God as (expectant) Father
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Author: John Schofield. John is a former Principal of an Anglican Ministerial Training Scheme |
The image of God as Father is of great significance to Christians, as it was, so the gospel writers tell us, how Jesus addressed God.
However, it can also be problematic, partly because many people have a bad experience of their own fathers, leading them to find it difficult to address God in that form, and partly because it perpetuates the myth that God is male. Though deeply embedded in the popular imagination, this is something that many people find does less than justice to the fullness of God; it also perpetuates male privilege, which has distorted the life of the churches over many centuries.
However, an image that has recently presented itself to me is of God as the expectant father. In these days when many - if not most - fathers are present at the birth of their children, then the picture of the expectant father pacing the space outside the delivery room has less traction than once it had. And yet, within the limitations of heteronormativity (and much of what follows works within that paradigm), it still speaks to me powerfully of the helplessness and powerlessness of the male parent who is nevertheless part of the creative process resulting in the birth.
Powerlessness is not necessarily an attribute that many ascribe to God. But we will come back to that.
Turning to the more common experience of a father's presence at the actual birth: alongside anxiety we can also see both delight and comfort: the father's shared delight at the birth (though the mother may not have experienced this during the birthing process itself, nor during the pregnancy), and the father's giving comfort – physical and emotional - to the mother.
Nevertheless, the father is still powerless, and has no control over what is taking place.
So may we in part rehabilitate the image of God as father by looking through the lenses of expectancy, powerlessness, delight and comfort? From birth, God is as delighted in the new person as God is in each and every person. Julian of Norwich writes powerfully about God delighting in us:
It is God’s will that we have true delight in him in our salvation. And in it He wants us to be greatly comforted and strengthened. So, joyfully, He wishes our souls to be occupied by his grace. We are His bliss because he endlessly delights in us and so, with His grace, we shall delight in Him.[1]
But the all too common Christian presentation of God as all-powerful and as judge still has a strong hold on minds, both Christian and post Christian. And with those pictures of God, we lose sight of God as source of delight, of delight in us.
This idea that God is an all-powerful Father (definitely with an upper case F) is reflected in the many instances of fathers attempting to impose their power, their will, on their children (and also on their partners). But God the expectant father is not like that. This God delights, this God comforts (as necessary), this God does not impose or control, but hopes and woos and lures. And in that sense God is a powerless parent (father). But it is the powerlessness of love, the powerlessness exhibited in the animals' feeding trough and on the cross.
Which would we rather have, power or love? It’s not as straightforward a question as it sounds. For while most would identify with God as love, in reality many opt for power - it seems a safer option: decisions are taken out of our hands, or God will (hopefully) intervene. But this all-powerful father image comes a cropper when we are faced with crisis. And then the cry goes up 'Why didn't God prevent this?' And often faith dissolves. But that is because God is not like that.
If we replace the concept of power with that of potential, then we get a very different picture. God becomes a God of potential, and God's delight is in the potential of each of God's children. It is the same with the expectant father - his delight and love at the birth of a new born is as much as anything delight in the gift of life, and his love is for the potential in and of that life. The same may be true of the mother - I obviously have no direct experience of motherhood, but what I have observed both in the birth of my own children and the births of others' children certainly suggests this is the case. Of the mother, so of the father: God as Amma as much as God as Abba. However, the very important question of about the role of mother as an image of God – another, and somewhat startling concept for its time, that we find in Julian of Norwich[2] – though both fascinating and important, is not the subject of this article.[3]
Pure unconditional love, such as the expectant father has towards the child yet unborn is the measure of what God is like. Extending the metaphor beyond birth, then the parent’s care, concern, delight and love for the growing child, which continues with something of the same sense of expectancy as is seen around birth, becomes a further expression of the character of God: God’s desire, God’s hope, God’s delight in each of us. As Irenaeus told us eighteen centuries ago, God became what we are so that we might what God is[4].
These images are as far from power and control as one can get. American theologian Thomas Jay Oord in his recent book The death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence[5] writes persuasively about how the idea of the omnipotence of God dies the death of a thousand qualifications and counters this with compellingly writing about how God is not just unconditional love, but also uncontrolling love. The fact that some fathers (and mothers) forget this does not invalidate the image of God the expectant father, expectant both around the birth and towards the life that has come into being and grows in its becoming, surrounded by care, love and delight. Of course, we must always remember that these are analogies, metaphors, and as such cannot be treated as equivalencies.
Nevertheless. this is a way of understanding the fatherhood of God with which resonates with me. It is of a piece with the realisation I had some years ago that one of the few times I feel comfortable with male language for God is when God weeps, or when I imagine God weeping with me and for me. For me, as a man, that is a powerful image. So too is this way of seeing God as the expectant father.
John Schofield
August 2024
[1] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 24.
[2] Eg: ‘Jesus Christ who sets good against evil is our real Mother … God is as really our Mother as he is our Father.’ Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 59 (and much else in this and the subsequent chapter).
[3] This different imagery for God could occasion further explorations about God within the whole of the parenting process, as hinted at in the next paragraph, with all its anticipation, even to God’s wondering about how to relate to this (new) person. But we must always remember that God is accessible through, but not reducible to, any image, concept or metaphor, which means these possibilities need to be played with, not shut down.
[4] This is how Irenaeus’s idea is generally expressed these days. The original (Against the Heresies, Book III, chapter 19) reads: He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God.
[5] Oord, Thomas Jay, 2023, The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence SacraSage Press
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John Schofield
Photo by Benji Aird on Unsplash |
Author:
John Schofield.
John is a former Principal of an Anglican Ministerial Training Scheme