The Fatherhood Metaphor
Understanding and approaching metaphors in the Bible, especially "fatherhood."
As I recently mentioned
I’ve started working on a new project that explores the gospel according to the Parable of the Prodigal Son. One of the most beautiful aspects of the parable, as well as the Bible, is the way it talks about God like a father. At the same time however, I’ve found that fatherhood language can be tricky.
When I was a kid, my dad died of cancer.
I also grew up in Christian spaces where we talked about God as a father a lot. That’s a normal and fine thing to do, but if you’ve lost a father than you know how it can get complicated. Sometimes, I found the idea of God as a father comforting. It was nice to believe that God stepped into the hole of my story to be for me, what I had lost. I still find that beautiful. At the same time fatherhood language felt a bit like Father’s Day, a painful reminder of absence. Sure, God is like a father, but God is not my dad.
Dealing with Metaphors
I bring this up because I want to talk about how we deal with Biblical metaphors.
“Father” is a metaphor for God intended to help us understand what God is like. It’s one metaphor among many that the Biblical writers employ to help us understand God. In Isaiah 49 and 66, the prophet used motherhood language to describe God. These metaphors are used to illustrate and highlight features of God’s nature. God can be like a mother or a father, but God can also be like a lion, a lamb, a rock, an artist, a shepherd, a fortress, a shield, a slice of bread, a glass of water. When we encounter metaphors in the Bible, we’re being invited to interrogate the images to discover what they do and do not reveal about God. Metaphors press on the boundaries we often put on God but when we overly commit to one metaphor, at the expense of the others, we risk displacing God with an idol.
Metaphors press on the boundaries we often put on God but when we overly commit to one metaphor, at the expense of the others, we risk displacing God with an idol.
Whenever we’re engaging a biblical metaphor, we should ask both/ and questions. How is God both like and unlike a father? What does fatherhood reveal about God and what does it conceal? This enable us to deal with the biblical metaphors more accurately and as theologian Bradley Jersak, says, “If we can rise above either/or assumptions and assertions that would box God in, we’ll be able to remember and recount our personal both/an experience of God.”[1] We can love and cherish the image of God as a father while at the same time naming, lamenting, and celebrating the ways in which God is unlike a father.
We can love and cherish the image of God as a father while at the same time naming, lamenting, and celebrating the ways in which God is unlike a father.
Secondly, metaphors borrow from culture but don’t necessarily endorse it. To say God is like a father, does not mean God endorsed the Roman law of patria potestas (power of a father) that gave fathers virtual ownership over their wives and children. In fact, I believe God used the metaphor of father in the world of patria potestas to present a profoundly alternative picture of God’s relationship with and to us. In the same way when we look at God as a father, we’re invited to see how God might be disrupting, transforming, and upending our modern conceptions of fatherhood. And just as that is true culturally, it’s true for us personally.
The invitation for us is to ask how is God like and unlike fathers. Believing God is like a father does not mean we have to believe God is like the patriarchal, exclusionary, or coercive visions we’ve received. As we read about the father in the parable of the prodigals’ sons, with a willingness to ask both/ and questions, we’re engaging an image that calls out cultural visions of fatherhood that have been projected onto God in idolizing ways. Which in turns gives us the power to call out our own “fathers” in light of God’s self-disclosure. God as father enables us to interrogate our own understandings, challenge projections, and even call out manifestations of fatherhood that run contrary to the one revealed in God.
Jesus’ life and ministry was the initiation of a renewed conversation about what God is like.
I think that’s exactly what Jesus’ is helping us do. Jesus’ life and ministry was the initiation of a renewed conversation about what God is like. He’ll often say things like, “you’ve heard it said, but I tell you, (See Matt. 5) as a way of provoking his listeners to consider anew and ask their own both/ and questions. That’s exactly what’s happening in the parable of the prodigal sons. Jesus uses language and characters his audience were familiar with. Even talking about God as a father wasn’t new to Israel (Is. 63:16). But, then Jesus does something interesting, he takes that familiar imagery and both / ands it to show us something new in effect saying, “you’ve heard that God is like a father, but I’m here to show you a picture of a father that may not look like your image of God.”
[1] Jersak, A More Christlike God, 6.
In a group I am part of, we talked about using words for the trinity that are not tied up in earthly relationships. I like Creator, redeemer and sustainer, as one replacement set. Father is loaded and it, along with son, has a gender. For me, the terms somehow narrow rather than expand the persons of God.