Our Father: Did Jesus Define His Term?
Outlook Jerusalem Correspondent
As a name for God the word father appears 187 times in the Gospels (usually on the lips of Jesus). Great philosophers and theologians define their terms. Can Jesus be placed into the category of a theologian and does he define the word father or does he simply use it?
After spending the past 30 years on the first part of this question, I am deeply convinced that Jesus is the major theologian of the New Testament. In regard to the second question, we can answer — yes, Jesus defined his term and we here intend to reflect on that definition.
Curiously, the Western mind seems able easily to see Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and Peter as theologians but hesitates to place Jesus in that same category. The reasons for this are complicated and beyond the scope of this brief study. However, we can note that Jesus is a metaphorical rather than a systematic theologian.
The metaphorical theologian creates meaning through metaphor, not through logic. When Jesus is looked at through this lens, he then appears as a brilliant theologian.
With this definition in mind, we turn to the second question noted above and ask if Jesus defined the term father or simply left his audience to supply their own definition shaped by their culture and experience. Indeed Jesus defined the term father, but did so in a story, not in a rational concept. His definition appears in the famous parable the Prodigal Son.
What precise picture of father does this story give us? In at least four places the image is clearly defined when the culture of the Middle East is taken seriously. These are as follows:
1. When the younger son (Luke 15:12) asks for his inheritance, everyone knows he means “Dad, why don’t you drop dead!” Such a request is unthinkable. Any self-respecting Middle Eastern father would drive the boy out of the house with a sharp slap across the face with the back of his hand. Middle Eastern culture demands it. The insult to the father is deep and unforgivable.
To the amazement of the Middle Eastern listener to the parable, the father in the story does what no Middle Eastern father will ever do: He grants the request. From that point on, the father endures the agony of rejected love, which is the deepest pain known to the human spirit. Furthermore, by granting the request the father offers with it ultimate freedom — the freedom to reject the love the father offers and (presumably) has always offered.
2. The son then asserts the right to sell. Modern scholarship has determined that “he gathered all he had” (RSV, Luke 15:13) is better translated, “the younger son turned the whole of his share into cash” (NEB).
First century Jewish law (spelled out in the Mishnah) specifies that a father may make an oral will and formally divide his estate, but it takes effect only after the father dies. In the meantime, neither the owner nor the heirs can sell the assets. But in the parable the boy sells. The father lets him do it. That is, a further unheard-of costly expression of love and freedom is offered.
3. On the younger son’s return, the father runs down the village street and subjects himself to mockery in the process. Robes in New Testament times reached the ground, as is evidenced in the Talmud. Both Aristotle and Ben Sira affirm in pre-Christian times that a gentleman is known by his walk. These practices persist, and in the Old City of Jerusalem today, Muslim and Christian religious figures move through the narrow streets of the city with the slow, stately pace of the classical dignified gentleman.
But no, in the parable the father runs down the street and thereby offers a costly demonstration of unexpected love. This demonstration overwhelms the boy as he says only, “I am no more worthy to be called your son.” He then does complete his plan and offer to become a paid worker in his father’s house (and presumably try to pay the lost money back).
4. The older son (like his brother) is “in the field.” The older son (like his brother) “returns” to the house but with the assumptions of a master-slave relationship with the father. On reaching the courtyard of the house, the older son (like his brother) deeply insults his father. The older son does so by refusing to enter a banquet hall with some 200 of his father’s guests. They will eat the calf that night; they must; there is no way to preserve it.
The entire village is watching and listening. The father is expected to thrash the boy. Rather, the father now offers a second costly demonstration of unexpected love. In public humiliation, he reaches out to the boy. When insulted and attacked, the father addresses the older son with a tender word (teknon) which means “my beloved son.” The older son’s final response is then deliberately missing.
In each of these four cases the father acts in an unexpected manner. This is not a picture of a Middle Eastern father as he is known in either Middle Eastern reality or in Western myth of what the West thinks a Middle Eastern father is like. That is, Jesus does not take the model for his favorite title for God from the culture of the Middle East. Within that culture he creates a brilliant image with which to mirror his perceptions of what the Heavenly Father is like. If we in the Church (East or West) have taken either an Eastern father or a Western father as a symbol for God we have erred and should repent.
There is no precedent from Jesus which allows for such a violation of his intent. In some contemporary literature there appear to be two lists developing. These are: (1) father means rule, order, discipline, judgment, authority, power, force and (occasionally) violence; (2) mother means love, compassion, suffering, new birth, gentleness, tenderness, kindness, patience, forgiveness, yearning for reconciliation, creativity and a love that will not let us go.
I see the polarizations implied by these two lists as sad commentaries on many things. My first question is, Are all American fathers that bad? My second is, Are all American mothers that good? But leaving those two questions aside, my appeal here is for a fair historical evaluation of the intent of Jesus when he describes God as Father.
If the American father has disintegrated into the “macho” characteristics of the above list, then tragedy has struck the American family. But what does this have to do with Jesus and his intentions?
Isaiah names God as “our Father” (Isaiah 63:16; 64:8). Isaiah then goes on to describe God with these words “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you.” That is, Isaiah calls God Father and the nature of that God includes the compassion of a mother. So with Jesus, a mother might run down the road to welcome a wayward boy and shower him with kisses. No one expects a father to do so.
Thus is it not possible to see Jesus as starting with Isaiah and turning images into a story? Is it not this metaphorical definition that should fill our imaginations when we pray “Our Father …?” Should not Jesus’ own definition be given full weight in any consideration of the continued use in our day of the name for God that Jesus taught His disciples to use?
Dr. Kenneth E. Bailey
The Presbyterian Outlook, Vol. 171, Number 24, June 19, 1989, pp. 6-7.