Chris,

 Thanksfor the reply. I realized when i wrote the previous post, i was in some ways departing from your original intent. And the question of an aesthetic response is obviously very important.

I have to admit struggling to get my head around (or in) it, though. I can see the way John and others use the concept of the Father as a driving motif in the story of men and God. Obviously we need to ask what “Father” meant to John. But I’m hesitant to view John’s as the highest or best. By that I don’t mean to set another storyline as larger, but rather that many storylines converge within the story of the NT. We have not one, but a number of Christologies. Depending on the story we’re leaning on, this determines how we, in some ways, view God and our relationship to him. Peter’s much wilder construct has elements of incredible intimacy bound up into it, but uses different language than John. So I tend to think that the various “approaches”, if that’s the way to say it, are meant to complement each other. Just as we can speak of various Judaisms in the time of and after Jesus, so we can speak of various “Christianities”. Together they give us the total matrix, but each can feed us in it’s own unique way. It’s like a diamond with different facets. If you look through a facet, you see part of the beauty of the diamand, but not all. And perhaps it’s impossible to look through all the facets at once. But perhaps we can carry them in our hearts and minds, to inform as life makes that necessary.

Am I even getting close to what you’re aiming at, or am I totally missing the point?