On the way here, as we were traveling across America last week, I saw the film _The War of the Worlds._ If you haven’t yet seen it, I heartily recommend the monsters, and the film contains great scenes carnage and destruction. It also has very satisfying scenes of the evil aliens getting their come-uppance. And, for us literary purists, the overall outline of the screenplay follows H. G. Wells’ tale pretty closely.
Running through the film, however, was a sub-plot about families, and particularly about fathers. The protagonist is a man named Ray Farrier, who turns out to be a really bummer of a father. He is divorced from the wife of his two children. His two children harbor intense resentments of him, and watching Dad Farrier relate to these two children we get to see a great many ways in which his fatherhood is deficient. And all this weaves together with the story of the invading aliens in this way – in many places, where Ray Farrier desires more than anything else to play the part of the father toward his son and daughter, he is crippled by the fact that he has not been a father.
After the film someone asked my wife if she thought the film was pro-family or anti-family. She replied that she thought the film was very pro-family, but in a negative sort of way. If you want to paint a picture of a triangle, you can do it two ways. You can present a triangle positively by painting a three-sided figure in some bold color and contrasts sharply with the background. Or you can do this negatively, by painting everything else in the background, leaving the triangle completely engendered, so that you finally see the triangle in terms of its absence. That’s how the film War of the World portrays fatherhood – it doesn’t give you a picture of a genuine father. Instead, it shows you what happens when there is no bona fide father. And, by looking at all the mistakes, the deficiencies, the tragedies, and the problems of missing fatherhood, you begin to sense how wonderful real fatherhood actually is when it’s present.
Watching a film like War of the Worlds easily prompts the question, “What, then, is a father?” If we ask ourselves that question, we can seek an answer in two ways. The most common way to get an answer to that question is to go to the Christian Bookstore, or look at an online Christian book distributor and search for titles with the word “Father” in them. If you do this, you will come up with a myriad number of books about fathers and fatherhood. And, most of them will be recipe books. Fathers do this and that, fathers avoid doing this and that. A far fewer number of books will present us case studies or small biographies of men who are deemed by the author to be good fathers. The idea is that we shall read these small biographies and attempt to mimic the lives of these model fathers.
The recipe approach is the least satisfactory, for so much of the recipe is modeled on current fashions in fatherhood. The case-study approach is somewhat better, for at the very least it is showing us some hard data about the manners and lives of men who have a reputation for authentic fatherhood.
There is an even better way to get at the meaning and essence of fatherhood, and we saw an example of this way this morning when we looked into Ephesians chapter 5. There we discovered what the Apostle Paul calls a Great Mystery. What we learned there is that human marriage – even marriage among unbelievers – is designed by God with an ultimate marriage in mind, the consummation of the age in the marriage Supper of the Lamb, when Christ the Bridegroom is united with his Bride the Church. Said another way, the meaning of your marriage and my marriage, the meaning of any marriage is not to be found in parts that make it up. Rather, individual human marriages take their shape, meaning, and destiny from a cosmic marriage at the end of the age. That marriage is the ultimate reality, our marriages, even the very first marriage in Eden – all of them are the shadows cast by that final marriage at the end of time.
There is a similar way to get at the notion of fatherhood, and we can also find it in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. In the third chapter of this letter, Paul writes these words,
“For this reason, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth takes its name, that he would grant to you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man …”
Buried in these words is the meaning of fatherhood, and I propose now to begin digging that out.
The first bit of digging will begin the word commonly translated “family” in verse 15. It is the Greek word patria, and it is the abstract noun which means “fatherhood” or “fatherliness” – the quality and characteristics and essence of being a father. A derivative meaning of patria is, indeed, “family” because families are what results from fatherhood. They are a chief expression of fatherhood – not just children or offspring, but entire families, extended families, clans, or tribes. The fatherhood of Abram or Isaac or Jacob is manifest in the nation Israel. The fatherhood of Judah or Levi or Simeon or Issacar or Benjamin is made manifest in the tribes which bear the names of their Fathers. Paul tells us in one place that he is a member of the Tribe of Benjamin – a family grouping that originates with one father, Benjamin the son of Jacob and Rachel.
So, why do modern translations render this word “family” in Ephesians 3:14? Well, I do not know exactly, but I do note two things. The more recent translations are beginning to acknowledge – sometimes in footnotes, and sometimes in the very renderings of this verse that the word means “fatherhood.” In doing this, modern translations are doing nothing new. Instead, they are going back to the earliest writings of the fathers of our faith. When we look at their writing, we find that they obviously understand it to mean “fatherhood.”
Indeed, Paul’s prose here almost certainly demands the sense “fatherhood.” The word Father in Paul’s Greek text is “pater.” If we leave these words untranslated, and speak the Greek words instead, we can experience what a Greek reader would have experienced with these words:
I bow my knees to the pater, from whom all Patria in heaven and on earth takes its name.
Or, if we are to achieve the same effect in English, we would render it like this: “I bow my knee to the Father, from whom all Fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its name …”
Now, if this is the correct rendering of Paul’s words, several things follow immediately concerning the meaning and nature of Fatherhood. Let me begin to list them.
First of all, the word “Father” AS IT REFERS TO GOD is NOT a metaphor or any other figure of speech. We do NOT call God FATHER because he resembles dear old Dad in some ways. The situation is exactly the reverse: we men are called fathers ONLY IF as WE resemble the everlasting Father.
The Church I attend is named for Saint Athanasius, a great hero of the faith in the Fourth Century. Over 1600 years ago, Saint Athanasius wrote this about Paul’s words here in Ephesians 3:
“God does not pattern himself on men,[…instead] God is properly and alone truly the Father of his Son, [and for this reason] we men are also called fathers of our own children; for from him ‘all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.’” According to Athanasius, God is not called father because he happens to resemble earthly fathers. On the contrary, earthly fathers are properly called father only when they resemble God the Father.
[Discourse Against the Arians 1.23]
But Saint Athanasius was NOT THE ONLY Father of our Faith who read Ephesians 3:14 in this way. Other giants of the early theological era of the Church HEARD the same thing in Paul’s words, among them St. Gregory Nazianzen and Saint Basil (Homiliae 24), St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis 6.1.; 7.1), St. Maximus the Confessor (Scholia 2.3), and St. John of Damascus. (De Fide Orthodoxa 1.8).
Indeed, from Saint Athanasius we learn of two variations of the Nicene Creed that were in use in his day. Both of the begin like this: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator and Maker of all things, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named” (De Synodis 25 and 27).” St. Jerome interpreted Ephesians 3:14 the same way as Athanasius. Jerome insisted that THE ONLY TRUE FATHER is God, and that EARTHLY fathers can be CALLED fathers only extending the idea of fatherhood to include them (In Ephesios, ad hoc).
In the Western Church, this understanding of Ephesians was exemplified by St. Augustine in his monumental work entitled “On the Trinity.” (De Trinities 4.20.29,) Jumping ahead to Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica (I.33.2), he cited Ephesians 3:14. as his authority saying that that the name Father applies to the First Person of the Holy Trinity more than to any other instance of fatherhood we can name. Aquinas explicitly DENIES that calling God Father is a METAPHOR at all. Instead, Aquinas asserts that “properly and not metaphorically [Jesus] is said to be the Son, and his origin [is] the Father.” Aquinas’ point is the same one we have laid out already: the fatherhood OF GOD is the source of HUMAN fatherhood, not the other way around.
To sum up this point, we are dealing here with a doctrine taught and held by the entire ancient Eastern and Western Church for the first 1,000 years of its existence. Consequently, our calling God Father is NOT to be explained as a distant echo from some long-ago patriarchal society. “Quite the contrary,” says Patrick Henry Reardon. “The patriarchal structure of the family and of the Church is BASED on the patriarchal structure of the Holy Trinity, NOT the other way around. A godly ordered human society is patriarchal, because the eternal divine society is patriarchal. Patriarchy is the inalterable structure of reality.” [Reardon, _Touchstone_, http://touchstonemag.com/archives/print.php?id=14-01-053-f]
Now, how does all this answer the question that POPS UP in a viewing of the film _War of the Worlds_? What does ALL THIS tell us when we ask “What is a father?”
Well, to put the matter bluntly, Paul in Ephesians 3:14 is telling us THIS: human males are properly called father only insofar as they mimic God in His eternal fatherhood. Paul is TELLING us that ALL fatherhood in heaven and on earth – that is, all CREATURELY fatherhood – ALL OF IT is derivative. Without the eternal father, there would be no human fatherhood. And where WE DO FIND human fatherhood – fatherhood that is TRULY in the image of the eternal father – THAT HUMAN FATHERHOOD takes its name from the everlasting Father. In other words, the character of fatherhood, the roles of fatherhood, the THINGS fatherhood DOES and HOW it does them – ALL THESE on a human scale are CREATURELY reflections of God’s fatherhood. Men, if you wish to be a good father, learn about the Eternal Father and copy him. If you wish to be a credible copy of the Eternal Father, become a good son of the Eternal Father.
At this point, I must say SOMETHING about how this view of fatherhood relates to MARRIAGE. Clearly, everywhere in the Bible, it is expected that marriage provides the CONTEXT for a man’s fatherhood to play out by generating children. Sex and procreation of children within marriage are HOW a man encounters those TO WHOM he functions as a father.
Having said that, however, we also know from sad experience that the act of siring a child does NOT MAKE the man a father, except in the most PRELIMINARY sense. All of us can think of people who do not even know the man who sired them, because he ran away from his fatherhood. All of us know children who live with their sires, but those men are anything but fatherly. Fatherhood is NOT A STATUS conferred by a biological event. FATHERHOOD is a RELATIONSHIP between two people, a relationship which in the ORDINARY course of events MERELY BEGINS with the birth of a baby. But that beginning guarantees nothing EXCEPT that a father-son or a father-daughter relationship becomes possible. For the relationship to proceed, the man must step up to the plate. Fatherhood is a CHOICE that a man MAKES – a choice to relate to his child in certain ways, a choice to TAKE UP certain responsibilities toward his son or daughter, responsibilities which he DOES NOT take up with respect to another man’s children, because he is not their father.
To understand what I’m talking about here, consider this fatherly role: disciplining one’s own children. If your child misbehaves in the grocery store, then because you are the father you SAY AND DO things to corral that misbehavior. This is proper and good. The Bible requires this of fathers.
But, if a child THAT IS NOT YOURS misbehaves exactly the same way and you say and do things to corral that behavior – well, you will likely find YOUR SELF being corralled by the father of the child. Why? It’s not because your corralling misbehavior is something so very evil – rather it is because YOU are extending fatherly functions toward SOMEONE who is not ACTUALLY your child. To discipline another man’s children is to ASSERT a relationship which does not in fact exist. And you’ll usually find yourself in a lot of hot water if you try to do this.
Now, this example shows us SOMETHING ELSE about Fatherhood. BECAUSE fatherhood is a choice, it is a choice that can be directed at those who are NOT your biological offspring. This is what happens in an adoption: a man chooses to be a father to someone who is not his biological offspring. Adoptive fathers can and do function with every bit as much success as biological fathers. Again, this is because fatherhood is a choice by the man to relate in certain ways to son or daughter.
Of course, it should be easy to see now how the term father gets applied to those who are not biological or adoptive parents. The Apostle Paul himself, for example, was a father to his disciple Timothy. Paul adopted a special relationship toward the church at Corinth, and he insisted that though they had many teachers in Christ, they had only one father – and that father was Paul, for as he said, “I have begotten you in the gospel.” This might be dismissed as so much metaphorical language, but as you read rapidly through the Corinthian epistles you will easily see all the marks of bona fide fatherhood in the way Paul engages the Corinthian believers.
In fact, if you REALLY want to see this kind of thing highlighted, I suggest you find a copy of Clement’s letter to the Corinthians. Within a few years after Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome, there arose a leader in the church at Rome named Clement. He is acknowledged by Roman Catholics to have been the third pope, after Peter and Linus. This Bishop of Rome wrote a letter to the Church at Corinth. If you read Clement’s letter, you will notice two things about it.
First of all, the problems that Paul was engaging in his letters to Corinth are still there, particularly the problems arising from partisanship, from the Corinthian Christians fastening themselves to specific teachers and then fighting among themselves as to which teacher was the better one. Clement’s letter shows that this problem is still flourishing in Corinth.
The second thing you will notice is a marked difference in tone. Clement writes to the Corinthians almost as a peer. He offers several paragraphs of flowery praise at the beginning, and only VERY slowly does he move toward discussing the party-spirit that is fracturing the Corinthian church into little splinter groups. He offers encouragement. He pleads, he cajoles. But, no where in Clement’s letter does he get close to speaking as Paul speaks. Paul speaks as a father to misbehaving children. Clement speaks to them as a distant, brotherly neighbor, who wishes they would get over themselves and stop fighting.
The point is this: You do not have to biologically sire children to be a father. You may adopt children instead. Indeed, Paul tells us that all of us are adopted children of God. By nature, we are children of wrath. By grace we have been adopted as sons. Nor do you even have to adopt children to be a father. Fatherhood is a choice to be fatherly toward someone else – and you may chose to be fatherly even toward those whom you have not legally adopted to be the heirs of your estate. Paul was a father to Timothy.
In fact, the term “Fathers of the Church” is not a sweet title for some long dead men. All Christians have fathers in the faith. Mine are Gilbert Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Henry Morris. These men do not even know they are my fathers in the faith. Well, perhaps Lewis and Chesterton and Schaeffer know this, if they can look down from heaven and see who is reading their books and taking them to heart.
I want to acknowledge that I haven’t said a whole lot thus far about what it looks like when a man is acting the part of a father, a true father, because he is taking his cues about the nature and function of fatherhood from the eternal father. Not only have I said little thus far, I’m not going to say much. This is the study of a lifetime, and we don’t have time for that in the next few minutes.
I would point, however, to a couple of ways in which earthly fathers are like the eternal Father. A couple of them are in the very prayer that prayed for all believers.
First of all, fathers set the tempo, set the style, set the agendas, set the courses for the families which they head. That is the essence of what it means to say that all fatherhood in heaven and earth takes its name from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. One father sets the meaning and function of all other fatherhood. And individual fathers do the same, in limited but discernible ways, for their own families.
A particularly successful father may set in motion any number of things for several generations that flow from him. In particular, men are always going to look to their own fathers as reference points when they undertake to be fathers themselves. If one is fortunate enough to know ones grandfathers, or even ones great grandfathers, what you learn from them is often decisive in a young man’s choices in how he will develop his own calling as a father.
Paul prays that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ would strengthen believers. This is another very common feature of godly fatherhood – to strengthen the members of their families as they grow and expand. This can take many forms – encouragement, counsel, admonition are obvious ways fathers do this. Sheer monetary assistance is another way it often happens, when the earthly father has amassed resources during his life, which he then deploys to strengthen and empower those in his own family.
The author of Hebrews mentions yet another way earthly fathers mimic the actions and goals of our heavenly father. In Hebrews 12, beginning at verse 5 we read this:
“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? … Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected u, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? “
Again, this is an area that is vast in its implications and in the time we could take to expound it. I will leave that for your pastor to do at another time. For now, I simply wish to repeat the point that human fathers – when they are truly worthy of bearing the name father – are worthy precisely because their fatherhood is a creaturely expression of God’s divine fatherhood.
I would like to close with a bit of advice to those here tonight who aspire to be better fathers, or to those who hope one day to become a father to others. I have shown you how Paul says that your fatherhood – at its truest and best – will be a fatherhood derived from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we were, therefore, to seek a simple and specific way to ensure that our fatherhood would be like that, what would that way be like?
I think some of you have already guessed the answer. We become fathers like the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in exactly the same way that any ordinary man becomes like his own earthly father – by being a good son. And, we have a pattern in that as well – Jesus Christ, who modeled perfect sonship toward us, with the result that he was also the perfect revelation of His father in heaven.
God grant that we should not only be good sons to our earthly fathers, but find grace to be good and godly Sons to our Father in Heaven. May Christ our Savior also save us in this – that in conformity to his image, we do as he commanded us – to be come perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect. And, may the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus Christ from the dead raise us out of the folly and vanity of this life, so that in our relationship to our children and to others, we may provide them with those good gifts that come from Father of Spirits.
Let us Pray.
O Father of lights, from whom comes ever good and perfect gift, grant that we men may prove to be good sons to our earthly fathers and also good sons to You, who have called us to eternal life in your Son, to the end that we may reflect in our very being a fatherhood that glorifies you as we counsel, comfort, and encourage those in the household of God. We ask this in the name of the one who ever knows you as the everlasting Father, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
