Jesus Christ names the Trinity’s defining purpose. The Holy Spirit names the Trinity’s unfolding purpose. We recognise as the work of the Holy Spirit the occasions when it anticipates or echoes the action of God in Christ. More vividly, Christ, along with the Father, sends the Spirit, to point to Christ, to make Christ present in creation, to foster the ways human beings are with Christ, to prepare the way for Christ’s first and second comings. Hence this chapter explores Israel, church and God’s realm as particular lenses through which we see that Christ-prefiguring, Christ-imitating and Christ-replicating action of the Holy Spirit. The purpose of this chapter is to articulate the continuous activity of the Holy Spirit in actions of bringing people into relationship with God – in their being with God, one another and the wider creation.

Here I begin my constructive account of a Christocentric incarnational theology. The Trinity has a chapter on its own: only thus may I express my insistence that this is fundamentally a story about God, and that creation, human beings and their divine destiny must stand in the light of that priority. My concern is to withstand the anthropocentrism of so much theology, which centres human existence and need, rather than God’s character and purpose, as the story’s focal point. The eight dimensions of being with provide a helpful structure through which to articulate the claims made about the Trinity.