We are commemorating the tenth anniversary of the death of the outstanding young preacher Geoffrey Preston by publishing this trilogy. It was written not very long before he died and has not appeared in print before. Its other two parts, ‘The Church of the Son’ and ‘The Church of the Father’, we will be publishing in our July/August and September numbers.

The Church is a communion, a fellowship, a togetherness in life and liturgy. And this togetherness, this sobornost, is rooted and grounded in the togetherness, the koinōnia, of the three-personed God. To this communion we have all been given access through the incarnation of the Word of God, by his own entering into koinōnia and sobornost with us. Those who share in this togetherness of koinōnia are in the Greek termed koinonoi, a name that cannot be rendered in English with a word which preserves the same linguistic form as ‘fellowship’ or ‘communion’, and so will have to be translated ‘partakers’. Christians partake with one another of goods both material and spiritual, and this is based on their common partaking in the life of the Godhead itself.