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Deity's Mutuality
By John R. Gavazzoni
In the prologue to John's gospel, we're introduced to something quite wonderful to contemplate, i.e., that which is WITH God also IS God. There's no problem with any confusion as to what the original Greek text says as handed down to us in existing manuscripts, nothing less than a straightforward declaration; the Greek text is clear: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was WITH God, and the Word WAS God." God speaks, and what God says, God is. The Speaker and the Spoken are One God, in a real sense, differentiated, yet perfectly, inseparably, united as One. Divine Oneness is a Oneness of union, a union of Divine Mutuality. Deity's Oneness, most definitely is not Aloneness.
The Greek has a connotation of intimacy between the Speaker and the Spoken, for the root for "with," conveys "face-to-face," The Word is with God, as in, face-to-face with God. God, the Speaker, beholding God, the Spoken, face-to-face. When one comes to know God, he/she is ushered into that very Communion which is intrinsic to the Divine Being. Apart from that Communion, God would not be the God that He is. God is only God in Communion with Himself, in the matter before us, as Utterer and Utterance. He has spoken to us in a Son Who is "....the sole expression of the glory of God---the Light-being, the out-raying of the divine...." (Hebrews 1:3, Amplified Version)
Please, dear reader, do not refer to God as the supreme being. Very misleading, as if God were simply the big being among other lesser beings. Rather, God IS Being, the Being within which we have our being. God is, as theologian, Paul Tillich, chose to define THE DEITY: the Ground of Being. The Speaker and the Spoken/Father and Son, at the center of the Family of, and which IS, God. The Communion of the Holy Spirit enjoyed in the communion of the saints emanates out from the Communion that constitutes the Completeness of God who is Spirit. To commune with God is to be granted participation in the ontological essence of Deity.
That part of John's gospel, chapters one through three, make it clear that the God is the Speaker, and His Son is His Word, as in the full expression of all that He is. That combination is not, as it were, two-thirds of a trinity. Father and Son bespeaks of Family, not trinity, but Fatherhood implies a Motherhood complement, joined in a union by which the Son was begotten.....begotten, not within the confines of time, but within the timelessness of God. From that eternality of Being, God sent His Son into the world incarnate: "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only-uniquely begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
What scripture refers to as the communion of the Holy Spirit, is first, a Son-conceiving, Son-begetting communion, by which Deity became Family. The attempt to describe the mutuality within, and which is, God, that led to the conclusion that God is a trinity: one God in three persons, to be fair, deserves respect rather than derision. That scripture ascribes Deity to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is undeniable, but the theological conceptualization of that fully shared Deity as trinity cannot help but to lead one to think of God numerically rather than relationally.
Out from within that nuclear-Family origin, God has birthed "many sons" by the One Son, who is the One Seed (Greek, "sperma") of the whole extended Family of God. Oh, the wonder of it: according to the Book of Hebrews, it's all about bringing many sons into glory through the perfecting of His One Son through suffering. In Romans, it's "that He might be the first of many brethren." That is the predestination of the whole family of God which shall finally be seen to be the whole family of humanity.
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