The Church and the Trinity III: The Church of the Father

Extract

Terminating the trilogy which we have published to commemorate

Geoffrey Preston

In the Johannine letters we learn that ‘Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3b). In a second Johannine idiom, we ‘abide in’ the Father and he ‘abides’ (or ‘indwells’, ‘remains’ or ‘makes his home’) in us. As we have seen, it was in the Spirit that we were baptised into the koinōnia of the Son: yet the origin and goal of the process is neither Son nor Spirit but the Father himself. We have fellowship with the Father because ‘God’s seed abides in whomever is begotten of God’. That is, we have fellowship with the Father precisely as Father, to the degree that we are made one New Man with the Son, conformed to the Son’s image, being members of the Son’s body. We stand where the Son stands, and have that same filial relationship with the Father which the Son himself enjoys. We form one body with the Son, living by the same Spirit or vital principle as he, and living before the same Father, the ultimate mystery of existence. This mystery, the Ground of being and the granite of it, we learn to perceive as personal and to address as ‘Father’. The disciples of Jesus once asked him to teach them to pray as he does; in response they receive the Pater Noster. The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer of those who stand where Jesus stands.