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Emmanuel Part Three
John R Gavazzoni
Oct. 21, 2002
Thousand Oaks, CA
During the course of discussing this series via e-mail with my friend and Webmaster, Jan Antonsson, I, informally, and rather spontaneously, shared with her what I felt was the very theological fabric of which this study was woven. Jan found those musings to have a unique quality that she felt should be incorporated into the study. I decided to share them with you all who have stayed with us this far, not by attempting to integrate them piecemeal but just as they came forth during our dialogue with virtually no editing.
I have connected together, into one short discourse, what originally were parts of three separate, informal replies of mine during our e-mail conversations. Jan and I invite you to share in the fellowship that is expressed in my replies to her as we took a fresh peek together into the glory of God.
JG
In respect to the Son of God's solidarity with creation, there is the aspect that even creation, with its eonion materiality, comes OUT FROM eternity having its existence in God in and from eternity, but is distinct in that it is a dimension in God which has---while of course being constituted by His Spirit--- a special quality of otherness in respect to God. It's a material manifestation of Him made vulnerable to sin and death and then, in fact, corrupted by the same.
But all the while, concealed within the corruption and mortality, lies incorruptibility and immortality awaiting its day, the day of Christ, when death shall be swallowed up in the victory of the resurrection, and transformed by the glory of God FROM THE INSIDE OUT, so that, inexplicably, by that process, the very glory of God enriches itself out of its own depths.
After centuries of emphasizing the hostility between flesh and spirit, is the Lord, with tongue in cheek, now showing us that the constitution of materiality is His glory and in this we are faced with another aspect of His hiddenness? I can't describe to you the spiritual excitement I'm feeling upon having heard from the Spirit that incorruption is hidden within corruption; light is in darkness; majesty lies at the heart of commonness.
The lie, which is enmity, hostility and alienation, is what glory has subjected Itself (Himself) to; but here lies a supremely important theological principle. Sin, corruption, darkness, etc,. in a word, death, CANNOT alter Reality; it can only bend it twist it, pervert it, misrepresent it, humiliate it, but never alter its intrinsic constitution. Oh God---within the humiliation of the cross is the very honor of Divine Nature. That's the principle that conventional theology misses and in missing it, they glorify the power of evil, ascribing to it a capacity that it does not have.
God, in Christ, handed Himself over to evil to do its worst, but it could not reconstitute Deity into anti-Deity.
A very simplistic and utterly inadequate illustration would be that, though a fine wine goblet can be filled with crankcase oil, doing so will not alter the composition or purpose of the goblet; that is, the glass-material in its wine goblet form remains what it is in spite of being violated. The illustration falls short because, finally understood, the container and the contained are One.In a last, coming installment, we will address the question of how Adam could sin and yet be the son of God.
Stay tuned for future serious, seminal samplings.
John Gavazzoni
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John R Gavazzoni
758 N. Woodlawn Dr.,
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360.
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