Ted Grant is a practicing physician in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For many years he has served as an elder at Long Lake Community Church [formerly Sunnyside Bible Chapel]. He is widely respected as a Bible teacher and conference speaker. This is article two in a six-part series on the subject, “Understanding the Trinity.” The six articles were originally lectures delivered at a symposium on the Trinity held at Emmaus Bible College on October 10-12, 2002.
Introduction
On January 7, 1855 the minister of New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, a borough in the city of London, opened his morning sermon as follows:
It has been said by someone that “the proper study of mankind is man.” I will not oppose the idea, but I believe that it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. [1]The preacher was Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who at the time was only twenty years old [2] What he said then remains true today: the proper study of God’s elect is God. For the believer can the study of any subject be more important than the study of God Himself? But who is God? And is it even possible to study Him? Most polls continue to indicate that over 90% of Americans believe in God. But what do most Americans believe about God? Indeed, what do most Christians know or believe about God? Who is this God in whom we claim to believe?
Erwin Lutzer has suggested that “‘I believe in God’ is perhaps one of the most meaningless statements we can make today.” [3] In the postmodern world God can mean almost anything we want Him to be. We have fulfilled for all practical purposes the maxim of the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), who suggested that religion is man’s attempt to create a god in his own image. [4] Open theologians have created a god who does not know the future. Feminists have created a female or androgynous god. And syncretistic influences have created gods who are virtually indistinguishable from the gods of other religions. In today’s world we face a very real danger of violating the first commandment and falling into idolatry. We have created, and continue to create, other gods besides God.
We can distinguish the God of the Bible from the gods of our own creation or imagination because of the self-disclosure of the biblical God. As Christians we believe that the God of the Bible is knowable. What we know about God depends on His revelation, and without that revelation God would be unknown. So it is important to examine the nature of the knowledge we have about God and how we acquire that knowledge.
Most of man’s knowledge (for example, the knowledge acquired through the natural and social sciences) is derived not from revelation, but from observation and experimentation. And one can argue that it is entirely legitimate that theology and the sciences should have different methodologies, since the objects of their inquiries differ. But because scientific knowledge has gained such wide acceptance, the validity of theological inquiry is constantly being questioned, and one feels compelled to defend the legitimacy of knowledge acquired by other than scientific means. And, indeed, some Christians themselves have encouraged such questions by insisting that the knowledge we have of God is in some sense comparable to scientific knowledge. [5]
In addition, there are those who would supplement revelation with scientific knowledge, human reason, or personal experience. Under certain circumstances that may be entirely permissible. Yet there is general agreement among Christians about the fundamental importance of the biblical record. Therefore any appeal to alternative sources must be permitted by, or at least be consistent with, revealed truth.
One important feature of this body of revealed truth is the theological unity of the Old Testament. This unity was assumed by Jesus and taught by the New Testament writers. [6] God’s revelation may be progressive, but the God of Abraham is not a different God from the God of Moses or the God of the prophets. The New Testament further teaches us that this same God, the God of the Old Testament, is also the Father of Jesus Christ. This immediately introduces us to the doctrines of the fatherhood of God and the Trinity, doctrines which cannot be ignored in any formulation of Christian doctrine.
Nevertheless, there is a distressing tendency in contemporary Christianity to regard the doctrine of the Trinity as a peripheral doctrine and therefore not essential to the faith. Some have even inferred that it is possible to formulate doctrines such as salvation (soteriology) and the church (ecclesiology) without any reference to the Trinity. But what is perhaps even more disturbing is that, in the minds of many, the Trinity has become divorced from the Christian understanding of God Himself. As a result, many well-meaning Christians have become functional Unitarians. [7] But we must emphasize that triunity is essential to the nature of the God revealed in the Bible, and that no true understanding of God Himself or of any fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith is possible apart from the doctrine of the Trinity.
Ontology: the Being of God
The Being of God
In his massive work, No One Like Him, John Feinberg reviews three common views of the reality of God in contemporary thought. [8] The first view sees God as a mental projection of man. This is the view represented by Ludwig Feuerbach, whom we mentioned earlier. For Feuerbach God has no reality independent of human thought. God is merely man’s mental image of an infinite extension of human attributes. In this view God is merely a product of human thought and exists only in the human mind.
A second view is that of the theologian Paul Tillich, who sees God as “being-itself” or “the ground of being.” This does not mean that God is a being, since for Tillich the existence of God is a non-issue. Since God transcends categories of existence, He cannot be said either to exist or not to exist. Therefore it is wrong to regard God as a being. And although in talking about God we use the language that we use to talk about other beings, such language is merely symbolic and is not to be taken literally.
The third view mentioned by Feinberg is that God is an existent being. This is a view which is consistent with the teaching of the Scriptures, but what kind of being is He? We will not attempt to prove the existence of God here, [9] but we believe that the God revealed in the Bible is self-existent and possesses certain attributes which we will discuss below. God’s triunity is one of His essential attributes. Robert Jensen argues convincingly that methodology is decisive in discussing God’s being. He finds that “theology’s habit of treating God’s being first and His triunity thereafter is a disaster, for if the Trinitarian identification of God is not made the basis of the doctrine of God’s being, some other identification will too easily be unwittingly presupposed.” [10]
Nevertheless, from a historical perspective a biblical understanding of the attributes of God preceded the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, and indeed those attributes all supported the concept of a monotheistic God. It was only after the church began to realize that the attributes of God the Father were ascribed in Scripture to the Son and also to the Holy Spirit that the doctrine of the Trinity emerged. Therefore, although our study will confine the discussion of the being and attributes of God to the person of the Father, the reader is reminded that the God we are talking about is a triune God who shares His essence and attributes with the other members of the Trinity.
Language about God
Before discussing the attributes of God, we must say something about the language that we use in talking about God. [11] Our starting point will be God’s transcendence. God is Wholly Other and infinite in power and perfection. On the other hand we are finite, fallible, and sinful. We can therefore never hope to understand or comprehend the nature of God exhaustively. There are those who argue that, because of God’s transcendence, it is impossible to know anything about God. However, the Bible itself refutes such agnosticism by revealing to us a knowable God.
Nevertheless, the Bible uses human language and human categories to speak about God. Biblical language in reference to God is analogical or figurative language. Such figurative language freely employs metaphors and similes, and describes God in anthropomorphic (that is, human) terms. As a matter of fact, Herman Bavinck insists that “God uses human language to reveal himself and manifests himself in human forms. It follows that Scripture does not merely contain a few anthropomorphisms; on the contrary, all Scripture is anthropomorphic.” [12]
Such anthropomorphic references to God are familiar to readers of the Bible. The Bible describes “the eyes of the Lord” being on the righteous and “his ears” bending to hear their cries. It speaks of “words coming out of the mouth of God” and of a “man after God’s own heart.” God delivers His people with a “mighty hand” and with an “outstretched arm.” There are even references to the “bowels” of the Lord (Isa. 63:15, KJV). Ancient Israel was keenly aware of God’s abhorrence of idolatry and clearly regarded such anthropomorphic language as a kind of poetic license. We too understand that God does not have a literal body, and that such descriptions are figurative and are not to be interpreted literally. But then, how are they to be interpreted? God is described not only as though He had a human body, but also as though He experienced human emotions (love, anger, hate, jealousy). What can that mean? In other words, if God is wholly unlike us, can such anthropomorphic language reliably convey information about God to us?
Thomas Aquinas thought about these questions long ago and suggested that there are three possible kinds of predications we could make about God. The first kind he called univocal; this means that words used to describe creatures have exactly the same meaning when they apply to God. But Aquinas realized that univocal predications about God are impossible because of God’s transcendence. Verbs such as “love” and “know” can and do describe human feelings and emotions, but they cannot have the same meaning when the subject is God.
The second kind of predication is called equivocal; such predications have entirely different meanings when they refer to God. For example, the word “bow” can mean to bend forward, to stoop, or it may refer to an instrument used to propel an arrow, or the front part of a ship. Those meanings are equivocal. But Aquinas realized that if language about God were equivocal, then we could know nothing about Him. Equivocal language would lead to the kind of agnosticism adopted by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who denied that our concepts of God had anything at all to do with His reality.
But Aquinas suggested that there is a third kind of predication, which he called analogical. Analogical language has both similarities and dissimilarities to human experience. God’s love is neither identical to nor completely different from human love. God’s love is infinitely greater than our love, but does have some identical features which allow us to use the same word to describe it.
The analogical theory has been the traditional view of language about God. Recently William Alston has suggested a refinement of that theory based on the modern philosophical concept of functionalism. His suggestion is based on psychological terms such as “know,” “will,” and “love,” and he suggests that there is some univocality in predications involving such terms. [13] This univocality should not surprise us, since we are created in God’s image, and that makes it possible for us to make meaningful statements about God.
The Attributes of God
We have just argued that God exists and that we can make factual statements about Him. We have also seen that although we can describe what He is like, any such description must depend on His self-disclosure in His written Word, the Bible, or in the living Word, His Son. In other words, what we know about God is necessarily limited to what He has chosen to reveal about Himself. Although the Bible describes God and His attributes, it does not do so in a systematic way. The biblical revelation of God occurs typically in narrative form, but it does provide a comprehensive description of His attributes. An understanding of these attributes is necessary for conceptualizing what God is like. In this study we will make no attempt to review the divine attributes exhaustively, but rather, we will focus in particular on those attributes which are most relevant to our discussion of God the Father.
Knowability
The God of the Bible is first of all knowable. This may be a surprising attribute. There is no a priori reason why God Almighty, the Transcendent One, the Wholly Other, the Creator of heaven and earth should be capable of being known by His finite creatures. Yet the Bible clearly teaches that in spite of God’s transcendence and infinity, He can be known.
When Paul visited Athens, he came upon a monument with the inscription, “to an unknown god.” In his oration to the people of the city he announced, “Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). His clear implication was that God is knowable, and we have argued that knowledge about Him comes to us via revelation. Now the Bible also teaches that we can learn about God from observation. However, even the knowledge derived from observation is not comparable to scientific knowledge, and is in fact a form of revelation usually referred to as “general revelation.”
General revelation refers to the attributes of God as seen in His creation. Psalm 19:1 states that “the heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” The knowledge that is obtained about God from general revelation is also called “natural theology.” In Romans 1:20 Paul asserts that natural theology is sufficient for man to earn God’s wrath against sin. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
General revelation, however, gives a very diffuse and less focused view of God than the revelation provided by Scripture, also known as “special revelation.” In special revelation, God Himself speaks in human language. So the prophets could proclaim, “This is what the Lord says” or “The mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” But the most complete revelation of God that we have is found in His Son, Jesus Christ. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…[who] is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” (Heb. 1:1–3). It is through His Son, and only through His Son, that we can really come to know God. “No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27).
Invisibility
We have just seen that God is knowable through His self-revelation in His written Word, the Scriptures, and particularly in the living Word, His Son. The New Testament teaches that God is inherently invisible, but that Christ has translated the attributes of the invisible God into a visible form. “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18). Jesus says that “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). And Paul calls Jesus “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15).
But what does it mean to say that God is invisible? The word “invisible” can mean either (1) physically incapable of being seen, or (2) simply, not seen. An example of the latter is the far side of the moon, which is physically capable of being seen, but is invisible from the earth. An example of the former is air, which normally does not reflect light and is therefore not usually visible. Visibility is an interesting attribute in that it is defined in human terms. Something is visible if it reflects light with wavelengths within the spectrum detectable by the human eye. [14]
God is invisible, that is, He is incapable of being seen because He is spiritual and not material. He is, therefore, not detectable by our eyes. But in the Incarnation the invisible God appeared in the form of human flesh. Christ is the invisible God made visible. However, even prior to the Incarnation, God seemed to appear from time to time in visible human form. Moreover, the Old Testament clearly signals that such sightings of the divine Being were fraught with mortal danger.
After one such epiphany Manoah, the father of Samson, said to his wife, “We are doomed to die! We have seen God!” (Judges 13:22). Earlier in the same book when Gideon exclaimed, “I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!” the Lord reassures him with the words, “You are not going to die” (Judges 6:22, 23). After a similar encounter with God, Jacob called the name of the place Peniel (“face of God”), saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared” (Gen. 32:30). And when Moses asked for permission to see the divine Being, God warned him that “no one may see me and live” (Ex. 33:20).
These incidents suggest that there is not only a physical reason why God cannot be seen, there is also a moral reason. Since God is holy and man is not, it could mean only instant death, were sinful man ever to lay eyes on a holy God. This explains Isaiah’s outburst, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isa. 6:5). [15] Yet God graciously permits us a glimpse of Himself in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Holiness
Our discussion of God’s invisibility concluded with the concept of His holiness. Isaiah’s confession in chapter 6 of his prophecy occurs after his vision of the thrice-holy God. Holiness is an essential attribute of God, and in the prophetic writings He is frequently called “the Holy One.” God’s holiness refers to His moral purity: “your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong” (Hab. 1:13). Holiness also decisively distinguishes the divine nature from human nature: “I am God and not man—the Holy One among you” (Hos. 11:9). The Hebrew word qô̄d̠eš conveys the idea of separateness or apartness. Things which are set apart for God’s purposes are holy. In the Old Testament people (the priests), places (the sanctuary of the temple), and things (the temple utensils) could be holy because they were set apart for the worship and service of God. Even days could be holy—“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (Ex. 20:8)—because these were special days reserved for the worship of God.
In the New Testament, as in the Old, holiness is a fundamental characteristic of God. The Greek hagios also conveys the ideas of apartness and purity. God’s moral perfection is an essential part of His nature. But whereas in the Old Testament objects are held to be holy, in the New Testament “it is only Christ and those who belong to him who are called ‘holy’, so that the personal character of holiness” [16] is emphasized. As holiness characterizes the Lord, so it should characterize His saints, His holy ones. “It is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Pet. 1:16).
Unfortunately, the imperative form of the verb in 1 Peter 1:16 has led many to infer that holiness is a quality which is achieved rather than conferred. In Roman Catholicism the attainment of sainthood, or holiness, is by ritualism, involving the ecclesiastical processes of beatification and sanctification. [17] Some elements of Protestantism tried to find sainthood, or holiness, in pietism. This movement traces its lineage back to Methodism, which departed from its Reformation roots by separating sanctification from justification. John Wesley wrote, “We do not know a single instance in any place, of a person’s receiving, in one and the same moment, remission of sins, the abiding witness of the Spirit, and a new, clean heart.” [18]
Methodism in turn laid the foundation for the “holiness movement” in North America, which then paved the way for Pentecostalism and, later, the charismatic and third wave movements, which sought sanctification, or holiness, in enthusiasm. These groups have viewed glossalalia and other signs of a “second blessing” as evidence of sanctification. Many evangelical Christians disavow such enthusiasm, but instead regard legalism as the path to holiness. This legalism is frequently positive (the observance of days and ordinances), but is more often negative (abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, and certain forms of entertainment).
The biblical record does not support the idea that holiness can be achieved by ritualism, pietism, enthusiasm, legalism, or any other form of human effort. But it does indeed identify a certain moral rectitude with holiness. In biblical terms, righteousness cannot be separated from holiness. The error is in viewing such moral rectitude as the cause rather than the result of holiness. Even though it is impossible to overemphasize the ethical aspect of holiness, the importance of the concept lies in its description of God’s essential nature. As Eichrodt observes, “The uniqueness of the Old Testament definition of holiness lies not in its elevated moral standard, but in the personal quality of the God to which it refers.” [19] Holiness, therefore, is not something which can be achieved; it can only be conferred. It can come only from God.
In the New Testament God’s holy ones, or saints, are those who “have been made holy” (Heb. 10:10); and here the passive voice implies divine action. But they are also those who “are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14). They are those whom God is in the process of conforming to the likeness of His Son (Rom. 8:29). The effort implied in the imperative, “Be holy, for I am holy,” is in order to make our lives conform to the status to which God has raised us, and not to achieve that status by our own efforts. And even there the effort is not dependent on human willpower or ability, but on the empowering of the Holy Spirit who indwells us.
Self-existence
God is not dependent on anyone or anything. This attribute is sometimes also called God’s aseity. It means that God does not depend on anyone or anything for His existence. He does not need or require anything from His creation. There are many Scripture passages which support this idea, but it is stated most explicitly in Acts 17:24–25. “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.”
To some thinkers God’s self-existence also implies that He is immune to influences outside Himself. (This is referred to as divine impassibility). But the Bible indicates that, in many ways, God does respond to His creatures and is therefore in some sense affected by them. [20]
God and Time
Under this heading I would like to introduce two additional divine attributes: immutability and eternality. Our starting point for this discussion will be the concept of time, which is one of the strangest properties of creation.
An obituary of the late physicist Ernst Stueckelberg observed that his textbook on thermodynamics
is a logical construct without compromise, a cathedral of the spirit erected to prove with the aid of the notion of entropy that the time of physics is indeed the “biblical time” having a beginning and an end, and not the “Greek time” that flows uniformly from an infinitely distant past to an infinitely distant future. [21]The quotation above raises a number of questions. First, is there a “time of physics”? And if so, what is it? Second, is there a “biblical time”? And if so, what is it? And finally, are physical time and biblical time truly identical? Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity radically altered the physicist’s concept of time. For Einstein the clock was the basis for time. Time is what a clock reads. [22] This operational definition of time is, of course, consistent with the special theory of relativity, according to which time is not absolute, but depends on your particular frame of reference, that is, on the reading of your clock.
But what is a clock? There are three prerequisites for a physical clock: matter, change, and periodicity. In order for a clock to exist there must be change. If nothing changes, there can be no time. Physical time presupposes change, and the changes that a clock measures are periodic (for example, the rotation of the earth on its axis, the swing of a pendulum, the vibration of a quartz crystal). Moreover, each of those changes presupposes the existence of matter.
But if matter is necessary for a clock and a clock is necessary for time, then there can be no physical time without matter. Therefore, we conclude that time must be a part of the creation. This appears to be the implication of the first few verses of Genesis:
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light [that is, matter]. [23] God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning [periodic change]—the first day [the beginning of time]. [24]If the biblical record presupposes some concept of time, what kind of time is implied? First of all, biblical cosmology suggests that biblical time is linear and not cyclic. In antiquity time was often thought to be cyclic, and this is understandable, since many natural events are periodic: days, years, seasons, for example. Ecclesiastes describes this periodicity of the natural order (Eccl. 1:2–11). But Hebrew cosmology has a linear rather than a cyclical view, because linear time is consistent with God’s intervention in historical time. God sent a great flood in Noah’s day. He delivered His people out of the hand of Pharaoh. He parted the Red Sea. These actions of God occurred once at a specific time in history.
But unlike Greek time, which was also linear, biblical time was finite. It had a beginning and, presumably, will have an end. It extends neither into an infinitely distant past nor into an infinitely distant future. In addition to being linear and finite, biblical time shares one more feature with physical time: it is directional. The time of physics has an arrow. [25] Similarly, the time of the Bible is directional, and it derives its directionality from the actions of God. [26]
This view of time, however, presents a problem. If time is a part of the creation, then God must be timeless, since He is not a part of the creation and His existence is independent of the created order. But then how is it possible for a timeless God to intervene in the creation in time? This conundrum has engaged philosophers of religion for a long time and has not been entirely resolved. [27] The following represents my personal view.
God is an eternal God (Ps. 90:2). If time implies change, then eternity implies changelessness. Therefore God’s immutability coheres with His eternality. Immutability and eternality are essential attributes of God; they are not attributes of the created order. Moreover, God has to be atemporal or supratemporal (existing outside of time) if, as we have argued, time is a part of the creation. God’s existence is apart from the temporal universe. [28] But since we believe that God is here and now, He has to exist not only in time, but also at every instant of time. Therefore God is omnitemporal.
But how can God be both supratemporal and also omnitemporal, i.e. existing at every instant in time? This, of course, is a difficult question to answer. But just as God’s immutability coheres with His eternality, so His omnitemporality must cohere with His omnipresence. God’s temporal attributes are comparable to His spatial attributes. Just as He is omnipresent in space, so He is also “omnipresent” in time. This is a particularly attractive view since modern physics regards the universe as a space-time continuum. If God is omnipresent, then He must exist in every inertial reference frame. And since time and all time-related concepts such as simultaneity are reference frame dependent, God must exist at every instant in every reference frame.
There are several important consequences to these conclusions. The Bible teaches that God is immutable (or changeless). He is “the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). [29] But if God is in any sense temporal, does that imply that He is in some sense changeable? The teaching of Scripture refers to God’s ontological immutability. His essence is eternal and therefore cannot change. But since He is omnitemporal, His immutability is not absolute. He can and does interact with His creation. More will be said about this later.
God’s Power
There are three expressions that have traditionally described God’s almighty power and transcendence; they are omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. Each of these is an exclusive attribute of God; that is, God alone possesses each of these attributes.
Omnipotence
Omnipotence means that God’s power is absolute. The word is not found in the English Bible and there are no words in Hebrew or Greek which exactly correspond to omnipotence. But the biblical writings do contain expressions which convey God’s great power. The Greek word pantokrator comes the closest to expressing omnipotence and is often translated “almighty.” In the Old Testament the Hebrew expression YHWH Sebaoth, favored by the post-exilic prophets, is often translated as “the Lord of hosts.” But the expression is now recognized as a genitive of apposition with attributive force. It is rendered in the NIV as “the Lord Almighty.” Motyer observes that “the whole title means ‘Yahweh [who is] hosts,’ that is, the one who in Himself is (not simply possesses) every potentiality and power.” [30] In biblical language God’s omnipotence is described in term of His “mighty acts.” [31] God is able to call the universe into existence by His word. God’s power is all pervasive. Nothing escapes it, not even a falling sparrow (Matt. 10:29).
Omnipotence means that God can do whatever He desires to do. “My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isa. 46:10). “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Ps. 115:3). It does not mean that God’s actions are without rational or moral restraint. Rather it implies that God is able to do everything which is consistent with His nature. In discussing God’s nature, one is frequently confronted with the old conundrum, “Can God create a rock so large that not even He could lift it?” It is often, but erroneously, assumed that omnipotence implies that it is not possible to construct a truthful statement which begins “God cannot….” But that cannot be true. The Bible itself informs us that there are things which God cannot do. “He cannot disown himself” (2 Tim. 2:13). “It is impossible for God to lie” (Heb. 6:18). God cannot do anything which is inconsistent with His being God. However, this does not imply or impose any limitation on God’s power. It simply means that there is one overarching thing that God cannot do; God cannot be not God. God can do only that which is consistent with His being God.
Omnipresence
Omnipresence means that God is not subject to the restrictions of space. As is the case with omnipotence, no such word is to be found in Scripture. Nevertheless, omnipresence is an essential aspect of God’s nature and is supported by the witness of Scripture. The psalmist assumed this attribute of God when he asked, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (Ps. 139:7–10; see also Acts 17:27–28). “‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord” (Jer. 23:24). Despite these statements omnipresence should not be thought of in materialistic terms of a substance occupying all spatial extent. Such notions could lead to pantheistic misconceptions. God’s presence is to be found throughout every part of the creation, but is distinct from, and not to be identified with, that created order. One of the lessons of the creation narrative in Genesis is that God is not to be identified with His creation; He is completely separate from it. His ubiquity should be regarded in a dynamic sense. It implies not only that God brought the created order into being, but also that His almighty power and wisdom encompass all of His works (Heb 1:3). [32]
In spite of His omnipresence, the Scriptures often localize God’s presence. God calls the tabernacle His “dwelling place” (Lev. 15:31), and later the temple was regarded as the place of God’s presence or His “glory.” Jonah tried to flee from the presence of the Lord by running away to Tarshish (Jonah 1:3). But it is clear that although on certain occasions God chose to identify Himself with specific locations, His presence was not confined to those places. Indeed His true dwelling place is described as “the highest heaven” (literally, “the heaven of heavens”) (Deut. 10:14). Jesus taught His disciples to pray to their “Father in heaven” (Matt. 6:9). And Solomon in his dedicatory prayer for the temple confesses that neither the temple nor the highest heaven can confine God’s presence: “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).
In spite of the difficulty in defining and comprehending divine omnipresence, this doctrine is essential to an understanding of God’s nature. As we noted earlier, there are similarities between God’s relationship to space and His relationship to time. As the Creator of space-time, God is confined by neither space nor time. There is no part of space where God is not. In fact God’s presence is to be found at every point in the space-time continuum. As is the case with time, omnipresence can be understood either in terms of transcendence or immanence, and at various times Christian scholarship has tended to emphasize either one or the other. However, a true understanding of God must affirm God’s transcendence as well as His immanence. [33] This is true in space as well as time.
In contrast to the pagan gods of yore, Israel’s God was not a territorial God. He is not merely a God of a particular piece of real estate. God is the omnipresent God, the universal God. He was and is not just the God of Israel; He is the God of the universe. As Rahab confessed, “the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below” (Josh. 2:11).
Omniscience
The Scriptures teach that God has perfect knowledge: “His understanding has no limit” (Ps. 147:5). “The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good” (Prov. 15:3). “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). “For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20). [34]
God’s knowledge is complete. He knows the past and the present as well as the future. Given God’s other attributes, His complete knowledge of the past and the present is understandable. However, His knowledge of the future has presented a number of problems for those who hold to libertarian freedom. If God knows future human actions, then are those actions really free? And if those actions are not free, can God hold men accountable for their actions? Is God’s foreknowledge compatible with freedom of the human will?
Evangelical Christians hold to both divine foreknowledge and human free will. One way to try to resolve the dilemma is to view foreknowledge as a purely epistemological phenomenon and not as a determinative force. In other words, foreknowledge means only that God is aware beforehand of my actions without any implication that His awareness causes or determines those actions. But, whereas it is true that divine prescience is not necessarily causative, there are certain biblical passages which suggest not only that God knew ahead of time what was going to happen, but also that He determined those events ahead of time. In his sermon on the day of Pentecost, Peter declared that Jesus was handed over “by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23). The clear implication is that Jesus’ fate was not merely foreknown by God, but was also in accordance with His eternal purposes. This suggests that Jesus’ arrest and execution were divinely predetermined, even though the principals involved (the Jewish chief priests and Pilate, for example) appeared to be acting in accordance with their own motives and for their purposes.
On the face of it, there is no simple way to reconcile God’s eternal sovereignty and the free exercise of the human will. The two traditional approaches to this problem attempt a resolution by blunting one or the other horns of the dilemma. Calvinism emphasizes divine sovereignty at the expense of human freedom, and Arminianism does the reverse. In contemporary scholarship, there are two opposing approaches, represented, on the one hand, by those who affirm the traditional divine attributes, even though they may not be convinced Calvinists, and on the other hand, by those who, like process theologians, challenge the conventional understanding of those attributes. [35]
In the past quarter of a century a third approach, known as open theism, has emerged. Open theists attempt to modify, without abandoning, God’s traditional attributes, while avoiding the extremes of process thinking. They claim that if man’s choices are truly free, then those choices cannot be known before they are made. God in His sovereignty created man with the ability to make real choices, and in so doing He has necessarily limited His knowledge of the future. He is fully aware of all the possible choices I can make and what the consequences of each of those possible choices are, but He does not know what choice I will make until I actually make it.
It is clear that open theism calls into question our understanding of the attributes of God as they are described above. God is no longer omniscient, since He does not know the future fully. The future is open for Him, as it is for us. Nor is He omnipotent, since His scope of action is limited by human choices. Although His ontological immutability remains intact, like us He has to adapt His plans to unfolding events. And God cannot be omnitemporal, since He exists in the “now” and awaits the future just as we do. Many find this re-interpretation of the divine attributes attractive. First, it paints a portrait of God who, rather than being aloof, remote, transcendent, and impassible, is immanent, involved, and sympathetic to our suffering. Second, it appears to resolve the problem of evil. Evil exists, not because God wills it, but because of human freedom. And third, it appears to be consistent with at least some of the biblical data.
Open theists appeal to certain biblical texts to defend their conclusions. One of their favorite texts is Genesis 22:12, where after testing Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac, God says to him, “Now I know that you fear God.” The suggestion is that the word “now” implies that God did not know that about Abraham previously, and that He acquired that knowledge only after testing Abraham and observing his response to the test. They also refer to the many texts in the Old Testament which seem to imply that God changed His mind. Most of these texts use the Hebrew verb nāḥam (e.g., 1 Sam. 15:35; Amos 7:3, 6; Jonah 3:10), which is translated “repent” or “relent.” These passages seem to tell us that God regretted a choice He had made or changed His mind about judgment in response to the people’s repenting and turning from their evil ways. There are also other passages which appear to show that God can be surprised by certain events: “Nor did it enter my mind” (e.g., Jer. 7:31; 19:5; 32:35). Open theists insist that to be faithful to the biblical texts such passages should be interpreted literally; and when they are so interpreted, they tell us that even for God the future is open. [36]
The perspective of open theism is valuable in that it encourages us to re-examine our understanding of the biblical teaching on the nature of God. And unlike process theology, it does so from an evangelical standpoint, which acknowledges the authority of Scripture. Nevertheless, there are a number of problems with openness, and it can be criticized on historical, theological, philosophical, and exegetical grounds. [37]
From a historical point of view, the philosophical ideas of open theism are not new. At the time of the Reformation, Laelius Socinus (1525–1562) and his nephew Faustus Socinus (1539–1604) rejected the Trinity and the divinity of Christ on rationalistic grounds, and their thinking led to an evangelical rationalist movement which was a forerunner of modern Unitarianism. [38] Like open theism Socinianism emphasized human freedom and redefined omniscience to make it compatible with freedom of the will. [39] To the Socinians omniscience meant knowing everything that can be known. Since the future is inherently unknowable, God can still be regarded as omniscient, that is, knowing all that is capable of being known. So the idea of a God with limited knowledge is not a new idea, but has roots going back as far as the time of the Reformation. [40]
From a theological point of view open theists contend that love is God’s most important attribute. Richard Rice argues that love is “the essence of the divine reality, the basic source from which all of God’s attributes arise.” [41] It is true that the Bible says that “God loves” (John 3:16), even that “God is love” (1 John 4:16). But each of God’s attributes define His essence. God has no non-essential attributes. Therefore it is difficult to argue that any one of God’s attributes is more important or more fundamental than the others.
When John says “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), he is not so much identifying an attribute or quality of God as he is describing God’s being. He is saying more than “God is loving.” There are three other statements in the New Testament which are grammatically similar to “God is love”: “God is light” (1 John 1:5), “God is spirit” (John 4:24), and “God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29; Deut. 4:24). Again, these statements convey more than “God is enlightening,” “God is spiritual,” or “God is fiery.” These statements describe the very essence of God.
It is also important to realize that in saying “God is love,” John is not suggesting that “Love is God.” He is defining neither love nor God; but he is affirming that love is basic to God’s being and to His actions. Since love is a fundamental part of God’s nature, He always acts in a loving way. But it is difficult to argue that “God is love” describes something more basic or fundamental about God than “God is light” or “God is spirit.” [42] Each aspect of God’s being is essential, without which He would not be God.
But it is also important to realize that love is an essential part of God’s trinitarian being. “God is love” is more understandable in a trinitarian view of God than it could ever be in a unitarian view. It could hardly be said of a unitarian God that He is love, since love requires both a subject and an object. David Jackman reminds us:
It is not simply that God loves, but that He is love. We are helped to understand this when we remember that God is revealed in Scripture as the holy Trinity, three persons in one God. We shall never be able to comprehend the full meaning of this with our finite minds, but at least we can grasp that at the heart of the deity there is a dynamic inter-relationship of love. Love flows between the three persons in a constant interaction, so that every activity expresses the love which is the divine nature. The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the Father; the Spirit loves the Son, and so on. This is not just a static description, but a living, active dynamism. God loves, within his own being, because his nature is to love. [43]Moreover, from a philosophical point of view open theism cannot even claim to have resolved the problem of evil. If God creates us with a free will, then He is ultimately responsible for the choices we make. In His sovereignty God could decide that there is already too much evil in the world and suspend the experiment of human freedom. [44] Moreover, the libertarian freedom postulated by open theism is difficult to defend on the basis of biblical teaching. The teaching of Paul is that without Christ man is not truly free, but is rather a slave of sin. [45]
Finally, open theists defend their view of God by a literal interpretation of certain biblical passages. These exegetical inferences, however, represent a misunderstanding of the anthropomorphic references to God in Scripture, and they would lead to a rejection of much of Scripture, particularly those dealing with prophecy. In 1 Kings 13:1–4 God’s prophet tells the wicked king Jeroboam that He will raise up a faithful king named Josiah. This prophecy was made 300 years before Josiah was born. In Isaiah 44:28–45:13 God predicted that He would raise up the Persian king Cyrus, announcing even his name more than one hundred years before he was born. The Old Testament predicted that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, He would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, His body would be pierced, but His bones would not be broken. Virtually all of the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament would have to be discounted if human freedom made it impossible for God to know the future.
But the Bible consistently teaches that God’s foreknowledge is complete, and that He foreknows even the decisions which people make of their free wills. Like His omnipotence and His omnipresence, God’s omniscience is one of His essential attributes, and to deny it is to deny God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture. Our heavenly Father is a God who knows the beginning from the end.
The Monotheistic God
God’s attributes constitute a powerful argument for monotheism. No one but God possesses these attributes. Bray observes,
The attributes of God…all pointed in a unitarian direction.… It was only when Christians realized that God’s powers were not delegated by the Father but were inherent in each of the three persons, that the full and essential deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit were properly established. [46]Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all monotheistic religions. But Christianity differs from the other two in that it believes in one God in three persons. To Muslims and Jews this appears to be a denial of monotheism. Some scholars regard primitive Judaism as henotheistic [47] and view a full-fledged monotheism as a later development. But the great “shema” declaration of the Old Testament (Deut. 6:4) was a bold proclamation of monotheism. This monotheism was adopted from Judaism by the Christian church. But Christianity also introduced a Trinitarianism which leaves Jews and Muslims in bewilderment. In order to delineate the nature and importance of the Trinity, we will review two historical alternatives, namely, Unitarianism and Binitarianism.
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a denial of the doctrine of the Trinity. Although the modern Unitarian movement traces its roots back to the time of the Protestant Reformation, there were forms of Unitarianism in the early history of the church.
Arianism and Sabellianism were among the early unitarian formulations. Today the names of both Arius and Sabellius are associated with heresy. But in the fourth century there was no accepted orthodox position, and their views of the nature of God were not at all unusual. As a matter of fact, even today such views are still held unwittingly by a number of Christians.
Arius was a popular presbyter (priest) in Alexandria. He has been described as a “skillful propagandist” who set his ideas to music and gained a wide hearing among clergy and laity alike. [48] He held that Jesus was more than a man, and he did not deny the deity of Christ, but felt that it was blasphemous to regard the Son as having the same nature as God the Father. He argued that Jesus Himself said that the Father was greater than He and that the Scriptures describe Jesus as the “only begotten” of the Father. If He was begotten, Arius felt then there had to be a time when He was not, and therefore He could not have been eternal with the Father. Arius thought that whereas the Father was divine by nature, the divinity of Jesus was a conferred divinity. He felt that the Son was more than a man. But he argued that since the Son was “begotten,” He was a created being, and therefore He had an origin in time. Therefore the Son could not be God since He is not eternal. Arius contended that the Son was like (homoios) the Father, but denied that He was of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father.
Arius was well versed in the Scriptures and marshaled numerous passages in defense of his position. It was a challenge that his bishop, Alexander, could not ignore, and the response of Alexander and his assistant, Athanasius, became so heated that the emperor Constantine himself intervened by convening a synod in Nicea (ad 325) to resolve the issue.
A second early form of Unitarianism was Sabellianism, or modalism, which viewed God as a unity, but having three different roles. According to modalism Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are just three different names for the same God who at various times plays different roles. This is an attractive solution to the difficulty of the Trinity, which is held by many Christians even today. [49]
However, as Feinberg emphatically observes, Scripture portrays the members of the Trinity as three distinct persons:
Matt 3:16–17 records the baptism of Jesus. Jesus is God, so we might think that on this occasion God is functioning solely in His “Son role.” However, as Jesus is baptized the Spirit descends upon him as a dove, and out of heaven the Father says, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” If Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not distinct persons, this is quite a feat of ventriloquism and optical illusion! And, it isn’t clear, then, whether it is the voice from heaven, the dove, or Jesus performing these feats. The most sensible way to understand this incident is that the three are distinct persons. [50]Arianism, Sabellianism, and other early forms of Unitarianism were eventually condemned as heretical, because they failed to do justice to biblical teaching about the person of Jesus Christ. The Eastern Church used the Greek word hypostasis to refer to the personal dimension of the Trinity. Originally, this word was virtually synonymous with ousia (essence), but the Greek fathers drew a distinction, claiming that the three hypostases (persons) of the Trinity were of one ousia. This is the view which prevailed at Constantinople in ad 381 and which eventually became the classic understanding of the Trinity: three persons of one substance.
On the other hand, as we noted above, modern Unitarianism goes back to the time of the Reformation and the teaching of Faustus Socinus, Laelius Socinus, and Michael Servetus, who was burned at the stake in 1553. Faustus Socinus rejected the Trinity on rational grounds. He regarded the doctrine as both irrational and unscriptural, and he denied the deity of Christ. [51]
On the contemporary religious scene Unitarianism is common among various cults and sects. Most, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, teach a Unitarianism of the first person of the Trinity, but some, such as the Jesus Only movement of Pentecostalism adhere to a Unitarianism of the second person. And some aberrant Christian groups even teach a Unitarianism of the third person. [52]
Binitarianism
Binitarianism, or a dualistic concept of God, is found in many cult movements. Some feminist groups have followed this line of thinking by describing God as an androgynous being, having both male and female characteristics. A contemporary form of binitarianism is found in the teaching of the Korean heretic Sun Myung Moon, in which there is a syncretistic attempt to incorporate the yin-yang dichotomy of Buddhism into Christianity. [53] Binitarian thinking is also found in many Christian sects which deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit by viewing Him as merely an impersonal force or influence.
The Challenge of the Monotheistic Religions
Orthodox Trinitarianism is challenged not only by traditional Unitarianism and Binitarianism, but also by the other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam. Jesus and the first Christians were Jews, and as Jews they reaffirmed the monotheism of the Old Testament. In Mark’s gospel, when Jesus is asked which is the greatest of all the commandments, He responds by quoting the shema declaration: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Mark 12:30). The writings of Paul also acknowledge the oneness of God (1 Tim. 2:5; 1 Cor. 8:6). But in referring to Jesus as “Lord,” the covenant name of God, the early Christians were going far beyond the Unitarianism of the Old Testament, while at the same time firmly maintaining its monotheism. Jews reject Jesus as the Messiah promised in the Old Testament and, of course, also reject His deity. Islam regards Jesus as a prophet, but also denies His deity. Islamic objection to the doctrine of the Trinity is based on a series of misunderstandings of Christian teaching. [54] These objections are numerous, but fall into three well-defined categories. Muslims accuse Christians of tritheism, or the worship of three gods; they misinterpret the teaching of the New Testament concerning the person of Jesus and His relationship to His Father; and they dismiss the doctrine of the Trinity as being overly complex.
According to Muslim teaching, to deny the unity of God is to commit the unpardonable sin of shirk, that is, assigning partners to God. This is the basis of their objection to the Trinity, which they see as the worship of three gods. However, these three gods are not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as a Christian might suspect, but rather God, Mary, and Jesus. In the Qu’ran, Muhammad asks, “O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah?” (Sura 5:119). Muhammad may have been acquainted with a group of Christians who revered Mary and erroneously concluded that Christianity deified her.
When one examines Islamic treatment of the person of Jesus, one discovers fundamental misunderstandings about the teaching of the New Testament. For example, the expression “the only begotten Son” is interpreted literally. The Muslim apologist Ahmed Deedat is quoted as saying, “ He [God] does not beget because begetting is an animal act. It belongs to the lower animal act of sex. We do not attribute such an act to God.” [55]
The Greek word which is translated as “only begotten” is μονογενής, monogenēs. In discussing John 1:14, R. E. Brown summarizes the meaning and usage of this word as follows:
Literally the Greek means “of a single [monos] kind [genos].” Although genos is distantly related to gennan, “to beget,” there is little Greek justification for the translation of monogenes as “only begotten.” The OL [Old Latin] correctly translated it as unicus, “only,” and so did Jerome where it was not applied to Jesus. But to answer the Arian claim that Jesus was not begotten but made, Jerome translated it as unigenitus, “only begotten,” in passages like this one (also i 18, iii 16, 18).56 [57]The Septuagint uses both agapētos and monogenēs to translate the Hebrew יָחִיד (yāḥîd̠). In Genesis 22:2 Isaac is Abraham’s only yāḥîd̠ (son), not literally, but in the sense that he was his beloved son. [58] Of the four gospels, only John uses monogenēs to describe Jesus’ unique relationship to God. [59] Matthew and Mark use agapētos, and Luke uses monogenēs in the sense of an only child (Luke 7:12; 8:42).
Christian teaching has never associated the expression with the Incarnation, since Jesus is the eternal and pre-incarnate Son of the Father. Lactantius, writing in the fourth century said, “He who hears the words ‘Son of God’ spoken must not conceive in his mind such great wickedness as to fancy that God procreated through marriage and union with any female,—a thing which is not done except by an animal possessed of a body and subject to death.” [60]
Muslims also appear to misunderstand various New Testament passages such as Jesus’ assertion that “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28) as implying a subordination of the Son to the Father. But as we shall see below, this refers to a functional subordination rather than an ontological subordination. That is, the Father is not greater than Jesus in substance or nature, but only in function or role. He was the One who was sent by the Father in order to accomplish the will of the Father.
Finally, Muslims complain about the complexity of the doctrine of the Trinity. It cannot be denied that Muslim theology is a model of simplicity. No religion has a shorter creed than Islam, whose theology can be summarized in the seven word shahadah (confession), La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammad rasul Allah, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle.” [61] But there is no inherent reason why God should be simple. [62] As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. It would indeed be surprising if the One and Only God, the Creator of the universe and of everything that exists, the Ruler of Heaven and Earth were comprehensible in simple terms.
Although both Judaism and Islam reject the Trinity, the attitude of Christianity toward both religions could hardly be different. Christians acknowledge the unity of the God of the Bible. The God who is the Father of the Lord Jesus is the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who gave Moses the Law, and the God of the Old Testament prophets. But is there a unity between the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an? In Qur’anic teaching Allah (the Arabic word for God) is the God who created the world in six days and who created the first man, Adam. He is the God of Abraham, and He is the God of whom Jesus is a prophet. Moreover, the Qur’an refers to both Jews and Christians as “the people of the Book,” and it further claims to be the culmination or the completion of God’s earlier revelations.
It is clear that Muhammad intended Allah to be identified as the God of the Bible. And it is generally assumed that the three great monotheistic religions all worship the same God, although the understanding of that God is different in each religion. However, although the unity of God in the Old Testament and New Testament can be maintained, it is virtually impossible to uphold the unity of the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an, because they are fundamentally different. Unlike the God of the Bible, the God of the Qur’an is not a personal God, and he cannot be known. He is not only an unknown God, he is an unknowable God. The only thing that can be known about Allah is his will. A personal relationship with him is impossible. Whereas the God of the Bible has a name, Allah can have no name, because to know one’s name is to know something about him. [63]
But perhaps the greatest impediment to maintaining the unity of the God of the Bible and Allah of the Qur’an is that the very structure of Islamic faith and practice betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the God of the Bible. The importance of the shariah (Islamic law) in Islamic life fails to do justice to the high understanding of God’s moral character and of His grace which one finds in the Bible. In short, the Allah of the Qur’an is an Allah of law (the shariah), whereas the God of the Bible is a God of grace.
There is also another fundamental difference between the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an, and this difference is of extreme importance for the rest of our discussion. Although the Bible repeatedly refers to God as a Father, the God of the Qur’an is not and could never be a father. Of the “ninety-nine names for God” in Islamic discourse, not one of those names is “Father.” The differences between the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an are so fundamental as to be unbridgeable. For the Christian, Allah can only be regarded as another god besides God. [64]
Father Language in the Bible
Before the emergence of Pentecostalism, the Holy Spirit was often regarded as the most neglected member of the Trinity. But in today’s world in which evangelical Christians tend to emphasize the person of Jesus, charismatics focus on the power of the Holy Spirit, Roman Catholics dwell on the person of Mary, and feminists agitate for a gender-neutral God, the forgotten member of the Trinity is probably the Father, as the title of Thomas A. Smail’s book implies. [65] In spite of that, in the contemporary philosophical climate the concept of God as Father has become a somewhat contentious issue.
The Old Testament
In the patriarchal social structures of the ancient East, the father figure is one who is deserving of respect and honor (Mal. 1:6) as the head of the household and as the one exercising authority over an immediate or an extended family. The father was also the one who had the responsibility of protecting, instructing, and supporting the members of his family. Both of these features are invoked when God is described as a father.
The Hebrew word אָב (ʾāb̠, “father”) has a wide variety of meanings. [66] These include:
- Biological parent. The most straightforward meaning of “father” is that of the male biological parent. Abraham is the father of Isaac, and Isaac is the father of Jacob. However, the word is also used in a number of largely metaphorical senses.
- Legal parent. According to the levirate law (Deut. 25:5–10), if a man dies without leaving a biological heir, his brother may marry his widow and a son born of that union would be a legal heir of the deceased. [67]
- Any ancestor. A grandfather (Gen. 28:13; 31:42, etc.) or a great grandfather (Num. 18:2; 1 Kings 15:11, 24, etc.) may be called a father. The plural “fathers” often refers to forefathers (Gen. 15:15; Ps. 45:16).
- Founder. The first ancestor of a tribe or nation is called a “father” (Gen. 10:21; 17:4–5, etc.). There are similar references to an inventor. Jabal was “the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock” (Gen. 4:20). Jubal was “the father of all who play the harp and flute” (Gen. 4:21). In that sense, in the New Testament, Abraham is called “the father of all those who believe” (Rom. 4:11).
- Benefactor. Job called himself “a father to the needy” (Job 29:16).
- Teacher. A person who imparted wisdom was a surrogate parent, or a father figure. Elisha called Elijah “My father!” (2 Kings 2:12). God made Joseph a “father” to Pharaoh (Gen. 45:8), and the prophetess Deborah was a “mother” in Israel (Judg. 5:7). [68] In the book of Proverbs Solomon, as wisdom teacher, addresses his student as “my son.” Similarly, the pupils of the prophets were called “the sons of the prophets” (1 Kings 20:35).
- Creator. One of the Old Testament meanings of “father” is creator: “Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew?” (Job 38:28). In the Old Testament the fatherhood of God is closely associated with His creative activity. It is in this sense that God is the “Father of the heavenly lights” (i.e., the stars) in James 1:17. But although God is also the father of all men as their Creator (Isa. 64:8, Eph. 3:14–15), in another sense His fatherhood is restricted to His covenant people. “Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another?” (Mal. 2:10).
Personal names in the Old Testament frequently described God as a father. For example, the name Joab means “Yahweh is my father” and Abijah means “my father is Yahweh.” Abimael, or Abiel, combines the divine name El and means “my father is God.” Similarly, Abihu, which means “he is my father” probably implies a circumlocution for the divine name. Other examples are Eliab, “my God is father;” and Abimelech, “my father is king.” [69]
God Himself uses the father metaphor when He calls Israel “my son” and “my firstborn son” in Exodus 4:22–23. He uses similar language in Hosea 11:1: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” He continues to describe His role as a parent imparting wisdom and instruction: “It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms” (Hos. 11:3). In the culture of the ancient East a parent was worthy of respect; so God asks rhetorically of His covenant people, “If I am a father, where is the honor due me?” (Mal. 1:6).
The father language for God in the Old Testament is largely metaphorical. A metaphor implies an analogy, but we should not think that God is a father because He is like a human father. Rather, the fatherhood of God represents the ideal for which human fatherhood was intended and to which human fatherhood should strive.
The New Testament
In the Old Testament the fatherhood of God is occasional and metaphorical, and generally refers to His covenant with His people. However, when we come to the New Testament, we find a completely different picture. First, in the entire Old Testament God is called “Father” fifteen times; in the New Testament 245 times, more than one hundred times in the Gospel of John alone. [70] “Father” is Christ’s most common designation of God. Second, in the New Testament, God as “Father” is not just a metaphor. “Father” refers to His essence. He is first and foremost the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And, third, although God still has a covenant relationship under the New Covenant, in the New Testament His fatherhood also refers to His relationship to the individual.
The Fatherhood of God
The Father of the Lord Jesus
Although God is infrequently referred to as a Father in the Old Testament, He is never addressed there as “Father.” [71] Yet when we come to the New Testament we find one person who always addressed God as His Father. The only recorded exception is His cry of dereliction on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” which is a quotation from Psalm 22:1, a psalm of messianic significance. The Gospels record more than one hundred times that Jesus called God His Father.
Jesus’ claim that God was His Father is obviously of great significance. In the aftermath of His having healed a man on the Sabbath day, He said to the Jews who confronted Him, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working” (John 5:17). This statement would have been deeply offensive to His Jewish hearers because it challenged their thinking about God in three different ways. Moreover, each of those challenges carried the implication of Jesus’ divinity.
First, He challenged the view that God’s Sabbath rest persisted. The Jews felt that God rested on the Sabbath because His work was done. But Jesus is suggesting that God has not been idle since the creation. The Jews would not have challenged God’s prerogative to not observe the Sabbath rest, but Jesus’ assumption of the same prerogative was blasphemous to them. Second, He compounded the offense by equating His work with God’s work. This in itself would also have been regarded as blasphemous, but in the context of the Sabbath rest, Jesus was going even further by affirming His participation in God’s work of creation.
But third, and most provocatively, He called God “my Father.” Now there is a sense in which God, in His role as Creator, can be called the father of all men (Isa. 63:16; 64:8; Acts 17:28; Eph. 3:14–15, etc.). But Jesus was making a special claim which they could not accept. God was not merely the Father of all men; God was His Father. His interlocutors immediately recognized the implications of this, and John informs us that the Jews tried even harder to kill Him because “not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). The Greek verb is in the imperfect tense, implying that He was always, or habitually, calling God His Father. That is, as God’s Son He has a unique relationship with the Father and, as we have seen, John uses the expression “only begotten” to describe this relationship.
The Father of Believers
In the Old Testament God’s fatherhood is described in terms of choice rather than generation. “You are the children of the Lord your God”(Deut. 14:1). “Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession” (Deut. 14:2). [72] This is perhaps to avoid the pagan notion of the gods as a generative source. [73] But when we come to the New Testament, we find that both ideas are presented. We are sons of God by adoption (Rom. 8:23), but also by regeneration (1 Pet. 1:3; Tit. 3:5).
So the New Testament describes God not only as the Father of the Lord Jesus, but also as the Father of Jesus’ followers. When Jesus prayed, He addressed God as “my Father” (Matt. 26:42). When He taught His disciples to pray, He instructed them to say, “our Father” (Matt. 6:9). The plural possessive “our” implies that we pray to God as a community and address Him as Father as a community. Just as in the Old Testament, God was the Father of the covenant community, so also in the New Testament, God is the Father of the community defined by the New Covenant, that is, the community of believers.
Jesus Himself prayed in His native language Aramaic and also taught His disciples to pray in the vernacular. This is of significance because it removes prayer from the liturgical sphere to that of everyday life. As Smail observes:
“Most daily Jewish prayers were in Hebrew, the special holy language of worship, but Jesus’ prayer is in Aramaic, the ordinary language of the people. He prays to Abba, a God too close to be appropriately addressed in the archaic language of long ago, because he is the living God of today, deeply involved with the contemporary life of his people.” [74]The above citation introduces the word abba. It is the vocative form of the Aramaic word for “father.” It occurs three times in the New Testament (Mark 14:36; Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6), where it is transliterated, but immediately followed by the Greek translation. This expression, “Abba, Father” was probably an early liturgical formulation, which was used to address God in prayer.
Joachim Jeremias described abba as a term of endearment, which a small child would use to address his father. [75] As a result, it came to be translated as “Daddy.” It was assumed that Jesus habitually used this expression to address His Father and that He also taught His disciples to address God as abba. Consequently, it became common in some circles to address God as “Daddy” in prayer. However, this practice has been criticized by the Oxford linguist James Barr, who disputes several of Jeremias’ points. [76]
The assumption of Jesus’ habitual use of abba in addressing God is plausible, but not stated explicitly in the New Testament. The only text which confirms Jesus’ use of the word as a form of address in prayer is Mark 14:36; and there the usage may have been exceptional, given the extreme circumstances of Gethsemane. Moreover, it is not at all clear that Jesus instructed His disciples to use the same form of address which He Himself used. He always called God “My Father,” but taught His disciples to pray, “Our Father.” And, finally, the usage which Jeremias originally implied was somewhat misleading, as Jeremias himself later conceded:
First, the fact that ’abba was originally a child’s exclamatory word has occasionally led to the mistaken assumption that Jesus adopted the language of a tiny child when he addressed God as ‘Father’; even I myself believed this earlier. However, the discovery that even in the period before the New Testament, grown-up sons and daughters addressed their fathers as ’abba, stands in the way of any such limitation. [77]He goes on to add:
Jesus regarded ’Abba as a sacred word. When he instructs the disciples to ‘Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven’ (Matt 23:9), he certainly does not mean to prohibit them from addressing their physical fathers as ‘father’. He is thinking, rather, of the custom of addressing distinguished people, especially older men, as ’abba. The disciples are not to do this, because that would be a misuse of the word. He wanted to reserve the honour of the name ‘father’ for God alone. This prohibition shows the degree to which Jesus felt that the address ’Abba should be revered. [78]The use of abba as a term of respect and reverence rather than as a term of familiarity argues against the translation of “Daddy.” Nevertheless, the appearance of the word in the New Testament as a form of address to God is extremely significant. Hofius notes:
Nowhere in the entire wealth of devotional literature produced by ancient Judaism do we find ’abba being used as a way of addressing God. The pious Jew knew too much of the great gap between God and man (Eccl. 5:1) to be free to address God with the familiar word used in everyday family life. [79]Yet the three occurrences of the combination “Abba Father” in the New Testament imply a new and intimate relationship to God. The first is in Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). The remaining two occurrences (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15) suggest that it was already a recognized formula used in prayer early in the history of the church. This usage itself has Trinitarian implications. The Holy Spirit enables believers to address God the Father with the form of address used by the Son Himself.
But although God is both the Father of the Lord Jesus and also the Father of the followers of Jesus, we should not lose sight of the fact that Jesus has a unique relationship with the Father. Our relationship to God is different from, and dependent on, Jesus’ relationship to God. A striking example of Jesus’ careful use of language is His instruction to Mary Magdalene after His resurrection: “Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (John 20:17). [80] Although Jesus taught His disciples to address God as “our Father,” He himself never used the plural pronoun to include Himself with His disciples. This is because our relationship to God as Father is so different in kind from Jesus’ relationship to God that the two cannot really be compared.
We have seen that one of the meanings of “father” is “creator” and that there is a relationship between the fatherhood of God and His creative activity. So in that sense God can be regarded as the father of all men, since everyone was created by Him. He is “the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Eph. 3:14–15). In his treatise, What is Christianity?, the German church historian Adolf von Harnack popularized the expression “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” as the essence of Christianity. [81] But it is clear that Jesus did not believe nor did He teach “the universal fatherhood of God.” In John chapter 8 when His interlocutors claimed that God was their father, Jesus flatly contradicted that claim by applying an astonishing paternity test: “If God were your Father,” He replied, “you would love me, for I came from God” (8:42). “You belong to your father, the devil,” He told them (8:44). As the universal Creator, God has a claim on everyone. But this does not mean that God is the Father of everyone. Indeed, Christ’s teaching, as well as the teaching of the Old and New Testaments, restricts the fatherhood of God to those who are a part of the covenant community.
Moreover, our relationship to God as Father also involves the other members of the Trinity. In Matthew 10:20 Jesus calls the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of your Father.” The New Testament teaches us that we have access to the Father through the Son (Rom. 5:1–2) and that this access is accomplished through the mediation of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who is able to testify to our spirit (or “assure” our spirit) [82] that we are God’s children (Rom. 8:15–16). So “the image of the Father cast in the New Testament is one that has been refracted through the prism of Trinitarian theology.” [83]
Finally, we should remember that our ability to call God “Father” is a great privilege and a precious prerogative. God is not a remote, impersonal being, but someone whom we can address as “Abba, Father.” It is a reflection of God’s great love and grace. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1). But every privilege carries with it a certain responsibility; and our cherished position as the children of God, also carries with it an ethical imperative. John expresses this imperative by saying, “Everyone who has this hope [of His appearing] in him purifies himself, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:3).
Peter also reminds his readers of the ethical imperative of sonship: “Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear” (1 Pet. 1:17). The verb “to call” (epikaleō) is in the middle voice which carries the meaning of “to appeal” (cf. “I appeal to Caesar” [Acts 25:11]). The implication of this verse is that those who enjoy the privilege of appealing to God as Father also have the obligation to live in awe (“reverent fear”) of Him and to live lives which honor Him who is also the Judge of all the earth.
The Father and the Son
When Jesus called God His Father, what was He implying about their relationship? The relationship between the Father and the Son is complex, intimate, and unique. And an understanding of that relationship is crucial to an understanding of the teaching of the New Testament. There are several key passages which provide us with some insight into the nature of the Father-Son relationship. It is a relationship characterized by exclusivity, unity, and subordination.
Exclusivity
We have already seen that John’s use of the expression “only begotten Son” is meant to signify the unique relationship between the Father and the Son. The Son has an exclusive relationship with the Father, a relationship which is shared with no other being. This is the clear implication of the following passage from Matthew’s Gospel:
I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:25-28).The authenticity of these verses has been questioned because of its echoes of Johannine theology, but this criticism has been answered decisively by Jeremias. [84] This is one of the most important passages describing the relationship between the Father and the Son. The verb “know” (epiginōskō) describes the profundity and the intimacy of the mutual knowledge between the Father and the Son, and the repeated “no one…except” emphasizes the exclusivity of that knowledge.
Michael Green has rightly observed that this is “the most astounding claim that has ever been heard on human lips,” and he identifies five distinct elements of that claim:
1. “Jesus maintains that God the father conceals and reveals according to his will.” [85] He reveals and conceals things according to His “good pleasure.” He is able to conceal things from those who are wise and learned in their own estimation and to reveal them to those who approach Him in childlike faith. Therefore, having an understanding of God’s revelation is no cause for boasting or pride, since it is a result of God’s sovereign grace.
2. “Jesus claims to be ‘the plenipotentiary representative of the Father.’” [86] All things have been committed to Him by the Father, and so He acts with the full authority of the Father. He fully represents the Father in every respect.
What are the “all things” of which Jesus is speaking? First of all, it refers to the power and authority of God Himself. [87] Jesus has the authority to forgive sin (Matt. 9:6), authority over the natural order (Matt. 14:22), authority over physical illness (Matt. 9:27f), and even power over death (John 11:43). In fact, He has authority over the entire created order, over the whole space-time universe (Heb. 1:1–3).
There is also the authority of Jesus’ word. The people were amazed at the authority of each of His teachings, as well as at the scope of His authority: “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him” (Mark 1:27). Although Jesus was regarded as a prophet (Matt. 21:11), Jesus’ authority greatly exceeded that of the Old Testament prophets:
The formula on the lips of Jesus is not the prophetic “Thus says the Lord” but the quite distinct and different “Verily I say to you”. His word is not God’s word occasionally, when by the action of the Holy Spirit what he says as a man corresponds to the word of God; His word is God’s word from the very fact that he says it, out of the personal divine authority that he both receives from His Father but also shares with him. [88]3. “Only the Father fully understands Jesus.” [89] No one knows the Son except the Father. No one observing the carpenter from Nazareth would recognize the Son of God without the revelation given by the Father Himself. Later, when Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus tells him that “this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven” (Matt. 16:17). Peter’s understanding of who Jesus is was not due to his keen theological insight, nor to his great analytical skills, but to the revelation of God the Father.
4. “Only Jesus fully understands the Father.” [90] No one knows the Father except the Son. No one possesses as intimate and as complete a knowledge of the Father as the Son. His knowledge of God is absolute. “It takes God to know God.” [91]
5. “Because Jesus shares the Father’s nature as well as ours, He and He alone can reveal the Father.” [92] And only those to whom Jesus has chosen to reveal the Father can rightly claim to have knowledge of God. “Jesus is quietly claiming to be the locus of all revelation…the center of all God’s self-disclosure is Jesus of Nazareth.” [93] Jesus is the exclusive mediator of God’s revelation to man. This is the significance of the introductory sentence of Matthew 11:27: “All things have been committed to me by my Father.”
In addition to the power and authority of God, which we discussed above, the context of this verse suggests another and highly significant aspect to the “all things” which have been committed to Jesus: “The concern of these verses is the revelation which is ‘hidden from the wise and learned’ (v.25). All revelation is given through the Son. Apart from him there is no other source of revelation.” [94] This is the truly astounding claim Jesus is making in these verses.
People other than Jesus can come to know the Father, but only those to whom Jesus has chosen to reveal Him. And they cannot share Jesus’ knowledge of the Father. His knowledge of the Father is “direct, intuitive, innate, unmediated.” [95] Their knowledge is indirect, secondhand and mediated through the Son.
Is Christianity then the sole repository of truth about God? Such a claim of exclusivity may appear to be insufferably arrogant to the non-Christian. But Jesus himself repeatedly made such exclusive claims: “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). This is not to deny that God in His sovereignty may on occasion choose to reveal Himself to those outside the Christian tradition. But any claim to a revelation of God, or from God, which differs from God’s revelation in Jesus Christ has to be rejected on the basis of biblical teaching. As Christians we have no basis for asserting that anyone can know the Father except through the Son.
It is precisely because of His unique role as the exclusive mediator of God’s revelation that Jesus can issue the invitation: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Because He is full of grace and truth (John 1:14), He and He alone is capable of giving us rest from the burden of the law by revealing to us the truth of the God of grace.
Jesus’ role as the mediator of God’s revelation is also important for our entire discussion of the fatherhood of God, for He is the one who has revealed to us God as the Father. God is the Father only in christological terms. He is the Father of the Son, Jesus Christ.
Unity
The second important feature of the relationship between the Father and the Son is unity. “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). This was a key verse in early controversies about the Trinity. On one hand, the Sabellians, emphasizing the unity of God but rejecting the idea of distinct persons, interpreted this to mean one person. On the other hand, the Arians, who believed that God was “alone” until the Son was begotten, interpreted this verse in terms of the unity of moral will. [96] Unity of will is certainly implied by this statement; but if that were all Jesus meant, it is unlikely anyone would have picked up stones to stone Him as the Jews did in the following verse. Jesus was asserting far more than that. He was affirming His essential unity with the Father.
In the Greek text the word “one” is neuter rather than masculine, and the distinction is important. Jesus was not claiming to be identical to the Father. That would have made Him only a manifestation of the Father in another form. Bengel summarized the orthodox position by saying, “Through the word ‘are’ Sabellius is refuted; through the word ‘one’ so is Arius.” [97] The word “are” implies distinct persons, whereas the word “one” emphasizes the unity of essence (ousia).
Jesus is homoousios with the Father. He is not identical to Him, but He shares His essence.
Subordination
A third, and controversial, feature of the relationship between the Father and the Son is that of subordination. In the Gospel of John the unity and equality of Jesus with the Father are repeatedly affirmed (John 1:1, 18; 5:16–18; 10:30; 20:28). Nevertheless, in John 14:28 Jesus says, “the Father is greater than I.” Like John 10:30 this verse has figured prominently in Trinitarian controversies. It was one of the verses which the Arians used to support their claim that the Son was inferior to the Father. But how can we reconcile that with the many other passages which assert the essential unity of the Father and the Son?
John 14:28 in its entirety says: “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” In reporting this saying of Jesus, it is unlikely that John wanted to leave the impression that Jesus was inferior to the Father. This would make little sense for several reasons. [98] First, since John has repeatedly affirmed the deity of the Lord, making Him another god of inferior rank to the Father would be completely incompatible with Jewish monotheism, which forms the theological background both for John’s Gospel as well as for the other Gospels. Second, a Jesus who is inferior to the Father would be inconsistent with Johannine theology, which has established Jesus’ essential unity and equality with the Father. Finally, it is difficult to see how that would make the disciples glad.
In trying to understand this verse, the context is helpful. Jesus is talking about His impending departure and the subsequent coming of the Holy Spirit. The disciples were no doubt sad to hear that Jesus was going away. Yet, He says, they should be glad that He was going to the Father because the Father is greater than He. Why should the greatness of the Father explain the joy the disciples should have on learning of His return to the Father?
Although Brown thinks that it is “anachronistic” to imagine that Jesus is speaking here of inner trinitarian relationships, [99] this seems to be the most appropriate way to understand this passage. The Bible does not teach an ontological subordination of the Son to the Father. The ontological subordination of the Son is the teaching that the Son was inferior in essence or in being to the Father. This was an early Christian heresy known as subordinationism. [100] In John 14:28, Jesus is describing a functional subordination of the Son to the Father. Jesus had earlier hinted at this relationship by observing that one who is sent is not greater than the one who sent him (John 13:16).
The following is taken from John Koessler who applies Philippians 2:5–11 to elucidate four aspects of Jesus’ subordination to the Father: [101]
- It was voluntary. He “made himself nothing.” He was not coerced, but acted freely. Similarly, Jesus states that His death was voluntary and not imposed (John 10:17–18).
- It was linked to the Incarnation. He had to lay aside rightful prerogatives in order to assume human nature.
- It was purposeful. He humbled himself in order to accomplish His death on the cross. The Father did not die on the cross; [102] the Son did. But His submission to the will of the Father did not annul His equality with God.
- It was temporary. Jesus is no longer humiliated; God has exalted Him to the highest place. He is still incarnate, but the time of His humiliation has passed and He is now crowned with glory and honor (Heb. 2:7).
The subordination of the Son is also implied by the fact that the Son prayed to the Father. The very act of praying is an implicit acknowledgment of dependence. Although the Son is equal to the Father, and can Himself be the object of prayer, He shows His submission to the Father by praying to Him. In addition, there is a mutual dependence of Father and Son. Not only is the Son dependent on the Father, but also, in some sense, the Father is dependent on the Son. For example, the Son is the one who makes the Father known. “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18). God acts through the Son throughout history. He acts through His Son in creation (Heb. 1:2), in redemption (John 3:16), in revelation (Matt. 11:27), and in judgment (Acts 17:31).
The Father and the Spirit
The Bible clearly teaches that the Holy Spirit is God. In Acts 5 Peter implies that lying to the Holy Spirit (v.3) is equivalent to having lied to God (v.4). In 1 Corinthians 3:16–17 and 6:19–20 Paul shows that being indwelt by the Holy Spirit is the same as being indwelt by God. Hebrews 10:15 says, “The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this.” The author then proceeds to quote the words of the Lord in Jeremiah 31:33–34. The clear implication is that the words of the Holy Spirit are the same as the words of the Lord.
The early church wrestled with the problem of the relationship between the Father and the Spirit. In John 15:26 Jesus says, “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.” How can the Holy Spirit be God and yet come from the Father, who is also God? There were those who denied the deity of the Holy Spirit by arguing that since the Spirit proceeded from the Father, He had to be inferior to the Father. However, Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the Cappadocian fathers, defended the view that the “procession” of the Spirit from the Father was proof of His divinity. He wrote, “When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” [103] At the same time, he regarded the members of the Trinity as distinct persons. The views of the Cappadocians were instrumental in the early attempts to formulate a doctrine of the Trinity.
The Nicene Creed of ad 325 said very little about the Holy Spirit. This was amended at the council of Constantinople in ad 381, when the expression “And [I believe] in the Holy Spirit” was replaced by the following paragraph:
And [I believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, [104] who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the prophets. And one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. [105]Here the deity of the Holy Spirit is acknowledged since He is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, in spite of such creedal affirmations, the Holy Spirit remains the most obscure member of the Trinity. He has been called the “shy member” of the Trinity. [106] Clark Pinnock observes that the Spirit
is not as clearly defined for us as Father and Son, because the Son became visible and renders the Father visible, while the Spirit remains invisible and not as easily known. It is easier to assign a face to the Son than to the Spirit, because of the historical concreteness of incarnation. By comparison, the Spirit is less well defined. Images like dove, water and fire (for example) are evocative but do not reveal the face of a Person; the Spirit remains somewhat anonymous. [107]This relative obscurity of the Spirit is not accidental, but is vitally related to His work. The concept of subordination is here again helpful in understanding the relationship of the Spirit to the Father and the Son. As the Son subordinates Himself to the Father without denying His equality with the Father, so “the Holy Spirit is now subordinated to the ministry of the Son (see John 14–16) as well as to the will of the Father, but this does not imply that He is less than they are.” [108] The ministry of the Spirit is not to draw attention to Himself, but to the person and work of the Son and to the glory of the Father.
The relationships between the various members of the Trinity show us clearly that subordination does not imply inferiority. This can have practical applications for our understanding of the roles individual believers play in the New Testament church. The distinctions of the wider society fail to abrogate the unity and equality of believers. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). Likewise, the variety of functions and roles which are displayed in the community of believers does not deny the essential unity and equality of those believers.
Such a functional subordination is familiar in the life of a local church. For example, the elders or leaders of a local church exercise a certain authority over the congregation. But this position of leadership does not deny the essential oneness of both the shepherds and the flock. They are all one in Christ. The members of the congregation submit to the authority of the elders without any implication of inferiority vis à vis the elders. Similarly, although the elders of a local congregation are equals, one of them may function as a primum inter pares (literally, “first among equals”), in his role as a leader or spokesman for the group of elders. [109] The other elders will acknowledge one of their number as being their leader, without denying their essential unity and equality as a group of elders.
Spiritual gifts in the local church provide still another example. Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 12–14 implies that some gifts are greater than others. [110] So in any local congregation there are some with “greater” gifts and others with “lesser” gifts. But spiritual gifts in the local church are not distributed on the basis of merit or natural ability. Such gifts “are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines” (1 Cor. 12:11). So one may be thankful for his gift, but he cannot be boastful, since the gifts are distributed by the sovereign will of the Spirit. Clearly, the variety of spiritual gifts does not nullify the essential unity of all believers. Koessler explains that although all are equal in Christ, “equality of position does not guarantee identity of function.” [111]
The Work of the Father
Creation
One of the figurative meanings of “father” in the Old Testament is “creator” (Job 38:28). And God’s name itself, Yahweh, means “creator.”So it is not surprising that in the Old Testament the fatherhood of God is associated with His creative activity (Mal. 2:10). The first portrait of God in the Bible is that of Creator. The biblical account of creation in Genesis 1 describes first of all the power and greatness of God. Everything that exists was brought into being by the power of God. Moreover, He created the entire universe ex nihilo (“out of nothing”). Before God created the universe, nothing existed except God Himself. God did not start with any building blocks to create the worlds. He started only with Himself.
The creation narrative in Genesis also teaches us that God is distinct from His creation. It is actually a refutation of pantheism. God is not the creation, and the creation is not God. God is the source of the creation and sovereign over the creation. He brought it into being by His powerful word and that powerful word continues to sustain it. And although God remains involved in the creation, He is separate from it.
The creation story also tells us that we are created in the image of God. This in no way implies that we are in any sense divine, but it does tell us that in some way we carry the imprint of the Creator in our being. This is expressed in many ways. We have a sense of the transcendent, an inkling of the existence of God. All human societies are inherently religious, although the expression and practice of religion may vary widely.
Because we are created in the image of God, all men have a moral sense. It is true that there have always been controversies about the morality of specific acts, but all of us have a sense of “oughtness.” We instinctively recognize that there is a difference between things which I can do and things which I ought or ought not to do. There are things within my physical or mental ability to do, but which for moral reasons I should not do. Where does this moral sense come from? It derives from my having been created in the image of a holy God whose being defines righteousness. God is, and can be, the only standard for moral judgment.
God is not only the Creator of the material universe, He is also the Creator of all mankind. In that sense God has a claim on all mankind, and in that sense He can be regarded as the Father of all men. However, as the Malachi passage suggests, God has a special relationship as Father to His covenant people. The same is true of His covenant people in the New Testament.
The creation is also important because it shows us the harmony of the work of the members of the Trinity. In creation the Father works through the Son (Heb. 1:2) and the Spirit (Gen. 1:2). The Son is the agent of creation. In the Hebrews passage He is the one through whom or by whom the worlds were made. In this context, “the worlds” (Greek: αἰῶνας, aiōnas) refers to the “whole created universe of space and time.” [112] The Son is also the sustaining power of the universe. The continued existence of the entire created order is dependent on the powerful word of the Son (Heb. 1:3). Without Him nothing would exist and nothing could continue to exist.
But the Spirit of God was also active in the creation. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, “and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Gen. 1:2). The Hebrew word רוּחַ, rûaḥ (like the Greek, πνεῦμα, pneuma) can mean “breath” or “wind,” but here the word does not refer to an impersonal force. As Keil and Delitzsch explain,
Ruach Elohim is not a breath of wind caused by God (Theodoret, etc), for the verb does not suit this meaning, but the creative Spirit of God, the principle of all life (Ps. xxxiii. 6, civ. 30), which worked upon the formless, lifeless mass, separating, quickening, and preparing the living forms, which were called into being by the creative words that followed. [113]In other words, the Spirit of God was actively involved in the creative process.
So although creation is closely tied to the work of the Father as in Malachi 2:10, we see that the work of creation involves the harmonious activity of all the members of the Trinity.
Redemption
The Bible provides us with a record not only of God’s creative works, but also of His redemptive works. Although redemptive acts of God are recorded in the Old Testament, there the portrait is primarily that of an all-powerful Creator God. He is transcendent and sovereign and retributive. But this picture of God must be complemented by the Redeemer God portrayed in the New Testament.
We have seen that the doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God is usually traced back to the picture of the Creator God, rather than that of the Redeemer God. There are only three occasions in the New Testament where the fatherhood of God appears apart from His redemptive work. [114] As the Creator of all men, He is “the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Eph. 3:14–15). As the Creator of people’s souls, He is “the Father of our spirits” (Heb. 12:9). And as the Creator of the physical universe, He is “the Father of lights” (Jas. 1:17). But in the New Testament the fatherhood of God is seen primarily in its redemptive aspects. He is the Father of all who believe in Jesus.
However, we should not think of the creative and redemptive acts of the Father as two separate aspects of His work, for they are inseparably linked. C. Hassell Bullock observes, “What a marvel that the Creator of the world should have intertwined His creative and redemptive designs like warp and woof, as the New Testament spokesmen transparently affirm. [115] Creation is more than the presupposition of redemption. It is God’s commitment to redemption.” [116] The beauty of the New Testament is that it displays the harmony between these two aspects of God’s work.
The New Testament also shows us that just as the Son and the Spirit are involved in the work of creation, so also are they involved in God’s work of redemption. Redemption is accomplished through the atoning work of the Son (1 Cor. 15:3–4; 1 Pet. 3:18, etc.) and through the sanctifying work of the Spirit (2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2, etc.). In the Incarnation we meet the Creator of the Old Testament as the Redeemer of the New Testament. To quote Bullock again:
While the Creator was personal and involved with His creation,…[it] is only in the Redeemer God that man meets Deity as Person. Only in the Redeemer God does the image of God the Creator become personalized. The Creator God, while admittedly personal, is more remote, more transcendent than the Redeemer God who comes down, reveals Himself in history, and walks among His human creatures. [117]It is no wonder that the last book of the Bible contains hymns of praise to both the Creator God (“Thou art worthy…for thou hast created” Rev. 4:11, KJV) and the Redeemer God (“Thou art worthy…for thou hast redeemed” Rev. 5:9, KJV).
Objections to the “Father” Language of the Bible
Recent scholarship has given rise to a variety of challenges to the “Father” language of the Bible. These objections come mainly, but not exclusively, from feminist theology, and are generally based on the claim that the exclusive use of masculine language for God (a) obscures the fact that ontologically God cannot be categorized as sexual, (b) runs contrary to the Scripture itself which occasionally employs feminine language for God, and (c) legitimizes male dominance and the sexual exploitation of women.
First of all, it must be admitted that each of the above arguments has some merit.
- God’s nature does transcend sex. Although the Bible uses masculine nouns (King, Father, Lord, etc) and masculine pronouns (he, him) to describe God, He is not a sexual being. He does not have sexual organs and He does not procreate. God is neither masculine nor feminine. Sexual categories are a part of God’s creation but not of God Himself, and we have already established that God is not to be confused with His creation. In warning His ancient people against idolatry, God Himself also cautioned them against confining the divine being to sexual categories: “You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman” (Deut. 4:15–16).
- The Bible does occasionally use feminine imagery to describe God. “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you” (Isa. 66:13). “You forgot the God who gave you birth” (Deut. 32:18). “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” (Isa. 49:15). One of the expressions for God’s mercy is a variant of the Hebrew word for “womb” (Zech. 1:16). However, these descriptions of God are analogical; God is being compared to a mother, just as in other passages He is compared to a father. Literally, He is neither a father nor a mother. “The biblical God is not both our begetter and our bearer; he is neither.” [118]
- It is true that the patriarchal language of the Bible has been used as a justification for sexual discrimination against women. This has been true throughout the history of the church and, unfortunately, remains true today. Feminist Mary Daly has famously protested, “Since God is male, the Male is God.” [119] Although both her premise and her conclusion are in error, this is an error which nevertheless informs the thinking of many of those who have been influenced by the gender-specific language of the Bible to think of God in masculine terms.
Some writers simply use “she” and “her” in speaking of God and Christ. For the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, some substitute Creator, Redeemer, and Comforter. Others avoid the excessive use of terms such as Father, King, and Master by substituting Yahweh or God or Abba. In the much discussed An Inclusive Language Lectionary, the Bible’s use of Father is changed to Father and Mother, Lord to Sovereign, King to Ruler or Monarch, Son of Man to Human One, Son of God to Child of God. [120]How are we to respond to such objections to biblical language about God? It is significant that the arguments here are primarily concerned with language. This observation focuses our attention on the nature of religious language. There are at least three issues which need to be addressed, and I have decided to call these linguistic inclusivism, linguistic anthropomorphism, and linguistic provincialism.
Linguistic Inclusivism
The call for “inclusive” or “gender-neutral” language is an attempt to counteract the masculine language found in the Bible. Such inclusive language is appropriate when masculine expressions could be misleading and more “gender-neutral” terms would more accurately reflect the original intent of the biblical text. For example, 1 Timothy 2:4 states that God wants “all men to be saved.” The Greek “anthropos” can be translated as “man;” but it means “man” in the sense of “human being,” and not “male person.” So the expression “all men” actually means “all people” and does not imply that God’s desire for salvation is limited to persons of masculine sex. Therefore, in that case, a more inclusive rendition, such as “God wants everyone to be saved,” would be a less misleading translation of the original text.
Emily Nussbaum, in a review of Today’s New International Version (the TNIV), a gender-neutral alternative to the New International Version which was recently released by the International Bible Society, agrees: “Anything that increases the text’s communicative power is good.” And, as she readily concedes, “[some] of the alterations are even justified by the original language.” But, she realizes, “others are triumphs of ideology over semantics.” [121] The agenda of some inclusivists is not to clarify the text, but to radicalize it. For example, in the Inclusive Language Lectionary, gender-neutralism is all pervasive. So the man who was born blind becomes “the one who had been born blind.” [122] But the real difficulty has to do with language about God as it is found in the Bible. Replacing “God the Father” with “God the Mother and Father” does nothing to clarify the nature of God. Rather than emphasizing that God transcends sex, instead such language views God as bisexual.
It is an inescapable fact that the biblical references to the divine being are overwhelmingly masculine. Although, as we have seen, the biblical text occasionally uses feminine imagery in reference to God, masculine pronouns are used exclusively to refer to God. And although God is occasionally compared to a mother, He is never called “Mother” or addressed as “Mother,” whereas He is frequently and repeatedly called “Father.” This gender-specific language is the language of revelation; it is the language of God’s self-disclosure. The eternal God has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The substitution of “inclusive” or “gender neutral” names denies God’s revelation of His own essence. “If the world did not exist—if there had never been any human beings at all, created to know and love God—then God would not be Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. He would still be, however, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” [123]
The gender-specific language in reference to God does not, of course, imply that God is masculine. Nor does it even suggest that He is more masculine than feminine. As we have insisted, God infinitely transcends the categories of human sexuality. “And yet since God fashioned man and woman in his own image, we must surmise that gender is not foreign to his nature. His actions create the impression of gender and are so described in the Bible. He is the ground both of the masculine and the feminine, yet He chooses to relate to us in the form of the masculine—as Lord, Father, Son, and so on. God is described in feminine imagery as well, but the masculine is always dominant, and God is never addressed as ‘Mother.’” [124] If we believe in divine revelation, then the gender-specific language of the Bible cannot be dismissed as mere convention. But how are we to interpret such language? In other words, what is the nature of biblical language about God?
Linguistic Anthropomorphism
Such questions bring us back to our earlier discussion of the nature of religious language. When we make statements about God, how do we know that such statements say anything meaningful? Some scholars assume that God is so different from us (“Wholly Other”) that anthropomorphic language about Him consists of equivocal predications in the sense of Aquinas, as we discussed earlier. But as the Roman Catholic theologian Avery Dulles points out, this view of religious language leads to a philosophical agnosticism. “God, even if he exists, is held to be utterly incomprehensible, with the result that all statements about God and his actions are devoid of cognitive value. Revelation itself is viewed as a myth or metaphor that cannot be taken literally.” [125] One proponent of this point of view “regards the God of Scripture as ‘our construction’ and asserts that ‘theology is mostly fiction.’ ‘What can be said with certainty about the Christian faith is very little.’” [126]
But such agnosticism is incompatible with the known and knowable God of the Bible. The symbolic theory of religious language renders God’s self-revelation meaningless and pointless. Human language cannot be expected to describe exhaustively and absolutely the attributes of the transcendent God. But that does not mean that it is incapable of reliably conveying any information at all about God.
A second, less pessimistic, alternative is that even though God is ultimately incomprehensible, we can make statements about His nature. But these statements are necessarily negative rather than positive. That is, we cannot describe what God is, only what He is not. This view is called the via negativa, and suggests that attributing to God “incorporeality, infinity, omnipotence, and omniscience simply means that he has no body, is not limited, is not powerless, and is not ignorant.” [127] But it does not tell us what any of God’s true attributes are in reality.
The third alternative is Aquinas’ analogical theory, which views religious language as metaphorical, such as the anthropomorphic language of the Bible. We cannot assume that words that we use to describe God mean the same as when they describe human actions and attributes. In fact, we can safely assume that they do not. When we say that “God knows,” or “God loves,” or “God remembers,” we do not mean precisely the same thing as when we apply those same verbs to human acts or human experience. But there is sufficient analogy between human experience and divine action to justify the use of such language to describe God’s attributes and His actions. Furthermore, we believe that such language conveys truth about the nature and work of God.
Our discussion of religious language up to this point has assumed that “analogical” and “metaphorical/figurative” are virtually synonymous. But in his discussion of the gender-specific language of Scripture, John Cooper makes a careful distinction between analogical language and figurative language. [128] All language for God is necessarily anthropomorphic, and therefore analogical. However, it does not necessarily follow that all terms for God are metaphors. [129] “God is a father” is a metaphor. It means that God is like a father. [130] But “God is the Father” is not a metaphor. That is who God is. “Father” is God’s name, and it describes God’s essence. [131] “Father” is not a title conferred upon God by human beings. It is the name that God Himself has revealed to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. God has revealed Himself as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Pannenberg states, “On the lips of Jesus, ‘Father’ became a proper name for God. It thus ceased to be simply one designation among others.” [132] And as Paul Vitz has emphasized, Jesus Himself gave us the terminology for talking about God; and “when people change the name for God, they have changed their religion.” [133] Moreover, this means that the use of the masculine pronouns in reference to God is not mere convention. These pronouns are necessary because God is Father. Father is His name.
The substitution of designations such as Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier for the biblical names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is inappropriate because they are not names at all and, therefore, do not identify the persons of the Trinity. Virtually any supposed deity can claim to create, redeem, or sanctify. [134] Moreover, the substitution of such designations for the divine names is a return to the modalistic heresy, which has been long repudiated by historic Christianity. When we alter the revelation of God the Father which we have received from God the Son, we can no longer claim to be adherents of the Christian faith and biblical truth. The acknowledgment of God as “Father” and Jesus Christ as “Lord” is fundamental to the witness of the Holy Spirit and forms the basis of the Christian faith. [135] It is only by the Spirit that we can call Jesus “Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3), and it is the internal witness of the Spirit which enables us to address God as “Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15).
Linguistic Provincialism
Much, if not all, of the advocacy for inclusive language has occurred in the English-speaking world. This, I think, is not accidental and is due in part to the peculiarities of English. The English language has lost all vestiges of gender, except for personal pronouns and certain specialized nouns. Because of this most English speakers tend to confuse gender and sex; indeed, the words are often used interchangeably. Speakers of other European languages instinctively realize that gender and sex have very little to do with each other. [136] But to English speakers it may appear inappropriate to use a word of a particular gender to refer to a person of a different sex, and so there is a natural tendency to misunderstand or misinterpret much of the masculine language and imagery of the English Bible. Where inclusive language can help to dispel or overcome such misunderstanding, it is indeed welcome, as we have conceded above. But, as the above discussion makes clear, there are limits to any attempts to “gender-neutralize” the language of revelation. Nussbaum points out:
When you make literal changes for a readership that takes the Bible literally, you bump up against the fact that men and women in the Bible are not even remotely equal. Men owned things: slaves, land, women. They had the moral authority, and with it, the moral responsibility. To cite an obvious example: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.” Gender-neutralize that! [137]But she goes on to explain that these kinds of changes are peculiar to the English language:
Linguistic changes of this sort are conceivable in English in a way they are not in the romance languages, where each noun—hat, chair, arm, leg—is assigned a gender from the start. But in English, we can escape this constraint, free to be inclusive (men and women) or neutral (people) or to avoid the subject altogether with grammatical subterfuge.
To translate the Bible this way is understandably tempting, but it is also a lie. I’m reminded of a modern Orthodox co-worker I once had, who said, “Look, being Jewish is a game with a set of rules: go ahead and move the pieces anyplace you want, but don’t call it chess.” A truly gender-neutral interpretation of the Bible would quickly begin to fall apart at the seams—laws about rape or slavery rising up like invisible ink from ancient parchment. One solution, of course, is to reject the Bible entirely. Another is to regard it merely as a parable whose historical foundation can be ignored. But for anyone who wants to take religion seriously, neither solution truly suits. Instead, it seems necessary to confront the contradictions in the text—to keep the pronouns as they are and wrestle instead with messy truth, like, well, manly Jacob with his angel. It’s a more difficult task, but it’s the only honest way out. [138]Just because many of the concerns of the inclusivists are dependent on the peculiarities of the English language does not, of course, imply that such concerns are not real or significant. The language describing the attributes and acts of God is analogical and metaphorical; and metaphors can have a profound influence on our thinking. But we should be careful that in altering the English text, we do not become unfaithful to the language and intent of the original text, and end up changing the rules of the game to satisfy some ideological agenda. Regardless of how dissatisfied we are with God’s revelation of Himself, we dare not alter it to suit our ideological preferences.
Divine Fatherhood and Human Fatherhood
There is one more objection to the fatherhood of God to which we must draw attention. There is a tendency to view it as a projection of human fatherhood onto the divine. The fatherhood of God is an essential part of His nature and is not affected by the imperfections in human relationships. This is because the Father/Son relationship in the Trinity is not a reflection of human father/son relationships. Rather, the human relationship is a pale image of the divine reality. “We do not project upon God the human experience of interpersonal relationships, but we find in God the perfection of personal interaction as this is mirrored in the self-revelation of the Father in the Son and through the power of the Holy Spirit.” [139]
The apostle Paul understood this when he described God as “the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Eph. 3:14–15). Karl Barth calls God’s fatherhood “the true and proper fatherhood.” [140] This understanding of the fatherhood of God clearly has practical and pastoral implications. Bray observes:
It is alarming to notice how many preachers and counselors have started to tell people that our heavenly Father is an extension and perfection of our earthly fathers, so that the relationship we have—or should have—with the latter can serve as a guide to the relationship we ought to have with the former. It may be true that some people are hampered in their understanding of God because they have had bad experiences of their own parents, but the answer to this is surely not to regard God as a substitute for human failure. We can know God the Father only to the extent that we know him in relation to his own Son, in whom we have been redeemed. [141]The fellowship and community of the Trinity is a model for human relationships and not vice versa. God is love because love exists in the Trinity; the Father loves the Son (John 3:35; 10:17). And this love serves as a model for human love. The Son submits to the will of the Father (John 5:30; 8:29; Phil. 2:5–11). So we should submit to each other in human relationships (Eph. 5:21–24).
Conclusion
God’s self-disclosure as the Father is one of the great truths of biblical revelation. We have seen that it has enormous theological and practical implications. It signifies a fundamental and essential relationship between the members of the Trinity. But it also affirms a new, previously unattainable relationship which followers of Jesus can have with the eternal Creator of the universe. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1).
Notes
- J. I. Packer, Knowing God, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 13
- J. I. Packer, Knowing God, 14.
- Erwin Lutzer, Ten Lies About God (Nashville: Word, 2000), 2.
- H. V. White, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, 8 vols. (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1967), 3:191.
- See, for example, the discussion in G. Bray, The Doctrine of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 17–24.
- G. Bray, The Doctrine of God, 25.
- L. F. Lorenzen notes that “many western Christians have focused theology and faith on the person of Jesus to the exclusion of any other theological categories. For these believers the doctrine of the Trinity does not function at all.” The College Student’s Guide to the Trinity (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1999), 1.
- John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2001), 41–55.
- Historically there have been numerous attempts to prove that God exists. To discuss these “proofs” or arguments would take us too far afield. However, there are many excellent reviews of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. See, for example, Larry Dixon, “What a Mighty God We Serve,” The Emmaus Journal 9 (2000): 37-72; Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 47–88; and Feinberg, No One Like Him, 183–204. For German readers there is also a thoughtful discussion of some of the newer “proofs” in Volker Kessler, Ist die Existenz Gottes beweisbar? (Giessen: Brunnen Verlag, 1999).
- R. W. Jenson, in Church Dogmatics, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 1:164.
- The theories of religious language are summarized in John W. Cooper, Our Father in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 170–180; and also in Feinberg, No One Like Him, 75–80. We will review some of those theories in our later discussion of the objections to the “Father” language of the Bible.
- Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, trans. William Hendricksen (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977 [= 1951]), 86.
- William Alston, “Functionalism and Theological Language,” in Baruch Brody, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytic Approach, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1992), 349; cited in Feinberg, No One Like Him, 78.
- Of course, there are things which are invisible to us but “visible” to God. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight” (Heb. 4:13).
- This thought is also captured in the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy, which is based on Isaiah 6. One of the verses of that hymn says, “Tho’ the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see.” But what or whom did Isaiah and other Old Testament witnesses see when they thought they had seen God? John in his Gospel suggests that Isaiah had a vision of the pre-incarnate Christ. After quoting a passage from Isaiah chapter 6, John adds, “Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him” (John 12:41).
- Bray, The Doctrine of God, 215.
- The process is described in detail by Kenneth Woodward in Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
- The quotation is found in Frederick Dale Bruner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1970), 38, who cites Klaude Kendrick, The Promise Fulfilled: A History of the Modern Pentecostal Movement (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1961), 40–41; from Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (London: The Epworth Press, 1952 [1741; rev. 1767]), 24.
- Quoted in A. S. Wood, “Holiness,” in The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975), 3:177.
- This concept will be discussed further in our criticism of open theism.
- Physics Today (March 1986): 120.
- See, for example, Victor F. Lenzen, “Einstein’s Theory of Knowledge,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (New York: Harper, 1949, 1951), 369–370.
- Light, of course, is not identical to matter, but the presence of light presupposes the existence of matter.
- Genesis 1:3–5, the italics are mine.
- This is explained by the second law of thermodynamics, which introduces the concept of entropy. The second law tells us that an isolated system always evolves from a more ordered state to a less ordered state, thereby defining a directionality of time.
- For example, Ecclesiastes 3:11 speaks of “what God has done from beginning to end.”
- Four different views of God’s relationship to time are presented in God and Time:Four Views, ed. Gregory E. Ganssle (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001). In that discussion, Paul Helm defends the traditional view that God is absolutely timeless, whereas Nicholas Wolterstorff presents the case for unqualified divine temporality. Two other authors, Alan G. Padgett and William Lane Craig attempt to combine the concepts of temporality and atemporality. Padgett describes God’s eternity as relative timelessness; God is timeless relative to the physical time of the universe. Craig’s view, which most closely approximates my own, combines timelessness with omnitemporality.
- It is correct to say that God existed “before” the creation. Indeed, the Bible speaks of God’s existence and activity “before the creation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20; see also, John 17:5, 24; Eph 1:4). But the word “before” implies temporal sequence and illustrates the difficulty of our language in describing atemporal events.
- Malachi 3:6 is often cited in support of God’s changelessness: “I the Lord do not change.” But the context of that verse suggests that this is an affirmation, not of God’s ontological immutability, but of His faithfulness to His covenant.
- J. Alec Motyer, “Haggai,” in An Exegetical and Expositional Commentary of the Minor Prophets, ed. Thomas E. McComisky, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 3:974.
- A. H. Leitch, “Omnipotence,” in The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975), 4:530.
- Merrill F. Unger, Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1957), 809.
- Leitch, “Omnipotence,” 531–532.
- Unger, Unger’s Bible Dictionary, 809.
- Process theology is based on the writings of Alfred North Whitehead and his pupils, such as Charles Hartshorne. Whitehead laid the groundwork with Process and Reality, which was published in 1929. Whereas classical theism emphasized God’s transcendence, process metaphysics focuses on His immanence. The God of process theology is not a transcendent and immutable Being, but rather a Being whose immanence causes Him to be so connected to His creation that He grows and changes as we do. He is not an impassible God, but a God who can identify with our cares and our sorrows. A summary of process theology can be found in Feinberg, No One Like Him, 149–179.
- For a full defense of open theology by its adherents, see Clark H. Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, The Openness of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), and Greg Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000).
- Several critical studies of open theism by evangelical authors have appeared. These include: John N. Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2001; Erwin W. Lutzer, Ten Lies About God (Nashville: W Publishing, 2000), 119–136; and Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory:The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2000).
- George H. Williams, “Socinianism,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 7:474.
- J. J. Herzog in Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1883), 2009.
- Socinianism was eventually rejected by the church as heretical. This discussion is not intended to accuse open theists of all the errors of Socinianism, but merely to point out the historical roots of open thinking.
- Richard Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” quoted in Frame, No Other God, 53.
- John M. Frame, No Other God, 50.
- David Jackman, The Message of John’s Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 118.
- Royce Gordon Gruenler in W. M. Zola, “God at Risk”, Christianity Today (March 5, 2001): 56-58.
- Romans 6:1–23.
- Bray, The Doctrine of God, 154.
- Henotheism (from the Greek word εἷς, ἑνός [heis, henos], “one”) is the worship of only one god among many existing gods. This is in contrast to monotheism, which holds that only one God exists.
- Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Knopf, 1994), 107.
- A recent correspondent wrote to Christianity Today: “This is the idea behind the doctrine of the Trinity: one God who has appeared on the stage of history in three roles. Just as steam, water, and ice are all one, namely H2O; and just as coal, graphite, and diamond are all one, namely, carbon, even so are the three Persons who make up the one true God.” Christianity Today (April 1, 2002): 12. This is a contemporary formulation of the modalistic error.
- Feinberg, No One Like Him, 466.
- Herzog, Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge, 2009.
- Donald Bloesch, God the Almighty (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1995), 196, 198.
- Bray, The Doctrine of God, 135.
- These objections are extensively discussed in a number of recent publications: Abdul-Haqq, Sharing Your Faith With a Muslim (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1980); N. L. Geisler and A. Saleeb, Answering Islam (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002);
- Cited in A. A. Shorrosh, Islam Revealed: A Christian Arab’s View of Islam (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1988), 254.
- Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), 13.
- Although most of the newer translations of the Bible follow Brown and translate monogenēs as “only” or “unique,” there are still powerful arguments for retaining “only begotten.” The arguments supporting both points of view are summarized by David MacLeod, “The Trinity in Scripture” in this issue of The Emmaus Journal, 11 (Winter 2002): 207-219.
- F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 41.
- However, F. Büchel argues that John in using the term to describe Jesus’ unique relationship to God “also understands the concept of sonship in terms of begetting.” “μονογενής,” TDNT, 4:741.
- Quoted in Geisler and Saleeb, Answering Islam, 265.
- Geisler and Saleeb, Answering Islam, 15.
- As C. S. Lewis reminds us, the truth is often complicated. “If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course, anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.” Mere Christianity (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1943), 145; quoted in Geisler and Saleeb, 269.
- In Islam God does not have a name. Allah is not a name, but merely the Arabic word for “God.” The so-called “ninety-nine names for God” in Muslim theology are not really names, but are adjectives describing God’s attributes. This contrasts with the God of the Bible, who not only has a covenant name (YHWH), but who also has conferred that name on His Son (Phil. 2:9).
- This question was addressed by Timothy George in a recent article, “Is the God of Muhammad the Father of Jesus?” in Christianity Today (February 4, 2003): 28-35. He summarizes his conclusions as follows: “The answer is surely Yes and No. Yes, in the sense that the Father of Jesus is the only God there is. He is the Creator and Sovereign Lord of Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, of every person who has ever lived. He is the one before whom all shall one day bow (Phil. 2:5–11). Christians and Muslims can together affirm many important truths about this great God—his oneness, eternity, power, majesty. As the Qur’an puts it, he is ‘the Living, the Everlasting, the All-High, the All-Glorious’ (2:256). But the answer is also No, for Muslim theology rejects the divinity of Christ and the personhood of the Holy Spirit—both essential components of the Christian understanding of God. No devout Muslim can call the God of Muhammad ‘Father,’ for this, to their mind, would compromise divine transcendence. But no faithful Christian can refuse to confess, with joy and confidence, ‘I believe in God the Father…Almighty!’ Apart from the Incarnation and the Trinity, it is possible to know that God is, but not who God is.” My own conclusion is that the answer can only be No. It is surely true that since there is only one God, that God is the sovereign Lord of every human being who has ever existed. In that sense the God of the Bible is also the “God of Muhammad.” But that is not the sense in which Muslims interpret the expression, “the God of Muhammad.” To Muslims the God of Muhammad is the God of the Qur’an. And simply because the God of the Qur’an happens to share some of the same attributes as the God of the Bible is not sufficient to make him the same as the God of the Bible. He is a different god, another god besides God.
- Thomas A. Smail, The Forgotten Father (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).
- E. McChesney, in Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1966), 346–7.
- Zerubbabel may be an example of the application of this law. In the postexilic prophets he is referred to as “Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel.” But in 1 Chronicles 3:19 he is listed among the sons of Pedaiah. A likely explanation is that Shealtiel, the eldest son of Neri, died childless, and his brother Pedaiah performed the duty of the levirate marriage which produced Zerubbabel. See, Walter Kaiser, Mastering the Old Testament, Volume 21: Micah—Malachi (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992), 253.
- Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible For All Its Worth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 190.
- John Koessler, God Our Father (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 17. J. D. W. Watts, “God the Father—Old Testament,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 2:509.
- The concept of the fatherhood of God in the Old Testament is not as rare as those numbers would indicate. “The prevailing assumption that the ascription of fatherhood to God (admittedly pervasive in the Greek New Testament) is infrequent in the Hebrew Scriptures is…the result of an oversight. The name Yahweh means, ‘he who causes to be’ or ‘creates’ and, as such, in itself, signifies ‘father’ in a culture where children were viewed as originating in the semen of the male. Thus, the psalmist writes in Psalm 100:3, ‘Know that Yahweh, he is God, he has made us, and not we ourselves.’ To the rhetorical question posed by the prophet Malachi, ‘Have we not all one father, has not one God created us?’ (2:10), the presumed answer is: ‘Yes! We do indeed all have one father; one God, namely Yahweh, has created us.’” John W. Miller, Touchstone (January/February 2001): 42.
- The vocative “my father” is found only in Jeremiah 3:4, 19, but here it is not a form of address used by an individual but by the covenant people. See O. Hofius, “Father,” in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1967), 1:618.
- See also Romans 9:4.
- Smail, The Forgotten Father, 34f.
- Smail, The Forgotten Father, 161.
- Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), 24.
- James Barr, “Abba Isn’t ‘Daddy,’” Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1988): 28-47.
- Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology (New York: Scribner, 1975), 67.
- Jeremias, New Testament Theology, 68.
- Hofius, “Father,” 614.
- Paul Beasley-Murray notes that this is a frequent interpretation of this verse, and he quotes Augustine that “what Jesus is by nature, his disciples are by grace.” But he thinks that “the emphasis may well in fact be the opposite—Jesus is drawing attention not so much to the difference as to the likeness. See Ruth 1:16, where Ruth says to Naomi, ‘Your people will be my people, and your God my God.’” The Message of the Resurrection (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 90.
- Adolf Harnack, What is Christianity?, trans. by Thomas Bailey Saunders (London: Williams and Norgate, 1901).
- C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ICC, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), 1:403.
- Koessler, God Our Father, 20.
- Joachim Jeremias, Neutestamentliche Theologie, Erster Teil: Die Verkündigung Jesu (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1971), 63f. Although Jeremias’ defense invokes a generic interpretation of the definite articles in this verse (“only a father knows his son, and only a son knows his father”), we agree with Smail: “It is good to know that technical scholarship can make a better case for the authenticity of this passage than has sometimes been allowed, but of course if we happen on theological grounds to accept the Johannine Christology as the only estimate that is adequate to the person and work of Jesus, we shall not find it hard to accept that at the moment of high exaltation described in Matthew 11 he gave expression in the presence of his disciples to this unique relationship with the Father in which he knew himself to stand.” Smail, The Forgotten Father, 50.
- Michael Green, The Message of Matthew (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988, 2000), 141.
- Michael Green, The Message of Matthew, 141.
- Fritz Rienecker, Das Evangelium des Matthäus (Wuppertal: Brockhaus Verlag, 1961), 153.
- Smail, The Forgotten Father, 92.
- Green, The Message of Matthew, 141.
- Green, The Message of Matthew, 141.
- Green, The Message of Matthew, 141.
- Green, The Message of Matthew, 141.
- Green, The Message of Matthew, 140–141.
- Rienecker, Das Evangelium des Matthäus, 154 (the author’s translation).
- G. E. Ladd, “God the Father—New Testament,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 2:510.
- R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, 403.
- Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, 403.
- Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Peter H. Davids, F. F. Bruce, and Manfred T. Brauch, Hard Sayings of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 504.
- Brown, The Gospel According to John, XIII-XXI, 645.
- The heresy of subordinationism should be distinguished from the functional subordination of the Son which we are describing here. Subordinationism is the false teaching that the Son, although eternal and divine, was subordinate (that is, inferior) to the Father in His being. This view was held by the church father Origen who lived in the third century, and it was rejected by the Council of Nicea in ad 325.
- John Koessler, God Our Father (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 46–47. Koessler uses the word “submission” in preference to “subordination.”
- The well-known hymn by Charles Wesley, Amazing Love, asks “How can it be that Thou my God shouldst die for me?” But those words are probably designed merely to express the divinity of Christ and not to assert that God the Father actually died.
- Quoted in Bloesch, God the Almighty, 166.
- The addition of the phrase “and the Son” proved to be very contentious and was at the heart of the “filioque controversy.” The Latin word filioque means “and the Son.” The addition of this word to the Latin text of the creed affirmed the “double procession” of the Spirit from both the Father and the Son. The Eastern Church objected to this addition since it regarded the Father as the only source of divinity. This difference over what appears to be a relatively minor point eventually resulted in the division between the Eastern and Western branches of the church which persists to this day. For a description of this controversy, see Feinberg, No One Like Him, 485–486, and Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 246–247. A full discussion of the controversy can be found in Gerald Bray, “The Filioque Clause in History and Theology,” Tyndale Bulletin 34 (1983): 91-144.
- Quoted in Grudem, Systematic Theology, 1169.
- F. Dale Bruner, “The Shy Member of the Trinity,” in The Holy Spirit—Shy Member of the Trinity, eds. Frederick Dale Bruner and William Hordern (Minneapolis: Augsberg, 1984), 15.
- Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996), 36.
- Millard J. Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 103.
- A. Strauch, Biblical Eldership (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth, 1995), 45.
- In 1 Corinthians 12:28 the apostle implies a certain ranking of the gifts: “first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles,” and at the end of the chapter he urges his readers to “eagerly desire the greater gifts” (12:31). The discussion at the beginning of chapter 14 is to show that the gift of prophecy is greater than the gift of tongues. “I would like everyone of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified” (14:5).
- Koessler, God Our Father, 51.
- F. F. Bruce, Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 4.
- C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch, trans. James Martin, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, reprinted 1981), 1:49.
- Cf. G. E. Ladd, “God the Father—New Testament,” The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 2:512.
- John 1:1–18; Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; 2 Cor. 4:6; Heb. 1:1–3; 1 Pet. 1:19–20; Rev. 13:8.
- C. Hassell Bullock, An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books (Chicago: Moody, 1979, 1988), 134.
- Bullock, An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books, 66.
- R. W. Jenson, Christian Dogmatics (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 94–5.
- Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973; London: The Women’s Press, 1986), 19.
- E. Achtemeier, Transformation, 4:2 (April 1987): 25.
- Emily Nussbaum, “The His-and-Hers Bible,” in The New York Times Magazine (February 10, 2002): 15-16.
- Cited by David Lyle Jeffrey, “Inclusivity and Our Language of Worship,” The Reformed Journal, 37.8 (August 1987): 13.
- Patrick Henry Reardon, Touchstone (January/February 2001): 53.
- Bloesch, God the Almighty, 25–26.
- Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation (Garden City, NY: Image, 1985) 6, quoted in John W. Cooper, Our Father in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 176.
- Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), quoted in Cooper, Our Father in Heaven, 176.
- Feinberg, No One Like Him, 76.
- Cooper draws a fine but, I think, clear distinction between the “analogical” and the “figurative/metaphorical” theories of religious language. He grants that the two theories are similar but points out that most figurative theorists prefer to distance themselves from some of the assumptions associated with the classical analogical theory, namely, that language expressing clear, literal ideas is best at conveying truth, and that, therefore, figurative language is deficient in this regard. In Cooper’s view, the analogical theory “uses the term analogical for the limited way in which all human language can convey truth about God. It reserves the terms figurative and metaphorical for those linguistic entities that function as figures of speech and metaphors. Thus the analogical theory can affirm that whereas all language for God is analogical, not all terms for God are figurative or metaphorical.” Cooper, Our Heavenly Father, 179.
- Cooper, Our Heavenly Father, 177–178.
- The often noted distinction between a metaphor and a simile is not significant here. A metaphor is merely an implied simile.
- Even God’s ancient covenant name of Yahweh conveys the meaning of “father.” See footnote 70.
- Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, tr. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 1:262. Quoted in Edith M. Humphrey, “Why We Worship God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” CRUX, 32.2 (June 1996): 4.
- Paul C. Vitz, Touchstone (January/February 2001): 33.
- R. W. Jenson, Christian Dogmatics, 96.
- Patrick Henry Reardon, Touchstone, (January/February 2001): 54.
- Unlike other European languages, English has lost virtually all vestiges of gender except in the case of personal pronouns (he, she, it) and certain specialized nouns (actress, aviatrix). But because of this restricted use of gender, English-speakers, unlike the speakers of most other Indo-Germanic languages, tend to confuse gender (a grammatical category) with sex (a biological category). So to native speakers of English, the personal pronoun “he” implies a reference to a biological male, and “she” to a biological female (with certain exceptions, such as ships, storms, etc). This implication affects contemporary usage of such pronouns. For example, in the case of expressions such as, “Everyone should bring his own book,” in order to avoid the appearance of sexism, we are wont to substitute the clumsy “his or her own book,” or even the illogical “their own book.” On the other hand, native speakers of other European languages realize that gender and sex are separate categories. For example, in virtually every modern European language, the word for “person” is feminine, because it is derived from the Latin “persona.” It would never occur to a French, German, or Russian speaker that there is a problem in using a word of feminine gender (“person”) to refer to someone of male sex. One of the German words for “woman” is neuter (das Weib), as is the word for “girl” (das Mädchen). As far as I know, no one has ever lodged a protest about that.
- Nussbaum, “The His-and-Hers Bible,” 16.
- Nussbaum, “The His-and-Hers Bible,” 16.
- Donald Bloesch, God the Almighty, 167.
- Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (S.C.M. 1949), 43. Cited in Smail, The Forgotten Father, 58.
- Bray, The Doctrine of God, 248.
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