Alpha and Omega—these, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, are used to signify that Christ include within himself all. He is the beginning and the end, the sum total of all things, from which all creatures derive, to whom they all tend. This title is true of Christ because he is God from whom all creatures derive and towards whom they all tend. God is the sum total, the beginning and the end. But he is not the sum total or the beginning and the end in the Eastern sense that creatures are an emanation from God, that history is the slow return into God of all that came out.

We all derive from God as things made from nothing by the act of his power, we tend towards him as creatures who behave as he designed us to behave, and as godlike men with grace who will see God as he is in himself.