God the Father

“Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”

— 1 Corinthians 8:6

God the Father is the first person of the Trinity, distinguished from the Son and the Holy Spirit not by a lesser degree of deity but by paternity: he alone is unbegotten, “of none, neither begotten nor proceeding,” while the Son is eternally begotten of him and the Spirit proceeds from him.¹ Theologians have accordingly called him the fountain of the Godhead in order among the persons, not in essence: all three share the whole undivided divine being equally.² In redemption the Father sends the Son and the Spirit, and adopts believers as sons through Christ (Gal. 4:4-7).

Confessional Witness

The Father’s deity and his distinction from the Son and Spirit are basic to historic Christianity rather than a Reformed or Baptist distinctive; the Nicene Creed opens with him:

“We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”³

The Second London Baptist Confession states the same catholic doctrine as its own, locating the Father’s distinguishing property within the one undivided essence he shares with the Son and Spirit: “the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son.”¹ “Of none” is the confession’s term for what theologians call paternity: the Father alone has no origin in another divine person. This is a personal property, not a difference of nature. The confession immediately adds that Father, Son, and Spirit are together “one God, who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal relations.”¹ How the Son’s own personal property of eternal generation is to be understood belongs to eternal generation of the Son; how this order of persons bears on the historic East/West dispute over the Spirit’s procession belongs to the filioque question.

Biblical Basis

Paul confesses “one God, the Father, from whom are all things,” set alongside “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things” (1 Cor. 8:6), naming the Father specifically as the one from whom creation and salvation both come. Jesus prays that eternal life consists in knowing “the only true God” and “Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3), naming the Father as sender of the Son he has sent. The Father’s exclusive, mutual knowledge of the Son is itself part of what Scripture says the Father is: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). Paul traces every fatherhood, human and angelic, back to its source: he bows his knees “before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:14-15): human fatherhood is patterned after God’s, not God’s Fatherhood named by analogy to man’s.

The Father’s role as sender is stated most fully in Paul’s account of adoption: “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:4-6). Believers cry out to the Father with the same word the eternal Son himself uses (Mark 14:36), because the Spirit of the Son has been given them (Rom. 8:15-16). The Father’s own account of adoption, and its confessional statement, belong to adoption as its own topic; here the point is that the Father is its source and object: it is he who sends, he who adopts, and he to whom the adopted cry.

Historical Development

Origen (early third century) first called the Father the “fountain” of deity, in a way the church later judged subordinationist. Origen “derives the Trinity from the person of the Father, instead of God’s being,” representing the Father as “being of himself God,” the “fountain or root of deity,” and “superior to the Son.”⁴ On this account the Son’s deity is derivative and lesser than the Father’s own, a reading Arius later pressed further: Arius “emphasized the uniqueness and singularity of the one unbegotten and unoriginated God,” treating the Father’s unbegottenness as proof that the Father alone is fully God.⁵

The Council of Nicaea (AD 325) rejected this reading without abandoning the language of the Father as source. The creed condemns anyone who says the Son is “of another hypostasis or ousia” than the Father, or that the Son is alterable, changeable, or “came into being from non-existence.”⁵ Athanasius, chief defender of the Nicene decision, restated the Father’s priority in a way that no longer subordinates the Son: “the Father was always Father; fatherhood belongs to his very nature… Just as one cannot conceive of the sun apart from its light, nor of a spring apart from its water, so one cannot conceive of the Father apart from the Son.”⁶ Athanasius could still call the Father “the first principle and fountainhead of the Trinity,”⁶ but now as an eternal, necessary relation of persons within one essence, not as a claim that the Son’s deity is inferior or derived by the Father’s choice. Calvin later stated the same distinction against the same error: “in respect of order and gradation, the beginning of divinity is in the Father,” yet “the Father, in respect of his person, is unbegotten” while the Son and Spirit’s shared essence is not thereby lesser.² Whether a claim about the Father’s and Son’s relation keeps this Nicene distinction between order and essence, or drifts back toward Origen’s original sense, is the question at stake in the modern eternal functional subordination debate.

Objections and Responses

If Scripture and the fathers call the Father the “fountain” or “principle” of deity, doesn’t that make the Son and Spirit less than fully God? Only on Origen’s original, subordinationist use of the term, which the church rejected at Nicaea.⁴ In its corrected, orthodox sense, “fountain” names an eternal order of persons, not a difference of essence: the Father’s priority is that the Son is begotten of him and the Spirit proceeds from him, not that the Father possesses more of the one undivided Godhead than they do.² The confession’s own language, “one God, who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal relations,” is written to hold both together: real order among the persons, no inequality of essence.¹

Does calling God “Father” project human fatherhood onto God? Scripture states the relation the other way around: Paul bows his knees “before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:14-15). Human fatherhood takes its name and pattern from God’s, not the reverse; the Father’s fatherhood is not an analogy borrowed from human experience but belongs “to his very nature,” eternally and necessarily, before there was any human father to name after him.⁶

Related Doctrines

References

The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 3. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-46), book 1, chap. 13, sec. 25: “inasmuch as the Father is first in order, and of himself begat his own Wisdom, he… is justly regarded as the principle and fountain of all the Godhead. Thus God, taken indefinitely, is unbegotten, and the Father, in respect of his person, is unbegotten.” ↩ ↩² ↩³
Ronald E. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), chap. 10, “God the Father,” 105. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel.” ↩ ↩²
Craig A. Carter, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 7, “The Biblical Character of Pro-Nicene Theology.” ↩ ↩²
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel.” ↩ ↩² ↩³