Our Father in Heaven: The Lord's Prayer II

In the Lord's Prayer, the difference between human fatherhood and divine fatherhood is expressed in a simple two-word prepositional phrase, "in heaven." Our Father in heaven, not our father on earth. In heaven implies not a difference in location so much as in ontology, in being-ness, in God's mode of existence. God's way of being Father so far transcends men's efforts to be fathers that there is actually no comparison except through God's grace and condescension in allowing His human counterparts to reflect a glimmer of His own infinitely "other" (holy) fatherliness.

Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, it has become quite popular among some feminist theologians to challenge the validity of God's fatherhood. Many have asserted that the word father used for God is a mere metaphor, a figure of speech, not His actual name or title, not a statement of Who He is. Applying the tools of literary criticism--the same ones used to analyze such novels as The Red Badge of Courage, say, or Pride and Prejudice--some feminist theologians and biblical scholars have undertaken to critique the Bible as if the words of the Scriptures have no special status. Rather than acknowledging the Bible to be the inspired record of God's revelation to humankind, they reduce Holy Writ to being merely words chosen by fallen human, male writers whose views of God were thoroughly tainted by the then reigning culture: patriarchy. Some feminists even accuse Christians of falling into idolatry by worshiping God as Father. Some promote the selection of new, more politically correct metaphors for God, some with feminine or motherly implications (e.g., Womb or Sophia) and some more impersonal images (e.g., Rock or Sustainer).

What those who neglect or reject the fatherhood of God fail to take into account is that Father is not a humanly devised term for God. Rather it is God Himself, through His relationship with His chosen people in the Old Testament and with His divine Son in the New, Who revealed Himself to be the Father from all eternity. In the four Gospels, in every prayer His Son Jesus addressed to God, save one, He called Him Father. (The single exception is the time He called out in agony on the Cross, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?") Ironically, even in Jesus' day, there was resistance to His referring to God as His Father. The Pharisees severely censured Jesus for this since, to them, this implied that Jesus Himself was divine, a fact that they did not recognize or want to admit.

It is no mere cultural, interchangeable figure of speech that Jesus taught His disciples to pray when He told them to address God as "our Father." In most cases in the Gospels, when Jesus refers to God as Father, He calls Him "My Father." But here in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus expands that meaning. He says that we are to address the Father in heaven not only as His Father--the Father of the eternal Son Jesus Christ--but also as the Father of all who believe in His Son. He is our Father. Yours and mine as well as Jesus'.

Jesus re-emphasized this ineffable truth after His resurrection when speaking to Mary Magdalene in the Garden: "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God'" (John 20:17, ESV).

The beauty and privilege of being able to call God Father is unfathomable. "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God" (1 John 3:1). Behold what manner of love that He has bestowed on us that we should be privileged to call Him Father!

Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me,

that they may be one, even as we are one.

--Jesus in John 17:11b (ESV)