subjected to Christ, Christ Himself will be subjected to the Father. And the purpose? "So that God may be all in all."
The Greek phrase translated "all in all" is panta en pasin. It is a little ambiguous. It could mean "everything to everyone" (taking pasin as masculine). It could mean "all in all things" (taking it as neuter). Or it could mean "all things among all people."5 On any of these readings, the scope is total. God fills everything that exists. Nothing falls outside His life.
Plain Words
Katargeō (Greek): "to render powerless, to nullify." Often translated "destroy," but the context shows what kind of nullifying Paul means. Hypotassō (Greek): "to place under, to bring into proper order." The word for "subjection" in this passage. Panta en pasin (Greek): "all in all" or "everything in everyone." The phrase that names the final state of creation.
The literary flow is a march toward completeness. Every step moves closer to total victory. And the final victory is not God standing over a divided kingdom, half light and half darkness. It is God filling everything.
Let me slow down on the verbs, because the verbs are where the argument lives.
In verse 24, Paul says Christ will hand over the kingdom to the Father "after destroying every rule and every authority and power." Many readers assume "destroying" means total annihilation. But as Robin Parry has shown, this is not required by the word.6 The verb katargeō literally means "to render inoperative" or "to nullify." What it means in any given instance depends on the context. When Christ "destroys" death in verse 26, the destruction is the nullifying of death through resurrection. Death is not an entity that gets punished. It is a condition that gets undone.7 Gerry Beauchemin makes this same point with force in Extermination or Restoration?: the only things said to be "destroyed" are abstract entities, and the word is katargeō, not a cognate of apollumi. As he puts it, "God does not destroy death by killing, tormenting forever or annihilating, but rather by making all alive."7b
Now look at what Paul says about the enemies. They are "put under his feet" (v. 25) and "put in subjection under his feet" (v. 27). Here is the key point: Paul says that it is not merely enemies but "all things" that are subjected to Christ (vv. 27–28). The redeemed are included in that "all things." And the redeemed are certainly not annihilated.8
Here is the move that I think changes everything. After the enemies are subjected (hypotagē) to Christ, Christ Himself is subjected (hypotagēsetai) to the Father (v. 28). The same verb. The same structure. Parry puts the point precisely. The parallel between the subjection of all things and Christ’s own subjection shows that this is "simply a restoration of the order of creation and not annihilation."9 Christ’s subjection to the Father is not forced submission. It is glad, willing obedience. The parallel tells us that the subjection of all things to Christ is the same kind.
The Parallel of Subjection
Christ subjects all things to Himself. Then Christ subjects Himself to the Father. The same verb is used for both. If Christ’s subjection to the Father is willing and loving, the subjection of all things to Christ must be, too. You cannot read one as glad worship and the other as forced conquest without breaking the parallel Paul built.
Thomas Talbott presses this point even further. He argues that true subjection requires willing obedience. A will that is merely overpowered is not truly "in subjection" at all. The rebel who is chained and gagged has not submitted. He has only been restrained. As long as even one will remains in rebellion against Christ, at least one power in the universe is not yet under Christ’s feet.10 The only way for God to bring every will into genuine subjection is to transform each one so that it freely places itself under Christ. That is not coercion. That is salvation.
This is what the verbs actually say. Not annihilation. Not forced surrender. But the willing return of all things to God through Christ.
Verse 26 is stunning in its simplicity: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death."
Not the second-to-last enemy. The last. Once death falls, there are no enemies left. And what does the destruction of death mean? In Paul’s theology, death is more than a biological event. It is the entire condition of separation from God.11 Physical death is only its visible face. The deeper death is spiritual: the estrangement of the creature from its Creator.
If Christ destroys this last enemy, if death in all its forms is abolished, then no form of separation from God remains. Think about what that means for the idea of an eternal hell. If death is the last enemy and death is fully destroyed, then permanent separation from God has been ended. The second death, the lake of fire (see Chapter 26), cannot be permanent if death itself is Paul’s "last enemy" and that enemy is destroyed.
As Talbott puts it, if death achieved a final victory in the life of even one person, then Paul’s rhetorical question would have an answer. "Where, O Death, is your victory?" (1 Corinthians 15:55). That question is not supposed to have an answer.12
Andrew Hronich echoes this with force. "Even one lost soul is a victory for the grave," he writes, "but no such victory awaits the forces of evil."13 Death will have nothing to boast about. Not one soul in its permanent grip. Christ has risen from the dead, trampling over death by death.
Death’s Final Defeat
If death is the last enemy and death is destroyed, then no one remains permanently dead, permanently separated from God. A single soul in endless separation would be a trophy that death still holds. And Paul says death holds no trophies at the end.
I want to make sure the weight of this sinks in. The traditional reading asks us to believe something very strange. It says that Christ destroys death as the last enemy. And yet, on this same reading, billions of souls remain in a state of permanent spiritual death forever. But if they are still dead to God, then death has not been destroyed. It has only been relocated. It lives on in hell.
This is not the total victory Paul describes. A general who claims victory while the enemy still holds half the country has not won. He has reached a stalemate. Paul does not describe a stalemate. He describes an end in which God fills everything. No holdouts. No rival territory. No corner left in darkness.
And here is a point I want to press. Paul does not treat the destruction of death as one item on a checklist. He treats it as the final, climactic act. Once death goes down, the drama is over. Christ hands the kingdom to the Father. The curtain falls on a completed victory. If death still exists in any form, in any place, the curtain has not fallen. The play is still running. And Paul says it ends.
Paul’s vision in 1 Corinthians 15 does not stand alone. It connects directly to the cosmic scope of two other passages we will treat in the chapters ahead.
In Colossians 1:20, Paul writes that God was pleased "through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." The same "all things" created through Christ (Colossians 1:16) are reconciled through Christ. (See Chapter 6 for the full treatment.) In Ephesians 1:10, Paul says God’s plan is "to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth."14
The connections between these passages are striking. The scholar Martinus de Boer has documented the direct correspondences between 1 Corinthians 15:20–28 and Ephesians 1:20–23. In both texts, the same three terms for powers appear in the same sequence ("every principality and authority and power"). In both, Psalm 8:7b is quoted in the same form ("all things He subordinated under his feet"). And both conclude with the phrase "all in all."15
These are not isolated proof texts. They are a single, coherent vision. Christ’s reign in 1 Corinthians 15 is the same reign that reconciles all things in Colossians 1 and unites all things in Ephesians 1. When God is "all in all," reconciliation is complete. Nothing is left outside.
And notice something that Parry points out about the Ephesians parallel. In Ephesians 1:21–22, the powers are subjected to Christ, and yet the church is also included in that subjection. The church is certainly not destroyed or punished by being under Christ. Being placed under Christ is being brought into the right order of things.16 The subjection language is compatible with, and even points to, salvation.
Now let me ask the hardest question the text raises. What would it mean for God to be "all in all" if an unredeemed remnant existed forever?
There are only two options. Either the permanently lost make up a kind of rival kingdom, a zone of darkness that persists alongside God’s light forever. Or they are sealed away, quarantined, locked in a corner of reality where God’s presence does not fully reach. On either view, God is not "all in all." He is all in most.
Stay with that for a moment. If even one creature is locked forever in rebellion, then the phrase "all in all" contains a silent exception. It means "all in all, except those ones over there." But that is not what Paul wrote. He wrote "all in all" and then named exactly one exception: the Father Himself (v. 27). Everything else falls under Christ. Everything.
I think many readers pass over this too quickly because they have been trained to assume an eternal hell in the background. They read "all in all" and automatically fill in the footnote: "of course, excluding the lost." But Paul does not include that footnote. The only footnote he adds is about the Father. The scope is otherwise total.
Gregory of Nyssa saw this with perfect clarity in the fourth century. He argued that for God to be "all" in a single creature requires that all sin be purged from that creature and it be filled with God. And for God to be "all in all" is the final victory, when sin is removed from the whole of creation and every creature is full of God. If any rebellion or resistance remains in any corner, then God is simply not "all in all."17
Origen, writing even earlier, was just as clear: "God will be 'all' for this intelligence … because evil will exist no more for this intelligence; everything is God, who is untouched by evil. Therefore, if at the end of the world … there will be restored that condition which the rational nature had … then for the creature, who has returned pure and unsullied, the One who is the only good God will become all."18
I find this logic compelling. "All in all" is a phrase of totality. It does not have exceptions built into it. The only exception Paul names is God the Father Himself, who is the one doing the subjecting (v. 27). Everything else is included. If a single creature remains in a state of rebellion, the prophecy has failed. God is not all in all. He is all in most, with a footnote.
Even Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, writing as a cautious "hopeful universalist" rather than a settled one, could see this. As Hunter Coates notes in Grace Abounds, Ware admitted plainly that the phrase "all in all" (Greek panta en pasin) "definitely suggests not ultimate dualism but an ultimate reconciliation."17b Even a theologian who held back from full confidence in universal salvation could not read this phrase as leaving room for an eternal rival kingdom.
But Doesn’t “All in All” Just Mean God Rules Unchallenged?
Some argue that "all in all" describes God’s uncontested sovereignty, not universal salvation. God rules everything; no enemy can challenge Him. But this reads the phrase as "all over all" rather than "all in all." Paul does not say God stands over a defeated creation. He says God fills it. Origen noted this: the text does not say God will be over all, but in all. That is the language of intimate presence, not distant authority.
I am not the first to read this passage as the ground of universal hope. I stand in a long line of readers, stretching back to the earliest centuries of the church.
Gregory of Nyssa (died 394) built his entire defense of the restoration of all things (the apokatastasis; Greek apokatastasis, "the restoration of all things"; see Chapter 13) on this passage. He wrote that when God is "all in all," "no being will remain outside the number of the saved."19 For Gregory, the subjection of all things to Christ was not destruction but healing. He read Christ’s subjection to the Father as the model for every creature’s subjection to Christ: free, willing, and joyful.20
Origen made the same connection. "The end will be the so-called apokatastasis, in that no one, then, will be left an enemy."21 Notice: the destruction of the enemy is not the annihilation of the creature, but the removal of its enmity. Origen said it plainly: "He will be destroyed, not in order for him to exist no more, but in such a way as to no longer be 'enemy' and 'death.'"22
Eusebius of Caesarea put it in a single sentence: "He will subject all beings to himself, and this must be understood as a salvific submission."23 Salvific. The subjection saves.
Origen made the logic explicit. As David Burnfield documents in Patristic Universalism, Origen argued that if Christ Himself is to be "subjected" to the Father, then subjection clearly cannot mean defeat or damnation. "If then that subjection be good and salutary by which the Son is said to be subject to the Father," Origen wrote, "it is an extremely rational and logical inference to deduce that the subjection also of enemies which is said to be made to the Son of God, should be understood as being also salutary and useful."23b The logic is airtight. If the word means willing love when it describes the Son, it means willing love when it describes everyone else.
Basil the Great testified in the fourth century that "the mass of men say there is to be an end to punishment and to those who are punished." And Basil himself wrote: "All beings will submit to him, and all will recognize his authority. And when God will be all in all, once those who created confusion with apostasies will be restored to peace, they will sing praises to God in a symphony of peace."24
I am not claiming that the fathers settled the question. The history of the doctrine is more complicated than any one chapter can trace, and the apokatastasis was later condemned in part (though the story of that condemnation is itself disputed; see Chapter 13). But I want the reader to know this: the reading I am defending is not modern. It is not sentimental. Some of the greatest minds in the early church read this same text and drew the same conclusion. The hope stands on Scripture. The fathers confirm that it always has.
So what does "all in all" positively mean, on the reading I am defending?
It means this: at the end of Christ’s reign, every enemy has been reconciled. Every hostile power has been brought willingly under Christ. Death itself is gone. Sin is consumed. Every creature is full of God’s presence and life. And then Christ, having completed His saving work, hands the kingdom back to the Father. The Son places Himself under the Father, not because He is forced to, but because that is the natural, glad order of love. And in that moment, God is all in all.
I find it important to say what this is not, because the counterfeits here are real.
This is not pantheism. God does not absorb all creatures into Himself, erasing their identity. The early church was careful about this. Eusebius wrote that the final unity is achieved "not in a confusion of substances, reduced to one, but in the perfection of virtue brought to its apex."25 Persons remain persons. God does not swallow them. He fills them. The difference between pantheism and this vision is the difference between a drop of water dissolving into the ocean and a house flooded with sunlight. The house is still there. Every room is full of light. But the house has not been destroyed.
Which Universalism Is This?
"God all in all" is not the dissolution of persons into God. That would be pantheism, or the gnostic idea that every soul is a fragment of deity returning to the divine whole. The hope this book defends is personal communion, not absorption. Each person remains a person. Each one is filled with God, not melted into God. God becomes everything to everyone, freely, through Christ, through the cross, through faith. This is the creedal hope: all reconciled, none erased.
This is also not coercion. The subjection of all things to Christ is the same kind of subjection that Christ freely gives to the Father. It is the willing worship of the creature who has finally come home. As I argued in Chapter 2, the God who is love does not drag His children back in chains. He wins their hearts.
And this is not a passing over of sin. The path from enemy to worshiper runs through the fire. The judgment is real. The purging is severe. No one arrives at the "all in all" by pretending their rebellion did not happen. They arrive because the fire burned the rebellion away, and what remained was the creature God made, finally free to say yes. (For the full treatment of the purifying fire, see Chapter 17.)
The "all in all" is a vision of a creation that has been entirely, freely, gladly won. Through the cross. Through fire. Through the patient, relentless love of a God who does not stop until every last creature is home.
Robin Parry’s treatment of 1 Corinthians 15 in The Evangelical Universalist is, I think, the strongest evangelical reading of this passage for the larger hope. He takes each piece of the puzzle apart and shows how it fits. His key observation is the one I highlighted above: the verb for "subjection" is the same whether Paul is talking about creation being placed under Christ, or Christ being placed under the Father. Parry writes that this indicates "simply a restoration of the order of creation and not annihilation."26 He also shows that the Colossians 1 parallel "clearly anticipates the redemption of the powers," which tilts the subjection language toward salvation rather than punishment.27
Parry is also honest about a question that divides universalists: whether to telos in verse 24 means "the end" or "the rest" (the remainder). He finds it more likely that it means "the end" (the traditional reading) and argues that universalism does not depend on the alternative translation.28 Even if to telos simply means the final stage of the cosmic drama, verse 22’s claim that "all will be made alive in Christ" still stands. The universalist case rests on what Paul says, not on a disputed translation of one word.
Parry on the scope of subjection:
"We read that it is not merely Christ’s enemies but ‘all things’ that are subjected to Christ (vv. 27–28). This includes the redeemed, and they are certainly not annihilated. Additionally, after the enemies are subjected to Christ, he subjects himself to the Father on behalf of the creation he represents (v. 28), clearly indicating that the subjection is simply a restoration of the order of creation and not annihilation."
Robin Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed., ch. 4Thomas Talbott, in The Inescapable Love of God, presses the argument from a philosophical direction. He contends that forced submission is an incoherent idea when applied to personal beings with wills. A conquered rebel whose will remains in opposition has not truly been "subjected." The will is precisely the thing that has not been brought under. Milton’s Satan illustrates the point: defeated in battle, he insists that "the mind and spirit remains invincible." A God who merely restrains rebels without changing their hearts has not put all things under His feet. He has pinned them down.29
The only real subjection of a will is a changed will. And a will changed by love is a saved will.
Andrew Hronich, in Once Loved Always Loved, reinforces this reading by showing that the church is itself among the things subjected to Christ, and yet that subjection is "entirely compatible with salvation." He argues that Paul’s emphasis in both 1 Corinthians 15 and Ephesians 1 is "on the reestablishment of God’s rule and cosmic peace," not on the permanent punishment of enemies.30
Hunter Coates, in Grace Abounds, traces the same logic through the church fathers and sharpens it with a question from Hronich that I find unanswerable: "Would Jesus truly be subject to His Father if His will was opposed to the Father, but He merely lacked the power necessary to overthrow His Father?" The point is decisive. In being subjected to the Father, the will of the Son is in line with the Father’s will. Jesus still has His will. It is just entirely aligned with the Father. In the same way, when all things are subjected to Christ, all beings will still have their will. Their will is just entirely in line with Christ.30b This is not the abolition of freedom. It is its completion.
Gregory of Nyssa, cited by Coates:
“Either God will not be in all if some evil will be left in beings, or, if it is necessary to believe that God will really be in all, then, together with this conviction, it is demonstrated that there will be no evil. For it is impossible for God to be found in evil.”
Gregory of Nyssa, cited in Hunter Coates, Grace Abounds, ch. on 1 Corinthians 15George Sidney Hurd, in The Triumph of Mercy, builds the case that the "all" of verse 22 is genuinely universal, tied to the "all" who die in Adam. If the scope of death is universal, the scope of life in Christ must be equally universal. To restrict the second "all" while leaving the first unrestricted would make Paul a careless writer who shifts the meaning of the same word within a single sentence.31 In his companion work, A Defense of Biblical Universalism, Hurd presses this further against De Young directly. He notes that if Christ’s subjection to the Father is voluntary, the same word (hupotassō) used four other times in just two verses must carry the same meaning for everyone else. The subjection of all results in God being "all in all," and that phrase describes a state of total reconciliation, not forced defeat.31b
David Bentley Hart argues that the phrase ta panta ("all things") in Paul’s usage is total and cosmic. There is no hidden asterisk. The "all things" created through Christ and the "all things" subjected to Christ and the "all things" in which God becomes all are the same "all things."32 I find Hart’s linguistic work here compelling, even where I part from him on the question of whether universal salvation is a matter of metaphysical necessity (I think it is a matter of God’s faithful love, freely received; see Chapter 2).
Let me now state the strongest case against the reading I have just given, as fairly as I can.
James De Young, in Exposing Universalism, argues that the "subjection" of enemies in 1 Corinthians 15 is the subjection of conquered foes. The wicked are "under his feet" the way a defeated army is under the heel of the victor. "All in all" describes God’s uncontested rule, not universal salvation. The enemies are suppressed, not redeemed.33
Michael McClymond presses a related point in The Devil’s Redemption. He argues that Paul’s references to the subjugation of hostile, demonic powers (1 Corinthians 15:24–28; Colossians 2:13–15) cannot be understood as describing a free or willing submission. These powers are coerced into submission, not persuaded to abandon their hostility to God. McClymond contends that Parry’s case from this passage is weaker than even his case from Romans 5, and that the subjugation of enemies here describes conquest, not conversion.33b
I want to give these readings their full weight, because they are not silly. The verb hypotassō can carry the idea of forced submission. And Paul is drawing on Psalm 110:1 and Psalm 8:6, both of which use the image of military victory.34 The Psalms speak of enemies as a footstool. That is conquest language. De Young is right to notice it.
But I have three responses.
First, the parallel holds. Christ is subjected to the Father using the same verb. If Christ’s subjection to the Father is willing and loving, then the subjection of all things to Christ must also be willing and loving. You cannot make the verb mean "forced defeat" when it talks about enemies and "glad obedience" when it talks about Christ. That breaks the structure Paul built. As Hronich observes, Paul’s point is that in the end, all things will be subject to Christ "in the same sense" that Christ is subject to the Father.35
Second, the enemies Paul names in this passage are not human beings. The enemies are "every rule and every authority and power" (v. 24) and "death" (v. 26). No humans are listed as enemies here. Whatever happens to the hostile powers, the destruction is aimed at delivering humanity, not condemning it.36 McClymond is right that this passage describes the subjugation of powers, but his own observation reinforces the point: the enemies are the powers over human beings, not the human beings themselves. The destruction of these enemies is a liberation, not a punishment.
Third, De Young presses the footstool image further, asking: "If universalism is correct, who will serve as the footstool of his throne?"36b George Sidney Hurd answers this brilliantly in A Defense of Biblical Universalism. The assumption behind De Young’s question is that one must be God’s enemy in order to serve as His footstool. But Scripture uses the footstool image very differently. The ark of the covenant and the temple are called God’s footstool (1 Chronicles 28:2; Psalm 132:7). Isaiah says God will make His footstool glorious (Isaiah 60:13). And in the New Testament, we who were once enemies are now His temple (Colossians 1:21; 1 Corinthians 3:16). The answer to De Young’s question, Hurd writes, is: "we will." We who were once enemies will fall at His feet and worship Him in humble adoration.36c
Fourth, as I argued above, genuine subjection of a personal will is impossible by mere force. A chained rebel has not submitted. Only a changed heart has submitted. The kind of total, complete subjection that Paul describes here requires the willing cooperation of every will in creation. That is the saving kind.
This is probably the most common response to the universalist reading of verse 22. "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." The traditionalist says the second "all" refers only to those who are "in Christ." That is, only Christians. The phrase "in Christ" limits the scope.37
De Young makes this case at length. He points to four references to the Corinthians’ faith in the immediate context of verse 22: the gospel by which they "are being saved, if you hold firmly" (vv. 1–2); "this is the way you believed" (v. 11); "your faith is empty" (v. 14); and "your faith is useless" (v. 17). His conclusion: it is faith that distinguishes those who are alive in Christ from those who remain in Adam. The "all" who are made alive are only those who exercise faith.37b McClymond agrees and adds that the reference to "those who belong to Christ" in verse 23 "delimits the scope" of Paul’s "all" in verse 22.37c
I understand why this reading appeals. In Paul’s day-to-day language, "in Christ" usually means believers. And verse 23 goes on to mention "those who belong to Christ," which sounds like a restriction. So the reader fills in a limit that the grammar does not actually require.
But as both Parry and Hronich have shown, the grammar points the other way. "In Christ" is not modifying "all." It is an adverbial phrase modifying "will be made alive." The most natural reading is: "everyone will be made alive in Christ."38 The means of the making-alive is Christ. The scope of the making-alive is everyone.
And the parallelism reinforces this. "In Adam all die" does not mean "all who are in Adam die" (as if some people are not in Adam). It means: all people die, and the cause is Adam. In the same way, "in Christ all will be made alive" means: all people will be made alive, and the means is Christ.39 To restrict the second "all" while leaving the first unrestricted is to make Paul sloppy with his own grammar. (For the full discussion of the scope of "all" in Paul, see Chapter 4.)
As for De Young’s four references to faith: no one in this book denies that faith is the instrument through which life in Christ is received. The question is whether every person will, in the end, come to that faith. Noting that Paul’s immediate audience believed does not settle the question of whether verse 22’s "all" includes only those who had already believed by the time Paul wrote. Paul is not cataloguing who is presently saved; he is mapping the eschatological sequence. And that sequence climaxes in God being all in all, not in God being all in some believers with an unredeemed remainder left over.
Some argue that "all will be made alive" in verse 22 refers only to the physical resurrection of the body. All will be raised; but some will be raised to judgment and others to life. The verse says nothing about universal salvation.40
This is a possible reading in isolation. But the context works against it. Paul’s whole argument in 1 Corinthians 15 treats being "made alive" as a good thing. It is the reversal of the curse. It is the undoing of death. He never hints that being "made alive" could lead to an eternal state worse than the death it reversed. And the endpoint he describes is not a divided resurrection, some to glory and some to perdition. It is God being all in all. The climax is total restoration, not divided outcomes.41
Talbott makes this sharp: if the second "all" includes every descendant of Adam, and these are restricted to those who will belong to Christ at the time of His coming, then the correct inference is that Christ will not return until He has already won everyone over to Himself. Paul’s second "all" is actually less restrictive than the first, because he immediately expands it to include every competing will, every power, and every enemy in the universe.42
Let me gather it together.
First Corinthians 15:22–28 maps the full sweep of God’s plan. It runs from the resurrection of Christ, through His reign over all enemies, to the moment when death itself is abolished and God fills all things with Himself. The verbs say "subjection" and "nullifying," not "annihilation" and "eternal punishment." The subjection Paul describes is the same willing, loving subjection that Christ gives to the Father. The "all in all" leaves no room for an unredeemed remnant. The early church fathers read it just this way.
This passage does not merely allow the larger hope. It demands it. An "all in all" that tolerates a permanent colony of the damned is no "all in all." It is a contradiction in terms.
And the hope is not vague or abstract. It is grounded in the cross. The same "all things" created through Christ are reconciled through the blood of His cross (Chapter 6). The "all" who are made alive are made alive in Christ, not apart from Him. No one is saved by some other route. Everyone is saved by the same road: faith in Jesus, won freely and finally by the God who never stops pursuing His creatures.
I think of the parent who will not go to sleep until every child is safe in the house. The lights stay on. The door stays open. The parent waits. That is only a faint picture, a pale shadow, of what Paul is describing here. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is not the kind of God who locks the door with children still outside. He leaves the lights on. He waits. And in the end, every child comes home.
I do not hold this hope carelessly. I know what it costs. I know the hard texts that press against it (we will get to every one of them in Part Two). I know that human freedom is real and that a real "yes" requires a possible "no." But I believe that this text, read in context and in its own terms, teaches that God will be all in all. Not all in some. Not all in the fortunate. All in all.
That is the keystone. If it holds, the whole arch of the hope holds. And I believe it holds because Paul put it there, under the inspiration of the Spirit, and because the God who raised Jesus from the dead is not the kind of God who leaves the job half done.
The case is building. In the next chapter, we will see Paul put this same vision in even starker terms: God reconciling all things to Himself, "making peace by the blood of his cross."
↑ 1. Paul’s concern in 1 Corinthians 15 is to answer the denial of bodily resurrection. But in making his case, he draws out the full eschatological implications of Christ’s resurrection, giving us the most complete picture in his letters of how the end comes. See Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 1219–32.
↑ 2. The verb katargeō (καταργέω) appears 27 times in Paul’s letters. BDAG gives the range as “to cause something to be unproductive, use up; to cause something to lose its power or effectiveness, invalidate, make powerless.” In Romans 3:3 it means “nullify”; in 2 Timothy 1:10 it describes Christ “abolishing” death through the gospel. Context determines whether the nullifying is annihilation or the removal of hostile power.
↑ 3. Hypotassō (ὑποτάσσω): “to place or rank under, to subject, to subordinate.” BDAG notes both the active sense (“to subject”) and the passive/middle (“to be subjected, to submit oneself”). The verb is used in Romans 8:20 for creation being subjected to futility, in 1 Corinthians 14:32 for the voluntary submission of prophets, and here in 1 Corinthians 15:27–28 for the subjection of all things to Christ and of Christ to the Father.
↑ 4. The Greek word tagma (τάγμα, “order”) in v. 23 refers to “that which has been arranged” or “placed in its proper order.” In a military context it means a corps, troop, or division. See Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), ch. 5.
↑ 5. Robin Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), ch. 4, pp. 94–95. Parry notes the ambiguity and cites de Boer and Thiselton on the three possible readings. Most church fathers in the Origenian tradition took pasin as neuter (“all things”); Thiselton, following de Boer, prefers “all things among all people.”
↑ 6. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, p. 93. “The verb Paul uses in 15:24 is katargeō, which literally means ‘to nullify, to render powerless,’ and the context determines what that means in any given instance. It certainly can mean ‘to annihilate,’ but such an interpretation is not required.”
↑ 7. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, pp. 94–95. Death is rendered powerless in the resurrection. “In the case of death there really is nothing left once it is nullified by eternal life. It is indeed annihilated. But then death is merely the absence of life in the same way that dark is the absence of light.”
↑ 7b. Gerry Beauchemin, Extermination or Restoration? A Restorationist’s Response to Annihilationism (2015), ch. on 1 Corinthians 15. Beauchemin writes: “It is also important to note that the only things which are said to be ‘destroyed’ are abstract entities such as opposing governments and the last enemy, death. Here, the word translated ‘destruction’ is not a cognate of apollumi. It is katargeo which, according to Strong’s means: ‘to be (render) entirely idle (useless).’ Death will once and for all be put out of commission.” This confirms that Paul is speaking of the removal of hostile conditions, not the annihilation of persons.
↑ 8. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, p. 93. “We read that it is not merely Christ’s enemies but ‘all things’ that are subjected to Christ (vv. 27–28). This includes the redeemed, and they are certainly not annihilated.”
↑ 9. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, p. 93. “Clearly indicating that the subjection is simply a restoration of the order of creation and not annihilation.” Parry notes that he follows Gregory of Nyssa’s understanding of the incarnate Son’s subjection: Christ submits in his capacity as the human who represents all creation before God (Nyssa, In Illud).
↑ 10. Talbott, Inescapable Love of God, ch. 5. “There is but one way for God to defeat a rebellious will and to bring it into subjection to Christ; he must so transform the will that it voluntarily places itself in subjection to Christ. For so long as a single will remains in a state of rebellion against Christ, so long as a single person is able to cling to his or her hatred of God, at least one power in the universe—the power of that person’s will—is not yet in subjection to Christ.”
↑ 11. In Paul’s theology, death (Greek thanatos, θάνατος) encompasses both physical dissolution and spiritual separation from God. See Romans 5:12, 6:23, 8:6. The destruction of death is therefore the destruction of every form of separation from God.
↑ 12. The point originates with Talbott, Inescapable Love of God, ch. 5: “If death should achieve a final victory in the life of a single person, then that would provide a clear answer to Paul’s rhetorical question: ‘Where, O Death, is your victory?’ (1 Cor. 15:55). But the question is not supposed to have an answer.” Cited in Andrew Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved: The Logic of Apokatastasis (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2023), ch. on 1 Corinthians 15.
↑ 13. Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. on 1 Corinthians 15.
↑ 14. The verb in Ephesians 1:10, anakephalaioō (ἀνακεφαλαιόω), means “to sum up, to bring to a head, to unite under one head.” It carries the image of gathering together everything that has been scattered. The cognate noun kephalē (“head”) ties this to the headship of Christ over all things in Ephesians 1:22.
↑ 15. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, p. 94, citing Martinus de Boer, The Defeat of Death: Apocalyptic Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5, JSNTSup 22 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988), 119. De Boer documents the correspondences: the same three terms for powers, in the same sequence, with “every” before the first; the same Psalm 8:7b citation diverging from the LXX in the same way; and both concluding with “all in all.”
↑ 16. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, Appendix 1, pp. 222–23. Parry writes: “The exaltation over and subjection of all things here must not be thought to exclude the church. As a microcosm of the cosmos the church is presumably also subjected to him, and yet this subjection is compatible with salvation.”
↑ 17. Gregory of Nyssa, In Illud: Tunc et Ipse Filius, 17: “It will be the case that God is ‘in all’ only when in the beings it will be impossible to detect any trace of evil.” Also De anima et resurrectione, 101: “Evil must necessarily be eliminated, absolutely, and in every respect, once and for all, from all that is. … For, as evil does not exist in nature outside will, once each will has come to be in God, evil will be reduced to complete nothingness, because no receptacle will be left for it.” Both texts are cited in Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 7, pp. 177–78.
↑ 17b. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, cited in Hunter Coates, Grace Abounds: God, the Gospel, and the Hope of All People (2023), ch. on 1 Corinthians 15. Ware’s exact words: “The phrase ‘all in all’ (panta en pasin) definitely suggests not ultimate dualism but an ultimate reconciliation.” Even as a “hopeful universalist” rather than a settled one, Ware could see that the phrase resists a reading that includes an eternal rival kingdom.
↑ 18. Origen, De Principiis (On First Principles) 3.6.2–3. Cited in Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 7, p. 178, and in Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. on patristics.
↑ 19. Gregory of Nyssa, In Illud, 21: “No being will remain outside the number of the saved.” Cited in Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 7, p. 179.
↑ 20. See Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, p. 93, n. 27: “Here I follow Gregory of Nyssa’s understanding of the incarnate Son’s subjection. Christ submits in his capacity as the human who represents all creation before God. Nyssen, In Illud.”
↑ 21. Origen, Commentarii in Evangelium Joannis (Commentary on John) 1.16.91. Cited in Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 7, p. 179.
↑ 22. Origen, Dialogus cum Heracleide (Dialogue with Heraclides) 26. Cited in Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 7, p. 178: “We must understand the destruction of the last enemy as the destruction, not of the substance that was created by God, but of the inclination and the hostile will that stemmed not from God but from the enemy himself. Therefore, he will be destroyed, not in order for him to exist no more, but in such a way as to no longer be ‘enemy’ and ‘death.’”
↑ 23. Eusebius of Caesarea, De Ecclesiastica Theologia (On Ecclesiastical Theology) 3.15–16. Cited in Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 7, p. 178.
↑ 23b. Origen, De Principiis (On First Principles) 1.6, cited in David Burnfield, Patristic Universalism: The Good News of the Early Church, 2nd ed. (2020), ch. 4 (discussion of 1 Corinthians 15:23–28). Burnfield notes that Origen’s argument from the subjection of Christ to the Father was his most powerful piece of evidence: if Christ’s subjection is good and salutary, the subjection of enemies must also be understood as salvific. Gregory of Nyssa likewise “interpreted the subjection Paul wrote about in v. 28 as union with God and that subjection was equivalent to reconciliation and therefore salvation.”
↑ 24. Basil the Great, De Asceticis. Cited in Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. on patristics. The testimony that “the mass of men say there is to be an end to punishment” is notable as a witness to the breadth of universalist sentiment in the fourth-century church.
↑ 25. Eusebius of Caesarea, De Ecclesiastica Theologia 3.18: “Making us all one thing, so that we are no longer many, but all of us are one, made one with his divinity, … made perfect, not in a confusion of substances, reduced to one, but in the perfection of virtue brought to its apex.” Cited in Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 7, p. 178. This is an explicit rejection of pantheism: the final unity preserves personal identity.
↑ 26. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, p. 93.
↑ 27. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, pp. 93–94: “Colossians 1:15–20, as we saw in chapter 2, clearly anticipates the redemption of the powers, and this inclines us to understand their subjection to Christ redemptively here also.”
↑ 28. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, pp. 91–93. Parry engages Talbott’s proposed translation of to telos as “the rest” and finds the traditional “the end” more likely, while affirming that the universalist case does not depend on it. He also notes that C. E. Hill (“Paul’s Understanding of Christ’s Kingdom in 1 Corinthians 15:20–28”) and Thiselton (First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1231) consider the lexicographical scope of to telos not to include “the remainder.”
↑ 29. Talbott, Inescapable Love of God, ch. 5. Talbott cites Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 1, lines 105–110, where Satan insists that his “unconquerable Will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield” remain undefeated. The point is that physical defeat does not equal the subjection of a will.
↑ 30. Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. on 1 Corinthians 15. Hronich writes that “the emphasis of the subjection of the hostile powers, both in the Corinthian epistle and the letter to the Ephesians, is on the reestablishment of God’s rule and cosmic peace. Any implications of any emphasis on the annihilation of the presently hostile powers is rather ambiguous if not entirely vacant.”
↑ 30b. Hunter Coates, Grace Abounds: God, the Gospel, and the Hope of All People (2023), ch. on 1 Corinthians 15. Coates traces the logic through Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory the Theologian: “As Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory the Theologian interpret this verse, since all beings still have their will, this is a freely made submission. In this sense, Christ is subjected to the Father the same way that all things will be subjected to Christ. And since Christ is perfectly in the Father, all things are perfectly in Christ. The final unity of apokatastasis is a unity of wills that comes about through the free choice of all beings.” Hronich’s question (“Would Jesus truly be subject to His Father if His will was opposed to the Father, but He merely lacked the power necessary to overthrow His Father?”) is cited within Coates’s discussion.
↑ 31. George Sidney Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy: The Reconciliation of All through Jesus Christ (2014), ch. on 1 Corinthians 15. Hurd argues that if Christ’s subjection to the Father is voluntary, which no one doubts, then the same word (hupotassō) used four more times in the same two verses must carry the same meaning. Hurd writes: “That the subjection of all to Christ is voluntary is evident, seeing that it is the same word hupotaso that is used of Christ when it says that He Himself will also be subject (hupotaso) to the Father. No one would question the fact that Christ’s subjection to the Father will be voluntary. It will be a voluntary subjection in the case of all others as well, but ‘each in his own order.’”
↑ 31b. George Sidney Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism: A Biblical Response to James B. De Young’s Book “Exposing Universalism” (2019), ch. 3 (“The Universal Reversal”). Hurd writes: “The obvious thrust of the passage is upon the restoration of all of mankind, reversing the fall and reuniting all back into oneness with God through Christ, the Last Adam.” He also notes the telos in v. 24: “The word translated end is telos which means: end, conclusion, fulfillment or final result. I think that perhaps the best way to understand ‘the end,’ telos in this context is, ‘then comes the fulfillment.’”
↑ 32. David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), Second Meditation (“What Is Judgment? A Reflection on Biblical Eschatology”). Hart argues throughout his second meditation that ta panta in Paul is a totalizing phrase referring to the whole of created reality. He insists that the scriptural case for universalism rests on precisely these comprehensive terms: the “all” of 1 Corinthians 15:22–28, the “all things” of Colossians 1:20, and the “every knee” of Philippians 2:10–11. For Hart, these are not vague gestures toward a general hope; they are the explicit, repeated, unqualified statements of Paul’s gospel.
↑ 33. James B. De Young, Exposing Universalism: A Comprehensive Guide to the Faulty Appeals of Universal Salvation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2018), ch. 9, “The Appeal to Texts with ‘All’ and ‘Whole,’” pp. 165–90; and his discussion of Psalm 110:1 under the heading “Jesus Rules As Conqueror of Some, Not As Savior,” pp. 210ff. De Young argues that the “subjection” of enemies is forced submission, not redemption, and that “all in all” describes God’s uncontested sovereignty rather than universal salvation. He writes: “These final words depict the final state; no other condition is foreseen. It means, therefore, that some are in everlasting subjection and conquest. This can hardly be a ‘loving embrace of Jesus Christ.’” De Young also argues that Paul “does not allow for any ‘enemy’ to become Christ’s ‘friend’ in subsequent time.” See also his “Enemies Are the Footstool of Jesus’ Feet” section and pp. 233ff., engaged directly by Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism, chs. 2–3.
↑ 33b. Michael J. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), V 2, p. 963. McClymond writes that with regard to 1 Corinthians 15, Parry’s case “is even weaker than with regard to Romans 5,” and that “references in the Pauline Letters to the neutralization or subjugation of hostile, demonic powers to God and God’s kingdom (1 Cor. 15:24–28; Col. 2:13–15) cannot be equated with the notion of a free, glad, or voluntary submission of Satan and demons.” He concludes: “Demons do not become angels—or at least not in the Old and New Testaments.”
↑ 34. Psalm 110:1 (LXX 109:1) and Psalm 8:6 (LXX 8:7). Both use imagery of military conquest. Paul draws on them in 1 Corinthians 15:25 and 15:27. The question is whether the military imagery determines the meaning of subjection in Paul or whether Paul transforms the imagery in light of Christ’s reconciling work.
↑ 35. Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. on 1 Corinthians 15. Hronich draws on the Origenian tradition: “The apostle, saying that all beings will submit to the Son, indicated the obedience given out of a free choice, and the glory … that all beings will render to him qua Savior and king of all together.”
↑ 36. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, p. 93: “No mention is made of the destruction of any humans. The only enemies that are in view are the powers, sin, and death. So even if God destroys his enemies, it is in order to deliver humanity.” Hendrikus Berkhof makes the additional point that if the powers were created good (as Colossians 1 suggests), then for Christ to annihilate them would mark a defeat for God rather than a victory. See Berkhof, Christ and the Powers (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1962), 32–35.
↑ 36b. De Young, Exposing Universalism, p. 233. The full question: “If universalism is correct, who will serve as the footstool of his throne?” De Young takes the footstool imagery (Psalm 110:1; Hebrews 1:13) to require eternal hostility: enemies are kept under Christ’s feet as defeated foes.
↑ 36c. Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism, ch. 2 (“The Reconciliation of All”). Hurd answers De Young directly: “This assumes that one must be God’s enemy in order to serve as a footstool. That is not what we see in the Scriptures. The imagery of a footstool in the Bible often refers to the habitation of God. The ark of the covenant and the temple where He manifested Himself to the people are referred to as His footstool (1 Chron 28:2; Ps 132:7). In Isaiah 60 He says that He will make His footstool glorious (Isa 60:13). Moving into the New Testament, we see that we ourselves, who were once enemies in our minds by wicked works, are now His temple or His footstool (Col 1:21; 1 Cor 3:16).” Hurd’s conclusion: “So, in answer to De Young’s question: ‘who will serve as the footstool of his throne?’ the glorious answer is, ‘we will.’”
↑ 37. This is the standard traditionalist reading. See, e.g., John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), who uses the restricted “all” in 1 Corinthians 15:22 to limit the scope of Romans 5:18. Talbott engages Murray’s argument at length in Inescapable Love of God, ch. 5.
↑ 37b. De Young, Exposing Universalism, ch. 9. De Young cites 1 Corinthians 15:1–2 (“by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message”), 15:11 (“this is the way you believed”), 15:14 (“your faith is empty”), and 15:17 (“your faith is useless; you are still in your sins”). His conclusion: “So within the context of verse 22 there are four references to the Corinthians’ faith. It was faith that distinguished them from all the rest who remained in Adam. It is those who exercise faith in Christ that become the ‘all’ who are made alive in Christ.”
↑ 37c. McClymond, Devil’s Redemption, V 2, p. 963. McClymond writes: “The ‘all’ who ‘shall … be made alive’ are those who are ‘in Christ’ (1 Cor. 15:22), and the following reference to ‘those who belong to Christ’ (1 Cor. 15:23) delimits the scope of Paul’s ‘all’ statement.”
↑ 38. Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. on 1 Corinthians 15: “The phrase ‘in Christ’ does not modify ‘all’ (so that the phrase would be rendered ‘all in Christ’), but is rather an adverbial phrase modifying ‘will be made alive.’ Thus, the verse most naturally translates as ‘everyone will be made alive in Christ.’”
↑ 39. The point about the parallelism is made by Martinus de Boer: “One can scarcely translate … ‘all who are in Adam die,’ if such a translation is meant to imply that some people are not ‘in Adam.’” De Boer, Defeat of Death, 112, cited in Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, p. 91, and in Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. on 1 Corinthians 15.
↑ 40. This is one version of the response Hronich identifies and answers: “Knowing full well the plain meaning of the text, traditionalists will attempt to further argue that ‘made alive’ simply refers to physical resurrection. Thus, it is because of Christ’s resurrection that all humanity shall be raised, be it some unto judgment and others unto eternal life.” Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. on 1 Corinthians 15.
↑ 41. In the context of 1 Corinthians 15, being “made alive” (zōopoiethesontai, ζῳοποιηθήσονται) is uniformly positive. Paul uses the verb in Romans 8:11 to describe the Spirit who “will give life to your mortal bodies.” It is a life-giving, saving act. There is no instance in Paul where being “made alive” leads to condemnation. Parry notes that Paul’s entire argument treats being “made alive” as the reversal of the Adamic curse, not as a neutral event that could go either way. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 4, pp. 90–93.
↑ 42. Talbott, Inescapable Love of God, ch. 5. Talbott argues: “If Paul’s second ‘all’ included every descendant of Adam (except Christ himself), as it surely did, and was restricted to those who belong to Christ at the time of his coming, then the correct inference would be that, according to Paul, Christ will not return until after he has already won over all people to himself.”