The Return of the Prodigal Son, Rembrandt, 1667
The New Testament prefers one word over all others when discussing God. The word is “Father” along with some of its variants. Certainly one must notice that Jesus Christ Himself can and does refer to God the Father with other language, including maternal imagery (when he quotes the psalms to speak of God as a mother hen, etc). And it is beyond debate that God’s essence transcends all gender and categories of human relationship. Still, it would not be much of an exaggeration to claim that the distilled essence of Jesus’ teachings can be found in framing God as our Father in Heaven. To see God as a Father—even as “abba,” which is to say “papa” or daddy”--and thus to see Him as One close to our hearts, who loves us, to whom we turn in times of trouble—this is perhaps the single most essential theological teaching of the Lord during his ministry.
To speak of God as Father is to speak of God as a parent, of course, yet there is more to it than that. Fatherhood is not merely generic parenthood as carried out by a male, just as motherhood is not merely parenting that happens to be done by a woman. Yet, like many profound and powerful ideas, we would be hard pressed to define precisely what fatherhood is over and against parenthood in general, or motherhood, or simple child care or teaching. There is a mystery to the idea of fatherhood—something that is forever explored by each of us and never quite exhausted. This is infinitely more true when we speak of the infinite God as Father: a mystery embedded in a mystery, never fully articulated, never fully known.
Many Christians today have become uncomfortable with the language of fatherhood as applied to God. There are some bad reasons for this, to be sure, but there are also some impulses that deserve attention. In the end, people who withdraw from speaking of God as Father almost invariably have some sense of pain and injury when reflecting on that mysterious term. For many of us, the word “father” invokes strength, comfort, protection, provision of needs, courage, and ultimately love (among many other things). Yet for many others, the word connotes rage, violence, abuse, bitterness, hatred, danger, and ultimately fear. For those who hear the term primarily in this way, referring to God as Father is language that causes one to recoil, drawing a person away from God’s love instead of toward it.
This is not grounds for replacing the ancient language given to us by the Lord Himself in our worship and theology. Moreover, referring to God as “mother” or “parent” or anything else as a replacement for the term “Father,” is only a game of musical chairs since such terms can also be agonizing to many of us. No, the word “Father” is not really escapable for Christians. To follow Jesus at all is to accept the term as primary to worship and faith.
I bring up the potential pain of calling God “Father” in order to call all of us who are fathers to attend to the profundity of the role we are playing. We are shaping, from the very beginning, a key part of our children’s foundational vocabulary for thinking and talking about God. From the very first moment of their birth, my children have been learning what a father is from me, their dad. Before they had words at all to use for it, they had some knowledge of fatherhood (and motherhood of course). And as they have grown, words have not so much taken over their understanding as helped them to articulate in some way a much deeper and instinctive sense of what a father actually is—a sense built up from experiences with me over many years since the time they were still in the womb listening to my voice out in the wide world.
Not all fathers are biological, of course. We have adopted fathers, to begin with, and step fathers who may have raised us. We call our priests “father,” and have “spiritual fathers,” along with grandfathers, fathers of the Church, fathers of our country, fathers of various fields of study and disciplines, and many more people called “father” across the ages. We have “father figures,” and men who have been “like a father” to us, especially those of us who have grown up without fathers. In fact, in the end, every single adult male Christian will (whether we like it or not) serve in some kind of paternal role in our lives. To become a biological father is not the destiny of all men, but to participate in the deeper meaning of fatherhood at least a little bit is indeed a calling all men must take up in our communities, monasteries, and families.
And so we must ask ourselves: what are we contributing to the meaning of the word “father” in the ears of our children (biological, familial, spiritual, and otherwise)? What will their implicit definition of this term be as they grow and mature? Will they be filled with pain and fear when it is spoken? Or will hearing the term “father” lift their hearts with the knowledge that they are in the care of someone strong and safe who loves them?
These are not just questions about the psychological health of the children we are raising (though they are that). The profundity of our task as fathers cannot be overstated. We are the beginning of our children’s understanding of theology. For if they grow up Christian, our children will be taught to pray to God as “Father,” and in so doing they will have invoked in their hearts something that we as fathers have impressed upon them. It is just a model, to be sure, as all theological statements about God are. In the end God transcends fatherhood entirely. And yet, as I have said above, Fatherhood is the Christian model of God par excellence. And we, as fathers, are building the meaning of that model one way or another in our children’s minds. When we fail in our calling as fathers, we place an enormous stumbling block between our children and God Himself. We warp the term “father” in their ears, and thus we twist the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we succeed as fathers, we build the strongest bridge of all between our children and God—giving them the ability to call out to God in the words taught by Jesus Christ and to know that He hears and will respond with both strength and love.
Whatever we ourselves have been given, then, we who are fathers in every possible way must offer prayers and all our efforts to the work of filling the word “Father” with good and virtuous things in the hearts of those around us. In humility and repentance, in strength and courage, in honesty, integrity, charity, joy, patience, and above all in love. It is far too much for us to bear and be worthy of, yet it is a call to which we will respond whether knowingly or unknowingly. A father—any father—is always and ever a theologian to his children.
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