Judging from the tone some apologists adopt, one cannot but conclude that their conception of Christian doctrine is that it is something in the nature of a derelict from ancient seas, drifted from its mediaeval anchorage and stranded now upon an inhospitable shore. Thankful we are to be if from the wreck we can obtain some fragments of its old-fashioned freight, and to be too aggressive even in that is matter for ridicule. It may be an unfounded suspicion, but something like that spirit seems to underlie this choice, presently tinder consideration, of the Apostles’ Creed as a statement of Christian faith. A poor salvage it must be that effects the rescue of only that. As it is natural, however, to value considerably above its inherent worth anything obtained under such circumstances, the ancient relic appears particularly valuable to some to-day. It is doubtless this that accounts for their reading into the various clauses of the Creed much that never could be read out of it.
Thus as to its opening announcement, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” we would perhaps scarcely be prepared to credit it with the amplitude some put upon it. It affirms, we are told, belief not only in God, but in “the Father,” and to this is given what is thought the value of the full Christian revelation of God in relation to His people. This greater and higher conception of God as the Father, brought to man, as it is so far rightly said, by Jesus Christ and the revelation He brought, is taken as declared accepted by the signatories to the creed. This may be so in the case of those who take it as now expounded; but in its original dress it scarcely seems to wear that complexion. As commonly understood, the words “the Father Almighty” are taken simply as distinctive of the first Person in the Godhead, the Son, and the Holy Spirit following in due order. No doubt much is implicit in all of these— “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” —as also in the simple baptismal formula of Matt. 28:1919Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: (Matthew 28:19), from which formula, by the way, many conceive the Apostles’ Creed to have originated. As stated, the term “Father” is a relative one, involving the idea of sonship. But it is surely to over-amplify the ancient confession to read into it here all that the name “Father” involves when used as designative of His relation to us, “sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” Sermonizing upon the term, it may certainly be legitimate to draw attention to it as expressive of His relation to men; but reading it in its place and context in the creed, it would seem rather to define the manner in which the First Person of the Godhead stands related to the Second— “Jesus Christ His only Son.”
Moreover there is a lack of precision in what is advanced as the particular truth expressed under this name of “Father” in its larger signification even. There seems to be confusion, or at all events lack of clear distinction between, two things quite separate and distinct, the natural man’s relation to God, and the Christian’s. The term implying paternal relationship appears in scripture certainly applicable to both classes. “Adam which was [the son] of God” (Luke 3:3838Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God. (Luke 3:38)), instances the nature of the link in the one case; and of the God “in whom we live and move and have our being” we are no doubt “the offspring,” as elsewhere expressed; but the Christian’s relationship by faith in Christ Jesus, making it possible for him, having the Spirit of adoption, to cry “Abba Father,” is a quite different and far transcending truth. This distinction may seem so evident as to make it unnecessary to be emphasized, yet here we are in presence of a marked failure to draw it, at any rate with anything like clearness. The universal fatherhood of God, as modernly conceived, was emphatically not the substance of Christ’s revelation, and however true it may be that Philip’s “show us the Father and it sufficeth us” voices the universally felt need of the human heart, and that Christ’s answer, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” is the Christian revelation of God epitomized, and direct answer to that need, it is on another plane than that of nature, where this revelation is received, and this relationship enjoyed. “I have manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world.” “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Nothing is more common than this confusion of the divine fatherhood in relation to man generally with that to believers in particular, or rather the absorption of the one into the other.
Here again is an instance of failing to give its distinctive place to what the New Testament teaches. For, leaving aside the Old Testament, what can be clearer in the New than that, consequent on the accomplished redemption it proclaims, part of the blessing it announces as the distinctive portion of believers, is their participation, theirs peculiarly, in the place and position of children and sons of God. Not only in the nature of the link itself do the two relationships differ, the one true of all who to Him as their Creator owe their being; the other a spiritual birth-tie existing in virtue of a divine operation of grace in the soul of one who is born again, born of God; but all round, as to their essential nature, the plane upon which they are realized, and the position of privilege and responsibility into which they severally introduce, the two things are wide as the poles asunder.
And even when a measure of distinction is seen to be called for by what the New Testament adds, more particularly by what the Lord Jesus Himself proclaims, it is largely misconceived. As parallel in its reasoning with the lecture at this point, and slightly more explicit, take a recent attempt, in a handbook on the “Life and Teaching of Christ,” to define what He teaches on the subject. Under the heading, “Subject matter of the teaching,” “God the Father” is taken as title of the first item. “Every new religion,” it is said, “begins in a new revelation of God, or in a new emphasis upon some hitherto half-understood aspect of the divine nature. Just as the starting-point of the religion of Israel was the new name of Yahveh given to God, so it is often claimed that the central point in the doctrine of Jesus is His conception of the fatherhood of God. There is, of course, nothing new in the idea. Jesus accepts a name for God which was already familiar; but fills it with a content and meaning of His own.” What then is this new content and meaning given to the idea not in itself original? “He speaks to the disciples of ‘My Father and yours,’ and teaches them to pray, ‘Our Father which art in heaven.’ This means a considerable advance upon the old conception of a Fatherhood derived from the fact of creation or generation.” Doubtless! In what then does it consist? “With Jesus the term ‘Fatherhood ‘ describes even something more than a relationship,” etc. The idea seems to be that Christ’s teaching carries the thought of God being Father beyond anything like the genetic sense it already had, and gives it rather an ethical significance. The Fatherliness of God rather than His Fathership is what is insisted on.
This elaboration of the idea of God’s Fatherhood, remark, leaves it still on the old ground, on the same plane as formerly. It is in no sense a new relationship opened up. With Jesus the term fatherhood “in the first place gives the essence or spirit which determines God’s action and lies behind it all,” either in redemption, as seen in the parable of the prodigal son, or in providence, as shown in the teaching of the Sermon on the mount. “The originality of His conception of the divine Fatherhood comes out in the stress which He lays upon the love of God. God is the Father of all men because He loves them.” In the second place, “He presents us with a new conception of the natural attitude of the soul to God under the figure of the filial relationship, in which there is a fine blending of childlike trust and godly fear, especially illustrated in His teaching in regard to prayer.” Finally, “It was not the least among the aims of the teaching of Jesus to bring home to men first the fact of this divine relationship, and then to show them the way to its fuller realization.” And is this all that is original in the “teaching of Jesus” on the topic of relationship with God? All that is to be learned from Him who, at the close of His ministry on earth, claimed as His peculiar prerogative, and accomplished mission, to have manifested the Father’s name? Who spoke of an hour coming when anything enigmatic about His disclosures to His disciples should be a thing of the past, and He would show them plainly of the Father? And who could give, as sufficient answer to the request, “Show us the Father,” the declaration, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”?
How short, how very far short of an adequate presentation of the full Christian revelation this mere bringing into prominence of an unoriginal idea comes! How little apprehension of a new relationship with God through being born again spiritually, a relationship founded on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, entered upon in association with the Son of God in resurrection, its basis essentially the possession of eternal life in Him, and God’s sending forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, “Abba Father.” This, and no mere fuller realization of filial relationship on the plane of nature, gives “the full range and meaning and significance of sonship.” The confusion no doubt arises from the fact that in the revelation Christ brought there was undoubtedly that which had to say to men at large, as well as to those chosen out of the world as the special objects and recipients of His testimony. It is truly said, “While nature’s testimony and conscience’s witness evidence respectively God’s eternal power and divinity, and His righteous and holy character, neither of them gave the revelation of the Father. It was reserved for the Lord Jesus Christ to make Him known to sinners as a God of love.” Blessedly true it is that through Christ was shown the sovereign matchless love of God to a sinful world, the true unfolding of the Father’s heart towards His prodigals in the far country, if so it may be taken; but even this in no wise exhausts the fullness of that revelation of the Father concerning which it is said “the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”
If it is a truly great and effective contrast that John draws in the statement, “The law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,” a contrast not less striking we may see between what we learn of that tie of relationship between God and the members of the human family, owned still in spite of their fallen state, and what “eternal ages shall declare” of “those who, with Thy Son, shall share A son’s eternal place.” It was of this wonderful place and portion, to be enjoyed consequent on redemption and the coming of the Spirit, that our blessed Lord spoke continually. The fourth Gospel, in particular, gives full testimony to it. In how rich measure, in chapters 14 to 17 especially, containing His last words to His own, have we that manifesting of the Father’s name to the men given Him by the Father out of the world that He speaks of in His prayer (17:6). “I have made known to them thy name,” He said in closing, “and will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” The “declaring thy name unto my brethren,” as He did most unequivocally in resurrection— “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God” —was surely the primary instance at least of His going on to make the Father known.
All this is involved in “that new conception of God, which burst forth into one word, religion’s ultimate, ‘Abba, Father.’” It may very well be questioned, then, if the statement of the creed has accommodation for all that is wrapt up in that wondrous name of relationship, “the Father.” More probably it was compiled, as it is by many recited, in much ignorance of this.
(Continued from page 32)
(To be continued)
[J. T.]