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"The basic decision taken at Nicaea made it clear
that the eternal relation between the Father and the Son in the Godhead was
regarded in the Church as the supreme truth upon which everything else in the
Gospel depends. Jesus Christ is himself the content of God's unique
self-revelation to mankind. It is on the ground of what God has actually
revealed of his own nature in him as his only begotten Son that everything else
to be known of God and of his relation to the world and human beings is to be
understood. It is only when we know God the Father in and through his Son who
belongs to his own being as God that we may know him in any true and accurate
way, that is, know God strictly in accordance with his divine nature. In order
to know him in that way, however, we must enter into an intimate and saving
relationship with him in Jesus Christ his incarnate Son, for it is only through
reconciliation to God by the blood of Christ that we may draw near to him and
have access to him. The Lord Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Son of God,
is the Way, the Truth and the Life, apart from whom no one has access to the
Father. His incarnate reality has been made the supreme Principle of all God's
ways and works within the order of creation and redemption alike, and the
controlling Principle of all our understanding of them. Thus the very essence of
the Gospel and the whole of the Christian Faith depend on the centrality and the
primacy of the relation in being and agency between Jesus Christ and God the
Father."
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