we have had in recent years a Jesus movement and a charismatic movement. The one has almost disappeared and the other is threatening to run out of steam, perhaps because each is in a different way inadequate to the gospel, which is basically a Father movement... It starts not with the cross of Jesus or with the gift of the Spirit, but with the Father who so loved the world that he gave his Son in his Spirit. And it achieves its purpose, not when the body of Christ is gloriously renewed in very part without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27), not even when the enthroned Christ has subdued all his enemies and brought every knee to bow before him (Philipians 2:11), but rather when that same Christ "hands over the kingdom to the Father, after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power" (1 Corinthians 15:24). "When he has done this, then the Son himself will be subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28).
(p.20, Thomas A. Smail, 1980, The Forgotten Father)
I like Tom Smail. He ought to be more widely read. His Charismatic Anglican Trinitarian Theology has a lightness of touch, while retaining real depth, which is really refreshing.
Considering those verses from 1 and 2 Corinthians it is striking that the Father is involved not just at the beginning and end but in the middle where he is the one who puts everything under Jesus' feet.
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