The various attributes of God have been interpreted and correlated, it becomes necessary, prior to consideration of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in their Trinitarian relationship, to investigate the nature and viability of the concept of God as Father.

I. THE OLD TESTAMENT#

In all three major divisions of the Hebrew Bible Yahweh was referred to as Father. This paternal relationship applied particularly to the covenant people of Israel rather than to individuals or to all humankind.

Yahweh’s fatherly relation to Israelites was expressed both in Egypt and in the wilderness.

  • “And you shall say to Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me’; and if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay your first-born son”” (Exod. 4:22-23, RSV).

  • Both in Egypt and in the wilderness, Moses declared, “you have seen how the LORD your God bore you, as a man bears his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place” (Deut. 1:31).

  • “Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you” (Deut. 8:5).

  • The laws of clean and unclean foods were prefaced with the declaration, “You are the sons of the LORD your God” (Deut. 14:1a).

  • The question, “Is he not your father, who created you, who made you and established you?” (Deut. 32:6b), probably referred to the creation of the covenant people.

  • According to Hosea, “in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Sons of the living God’” (1:10b).

  • Historically, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hos. 11:1).

  • A Son of David text which is usually interpreted messianically contains the title “Everlasting Father” (Isa. 9:6c).

  • “For thou art our Father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us; thou, 0 LORD, art our Father, our Redeemer from of old is thy name” (Isa. 63: 16).

  • “I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me” (Jer. 3:19b).

  • Judah will be restored, “for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn” (Jer. 31:9c).

  • “Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?” (Mal. 2:10a) seems to refer to the fatherly creation of the covenant people.

  • In the Psalms divine fatherhood is an analogy rather than a title.

  • “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation” (68:5).

  • “As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him” (103:13).

George Angus Fulton Knight (1909-) set forth the dubious hypothesis that the Father-Son principle is part of the essence of God and thus eternal and that God tried to bestow sonship on Israel, but his plan was wrecked by Israel’s disobedience. Joachim Jeremias concluded that in the Old Testament God was never addressed in prayer as “Father.” Jeremias found a few examples of such in postcanonical Diaspora Judaism.

II. THE NEW TESTAMENT#

A. SYNOPTIC GOSPELS#

1. Jesus’ Usage in General

Jesus’ favorite designation of God was “Father”. Jesus did not “break new ground” but made this truth a living reality as never before. Jesus, according to W.T. Conner, did three things for the concept of God as Father.

  • He made fatherhood the controlling idea in God’s relation to men

  • He put a new ethical quality into the idea of fatherhood as applied to God

  • He made this a living conception as applied to the relation between the individual worshiper and God

2. Jesus’ Term

Jesus evidently used the Aramaic term ʾabbāʾ (Mark 14:36; compare Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15). According to Jeremias, the Jews did not use ʾabbāʾ in reference to God, but it seems to have been Jesus’ common term of address in praying to God.

3. Specific Texts

a. Sermon on the Mount (Matthew)

The word patēr was used five times with the singular adjective “thy Father” or “your Father” (6:4, 6, 18). It was used three times with the plural adjective, “your Father” (5:45; 6:1, 15b).

The term “your heavenly Father” was employed four times (5:48; 6:14, 26, 32). Once we find “your Father who is in heaven” (7:11b).

In addition to and in distinction from the foregoing 13 usages of “Father” in reference to Jesus’ disciples, there are two others in the Matthean form of the Sermon on the Mount, namely, “Our Father who art in heaven”(6:9), and “my Father who is in heaven” (7:21).

b. Miscellaneous Synoptic Sayings

Matthew included a saying that reminds the modem reader of the Johannine materials:

“I thank thee, Father, Lord ofheaven and earth …. yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (11:25-27, RSV).

The one who “does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matt. 12:50). Not a single sparrow “will fall to the ground without your Father’s will” (Matt. 10:29). Jesus “will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven” every human being who acknowledges him before others, and conversely he “will deny before my Father who is in heaven” everyone who denies him before others (Matt. 10:32-33). The same Father in heaven has revealed to Simon Peter that Jesus is the Messiah (Matt. 16:17).

If evil humans, said Jesus, give “good gifts” to their children, “‘ow much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). Jesus’ disciples are not to address other humans as “father,” “for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Matt. 23:9). At the final judgment the “sheep” are to be addressed as “blessed of my Father” (Matt. 25:34).

c. Passion Sayings of Jesus

In the Gethsemane narrative “My Father” is used twice with regard to the possible avoidance of the “cup” of suffering (Matt. 26:39, 42). The same term is used in the saying about possible help from angels (Matt. 26:53). Two of the seven sayings of Jesus issued while on the cross contain the name “Father,” used in the vocative: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), and “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

B. PAULINE EPISTLES#

Paul alluded to God as Father in his epistolary salutations and in connection with the adoption of believers as sons to God. Among the epistolary salutations reference is made to:

  • “God the Father” (1 Thess. 1: 1; 2 Thess. 1:2; Gal. 1:1; 1 Tim. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:2; Tit. 1:4)

  • “God our Father” (1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; Rom. 1:7; Eph. 1:2; Phil. 1:2; Col. 1:2)

  • “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Cor.1:3; Eph. 1:3)

  • “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Col. 1 :3).

When Paul referred to the adoption of believers as sons to God, he declared that believers call God ‘abba’ at the instigation of and with the confirmation of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 4:5-6; Rom. 8:15-16).

JOHANNINE WRITINGS#

The emphasis in the Gospel and the First Epistle is on the Father-Son relationship. Therein the Father is almost exclusively Father to the Son of God or the only Son, Jesus.

1. Gospel of John

a. The Son vis-à-vis the Father

The Son (Logos) was in the beginning with the Father, was God, is the only Son from the Father (1:1, 14, 18; compare 3:16-18), and has his being in the Father (14:20). The Son knows the Father even as the Father knows the Son (10: 15). The Son has been sent by or is on mission from the Father (5:36b, 37, 38; 6:57; 10:36-38; 13:3; 20:21), and the Son comes in the Father’s name (5:43). The Son depends on the Father (5: 19), singularly sees the Father (6:46), honors the Father (8:49), and obeys and loves the Father (14:31). He knows “the righteous Father” in contrast to the world’s not knowing him (17:25).

The Son speaks on the Father’s authority (8:27-28, 38), utters the word of the Father (14:24) and the command of the Father (12:49-50), and speaks plainly of the Father apart from figures (16:25). The Son is the mediator of the knowledge of the Father as the only way of entry to the Father and as the adequate revealer of the Father (14:6-9). The works of the Son done in the Father’s name call for faith (10:31) and bear witness to the Son (10:25). The Son and the Father “are one” (10:30).

The Son prays to the Father for the glorification of the Father’s name (12:27-28) and for the Father’s glorification of the Son so that the Son may glorify the Father with the Son’s preexistent glory ( 17: 1, 5). The Son prays to the Father for the giving of the Holy Spirit (14: 16-17), and the Son is to send from the Father to believers the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father (15:26). The Son prays that the “Holy Father” may keep those given to him by the Father so that these may be one as the Father and the Son are one (17: 11). The Son likewise prays for the unity of present and future believers after the analogy of the unity of the Father and the Son “so that the world may believe that” the Father has sent the Son (17:20-21). Moreover, the Son prays that believers may be with the Son in order to behold the Father’s eternal glorification of the Son (17:24).

The Son is to drink the cup given to him by the Father (18: 11) and is to take again his life with the power and authority of the Father (10:18). The Son has not yet ascended to the Father (20: 17), yet he is about to leave the world and go to the Father, who is greater than the Son (13:3; 14:28; 16: 10, 17, 28). Moses, not the Son, is to accuse unbelievers before the Father (5:45), and the Son will vivify “whom he will” and administer that final judgment given to him by the Father (5:21-22).

B. The Father vis-à-vis the Son

The Father gives the “true bread from heaven” (6:32) and is present with the Son (16:32). The Father loves the Son “and shows him all that he himself is doing” (3:35a; 5:20a), sets his seal upon him (6:27), and glorifies him (8:54). He gives all things into the hand(s) of the Son (3:35b; 13:3), for all that which belongs to the Father belongs to the Son (16:15). The temple in Jerusalem is “my Father’s house” (2:16). The Father bears witness to the Son (8:18-19) and draws believers to the Son (6:44-45; compare 6:65).

The Father, who indwells the Son, performs such works as call for human believing (14:10-11). The Father hears the Son’s prayer regarding Lazarus (11:41), and prayer in the name of the Son is to be granted that the Father may be glorified (14:12-14; 15:16; 16:23). The Father is to send the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son (14:26). The Father’s love of the Son is attributed to the Son’s giving of his life (10: 17). The Father has a heavenly “house” (14:2).

c. Believers/Disciples vis-à-vis the Father and the Son

Those given by the Father to the Son will come to the Son, believe in him, and have “eternal life” (6:37, 40). The “true worshipers” are to worship “the Father in spirit and truth” (4:21-24). Those who have God as their Father will love the Son, who proceeded from the Father (8:42). The one who loves the Son is beloved by the Father (14:21, 23), and the Father honors the one who serves the Son (12:26). The Father loves disciples because they have loved the Son and have believed that the Son came from the Father (16:27). The Son makes known to his disciples all that the Son has heard from the Father (15: 15 ). The Father as the vinedresser is glorified by the fruit-bearing of disciples, by their loving the Son, and by their obeying the Son (15: 1, 8-10). Believers are to perform greater works than the works of the Son because the Son will go to the Father (14:12). No one shall snatch away the Son’s “sheep” out of the hand of the Father, who is “greater than all” (10:29). Persecutors of the disciples have known neither the Father nor the Son (16:3), and the one who hates the Son hates the Father also (15:23-24).

References to God as “Father” or “the Father” are found in at least 62 different passages in the Gospel of John. In only four chapters (7, 9, 19, 21) is there no reference. Unquestionably divine fatherhood is a major theme in this gospel.

2. First Epistle of John

In 11 usages the term is uniformly “the Father”

  • Sometimes the Father-Son relationship is prominent, as in the Son’s eternal presence with the Father (l:2b), in the Fathers sending of the Son (4:14), and in denial or confession (2:22h-23).

  • In other contexts the Father loves the “children of God” (3:1) and Jesus is “an advocate with the Father” (2:lb).

  • Elsewhere, the focus is on disciples knowing the Father (2:13c), loving the Father (2:15b), having fellowship with the Father and the Son (l:3c), and abiding in the Son and the Father (2:24b).

III. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE#

A. APOSTLES’ CREED#

The term “Father” was used in the initial or first confession of the Old Roman Symbol (R), or the Apostles’ Creed: “God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”.

The fact that power and creatorship were closely associated with fatherhood may have been the result of anti-Gnostic considerations.

B. ARIAN CONTROVERSY#

The term “Father” as applied to God figured prominently in the fourth-century Arian controversy, but chiefly in respect to the Son’s relationship to the Father, not to the scope of God’s fatherhood respecting human beings.

C. TWENTIETH-CENTURY LIBERAL PROTESTANTS AND EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTS#

The fatherhood of God was a divisive issue between Liberal and Evangelical Protestants during the twentieth century. Three ares of disagreement can be identified:

1. Is God’s fatherhood respecting its scope universal or particular?

Liberal Protestants have normally affirmed it as universal, whereas Evangelical Protestants have taught that it is particular.

Liberals have appealed to the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), asserting that the prodigal never ceased to be his father’s son while in the “far country.” They cite Matt. 5:45, a text about love of enemies: “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (RSV). According to William Newton Clarke (1841-1912), “in the parable the natural relation of father and son was never altered.”

Evangelicals, on the other hand, have stressed that the New Testament emphasis is on God as “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” and as Father of the regenerate, or Christians, and that a specific text that clearly teaches universal fatherhood is lacking. Evangelicals cite the Pauline texts concerning adoption as sons and the following passages: Matt. 13:38;John 1:12; 8:44; and Gal. 3:26. Accordingto Carl F. H. Henry, “divine fatherhood” is not “an automatic derivative” from monotheism, for “[n]either Judaism… nor Mohammedanism… developed a conviction of divine fatherhood which commends itself to the New Testament mood.”

There have been efforts to harmonize or reconcile the universal divine fatherhood and the particular, the universal sonship to God and the particular. In addition to the thoroughgoing positions on either side, that is, the exclusively universalistic and the exclusively particularistic, E. Y. Mullins listed three efforts at harmonization.

  • First, some would hold that God’s fatherhood is universal but that sonship among human beings is particular. Hence the unchangeable God is Father to all humankind, but only Christians are “sons of God.” But one may ask whether some reciprocity is not essential to a genuine father-son relationship.

  • Second, others would differentiate natural sonship and spiritual sonship. Hence “all men are natural sons of God, but only believers in Christ are true spiritual sons.” Can these two categories always and precisely be separated?

  • Third, yet others would differentiate potential sonship and actual sonship, so that “all men are constituted for sonship to God, and … God desires all men to become sons,” but only Christians are the actual or real sons of God. Accordingly unregenerate humans have “a filial character” or “constitution,” but the “relation” has been lost through sin. Thus a potential son can become an actual son only by being born anew through faith or by adoption as a son.

2. Is divine fatherhood grounded primarily in creation or in redemption?

The answers to this second question tend to be correlatable with the answers to the first question. Those who have stressed universal fatherhood have tended to ground fatherhood in creation, whereas those who have stressed particular fatherhood have tended to ground fatherhood in redemption.

3. Is divine fatherhood somewhat antithetical to divine sovereignty, or can these two be correlated?

Clarke sought a harmonization of the two by asserting that “sovereignty is grounded in the true Father’s right and power to govern his spiritual offspring” and limiting his sovereignty “over men” to “a manner accordant with his own nature.” Some interpreters of divine fatherhood as universal have turned divine love toward sentimentality and God’s fatherhood into an indulgent grandfatherhood.

The Jewish concept of fatherhood contemporaneous with Jesus involved roles of family leadership and discipline, and such a factor helps to make possible the rightful correlation of fatherhood and sovereignty, at least in the New Testament setting.

IV. THE CONTEMPORARY DOCTRINE#

The Christian doctrine of God as Father faces today various challenges to its tenability so that the task of the Christian theologian is not merely expository but also apologetic. In modern Western civilization, especially during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but also earlier, there have been revolts against or rejections of the entire concept of divine fatherhood.

  • W. A. Visser’t Hooft has traced these rejections. He reaches back to Baruch Spinoza’s “Deus sive natura” (god or nature) and to Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire’s (1694-1778) rejection of divine providence. He cites Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (1792-1822) revolt against Jupiter in Prometheus Unbound, the projectionism of Marx, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), and Freud, and the thought of the anarchists (Pierre Joseph Proudhon, 1809-65, and Michael Bakunin, 1814-76), who held that “faith in God the Father was not merely an illusion or a malady” but “the source of all evil in current society.”

  • As a sequel to these rejections, Hubertus Tellenbach (1914-), a German psychiatrist, has contended that “the father figure has all but vanished from the western psyche.”

It is now desirable to examine in greater detail three forms of the contemporary rejection of divine fatherhood.

A. FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS#

Sigmund Freud taught the Oedipus theory, according to which the Greek mythological Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, with disastrous consequences, and this deed is relived in every human being’s struggle for independence from parents. Freud also reinterpreted Israelite history by positing that Moses was murdered by the Israelites and that Israelites suppressed the account thereof. Hence the memory of the murder of their father figure Moses has brought guilt upon Jews.

For Freud God as Father “is only a human memory, rather than a divine being,” and consequently rejection of divine fatherhood is “essential for human maturity and sanity.” The Freudian perspective militates against any positive appropriation of biblical imagery about divine fatherhood.

B.CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT#

The viability and usefulness of fatherhood as a leading analogy for God has been severely challenged, especially in Western and industrialized societies, by the widespread occurrence of child abuse and child neglect by human fathers. Because human fathers have perpetrated such deeds and have been guilty of such neglect and abandonment, the concept of God as Father does not convey for these children the positive connotations of care, protection, love, sacrifice, and wholesome discipline. This is the testimony of clinical psychologists, family counselors, social workers, and others.

C. FEMINIST THEOLOGIANS#

Most contemporary feminist theologians have challenged and rejected the use of paternal language in reference to God. Such language is seen as indicative of a patriarchal human fatherhood which suppresses women and denies to them their legitimate role and rights.

Sally McFague (1933-), seeking a “remytholizing” of the God-world relationship through a “metaphorical” theology, has set forth the “models” of “mother” (together with “parent”), “love,” and “friend” for God as expressions of"creative, salvific, and sustaining" love in place of patriarchal language. McFague does not avoid panentheism, but her proposals as to God-language are conservative.

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza (1938-), citing Luke 7:35, 11:49, 12: (par. Matt. 12:32), and 13:34, has posited that the God of Israel and of Jesus was the feminine Sophia (Wisdom).

Jesus is thus one “in a long line and succession of prophets sent to gather the children oflsrael to their gracious Sophia-God.” Jesus’ death was not an atonement for sin but resulted from “violence” against Sophia’s “envoys.”

Rosemary Radford Ruether traced the history of male/female images for God from primitive and nomadic societies and through Israelite and Christian history and concluded:

We need to go beyond the idea of a “feminine side” of God, whether to be identified with the [Holy] Spirit or even with the Sophia-Spirit together, and question the assumption that the highest symbol of divine sovereignty still remains exclusively male.

Ruether cited approvingly “Mother-Father God,” but subsequently argued with ecofeminists as to the propriety of substituting Gaia, “the Greek Earth Goddess” and contemporary biological term for “the entire planet,” for God. Mary Daly (1928-2010) has called for the “liberation,” “castration,” and “exorcism” of the language of the doctrine of God, charging that patriarchy has led to “rape, genocide, and war.”

D. RESPONSE#

What should be the Christian response to such rejections of the concept of God’s fatherhood?

Christians can seek to “de-patriarchalize” the language and concept of God as Father and yet to preseive the abidingly valid dimensions of divine fatherhood. To do this, Christians need to be reminded of Jesus’ use of the term ‘abba’, the filial consciousness toward God which he manifested in giving the Lord’s Prayer, his placement of discipleship above family ties, his teaching and associating with women, his parables of the laborers in the vineyard and of the prodigal son, and his teaching and example concerning seivanthood, not domination.

Patriarchalism, on the other hand, “is resistance to the process of emancipation,” competition for power between father and son, “the abuse of a father’s power,” and treatment of women “as second-rate beings.” Hence, according to Visser ’t Hooft, the “revolt against the Father-God is… to a very considerable extent a revolt against a caricature of the true God whom we come to know through Jesus.”

In response to the radical feminism of the latter twentieth century, is it necessary to affirm the motherhood of God?

First, it should be noted that there are some biblical texts, especially in Isaiah, in which maternal features are ascribed to God.

  • “As little mother birds hovering so will Jehovah of hosts protect Jerusalem” (Isa. 31:5a, George Adam Smith).

  • Following a time of restrained silence “now I will cry out like a woman in travail, I will gasp and pant” (Isa. 42: 14, RSV).

  • “Can a woman forget her sucking child that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?” (Isa. 49:15).

  • “As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you” (Isa. 66:13a).

  • “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Luke 13:34).

Second, it should be remembered that biblical religion, being confronted with the fertility goddesses of surrounding nations-“Ishtar of Babylonia, Cybele, the Great Mother of Phrygia, Astarte and Asjeria of Syria, Anoth of Canaan,” and Diana of the Ephesians-with their accompanying ritual prostitution, maintained “a clear reticence with regard to symbolism which could be interpreted as describing God as a mother goddess.” That same reticence was characteristic of the Church Fathers, who confronted the Gnostic use of Helena as the consort of Simon Magus, the ascription of femininity to the Holy Spirit, and the ethical extremes of asceticism and promiscuity.

Third, present-day Christians, recalling how both the Shakers under Ann Lee (1736-84) and Christian Science under Mary Baker Eddy espoused the concept of a Father-Mother God, should “maintain acertain reserve in speaking of the motherhood of God.”

Visser’t Hooft has concluded:

God transcends the difference of the sexes. We call him Father because Jesus has taught us to do so, and to cease so to call him is to cease to pray as Jesus enjoined us. To refuse to use any reference to God as “He” and to choose terms such as “the divine being” or “the Deity” is to depersonalize God. The fatherhood of God is however not a dosed or exclusive symbolism. It is open to correction, enrichment, and completion from other forms of symbol, such as “mother,” “brother,” “sister,” and “friend.”