The Church and the Trinity II: The Church of the Son

Extract

The second part of the trilogy which we are publishing to mark the tenth anniversary of Geoffrey Preston’s death.

‘In one Spirit we were all baptised into one body’ (1 Cor. 12 : 13a). Repentance and faith give a man koinōnia—participation—with the Holy Spirit and by virtue of that partaking he has koinōnia too with all his fellow-Christians who are partakers with him of the same Spirit. He belongs to and within the communion of holy people, of the holy people who share holy things, the sacraments and mysteries of the Church. But the body into which we were all baptised by the one Spirit is itself the body of the Son, the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Word of God made man. The Church, the body of the Messiah, the messianic community, is koinōnia with Jesus Christ as well as koinōnia with the Holy Spirit. True, it is through the koinōnia of the Spirit that the Church becomes the koinōnia of the Son, but nevertheless it does really become that. Paul writes to Corinth:

God is faithful, through whom you were called into the koinōnia of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

(2 Cor. 1 : 9)