The Forgotten Father

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.

The Trinity in Salvation

I think this diagram represents how I think of our salvation.

I want to use it to explain a few things in future posts if I get the time. For example:

• The differnce between how contemporary Evangelicals and the Reformers view the marks of the church/Christian
• How in the 'law' God works in an sub-Trinitarian way (will have to be careful with that one)
• How Stuart Olyott, and not Luther, got it wrong (with all due respect)
• How the cross both is and isn't where Christ is glorified, and why weakness is and isn't where Christians are strong
• Where we should find our assurance
• The dangers of ritualism, and anti-ritualism

But firstly I'll just throw my big-picture out there for you to point out my heresies.

As a bit of clarrification, what I'm trying to communicate in the diagram is a whole range of things, such as:

• How all three persons are at work in our salvation, at every stage
• How Christ and the Holy Spirit are inseperable
• The Father's initiative
• The centrality of the cross and resurrection
• How the humbling of the Son was both going in the opposite way to getting glory, but also the way to glory
• The ultimate end of salvation being the glory of God
• That works come from faith which comes from the external word which comes from Christ's death and resurrection. They are all of an ordered piece.
• and probably a load of other random things I've forgotten