Summarizing and developing some of our thoughts on the Fatherhood of God.

Scripture (both O.T. & N.T.) does not regard God as having gender. God does not have a body. God is neither male nor female. In the image of God God created humanity, male and female God created them.

Typically male pronouns are used in reference to God. This is so for two practical reasons. One, it would not make grammatical sense to depict God as father and then to refer to God as “she.” Second, to shift from personal pronouns to impersonal, from he to it, leaves us with a rather impersonal God, an object rather than a Being. (Maybe we should simply designate God as “You” instead of “He.”)

Scripture refers to God as “Father”, never “Mother.” This is not to say that mother/female imagery is never used of God, but that God is never addressed as “Mother.” (Ps. 131; Is. 43:14-15; esp. Is. 66:13)

In a patriarchal society/context, to refer to God primarily as a mother/woman would be to render God as being less than God (i.e., less than in charge). If the father is the head of the household, then the head of the universe, and likewise, the head of the covenant people, is going to be thought of in “father” terms.

What is the function of the father in a patriarchal society? What is the point of the father metaphor in its cultural context? The metaphor would emphasize both the authority and the responsibility of God over and towards that to which God is father. The father had governing authority. The father was responsible to protect and provide for his family/household (included all those in his care). The father was responsible for the justice/peace of the household – defending the cause of the weak over against the abuse of the strong. Hence, to call God Father is not only to acknowledge God’s authority, but to call God into responsibility – the responsibility of providing, protecting, and governing with justice.

The father was also understood to be the “creator” or the initiator when it came to procreation. “Adam knew his wife Eve” rather than “Eve knew her husband Adam.” The woman is almost passive. Adam creates the pregnancy. At Cain’s birth Eve exclaims, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.” I suspect this refers specifically to the birthing – rather than to the conception – and is to be read over against the woman’s punishment of “bearing children with great pain.” From this perceived role of the father in creating offspring, the role of founder was naturally metaphorized in terms of father. The founder of a community, a guild, a tribe, a village, etc., is regarded as the father of said group. Thus, identifying God as father is a way to assert that God is creator, that God is initiator, that God is the one who brings into being.

In the Old Testament God is understood to be the father of Israel – God created Israel, has authority over Israel, and is responsible for Israel. The covenant relationship between God and Israel is in view with this father-son language.

In the O.T. and the N.T. God is never literally depicted as the father of all humanity. Only the covenant people know God as father. Only believers are children of God.

In particular the Davidic line knows God as father. Israel’s king is to be in a father-son relationship with God. This carries connotations regarding authority and responsibility. The king is to govern in a manner that conforms to the character and will of God his father.

While the Old Testament prepares us to say, “Our Father”, it is through Jesus that God is ultimately defined as father. Or perhaps better, through Jesus we come to a proper understanding of the fatherhood of God. We know the Father whom we haven’t seen through the Son whom we (okay, the disciples) have seen and who came to dwell among us and to whom the Scriptures and the Spirit bear witness.

“Father”, like all metaphors, brings a lot of earthly, cultural baggage with it. The revelation of God our Father as manifested in Jesus the Son is the corrective to such baggage. God’s fatherhood is not to be defined by contemporary culture nor by one’s personal experience (or lack thereof) of a father, but by Jesus the Son’s revelation of God the Father. That’s the father-son relationship that defines God’s fatherhood, not our own father-children experiences.

Significantly, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father, who is in heaven.” There is a contrast with earthly fathers/earthly fatherhood. The father metaphor is meaningful, but it also falls short, not only because God cannot be captured by any one single metaphor, but also (especially?) because we fall so short as fathers and we have all experienced fathers who to one degree or another shorted us. “Who is in heaven” is a way to make up, or at least counter, this linguistic and experiential shortfall.

The notion of God is up for grabs (yes, in current culture wars, but also generally so throughout the history of humanity). Typically, cultures or subcultures construct a deity that will legitimate their own way of life, a deity that will mandate their particular social agenda and construal of reality. For this reason I am suspicious of those who want to (re)construct God as mother. What is their social agenda? What construals of reality are they trying to debunk? What are they attempting to legitimate and mandate via “God the Mother”?

Patriarchal societies and/or those who espouse patriarchal notions of God are not immune to the idolatry of co-opting God (or the notion of God) for a self-serving construal of social order. The fatherhood of God has been used to legitimate much behavior that has nothing to do with the character of God as revealed by Jesus the Son.

Motherly imagery depicting God is not completely absent from the scriptures. As with the father metaphor, this imagery needs to be understood in terms of its contextual (historical and literary) significance. Possibly such language is a protest against an overly male rendering of God and an overly male ordering of society, but it is also possible that “protest” is not in view. Rather, God is in view and the writer is using the full range of metaphors available in service to communicating God’s character and activity. The motherly imagery (as well as the fatherly imagery) is drawn up into service to God rather than God being pulled down in service to feminine imagery/agendas (and male imagery/agendas).

In short, the revelation of God in Christ, to which the Scriptures bear witness through the Spirit, is subversive to our notions of God. The challenge is to submit our notions of God to the revelation of God, our notions of God’s fatherhood to the revelation of God the Father. Too often we make the revelation subject to our notions. We reduce the revelation to something suitable.

Finally, it is recognized that for some, due to incredible depths of abuse and hurt, the image of father has become utterly bankrupt of anything good and thereby cannot, for the time, be applied to God. “Loving father” has become oxymoronic. Rather than force the fatherhood of God upon such a person, which likely would only re-enforce the negative connotations or draw God into the negative connotations, the goal would be to help the individual know the “fatherly” attributes of God without using the father image. More than anything, there would be a life-long process of reconstructing the image of God in the light of the revelation of Jesus (which is not so different from the journey we are all on). Perhaps, in the fullness of time, in the light of Christ, such a wounded person will be able to pray, “Our Father, who is in heaven.”

(Steve Rodeheaver - April 6, 2004)