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I Believe in God, the Father
By John R. Gavazzoni
The title of this article is taken from the beginning of The Apostle's Creed, a quite carefully composed creedal confession that sought to make clear what was deemed to be what Jesus' disciples taught in re: to an objective, conceptual explanation of what we are to believe concerning God Himself and His relationship with man.
I find it important that the creedal statement begins with describing God as, ".... the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth...." First, God is to be known as our Father, and only then, as our Creator, for what He brought into being by procreation (begetting/birthing) became what He created out of, i.e., the Spirit essence of His only-begotten/uniquely-begotten Son in the many sons proceeding from Him, is the "stuff" from which God created all things, and particularly man in his creaturely mode of existence.
In the second chapter of the Book of Hebrews, we have the Son, speaking to the Father, saying He (the Son) would declare His (the Father's) name unto His (the Son's) brethren, going on to explain that in the midst of the church He would praise the Father,,, THEN adding, "I, and the children Thou hast given me." We have Jesus explaining that the Father gave children to the Son, as typically, Abraham, by His Seed, gave children to Isaac, and beyond to all the children of Abraham through Isaac.
When scripture presents God as our Father, it is not as a metaphor. Man, created in the image of, and according to the likeness of, God is a prolifically procreative, birthing, begetting creature. Man is especially like God in that respect. Imaged by man, created as male and female, God impregnates, conceives, and gives birth to a family of Spirit-begotten children. As imaged in creation, where every creature reproduces after its kind, so God gives birth after His kind, i.e., a family of children whose true nature derives from Godness/Deity, notwithstanding that part of God's plan for His family during which His children suffer from a creaturely-disconnect from their Primal Origin.
The supreme delight of God to give birth to a Son, and by Him, many sons, within the timelessness of His Being, has... I must in all humility declare... been shown to me by revelation. The Divine Nature has self-fulfilled Itself in eternally/timelessly giving birth to the Son of His love. "His love," of course, implies a "Her complement," for whoever heard of Fatherhood without Motherhood. In that timeless moment within the I AM of, and which is, God, God overflowed with joyful delight at the birth of His Son who made Him a Father. Yes, having a child makes one a parent. Until that event, there is only the potential of parenthood. The phrase, "the fulness of God," by Paul, is the fulness of the family of, and which is, God.
All divine pleasure traces back to, and has as its Source in the above-explained Relational essence of the Divine Nature. God is Gender-Complementary, Family-Constituted, Relational Being. God is only God relationally. God is only God, as Father and Son. God is Father to Himself as a Son, and a Son to Himself, as a Father, being an Impregnator to Himself as a Conceiver, and a Conceiver to Himself as an Impregnator. To know God is experience Him as passionately-Relational.
Oh, all that we are to infer from "the fellowship/communion of the Holy Spirit." It's about an intimacy of relationship beyond what words can describe. God passionately desiring to be known by His family to His and their delight, to be known as the Love He is. Some men and women have had brief experiences of being immersed in the fire of that love, with some confessing that they were afraid if the experience would continue longer, their mortal frame would not be able to bear it and they would die. But we all shall be freed from this present body's limitation, having glorified bodies able contain the full outpouring of Divine Love.
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