Is it correct to call God “Father”?

Reflections by André Gounelle* published in the Protestant monthly Évangile et Liberté (France) in March 2018, freely translated by Giacomo Tessaro

Charles Wagner wrote that, of all the names of God, “Father is the least pretentious, the most humble, the most human, the sweetest”. It's true, but it's also a name that poses problems and inconveniences.

Following Jesus, and according to his teaching, we address God with the title of Father. It is a name that should not be taken for granted: Muslims are shocked by it, because fatherhood implies sexuality, to which, according to them, God is extraneous; poses problems for those who have had an unworthy, absent or violent father; some find it unfair towards mothers, as the Bible also speaks of God in the feminine.

Two other criticisms have been leveled at the statement that God is a father:

1. The first criticism underlines the fact that paternity refers to a provenance, to someone before us, who is located at the origins of our existence; now, the biblical God orients us towards the future, introduces the new, calls and leads the world towards transformation. Bultmann writes: “The God of the Gospel is always ahead of me, like the one who comes: it is his perpetual futurity, which is his transcendence”. For Cobb, more than the past and the present, the future is God's time par excellence. Let's think about Christmas: isn't a newborn baby a better symbol of God and his Kingdom than a father? The father precedes, the newborn announces a becoming.

This objection, despite its relative relevance, seems reductive to me, as it reduces fatherhood to the original generation, while in reality it is, first of all, a continuous adventure. A father educates his children, then accompanies them and helps them. God is Father because he pushes us to move forward and gives birth to the unknown, in our lives as in the world. The biblical creation itself does not concern so much the origin of the world, but rather its present and its future: rather than an initial foundation, it refers to that divine dynamism which continually produces something new.

2. The second criticism objects that calling God "Father" it lowers its glory and sovereignty and makes them too familiar. When we use the word abba (Pope), who would have used Jesus first, we would quickly forget what differentiates us from him and we would fall into the comfortable religion of a God who pampers us and is our friend, a God who is pleasant like a nice pillow or a comfortable sofa, similar to plush toys infantile, which reassures us and makes us drowsy, while instead the biblical God disturbs, undermines, questions, shakes and sets in motion.

This second objection also contains some truth, but it is one-sided. Many pages of the Bible underline the fact that God is terrible in his demands, fearsome in his justice, deadly in his holiness, but all this does not exclude love; other pages talk about the affection he has for us, the protection he assures us, the trust we can have in him, but all this does not exclude his greatness and his majesty.

God is at the same time other and intimate, foreign and familiar. In faith we develop a relationship that combines respect and reverence with tenderness and affection. When Matthew reports the prayer not simply starting with "Father", like Luca, but with “Our Father, who art in heaven”, puts tension on the "father", or intimacy, with i “heavens”, which symbolize not an elsewhere, but an otherwise, combining the proximity of "father" with otherness “heavenly”.

Any designation of God comes with drawbacks. The objections to the designation of "father" they must not lead to discarding this name, but rather to carefully specify it, recalling the distance and difference of the Divine and placing generation not only yesterday, but above all today and tomorrow.

* André Gounelle, pastor, honorary professor at the Protestant Institute of Theology of Montpellier, author of numerous books and collaborator of Évangile et Liberté for 50 years.