NB: This is a temporary working file. The notes are intended for the article in progress and, therefore, not organized in any order.
You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
Mt 5:14-16 (NIV)
You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Mt 5:43-45 (NIV)
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Mt 5:48 (NIV)
Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Mt 6:1-4 (NIV)
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'
Mt 6:5-13 (NIV)
The Fatherhood of God as Central to the Church�s Confession of Faith
Marianne M. Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 1.
First of all, we have to do with revelation in time, through historical particularity. We have to do with a Jew in first-century Palestine who called God his Father and who has invited us to pray on his warrant (in his name) to God as Father . . . There is no exhaustively necessary reason we can cite to show why Jesus should have used this language. The fact is simply that he did . . . and so must we.
Gerhard O. Forde, �Naming the One Who Is above Us,� in Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. by A. F. Kimel, Jr. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 118.
First of all, we have to do with revelation in time, through historical particularity. We have to do with a Jew in first-century Palestine who called God his Father and who has invited us to pray on his warrant (in his name) to God as Father . . . There is no exhaustively necessary reason we can cite to show why Jesus should have used this language. The fact is simply that he did . . . and so must we.
Robert W. Jenson, �The Father, He . . .� in Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. by A. F. Kimel, Jr. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 104.
In the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the power and compassion of God towards his people are frequently described in colorful figurative language reflecting qualities characteristic of the parental authority and care of a human father or mother, but without conceptions of human fatherhood or motherhood being read back into the very nature of God.
Thomas F. Torrance, �The Christian Apprehension of God the Father,� in Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. by A. F. Kimel, Jr. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 130.
The following three assumptions about a father in Israelite society shed light on the references in the Old Testament to God as Father. (1) Above all, the father is the source or origin of a family or clan, who as the founding father provides an inheritance to his children. (2) A father protects and provides for his children. (3) Obedience and honor are due to the father, and, hence, when children disobey or go astray, they are corrected or disciplined.
Marianne M. Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 39.
While some passages of the Old Testament speak of God�s �begetting� in connection with the creation of all peoples (cf. Isa.45:9-13), in general the �fatherhood of God� refers neither to God as universal creator nor to some attribute or quality of God. It refers specifically to God�s purpose and blessings for Israel (Isa. 63:16; 64:8; Jer. 3:19; 31:9). This is where Israelite faith takes a turn from its neighbors. While it speaks of the one God, creator of all that is, as Father, it limits that Fatherhood particularly to the people of Israel.
Marianne M. Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 41.
The majority of scholars see Jesus� teaching about God our Father as a radical shift from the practice of Judaism of his days.
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.
O. Hofius, �Father,� in New International Dictionary on New Testament Theology, 1:614.
That Jesus used the title �abba� for God and that it was probably not a central aspect of Jewish practice need no longer be seriously questioned. But to say that Judaism did not know of the Fatherhood of God fundamentally misrepresents Judaism, especially since Judaism was patriarchal and patriarchy was used to explain God.
S. Knight, A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 52.
[In Judaism] God had retreated far off into the distance as the transcendent heavenly King, and His sway over the present could barely still be made out. For Jesus, God again became a God at hand. This contrast finds expression in the respective forms of address used in prayer. Compare the ornate, emotional, often liturgically beautiful, but often over-loaded forms of address in Jewish prayer with the stark simplicity of �Father�!
R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner�s Sons, 1951), I:23.
�Abba� was a surprising word to use in addressing God. In the natural usage it was a family word and usually confined to the family circle . . . It was a word resonant with family intimacy. . . The point is that to address God in such a colloquial way, with such intimacy, is hardly known in the Judaism of Jesus� time . . . What others thought too intimate in praying to God, Jesus used because of its intimacy.
James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985), 48.
Rabbinic prayers to �our Father� manifested a corporate, rather than individual, understanding of God�s Fatherhood, and hence did not help to explain Jesus� use of the term. Father imagery for God, rather than personal address to God, was not a true parallel to Jesus� use of abba in prayer. What was new in Jesus� prayer, therefore, was that as an individual he directly addressed God as Father.
Marianne M. Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 26.
It used to be thought that the Fatherhood of God was a concept distinctive of the New Testament. There is now a more nuanced appreciation of the concept, recognizing that Jesus� teaching stood in continuity with the OT and the Judaism of the time.
It is the idea of God as Father which is the most characteristic of NT teaching in general and especially of the teaching of Jesus. Whereas the contemporary pagan world held its gods in fear or uncertainty . . . the Christian view of God�s parenthood brings an unparalleled element of intimacy into human relationship with God.
D. Guthrie and R. P. Martin, �God,� in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 357.
Jesus� term for God . . . show how this Father-child relationship to God far surpasses any possibilities of intimacy assumed in Judaism, introducing something which is wholly new.
Gerhard Kittel, ��abba�,� Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 1:6.
If man leaves Eden under a curse, it is to a father�s smile that the prodigal returns.
N. M. deS. Camerson, �Fatherhood of God,� in New Dictionary of Theology, 254.
You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator. In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one�s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God�s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old Testament, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. �Father� is the Christian name for God.
J. I Packer, Knowing God (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975), 224.
The complete novelty and uniqueness of Abba as an address to God in the prayers of Jesus shows that it expresses the heart of Jesus� relationship to God. He spoke to God as a child to its father; confidently and securely, and yet at the same time reverently and obediently.
J. Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), 62-3.
On the lips of Jesus �Father� becomes a proper name for God. It embraces every feature in the understanding of God which comes to light in the message of Jesus.
Wolfhart Pennenberg, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), I: 262.
When we turn to the Scriptures of the New Testament, we find a radical deepening of the Old Testament doctrine of God, for �Father� is now revealed to be more than an epithet�it is the personal name of God in which the form and content of his self-revelation as Father through Jesus Christ his Son are inseparable. �Father� is now the name of God that we are to hallow, as our Lord Jesus taught us: �Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.�
Thomas F. Torrance, �The Christian Apprehension of God the Father,� in Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. by A. F. Kimel, Jr. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 131.
In addition to his praxis of table fellowship with sinners, Jesus taught his followers to call God �abba�, �Father,� in both conversation about him and in prayer. Jesus� insistence on calling God �abba� lies on the cutting edge of a vision for Israel.
S. Knight, A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 50.
�. . . apart from the cry of dereliction (Mark 15:34), every prayer of Jesus recorded in the canonical Gospels begins with �abba�, �Father.'
S. Knight, A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 56.
�. . . Jesus taught that God�s Fatherhood is a relationship reserved only for himself and for those who follow Jesus. God�s Fatherhood is not universal; rather, like the Fatherhood of YHWH in the Hebrew Bible, it is confined to the covenantal relationship with Israel.
S. Knight, A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 58.
�. . . for Jesus, �abba� revealed his innermost relation to God and the secret to his heart for God. That is, �abba� best represented for Jesus the experience he had of God and the only way he could express that relationship.
S. Knight, A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 61-62.
Abba expressed closeness to God because it is an intimate familial term. Jesus lived in the conviction that the Father knew him, that he knew the Father, and that through him God as Father is close to the disciples and known by them as a God of mercy.
Edgar Krentz, �God in the New Testament,� in Our Naming of God, ed. by Carl E. Braaten (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 88.
The further back we go [in the gospel tradition], the more we discover the intense conviction of Jesus that God is his Father and he is His son. This is supported by the word abba, an address used at times by children to their father, indicating an intimacy and directness not contained in the more formal abinu [�our father�]. Certainly other Jews believed in the fatherhood of God, but this was a creedal affirmation . . . For Jesus the fatherhood of God has become a profoundly personal religious experience, long before it became a doctrine to be communicated to others.
G. B. Caird, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 400-1.
We must suppose that Jesus used it [the term �Father�], by choice, because it is the appropriate way of speaking about the personal life with God which was his concern, but, even more, because it was the only possible way of speaking of God as he himself knew him.
C. H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 61-62.
In spite of the frequent use of Father, in no Gospel does Jesus make the �Fatherhood of God� the subject of lengthy explanation. There are no exhortations urging people to think of God in a new way as a gracious and merciful Father. There are no antitheses in which Jesus introduces his own convictions regarding God in contrast with those generally or previously held: �You have heard it said . . . but I say to your that God is your heavenly Father.� . . . the fact that in the Gospels Jesus seem to assume, rather than to defend or explain, God�s Fatherhood suggests that such address to God made sufficient contact with familiar ideas so as to be understandable to Jesus� original audiences.
Marianne M. Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 71.
. . . when Jesus gave his disciples the Lord�s Prayer, he gave them authority to follow him in addressing God as �abba,� and so gave them a share in his status as Son . . .
O. Hofius, �Father,� in New International Dictionary on New Testament Theology, 1:615.
[Jesus] evidently never called God the Father of Israel. He spoke of God as his Father (�my Father�) and as the Father of the disciples (�your Father�). But he never joined with them together in a common �our Father� (the Lord�s Prayer is a prayer for the disciples to use!).
O. Hofius, �Father,� in New International Dictionary on New Testament Theology, 1:619
The expression �your Father� is found only in the words of Jesus to his disciples. This means that Jesus did not teach the idea that God is the Father of all men. Rather, he linked the fatherhood of God to men�s relationship to himself.
O. Hofius, �Father,� in New International Dictionary on New Testament Theology, 1:620.
The fatherhood of God is not a fact of nature, but an eschatological miracle . . .
O. Hofius, �Father,� in New International Dictionary on New Testament Theology, 1:620.
�. . . the cry Abba becomes for Paul�s congregations a point of entry into the experience of a familial relationship to God which is their privilege and inheritance under the new covenant of grace.
D. Guthrie and R. P. Martin, �God,� in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 358.
Supremely God is the Father of Jesus, the Son who is loved (Col 1:13 . . . ). It is the divine purpose to replicate in the lives of Christ�s people the image of his Son so that by the Spirit�s ministry (2 Cor 3:18) the likeness of his Son is being made increasingly more apparent until at length, at the consummation of their salvation, they become �conformed to the image� of Christ (Rom 8:29). It may be that in the process they will be called on to experience suffering for Christ (Phil 3:10) in anticipation of the resurrection of the dead (Phil 3:11).
D. Guthrie and R. P. Martin, �God,� in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 358.
We do not call God Father because we know what that is; on the contrary, because we know God�s Fatherhood we afterwards understand what human fatherhood truly is.
K. Barth, The Faith of the Church (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), 14.
We must not measure by natural human fatherhood what it means that God is our Father (Isa.63:16). It is from God�s fatherhood that our natural human fatherhood acquires any meaning and dignity it has.
K. Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1936-1969), I/1:389.
Not all the traits or characteristics of a father apply directly to God as Father. Nor can one start with God and transfer all God�s attributes to even ideal fathers.
Marianne M. Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 38.
. . . it is crucial to note that in the scriptures, the understanding of God as Father does not explicitly serve to legitimate masculine identity or behaviors, nor does scripture draw specific �lessons� from God �s Fatherhood for human fathers. The ethical obligations derived from an understanding of God as Father are related directly to relationships with communities rather than within nuclear families. Nor do fathers image God more fully or completely than mothers do simply by virtue of being male or being a father to one�s children.
Marianne M. Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 170.
. . . the real theological issue is not whether God can be experienced in a fatherly way but whether God can be trusted to fulfill the promises and obligations that the Bible ascribes to him as Father . . . whereas much of the theological and pastoral discussion today seems in part an effort to rehabilitate the image of God as Father by making it a benign image of a good deity, the Bible doesn�t particularly aim to soften the image of God through appeal to his fatherliness.
Marianne M. Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 174.
Strikingly, in all the Bible�s presentation of God in the �masculine� imagery of Father, God is never held up as the model for �masculinity� for a father or a male over against a mother or a woman. Rather, the way in which God is understood to act obligates human beings in their relationships to each other. The implications of God�s Fatherhood are not drawn out for fathers, but for those who wish to live together in the community which god calls into being.
Marianne M. Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 182.
While modern Americans may move from �Daddy� to �Dad� in their psycho-social development, and in so doing shed their former childhood language, this was not the case with ancient Jews. They continued to address their fathers as �abba�, and this shows the fundamental connotations of the term: both respectful authority and love. It is highly unlikely that Jesus or other Jews of his time would have addressed God or described God with childish or overly familiar terms; the evidence shows a massive consistency in speaking of God in reverent terms and even refusing to use his name.
S. Knight, A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 61.
. . . God has not left us to guess what His fatherhood amounts to, by drawing analogies from human fatherhood. He revealed the full meaning of this relationship once and for all through our Lord Jesus Christ, His own incarnate Son. As it is from God that �all fatherhood, earthly and heavenly, derives its name� (Ephesians 3:14, Phillips), so it is from His manifested activity as �the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ� (1:3) that we learn in this one instance which is also a universal standard, what God�s fatherly relation to us who are Christ�s really means. For God intends the lives of believers to be a reflection and reproduction of Jesus� own fellowship with Himself.
J. I Packer, Knowing God (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975), 227-8.
According to our Lord�s own testimony in John�s gospel, God�s fatherly relation to Him implied four things.
First, it implied authority. The Father commands and disposes; the initiative which He calls His Son to exercise is the initiative of resolute obedience to His Father�s will. �I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.� . . .
Second, fatherhood implied affection. �The Father loveth the Son.� . . .
Third, fatherhood implied fellowship. �I am not alone, because the Father is with me.� . . .
Fourth, fatherhood implied honour. God will to exalt His Son. �Father, glorify thy Son.� . . .
All this extends to God�s adopted children. In, through, and under Jesus Christ their Lord, they are ruled, loved, companied with, and honoured by their heavenly Father. As Jesus obeyed God, so must they. . . As God loved His only-begotten Son, so He loves His adopted sons. . . As God had fellowship with Jesus, so He does with us . . . As God exalted Jesus, so He exalts Jesus� followers, as brothers in the one family.
J. I Packer, Knowing God (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975), 228-9.
©Alberith, 2014