God as Father

Abstract

THAT was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: and afterwards that which is spiritual.’ The notion of a divine parentage for nations, clans, or individuals, was common enough in the ancient world, and that not merely as figure of speech but as a statement of physical fact. Clans and nations, families and individuals traced their descent back to a divine ancestor, who was supposed to be in literal truth their progenitor. Whether or not this crude idea was ever entertained by the Semitic peoples in general or by the Hebrews in particular, it is already a more spiritual conception which meets us in the Old Testament. The few passages where a divine parentage might be understood in the physical sense are all cases where heathen or idolatrous cults are in question. The paternal relation of Jehovah to Israel is not at all conceived in physical terms. When once the crude idea of physical generation has been put on one side, the idea that God is the Father of a nation or an individual may be conceived in two ways, corresponding to the two aspects of the relation of father to child in the human sphere, which we call paternity and fatherhood.

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