Interior Family Correspondence
By John Gavazzoni

The "Family" in the title of this article refers to the Family of God, the Family which God is, including all the children born within that Family. There are undeniably Three to Whom Deity is ascribed in scripture, and they are "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." Describing the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the Trinity obfuscates more than explains or clarifies the nature of that Divine Relationship. Father and Son describe a Familial relationship of shared Deity, with the Holy Spirit being the Spirit which binds the Family together in an indissoluble union, being also the Medium of communal correspondence from One to Another, as They share the whole of Their Personness with One Another. (Credit is due to Jonathan Mitchell's preference for "Personness" over Personhood," in regard to that sharing.) While there is a trinitarian factor at work within Deity, that trinitarian factor is a Family factor.

Note that the reality of God's Fatherhood implies Fatherhood's complementary Motherhood, clearly laid out for us in the account of man's creation. In that account, we read of God's decision to create man in His image, and according to His likeness, so He created man in His image, "MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM." Adam and Eve imaged God. Even In their creaturely form, they were the image of what God is. Adam and Eve were male and female of reproductive potential which they realized in the birth (at least) of Cain and Abel. From this we know --- or ought to know --- that their God, Whom they imaged, in whose likeness they were created, had reproductive potential realized in the birthing of the Son of God, and through Him all the Family of God.

In all (true) families, there is first what I call the nuclear family, that is: a man and woman possessing together the potential of reproduction - realized by an act of communal love - from which proceeds additions to the family. This universal, living parable, begs the deepest consideration toward having an intimate, experiential knowledge of Deity as It really is, and, as an aside, ought to show clearly that granting family status to homosexual union distorts mankind's Divine likeness. But let no one infer from this that I call for anything other than love for those involved in that distortion, for there certainly exists within heterosexual unions their own forms of marriage distortion.

The above lays the groundwork for the essential message of this article.

We have all heard such expressions as "inter-office communication," "inter-departmental correspondence," "inter-office memos," "interstate commerce," and the like. Well, given the Family-Constitution of Deity, there exists a wonderful inter-Family communal correspondence. It is both inner and "inter" as the reader can understand upon reading with the carefulness just what it is that our subject calls for. There is a constant communal/fellowshipping exchange, interaction, and correspondence going on within the Nuclear Family which God is, and which ought to normatively become the eonian fellowship of the saints. I encourage the reader to study again that unique section of the Gospel of John, chapters 14 through 17, in order to fully understand what I'm here pressed to present.

Very representative of that whole section is the promissory prediction of Jesus as found in verses 13 through 15 of the 16th chapter. I quote from the NAS version: "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you."

If some of my readers prefer the KJV, that's fine, the essential message gets through in that translation also, but I do especially commend the NAS, and also, even more, the Amplified version, and beyond that for the greatest clarity, Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament. Checking all three would be well worth one's effort.

It's not difficult at all to notice the sequential inter-Family exchange in that part of Jesus' discourse: an exchange leading sequentially to the believer sharing in inter-God-Family communion, exchange, and correspondence. The Spirit of Truth speaks not of Himself, but only takes from Jesus what is His (Jesus') and discloses the same to the extended family of God, but our Lord makes it clear that what is His is what the Father has. All that the Father has belongs sequentially to Jesus, and all that Jesus has belongs to us, His brethren, in the continuity of that sequential inter-relationship.

This operates not only in the eternal/timeless dimension of the Family-relationship, but from there into the ages, and in the ages that sequential gifting from the Father through the Son, by the Spirit, to us is the root meaning of the Greek: "Zoe aionios." "Zoe" for God-life, operating in, and pertaining to the ages ("aionios"), so that our experience, as per St. Peter, of partaking of the Divine Nature is anchored within the timelessness of God, and in the timelessness of that inter-Family "communing delight."

When, as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Jesus takes us to the Father (Jn. 14: 6), we are taken into that Divine communion which binds all things and all mankind together. That Nuclear Family correspondence is the anchor of all Reality. The more true science delves into the essential constitution of the universe of time, space and materiality, the more it will discover that the communion that makes Deity what it is also makes all things be what they are. There is a constant exchange going on in the material world that traces to the communion exchange, interaction, and correspondence within its Creator.