The idea of God as Father is a conspicuous emphasis in the faith and life of Christians. When Jesus taught us to pray, he began “Our Father in heaven”. In this blog I want to examine what it is for God to be our father. Its importance lies in the centrality of the fatherhood of God in the thinking of most Christians and also in that the concept of God as Father has been challenged recently, most notably by those that claim the idea is “patriarchal” and therefore unhelpful. Earlier in the year, for example, Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York said, “I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life.” The comment was an aside in a speech before the General Synod that focused on the need for unity – God is our father – the father of us all together – as the Anglican communion continues to tear itself apart over differences on issues of sexuality, identity and equality. Needless to say the ensuing stramash was unedifying, albeit predictable. As with almost everything else nowadays, it hinged on questions of gender identity.
Father Jove
The language of God as father is not unique to Christianity although its meaning in other religions frequently differs significantly from that in the New Testament. Graeco-Roman paganism, for example, thought of Jupiter, the king of gods and head of the Pantheon, as ‘father Jove’. The title was partly one of precedence but it also reflects the fact that the gods of ancient Greece and Rome were thought of in very human terms. Like us, they were irascible and unpredictable. In particular, however, they married and procreated, often incestuously. Jupiter was married to Juno, his sister. Their daughter was Minerva, goddess of wisdom. Jupiter was also the father of several other gods, including Mars. He was not thought of as the father of the Romans. That accolade belonged to Romulus, the first king of Rome, a human figure whose father was said to be the god Mars, and who was later himself deified. Romulus effectively ‘gave birth’ to Rome, bringing the nation and empire into existence. All the same, even Romulus was not addressed directly as father. But having given birth to Mars who in turn gave birth to Romulus, Jupiter could be thought of as the ultimate founder of Rome, and father of Rome, albeit indirectly.
Interestingly, the apostle Paul picks up on the idea of Jove as father in his sermon to the Areopagus in Athens when he says, “For in him [Jupiter] we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his [God’s] offspring” (Acts 17:28). The quote is from the Greek poet Arastus (c.315/310 – 240 BCE). Paul would have denied that there was any literal sense in which anyone can be a son or daughter of God; but at the very least, he suggests, the language conveys the idea of createdness: ‘We are his offspring’. Moreover unlike the Graeco-Roman gods, who were governed by their emotions and were given to fits of rage, the god Paul preached desires we reach out to him and find him. As Augustine remarked, God made us for himself. He desires loving fellowship with us.
The idea of god as father in the sense of creator and life-giver is also found in Hinduism. In the Bhagavad Gita, the Krishna, the principal deity of Hinduism, the god of protection, tenderness and love declares, “I am the Father of this world, the Mother, the Dispenser and the Grandfather”. What is interesting here is that God is also Mother, an idea that also crops up in the Old Testament. Note too that the character of Krishna as Father of this world is markedly different from that of tyrannical father Jove.
In Islam, the concept of God as father hardly occurs at all. Islam is fiercely monotheistic and emphatically denies that there is any sense in which God could be said to have a son(s). “It is only God who deserves all praise. He has not begotten a son and has no partner in His Kingdom” (Surah 17:111). While this is often taken as a rejection of Christian trinitarianism (more shortly), it could as easily refer to the Graeco-Roman idea that the gods married and procreated. There were similarities between Graeco-Roman paganism and the paganism of Mecca at the time of Mohammad. While Islam does not forbid addressing God as ‘father’, the term is not one of the 99 names of God that reflect his attributes, and it is not generally applied to Allah.
Hear, O Israel
Judaism is as fiercely monotheistic as Islam. In the Shema, Jews declare “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God; the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4). Again, the idea that God might have a son in the way that the Graeco-Roman gods were said to is blasphemous. All the same, the language of God as father does occur in the Old Testament, if only in an analogical or metaphorical sense. So, in the book of Micah, for example, God is said to be the father of Israel in the sense that he created and called them: “Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?” (Micah 2:10). The point was that if your hurt fellow Israelites, you are hurting your family. Here God is father, and the people of Israel are brothers and sisters.
Israel then is the metaphorical son of God: “Israel is my first born son” (Exodus 4:22). Again, “You, LORD are our father, our redeemer and from of old is your name” (Isaiah 63:16). Like a father, God pities and protects his people: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him” (Psalm 103:3). So in Judaism, God is creator but he is also the living and loving father of his people; not only immanent but personal in the sense that he enters into a personal relationship with them. As former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks puts it, God “is not distant in time or detached, but passionately engaged and present”. This idea of a personal god, a god who can be related to as a person rather than simply an absolute force makes the God of Israel rather different from the gods of Graeco-Roman paganism. Note again, however, that the language is essentially anthropomorphic. God is like a father
The Prodigal Son
One of the most remarkable examples of God as father in Jewish thought is found in the New Testament and in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal (or Lost) Son (Luke 15:11 – 31). The details are well known. We have a father and two sons. The older is devoted to his father and is hard working. The younger wants to up sticks and sow his wild oats. So he asks his father for the part of the sons’ inheritance so he can spend it on ‘wild living’. Eventually, however, he runs out of money and a famine comes to the land. The prodigal ends up looking after pigs, eating their food, a fate as low in the Jewish mind as one can go. In desperation, the lad determined he would return to his father for the opportunity to work as a hired hand. There are a couple of things worth noting here.
The first is the father’s longing for the return of his son. We are not told that he actively seeks his son – this is in contrast to earlier parables of the lost sheep (Luke 15:1 – 7) and the lost coin (Luke 15:8 – 10) – presumably because there is little he can do until his son returns of his own volition. Either way, there is no mistaking the extent of the father’s delight when his son does return. We are told that the father saw his son “a long way off”. He appears to have recognised him from afar, just we might recognise a family member or beloved friend from a distance. He recognised him because he was family, and as family he loved him. This is how it is in the Old Testament. In God’s mind, it did not matter how rebellious his people became, his commitment to them in fatherly love remained. So in the Book of Isaiah we read this: “But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name” (63:16). What is being said here is that even if the Israel of Isaiah’s day was so changed that Abraham (Israel’s literal father) did not recognise them, or that their relationship to God was so degraded that their forefathers might be ashamed to acknowledge them, God remains their Father and they continue to bear a family resemblance, no matter how damaged that resemblance might be. In similar vein, in Jeremiah we read “‘Is not Ephraim my son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion on him,’ declares the LORD” (31:20). The prodigal may look wretched, his clothes torn and dirty, his body filthy but he remains his father’s son and his father still loves him.
The second thing is the extravagance of the father’s forgiveness. In the parable, the son hardly gets out the words of his prepared speech in which he begs to be allowed to work as a hired servant before his father embraces him, gives him the best robe, a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. He has the fattened calf slaughtered for a feast of celebration. The prodigal is the son he always was, forgiven and beloved by his father. The father is the father he always was even when estranged from his son. This irks the elder brother who has always worked hard. Jesus’ intention here is to remind us both of the extravagance of grace and the scandal of grace. Grace wipes the slate clean. And so in the Old Testament, God is the father of Israel having created them as a nation and as his people, and loving them everlastingly.
God Our Mother
In Judaism, God is conventionally referred to using masculine language, reflecting Biblical usage. The names of God (‘elohim, adonai, Yahweh, etc.) are all grammatically male. Some writers have noted that the Hebrew word ru’ach, spirit which occurs in Genesis 1:2 and elsewhere – “the spirit (ru’ach) of God (‘elohim) was hovering over the waters” – is grammatically feminine. Can we conclude from this language regarding the gender of God?
Unlike English, Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic are grammatically gendered. This means that all nouns are assigned gender; in some languages masculine, feminine or neuter, in others masculine or feminine. English is unusual among world languages in not being gendered. German, to which it is closely related, is gendered. Very often, there is no obvious rhyme or reason why certain nouns are masculine while others are feminine. For example, the Hebrew word for ‘word’, dakar, is masculine while the Hebrew for land, aretz, is feminine. The Arabic word for house, bayt, is masculine (as is the Hebrew equivalent bayit), while the word for room, ghurfa, is feminine. Clearly, it would be a mistake to attach too much significance to the grammatical gender of these nouns. Should we conclude then that God is feminine in some sense, perhaps as well being male in some sense? I think the answer is a resounding ‘no’. A Hebrew speaker usually would no more think there is anything intrinsically female about the word spirit than about words like land, nation, family, truth, knife, or in modern Hebrew, frying pan. Note that in the New Testament, while the Greek word for spirit, pneuma, is feminine, the Spirit is also referred to as ‘Counsellor’, parakletos, a masculine word (John 16:7, 13).
If we cannot infer anything about the gender of God from grammar, are their other ways to approach it? We’ve already seen that God is likened to a father. What about a mother? There is some scriptural warrant for this in that while the Hebrew Bible does not call God ‘Mother’ in the way it calls God Father, it occasionally describes God using female imagery, perhaps most famously in Isaiah 49:15 where God says through the prophet, “Can a woman 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!” Similar imagery is used in a few other places. In the New Testament, Jesus describes how he longed to gather together the people of Jerusalem that had killed the prophets like a hen gathers her young. In Deuteronomy, it could be argued that male and female imagery is brought together. We read “You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth” (Deuteronomy 32:18). Just as the intention with father language is not to claim God has any of the physical attributes of a father, the intention with mother language is not to suggest that God is literally a mother. Rather, while God is most often pictured using father imagery, he can also be thought of using mother imagery. I think we can retain conventional masculine pronouns for God while appreciating that God is not male and that he can also be thought of as possessing traditionally motherly as well as the best of fatherly attributes.
He Made Them Male and Female
Perhaps the most obvious place where male and female are brought together is at the beginning of the book of Genesis where men and women together are said to bear the image of God: “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). What is being said here is that there is a sense in which men and women are a kind of reflection of God; they bear his image. Unfortunately, the Bible does not explicitly define the image of God and its content is debated. But it does imply that humans possess unique dignity in that they were made to reflect in some way the nature and character of God. “What is mankind that your are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels, and crowned them with glory and honour” (Ps. 8:4 – 5). Calvin comments, “When it is said here that man must be created in the image of God and according to his likeness, it is for the purpose of declaring that he must have such virtues and gifts, which will serve as signs and marks, to demonstrate that the human race is as the lineage of God, just as St. Paul proves with the saying from the pagan poet in 17th chapter of Acts: we are his descendants.” Crucially note that men and women individually bear God’s image and that also they do so together. We are sociable beings that live in societies, of which marriage is the basic building block. We are made for one another. We are also made for God such that the relationship between a man and his wife is strikingly compared to that between God and the church of Christ. Paul adds that this is a mystery (Eph. 5:32). Note that in saying this, I am not decrying either singleness or other types of relation. The image of God is not lessoned in us if we are unmarried.
Before leaving this, it should be pointed out that not only is God’s image in human beings a pale reflection of the essential glory of God, it has become distorted through sin. John Calvin again: “In order for us to come to a sure knowledge of ourselves, we must first grasp the fact that Adam, parent of us all, was created in the image and likeness of God. That is, he was endowed with wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and was so clinging by these gifts of grace to God that he could have lived forever in Him, if he had stood fast in the uprightness God had given him”. But he goes onto say that “Now God’s image is the perfect excellence of human nature which shone in Adam before his defection, but was subsequently so vitiated and almost blotted out that nothing remains after the ruin except what is confused, mutilated and disease ridden” (Institutes 1.15.4). The historicity of Adam is not the point here. The point is that God made us to reflect something of his nature and character. We were family. But like the prodigal, we turned away and sought to make our own way without the father and without our brethren. But all but unrecognisable though the image might be, it is not completely blotted out. This is why the apostle James is so insistent that we tame the tongue. He says, “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father [note the use of Father here], and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness…My brothers and sisters, this should not be” (James 3:9, 10). Regardless of low we fall, we retain the dignity of those that bear the image of God. In a very real sense, we are all family. Nothing should give us greater delight than welcome back the estranged. Just like the father in the parable, our father in heaven delights in nothing more than in the return of the prodigal and in their full restoration to the family circle. “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy…You will be faithful to Jacob, and show love to Abraham, as you pledged on oath to our ancestors in days long ago” (Micah 7:18,20).
I do not believe that Genesis 1:27 is telling us anything about the gender of God, not least because the image is applied to male and female equally. Crucially, we are being reminded that men and and women possess equal dignity. There is no difference in status between man and woman. Sexism has no place in the church. If God is Father, he is our Father, regardless of who we are. Thus when we pray ‘our Father’ we do so in solidarity with all those for whom God is Father, supremely the church but also all those he loves, that is the world, the cosmos, even in its opposition to God. “Give us this day our daily bread; forgive our debts; lead us not into temptation”. And then the kingdom is His and all the power and the glory are His, our Father in heaven. This was the point Stephen Cottrell was making to the General Synod. It was a call for divided and bickering Christians to unite around the gospel and to rejoice in their status as the beloved of God. During the ensuing fracas, a feminist theologian who had campaigned for female bishops said: “The big question is, do we really believe that God believes that male human beings bear his image more fully and accurately than women? The answer is absolutely not.” Quite so. To my mind, however, the comment misses the point in that it seems to reflect a strand in feminist theology that insists that gender language in reference to God is meaningful, not arbitrary. Feminist theologians have written thousands of pages critiquing a supposed male God. Orthodox Christianity knows of no such God. Unlike the gods of Graeco-Roman paganism, the God of Judaeo-Christian faith does not possess gender. God is Spirit (John 4:24). The Catechism of the Catholic Church s explicit. It states that while God is called “Father”, his love for humankind may also be depicted as motherhood. Ultimately, however, God transcends the human concept of sex, and “is neither man nor woman: He is God.”
Son of God
The concept of Jesus as Son of God occurs throughout the gospels. In the Synoptic Gospels, for instance, we read that having praised the Father, Jesus says, “All things have been entrusted 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” (Matt. 11:27). The language occurs most frequently in the Gospel of John. What did he mean when he called God “my Father”? What does it mean that Jesus is the Son of God?
We have seen that the idea of God as Father does not occur frequently in the Old Testament. The Jewish people knew God predominantly as YHWH, translated the LORD in English Bibles (Exodus 3:15). (God was not addressed as such in prayer because the name YHWH was considered too sacred to pronounce). Other names for God were used to address God in prayer, but not “Father”. Jesus changed that, referring to God not only as Father but specifically my Father. This was shocking in that not only was Jesus claiming an especially intimate relationship with the God whose covenant name the Jewish people dare not pronounce, he was actually claiming equality with God. This emerges from John’s gospel where Jesus says, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” We read that “for this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God (John 5:17 – 18). This immediately suggests that the Jews considered the title Son of God, a title reflected not only in John but in the other gospel writers also, a divine title. This should give us pause as we reflect on who Jesus is because one would think, as Albert Barnes (1798 – 1870) points out “the Jews were the best interpreters of their own language, and as Jesus did not deny the correctness of their interpretations, it follows that he meant to be so understood” (Notes on the New Testament). There is no escaping the fact that the gospel writers see Jesus as not less that God himself. The apostle Paul also styles Jesus as God. Thus, we “wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). The glory whose appearing we await is that of our great God. And who is this? It is our Saviour, Jesus Christ. The glory of Jesus is the glory of God. Again, John says “we have seen his glory, the glory of the Only Begotten,” surely a reference to the Mount of Transfiguration where God declares from a cloud: “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; Listen to him” (Luke 9:35).
Earlier I suggested that the father in the parable of the prodigal son may well have recognised his son from a distance based on some family resemblance. I linked this with the idea of the image of God. In the New Testament, Jesus, the Son of God is also described as the image of God. Paul writes, “He [the Son he loves] is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). Using slightly different language but adopting the same general idea, the writer to the Hebrews says, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). Of course, while human sons and daughters may resemble their parents, and that strongly, they are not like them in every way. They are not identical. Indeed each is also unique. Yet when we read about Jesus as the Son of God, we are left in no doubt that he is completely like his father. He is, as we said, “the exact representation of his being”. The Greek word is the word is charakter, a tool for engraving, and by extension, an impression. The New Testament writers are not saying that Father and Son are one and the same; but they are saying that when we see Jesus, we see the perfect likeness of the Father in him. “Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.'” (John 14:8, 9). If there is one thing and one thing only that I want to emphasise here it is this: When we think of God as Father, we should first think of him as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What kind of a father is he? He is like the Jesus we meet in the pages of scripture. As former archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsay put it, “There is in God no unChristlikeness at all”. There is no unChristlikeness in God the Father, in our father who is in heaven. When we have seen Jesus, we have seen the father.
Sons and Daughters by Adoption
Galatians 4:4 – 6 is perhaps one of the most remarkable passages in the New Testament. It is worth quoting in full.
“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir”.
These verses, which are jam packed with meaning, tell us why Jesus came into the world. They set out the purpose of incarnation: “God sent his Son…that we might receive adoption to sonship”. First, God sent his son. These words echo 1 John 4:9: This is how God showed his love among us: “He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him”, words that themselves echo John 3:16 (“God gave his one and only son….”). The sending is also a giving. Note the translation here. While traditionally the word translated as ‘one and only’ (monogenes) is rendered ‘only begotten’, it is very likely that this is incorrect. There is a strong case for arguing that the term ‘only begotten’ is misleading since there was no point at which the Son became the Son. He was the Son eternally, as John’s Prologue stresses. As the Quran states, “He [God] begot no one nor was He begotten”. A better translation is the followed by most modern English versions of the New Testament, “one and only”. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son”. Many see here a harking back to Genesis 22 here and God’s command to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah” (v2). The story itself contains many difficulties. That aside, Christians have always seen it as in some sense prefiguring Calvary. Either way, the words of God to Abraham are heart-rending. “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love.” Here, of course, while Isaac is the sacrifice, as Jesus was, it is Isaac’s father Abraham that offers the sacrifice. In John 3:16, God the father offers the sacrifice. The great difference between John 3:16 and Genesis 22 is that ultimately God does not require the sacrifice of Isaac, laying the theological foundation for God’s repudiation of human sacrifice throughout the Old Testament, because God himself provides the lamb. The lamb caught in the thicket prefigures the Lamb of God in the New Testament. As an aside, and I may return to this in another blog, it is important to note that in giving his son, God is not sacrificing an innocent third party. Rather it is God in Christ that that bears the cost of forgiveness thereby reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor. 5:19). The gift of God therefore is his giving of himself. Of course this takes us into the doctrine of the Trinity, which is difficult at best; but can we at least recognise that if there is to be forgiveness by an aggrieved party, that party inevitably sets asides any requirement for payback. This is what God offers to us in the gospel of Christ: forgiveness that is full and free at the point at which it is received. Not only is God our father a forgiving father (Ps. 103:9 – 12), he is ready to forgive even the most heinous of offences of the penitent despite the pain it causes himself. Forgiveness is not easy. It can hurt. It is not easy for us to forgive and it is not easy for God either. But forgive he does and that over and over and over again.
Jehovah’s grace, how full, how free:
His language how divine!
“My Son, thou ever art with me,
And all I have is thine”
My saints shall each a portion share,
That’s worthy of a God;
They are my chief, my constant care–
The purchase of my blood.
Both grace and glory I will give,
And nothing good deny;
With me my saints shall ever live,
And reign with me on high.
And should a hundred thousand more,
Accept the proffered grace,
I have a heaven prepared–for all;
Nor shall you have the less.
Then, dearest Lord, let millions come,
And feast on pard’ning grace;
Bring prodigals, bring exiles home,
And we will shout thy praise.
Getting back to Galatians, we notice that God’s purpose in sending his Son is that we might receive adoption to sonship. The idea also occurs in Ephesians 1:4: “In love [God the Father] predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ”. There are at least two aspects to this. First, there is the idea of freedom. According to Galatians 4:4ff, adoption is the consequence of redemption, where the idea is that of having been bought from slavery to the law and hence the consequences of sin. Adoption gives us the freedom of sons, specifically that of an heir.
Recall that in the parable the prodigal squandered his share of the inheritance and that when he came to his senses he asked only that his father would make him as one of the hired servants. Loving him as his son, he instead gave him the best robe thereby restoring the status he thought he had lost. The consequence of this is that we “.receive the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father'”. The gospels tell us that the Jewish authorities were incensed when Jesus called himself the Son of God, thereby “making himself equal with God”(John 5:18). Mark tells us that in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane during the night on which he was arrested, Jesus addressed his Father as ‘Abba‘. What does this mean? I am not convinced by Joachim Jeremias’ assertion that the term means ‘daddy’. It is not the language of an infant. All the same, it does reflect the closest imaginable intimacy between father and son. This is our privilege when we come to God in prayer saying. “Our father in heaven”. Adoption is a significant emphasis in Reformed soteriology. The Westminster Confession of Faith has a chapter on adoption. It says, “All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption, by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God, have his name put upon them, receive the Spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry, Abba, Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him, as by a father: yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption; and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation” (WCF Ch. 14:1). One of the reasons the New Testament in Greek refers here to sons rather than daughters is that Jewish society operated the principle of primogeniture in that the firstborn son received the larger proportion of an inheritance, daughters often receiving nothing. Paul wants us to know that all believers receive the privilege of first born sons and receive entire inheritance God has in store for them. “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus…There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:26 – 28).
God our Loving Father
I began this blog by noting that it has been suggested that the language of God as father may be unhelpful in the minds of some people, particularly those that have experienced abuse by a father figure. I am reminded of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Matt. 7:9). One can imagine that someone in the crowd might have thought “mine would!” That remains true for many people today. Their difficulty is that Jesus adds that if human fathers know how to give good things to their children, then surely we can trust our heavenly father to do so much more. Those that have experienced paternal abuse have little or no experience of a father that gives good things may find Jesus at this point is unhelpful. I would respond by pointing out that this is not the full story.
Jesus is addressing an ordinary crowd of people, many of whom were most likely loving and decent fathers and that despite their imperfections and failings. Notwithstanding the high incidence of abuse in our own day as in every day, it remains true that most fathers are good fathers. Either way, scripture does not model God’s fatherhood on human fatherhood. In fact it is quite the opposite. God is the perfect father whose nature as father human fathers should seek to emulate. In everything I have said above, I have tried to emphasise the astounding love of God for Jesus his one and only Son and equal in glory, and for us, sons and daughters, adopted into the family of God for Christ’s sake. I have referred to his patience and compassion and to his limitless generosity. In short, I have said that God’s fatherhood is Christlike. While never an earthly father himself, the character of Jesus includes all the attributes a good human father should emulate. If those of us that are fathers want to be good fathers, we should seek to be like Jesus, and that even if we have experienced abuse ourselves. “Show us the father,” they said, “and it will be enough”. Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
Must we really address God as father in prayer? I think we can answer this at two levels. First, we can remind ourselves that all language we apply to God is analogical. God is not a literal father in the way Jove and the other gods of Rome could be considered literal fathers. “He has not begotten a son and has no partner in His Kingdom.” God is without gender. That being so, the pronoun we use to address God is probably of little consequence. We have seen that in his dealings with us, God shows both fatherly and motherly traits. My caveat is that we must be sure not to stray outside scripture in creating, as some writers have, an essentially female mother earth goddess and more than we should portray God as a malevolent and irascible bully. I might add that in general I think we should keep liturgical language as it is and that we certainly should not refer to the Father and Son using male pronouns while referring to the Holy Spirit using female ones. That distinction is quite out of place in orthodox belief about the trinity.
Secondly, while sympathetic, I think I would want to encourage those that struggle with the fatherhood of God to dig a bit deeper to understand how scripture portrays that fatherhood as perfect Christlike fatherhood rather than rely too much on their own experience of toxic fatherhood. Perhaps we can ask what their ideal father might look like. Following Jesus’ logic, we could then point out that any human conception of fatherhood pales in comparison to the heavenly fatherhood of God. Once again, what is God the father like in his character and dealings with us? He is like Jesus. Jesus said “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
Unconformable Views 
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