God as Father in the Synoptic Gospels
Did Jesus believe in a doctrine of Universal Fatherhood? Such a belief not many years ago was almost axiomatic in Liberal Christian circles. ‘In the combination of these ideas—God the Father, Providence, the position of men as God's children, the infinite value of the human soul—the whole Gospe...
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| Format: | Electronic/Print Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
[1956]
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| In: |
New Testament studies
Year: 1956, Volume: 3, Issue: 1, Pages: 31-46 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Did Jesus believe in a doctrine of Universal Fatherhood? Such a belief not many years ago was almost axiomatic in Liberal Christian circles. ‘In the combination of these ideas—God the Father, Providence, the position of men as God's children, the infinite value of the human soul—the whole Gospel is expressed.’ But lately, after an examination of the gospel evidence, it has been denied that Jesus believed that God was the Father of all men. ‘In spite of what is commonly supposed, there is no ground whatever for asserting that Jesus taught a doctrine of “the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man”…There is no hint anywhere, either that he himself believed, or that he taught a doctrine of Universal Fatherhood.’ Professor Sparks arrives at this conclusion by considering all the times that Jesus is recorded as having used Father as a word for God. ‘The bulk of his recorded references to God as Father are Messianic; and apart from one, at the best ambiguous, reference in Matthew, all his references to God as the Father of men are in passages where he is speaking to his disciples’ (p. 260). With this we may compare the words of Dalman: ‘Much rather is God regarded as the Heavenly Father of His own disciples or else as the Heavenly Father of Jesus himself.’ Dalman indicates the unique personal relationship which subsists in the first place between God and Jesus himself, and also between God and those who are his, who can be spoken of as ‘sons of the theocracy’ (Matt. xiii. 38). |
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| ISSN: | 0028-6885 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: New Testament studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0028688500017422 |