…The Father Almighty…

The Bible famously beings with the words, “In the beginning, God.” God is what we call what ‘existed’ before anything existed. This God is the source, cause, and fountain of everything that exists. The other day, we saw how the Creed affirms that this God is ‘one’, not just arithmetically, but as a perfect, whole, unified expression of who and what God is. Today, we see that the next thing the Creed affirms is that we call this perfect wellspring of life “Father,” specifically “the Father Almighty.” But where does this language come from? What does it mean? And what consequences should it have for the life of faith?

The simplest answer to the first question is that we Christians call God “Father” because it was one of Jesus’ most common ways of talking about God, whether in prayer (”Our Father in heaven …”, Matthew 6.9), as a character in a parable (see the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.11ff), or in teaching (such as in John 20.17, where he refers to God as “my Father and your Father”). Jesus did not invent this language for God within Judaism — see, for example, Isaiah 63.17, which says “you, O LORD, are our father” — but he did turn it from one general metaphor for God among many others into something more central.

The question of what this language means is more complicated. As I’ve noted before, it’s a case where we need to let Jesus’ teachings about God take the lead. For God may be our Father, but this fatherhood is not at all like the traditional Greco-Roman or Jewish ideas of fatherhood. Far from the dominating figure who lords his power over his household inherent in Greek and Roman archetypes, the New Testament paints a picture of a father who provides for and protects his children, who is quick to forgive, longs for his children to grow up into exactly who they are, and readily adopts anyone into his household. So, when we affirm in the Creed that we trust God as our Father, this is the kind of father we’re talking about. To put it all in today’s language, Jesus uses the vocabulary of fatherhood but completely deconstructs it and reshapes it in the process. God is Father, but this is not ‘the Patriarchy’.

While it shouldn’t need to be said, we also need to remember that this language of God’s Fatherhood does not mean that God is male or masculine. It’s symbolic language, not literal language. And this is true of all of the language of the Creed and of theology itself: An infinite God is beyond all conceptions and language. This is not a postmodern hedging of belief, but is a truth the very theologians responsible for the theology and language of the Creed understood and insisted upon seventeen hundred years ago! The Creed’s formal title is in fact, the “Symbol of Faith.” To this point about the language being symbolic, our Scriptures are just as happy to use feminine imagery, particularly the language of motherhood, to describe God, as it is masculine imagery. For example, the Spirit “broods over” the waters in Genesis 1.2, God is said to have birthed Israel (Deuteronomy 32.18), God “cries out like a woman in labour” (Isaiah 42.14), God’s care for Israel is compared to a woman who will not “forget her nursing child” (Isaiah 49.15) and to a momma bear defending her cubs (Hosea 13.8). And in the New Testament, Jesus longs to gather the people to him, like a hen sheltering her chicks (Matthew 23.37), and Peter compares spiritual feeding to an infant suckling (1 Peter 2.2-3). We call God ‘Father’, but God is not male, and, albeit in a way less central to our traditions, God is also ‘Mother.’

The Creed describes this Father as “Almighty” — at least in most English translations. The Greek is pantokrator, which means ‘Ruler of All’ (note the krat- stem, from which we get words like ‘democratic’(rule by the people’), ‘autocratic’ (rule by one person alone), or ‘plutocratic’ (rule by the wealthy)). But, this term was what the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was ‘the Bible’ for many Jews in the first century) used to translate the Hebrew Shaddai, in the common divine epithet El Shaddai, which is normally translated into English as ‘Almighty’, and so the common English form in the Creed here makes sense. But, to make it even more complicated, we don’t actually know what Shaddai means. It’s not known in Hebrew aside from its use in El Shaddai, and it isn’t even clear what Hebrew root, or word family, it belongs to. Suggestions range from ‘God of the Wilderness’, ‘God of the Mountains’, ‘God the Destroyer’ (probably the interpretation that led to the Greek translation), or even ‘God of the Breasts.’ At any rate, there are a couple possible connotations of pantokrator, which is after all what is in our Creed, that are worth teasing out.

First, we might stress the sense of mastery or rulership inherent in this title. If we emphasize this aspect, we also need to remember that the New Testament gives it the same treatment as it does fatherhood. To rule or to be a master or lord in Jesus’ teaching does not mean power trips and domination, but humbly giving oneself and one’s life sacrificially for the benefit of those for whom one has responsibility. As we saw in last Summer’s series on Ephesians, even where the New Testament seems to uphold the power dynamics and hierarchies of the first-century Mediterranean world, it always insists that those with power and authority wield it gently, humbly, and with a sense of service on behalf of others.

Second, we can emphasize the sense of power or strength conveyed in the title. If we do this, it’s an expression of God’s limitless ability to act in and for the world. This is a God who “can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3.20), and who “works all things for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose” (Romans 8.28). This belief is a bit of a double-edged sword, for as much as it speaks to God’s ability to act positively in our lives, it also raises the big question of God’s justice, or ‘theodicy’. If God can act, why does God more often than not seem to sit by idly while evil runs amok? And that is the big, unanswerable question presented by belief in God. (As Job found out.)

So, what does all this mean for us and how we live our lives? What is the spirituality of God’s fatherhood and all-powerful governance? Again, it ought to lead us to humility before God and others. Before God, because it means that God is the source of everything in the world, including us, and because God has welcomed us into God’s household as adopted children, Before others, because it means we are all on the same level. It’s fascinating (and sad) that God’s fatherhood has so often been used to reinforce human power hierarchies, since what it really means is that we are all adopted children of God, and therefore siblings of one another, all reliant on God’s loving grace. God has created a family and invited us to be a part of it. And, as ‘Almighty’, God will stop at nothing to bring us back home. If God is Father, then we all belong and are at home in God.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty…