A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Gerald O’Collins on naming the Trinity

Lots of good comments in the post below.

Prior to this discussion I’d been reading Gerald O’Collins’s The Tripersonal God: Understanding and Interpreting the Trinity. He has some things to say on naming the Trinity that might be helpful:

When the Trinity is named, God the Father functions validly if we align ourselves with the meanings communicated in that metaphor by the biblical witnesses (above all, by Jesus himself) and refuse to literalize it. It is these meanings that convey true information about the tripersonal God. Father names personally the God revealed in Israel’s history and known relationally as the Abba of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection (together with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit). Father fixes the reference when Christians speak distinctively of the tripersonal God and what they believe the Trinity to be like. The image and language of Abba emerged from Jesus’ specific experience of God. Once we agree that language and experience, while distinguishable, belong inseparably to each other, we would misrepresent Jesus’ experience if we insisted on replacing his central language for God. Fidelity to Jesus calls on believers to name the first person of the Trinity primarily as Father, which entails acknowledging Jesus himself (though once again not exclusively) as the Son of God.

By not arguing for an exclusive use of male names, I recognize that we do and should also use other names: Such a gender-neutral name as Creator for the first person of the Trinity and such a female name as Wisdom for the second person. Once we move beyond trinitarian formulations, many possibilities open up: well over 100 distinctive names for Jesus in the NT alone and “God” (in the form of ho Theos) as the name with which the NT often designates God the Father. The question at issue is not the use of other distinctive names but rather the primary way of naming the Trinity when we use trinitarian formulations, and–in particular–the name Father for the first person. (p. 186)

The key points here, it seems to me, are that “Father” fixes the reference to the God of Jesus, and that language and experience are inseparable, so we can’t simply assume that we can retain the same meaning with a change of language. It’s fidelity to Jesus and his experience of God, not some vague idea we may have about “fatherhood,” that licenses the use of “Father” to address the first person of the Trinity. If anything, in the biblical tradition the character of God defines and sets the standard of fatherhood that human fathers are measured against, rather than being a projection of human qualities onto God.

Later Fr. O’Collins writes:

Suppressing the traditional naming of the Trinity would mean loss rather than gain. Such alternate proposals for the first person as Source and Parent sound remote, even impersonal, and nowhere near as directly relational as Father. Unquestionably, these alternatives contain or imply some personal and relational elements and are not intended to subvert Christian belief in a personal God. But if we try using (exclusively?) Source, Parent, and so forth as forms of address to God, we will perceive the superiority of Father. Some of the alternative triads (e.g., Creator, Christ, and Spirit) have a strong Arian flavor about them, as if only the first person of the Trinity were properly divine, possessed the power of creation, and had in fact freely created out of nothing Christ and the Spirit. One might object here that Hilary of Poitiers said something similar when he wrote of faith “in the Creator, the Only-Begotten, and the Gift.” Yet, he used such language immediately after recalling Jesus’ mandate to baptize “in the name of the Farther, and the Son, adn of the Holy Spirit” (De Trinitate, 2.1.33). The context for Hilary’s alternate triad removed any sense of Arian ambiguity.

Although it may claim some kind of NT pedigree (perhaps in Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30), “Child” (as in Parent, Child, and Paraclete and Father, Child, and Mother) seems to depricate the second person of the Trinity, as if the Son were not yet properly mature. Moreover, to use Father, Child, and Mother could seem a little like a rerun of a Gnostic myth summarized by Irenaeus as Father, Mother, and Son (Adversus Haereses, 1.29). Renaming the first person of the Trinity in different ways could well mean saying something different and changing basic belief. A certain crypto-modalism comes through in some of the alternate proposals I listed: Creator, Liberator, and Comforter, for instance, can readily suggest a monopersonal God who behaves toward us in creative, liberating, and comforting ways but whose inner life is not differentiated into three divine persons. Another triad, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, can claim considerable background in Christian tradition. But if used by itself, it fails to distinguish Christianity from other religions in a way that naming Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does. After all, other religions can and do profess faith in deities who create (or in some lesser way make), redeem, and sanctify human beings. The names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit tie Christian faith firmly into the revealing and saving history that culminated in the events of the first Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Once again, let me insist that I am speaking about the primary way of naming the Trinity, the three names used in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. This does not mean that such formal trinitarian language is the only way of speaking about and addressing God. In these days, we may need more than ever some alternatives to prevent our “Father” language from collapsing into crass literalism. (pp. 189-90)

This approach seems to strike a good balance. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remains the primary way of naming God because it keeps our faith fimly anchored in the historical particularity of the Gospel. Christianity is, after all, a historical religion, not a religion of abstract truth or speculation. But it allows for a certain flexibility in our images and forms of address to God. Theologians and mystics have frequently been quite daring in their language to and about God, and I don’t see good reason for the church to discourage that. We do need to be reminded that our language remains inadequate to its object.

28 responses to “Gerald O’Collins on naming the Trinity”

  1. Joshie

    I do not object to the use of Father to refer to the first person of the Trinity or the use of son for the first. But we are on very dangerous ground when we say that the word Father alone describes the God of Jesus. Even though it’s not some “vague notion of fatherhood”, but God’s revelation of God’s self through Christ, when we take this point of view we run the risk of adopting a sort of “red letter theology” where everything that Jesus says in the gospels has priority over everything else. The scriptures as a WHOLE are a witness to God and humanity’s relationship with God.

    Also when we say that we say “Father” because the historical Jesus said “Father”, our trinitarian formula opens itself up to questions about the historicity of that language. The long discourses in John are, I think it’s safe to say, of dubious historicity. There is still the Lord’s prayer and the end of Matthew, but the case looks substantially weaker when all we have are the synoptics to support that language. A much better place for that is that that is the name that the Spirit has revealed to the church and the world through the scriptures and the tradition of the church, but that other ways of speaking about the 1st person (or 2nd or 3rd for that matter) of the Trinity also exist.

    Ultimately, as tha apophatic tradition shows us and as you say in the conclusion of this post, language is unable to penetrate the mystery of God fully.

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  2. jack perry

    Another triad, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, can claim considerable background in Christian tradition. But if used by itself, it fails to distinguish Christianity from other religions in a way that naming Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does.

    Maybe I missed his mentioning it, but another problem with this appelation is that it acts as if only the Father is Creator, only the Son is Redeemer, and only the Spirit is Sanctifier. However, the Son also Creates, as does the Spirit. Likewise, one cannot say that Christ alone is Redeemer; “God was redeeming the world to himself in Christ,” as the Scriptures say somewhere, would suggest otherwise. I’ve seen “Creator, Sanctifier, and Redeemer” used historically not as appellation to distinguish, but to unite. In particular, the Son is “Creator, Sanctifier, and Redeemer”. The Father is “Creator, Sanctifier, and Redeemer.” etc.

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  3. jack perry

    Sorry — I misquoted the scripture; I should have said, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ.” The point still stands, however.

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  4. Maurice Frontz

    Joshie, I think that this is an issue of Scriptural authority, as I posted in a comment below. The issue is whether the Bible’s revelation about God is trustworthy, or, to press the point, whether the Bible is revelatory at all, but instead simply a “groping toward God” that is at best inarticulate and at worst malevolent.

    Historical-critical research is a fact of life, unless you are a thoroughgoing fundamentalist. But truthfully, I would argue that from a criterion of embarrassment, the Father-language of Jesus actually has a claim to be very historical, for why would the early Church make up something this unlikely out of whole cloth? Moreover, it is hardly proof-texting when one sees that the relationship of Jesus to God as Son to Father sharing one Spirit is not simply one obscure verse at the end of Matthew or a couple in the Gospel of John, but it’s all over Paul’s writings, the General letters, Luke/Acts, etc.

    In fact, one might say that without the Trinitarian formula, no Christianity. Without the idea that this person related to God in a familial way when we did not, but that through him we can have access to God in a familial way, and share in the spirit of “sonship” or “adoption” in the way that he did, the distinctions between the persons of the Trinity collapse and our place in the Trinitarian life disappears.

    Do we say that the word “Father” alone describes the God of Jesus? No. But the way that God related to Jesus is the way God wishes to relate to us. And God wishes to relate to us neither primarily as Creator, nor as Monarch, but primarily as Father. To claim otherwise is to claim that God is not who Jesus proclaimed him to be.

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  5. Lee

    Jack – I think that’s right. Meanwhile, on another interpretation, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier can sound modalistic – i.e. three activities of a single person.

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  6. Lee

    P.S. Who would’ve thought that Trinitarian language would be the most popular topic EVAR?

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  7. Chris T.

    It seems to me that the argument that “language and experience are inseparable” (with the implication that experiences of the God of Jesus are inseparable from Father-language) and the notion that “We do need to be reminded that our language remains inadequate to its object” are mutually exclusive. If Father-language is inadequate to the God of Jesus, why must it all the same remain part of our “primary way of naming God”?

    More to the point, I have certainly had very real experiences of God’s presence during services that invoked God through the formula “Source of All Being, Eternal Word, and Holy Spirit”. Billions of people experience God without naming God at all (Marian devotion comes immediately to mind). Claiming that God cannot be experienced if Father-language is not used is very shaky ground indeed; I would even go so far as to say that it puts one in danger of the unforgiveable sin of blasphemy against the Spirit. God works in mysterious ways, and claiming that God doesn’t and must respond only or primarily to the traditonal formulae is problematic.

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  8. Joshie

    You misunderstand me, Pastor. I am in complete agreement with you on just about everything you are saying. I never claimed the Father-Son language wasn’t historical to the early church’s teaching, if not the way Jesus himself spoke.

    What I am saying is that when too much stock is placed in father as opposed to mother (as I read Braaten to be doing) instead of Father in relationship to Son, we run the risk of turning gender into a cosmic phenomenon, and putting masculinity into the Godhead, and thus marginalize women and the witness of the scriptures that uses other ways to talk about God.

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  9. Lee

    Chris – I would say this: Certainly God can be experienced outside of traditional trinitarian language. Nevertheless, language shapes our experience (cf. Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine) and Christians, at any rate, believe that we’ve received a language that, however inadequate, allows us to enter into the experience of God as Jesus and the Church have known it. This isn’t to say that there can’t be veridical experience of God outside of this language, but this is where we believe God has promised to be.

    I think it’s analogous to the sacraments – God can certainly act outside of them, but we believe that God has promised to be present there. As Christians we have no special authority or insight to bless every purported experience of God (though I don’t see why we can’t learn from them). Rather, our job is to point to where we believe God has revealed himself: in Jesus, his Word, and his Sacraments.

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  10. Joshie

    Let me further clarify myself, as well and this may be where others disagree with me.

    I do not beleieve that the Father-Son-Adoption image is itself the whole of the gospel, and without it there is nothing. There are many other images that are just as biblically and historically rooted, the image of the church as the bride of Christ, the Kingdom of God, etc. So while the Father-Son dynamic is of vital importance, there are other images that are just as authoratative and ancient.

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  11. Maurice Frontz

    Chris, the true statement that our God-language is inadequate to its object simply means that our language does not exhaust who God is. It is the same thing as saying that the words “father, husband, Lutheran pastor, citizen of the United States” do not totally exhaust the meaning of who I am. In God’s case, to say that the mystery of the Godhead is inexpressible is not to say that we cannot name him – it’s simply to say that we do not have God utterly to hand by our naming of God.

    Nonetheless, there are “adequate” ways to name God. Moreover, there are “appropriate” ways to name God. “Majesty” may be an appropriate name for God, but it is not adequate. Same with “Creator,” “Source,” etc. “Father, Son, and Spirit” is both an adequate and appropriate way to name God because that is how God has revealed himself in history, moreover, it is the theologically adequate expression of the relationship between the persons of God, the relationship into which God calls us in Holy Baptism. Our life is a sharing in the life of the Trinity, and that life is not one in which we relate to the first person as “Your Majesty” or “My Creator” or “Ground of my Being” or any other substitution: but we are adopted children.

    When you use a substitution for the Trinitarian formula, or primarily use a substitution while giving a grudging nod to the traditional language, you are basically saying that the traditional language is inappropriate and inadequate. That assertion necessarily obscures who God is for Christ and for us.

    Lee – how appropriate that the first things, the most fundamental things, should generate the most interest.

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  12. Maurice Frontz

    Joshie – it is not the whole of the Gospel, but it is at the heart of the Gospel. One can do without the Bride of Christ imagery (and there is where some may disagree with me!) you can do without Israel as God’s unfaithful wife, but you cannot displace the revelation of God as Father of the Son without obscuring the Gospel. It is the keystone of the whole structure.

    Without it, you basically have a Church that is able to relate to God without Christ and which possesses the Spirit apart from Christ. This I think was the error of the deists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Ironically enough, they retained the language of “Father,” but they made him a universal Father in the sense of “Creator,” one whose Spirit was accessible to human beings apart from “the” Son. The specificity of naming Jesus as “the” Son and that God is his “Father” implies a way of relating to God that was unique, and that we cannot relate to God except by being adopted as his brothers and sisters. We may perhaps add other imagery to this way of naming God, but we cannot displace or obscure it.

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  13. Maurice Frontz

    By “his” in the last post’s penultimate sentence I meant Jesus. Just to clarify.

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  14. Joshie

    I’m sorry Pastor, but that’s a totally false dilemma. You seem to be saying “either you believe the adoption language is the only adequate way to think about God and humanity or you don’t believe the bible is authoratative”.

    As you said, it IS about the authority of scripture. What you seem to be doing in claiming adoption as the only adequate image is chopping up the scriptures, a la Marcion, to produce a scriptual witness that only supports one view, the one that you like the best. Jesus preached the kingdom of God, but that is somehow inadequate? Paul talked about the church as the bride of Christ, a solid familial image one saturated with self-giving love, but that is somehow inadequate too?

    The beauty of the scriptures is that multiple images and views of these things exist. The untamed scriptures are a reflection of the untamed God. When we try to pound the multifaceted witness of the scriptures into our own pet systems we do ourselves and the scriptures a disservice.

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  15. Maurice Frontz

    “Although it may claim some kind of NT pedigree (perhaps in Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30), “Child” (as in Parent, Child, and Paraclete and Father, Child, and Mother) seems to deprecate the second person of the Trinity, as if the Son were not yet properly mature.”

    This is an excellent point that Fr Collins makes, and it leads me to comment on something that I’ve been thinking about over the past few months. I agree that “sons of God” is an inadequate translation for today of, say Romans 8:14 (a poster verse for the current argument if there was one!) But in the NRSV it reads this way: “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” When I hear that, I hear the word “children” in the very same way that Fr. Collins hears it: that we are newborn babes, we are little lambs, God’s precious angels, etc.

    But that is totally counter to the spirit of the whole text, which is talking about mature children in the sense of heirs, sons and daughters of God in the same way that Jesus is the Son of God, active in obedience, faithful to the will of God, grown-up in every way. The “correct” translation is inadequate in a very different way than the first one: in avoiding the word “sons” in order that we do not exclude women (a very right and proper thing to do by the way), we image ourselves as little children, with no responsibilities or resemblances to the active obedience of Jesus. (When does this text come up in the lectionary again? I’m pumped!)

    In a broader sense, this is what happens when you mess around with words. You avoid the misunderstandings associated with the offensive word, but you create brand new ones by changing the meaning of the text.

    I’m going to stop now.

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  16. Chris T.

    This isn’t to say that there can’t be veridical experience of God outside of this language, but this is where we believe God has promised to be.

    The Kingdom of God is within you—in that sense, God has promised to be present everywhere. At the most pessimistic, we have the Scriptural promise that God will be presence wherever two or three are gathered in God’s name. As Joshie has pointed out, there are many, many names for God attested even in Scripture. I find the argument that God only promises to be present when a particular “appropriate” name is called to be a really narrow reading of revelation.

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  17. Joshie

    grrrrrrrrr. I didn’t see your second comments until just a couple seconds ago, this blogger stuff is ticking me off.

    Sorry, I think I went too far with the Marcion bit. Sorry if I was too agressive there. But the rest I whole-heartedly stand by.

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  18. Maurice Frontz

    I said I’d stop, but I can’t.

    Joshie, adoption language is not the only adequate way to speak of God.” That is not what I’m saying. It is, however, NECESSARY for Christians to use this name, with other names, and understand the concept of childhood and adoption. “Father, Son, and Spirit” is not an exclusive name, but it is a name that gives unity and coherence to all of the names. We can use other ways too – we can speak of God who provides for us in the same way that a mother provides milk for her baby. We can speak, as Jesus did, of the Son wanting to gather us under his (her?) wings as a mother hen gathers her chicks. We can speak of God as Creator, Breather of life, etc., etc. But we can not “not speak” of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or somehow diminish that name because it makes us uncomfortable. We cannot do that, as I said above, because it is the Scriptures themselves that lift the name up among many names as somehow key to understanding the mystery of God in Christ. It is not “just one name” among others that we can interchange for other, even Scriptural, formulations.

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  19. Lee

    Chris – Of course God is present everywhere – that probably wasn’t the best way to put it. What I mean is that our experience of God is shaped by the language of our tradition. If there’s any agreed upon philosophical and theological insight of the last hundred years or so it’s that we can’t so easily separate thought and language as our Enlightenment heritage seemed to hope. Inhabiting a tradition is as much about learning a language as anything. And the contours of the tradition are largely the contours of the language, and the practices it gives rise to.

    In Christian idiom that means that becoming a Christian is largely about learning to speak of God in the way that Christians speak of God. And this is because we believe that language is faithful to who God is.

    Does that mean inhabitants of other tradtions can’t learn to speak faithfully about God? Of course not. But as a Christian I can only speak from within that tradition – a tradition which I believe I have good grounds for being part of – and am not in a position to give a blanket blessing to however anyone may choose to speak of God. I presume we would all object to language which implied that God approved of slavery or torture; but on what grounds do we do so apart from the language we’ve learned to speak about God with in our own tradition?

    I find that people who object to a particularistic religious language often think they’re replacing it with something more universal, but in fact it turns out to be a language no less particular, but one that reflects their own context. The language of tradition, to borrow a phrase from Chesterton, is what frees us from being exclusively children of our own age.

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  20. Maurice Frontz

    Chris, the proper subject of your Scripture quote is Christ: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matt. 18:19-20). Likewise, John 14:13: “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (italics mine).

    And as for the Lukan quote, that is exactly why you need the whole witness of Scripture, as has been rightly said. To say, “the kingdom of God is within you,”
    without anything else, is in effect to make you and your experience authentic sources of God’s revelation. I know enough about what I wanted to type in this comment and where it comes from that I have no trust in my inner self as the source of God’s revelation.

    “I find the argument that God only promises to be present when a particular “appropriate” name is called to be a really narrow reading of revelation.”

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that Christianity? To say, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is not just an authoritative statement about the first person, it is a statement about the second person and the third person. To wit: we don’t get the first until we get the second, and neither without the third. It is that truth that the Trinitarian name expresses, and that no other name expresses. That is why you need the name of the Trinity and can use or not use the others as you see fit.

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  21. Joshie

    Again, I do not feel “uncomfortable” with the langauge of father, son and spirit. I have never claimed that I did. I prefer the traditional invocation, as I said in a response to the previous post.

    What I am uncomfortable with is the linkages you are making with that and the highly questionable theological move that the adoption imagery is the sum of all the other images of God’s relationship with God’s people. If I have ignored some passage in the scriptures where this is explicitly raised up, please show me so that my thinking can be corrected on this matter, but nothing you have said so far has convinced me that this is the case.

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  22. Maurice Frontz

    Just real quick – I think that the central idea of Romans 1-11 is that we are adopted by grace to be sons and daughters of the Father as Jesus is son of the Father, and that the Spirit, not circumcision or the works of the law, is the seal of that adoption. I think this is also seen in the book of glory in John, where Jesus makes explicit that the relationship he has with God the Father is to be extended to the Church by the gift of the Spirit, and that this must happen by his death and resurrection. This is less spelled out in the Synoptic Gospels (perhaps most clearly at the baptismal and transfiguration scenes, The Great Commission, and in Luke’s nativity), but certainly the relationship of Son to Father is there. It’s also present in Hebrews in a very real way.

    What I think that this says is that in baptism, God calls us to live the intra-personal life of the Trinity as our life. We are given the status of Jesus in relation to the first person, we are filled with the Spirit…but only in and through Jesus. That is why I guess I’m not following your assumption that the Trinitarian formula can be just one of many names, instead of the name that gives meaning to all the others. If that is what you’re saying.

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  23. Joshie

    The adoption idea is certainly there in Romans, I’ll not deny that. But there are a number of other images in John (“I call you my friends” for instance). In the rest of the Pauline corpus there are also a number of other images, though. But naming the Father, Son, Spirit does not exclusively point to the adoption image.

    Here’s an example of how another one could work: Christ is our bridegroom. We, the church are his bride. The Father is Christ’s father and, through the church’s marriage to Christ, The Father of our groom becomes our father as well and we join the divine family.

    Also, while you have shown that that the adoption image is a very important one, you have failed to show how it is the one on whom all the other images in the scriptures rise and fall.

    Also, whether or not the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or just the Father is far from a settled issue in the church at large, as I’m sure you well know, althogh passages like John 20.22 lead me to believe the Western position is correct, whether it was appropriate to insert that idea into the Creed or not.

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  24. Chris T.

    But as a Christian I can only speak from within that tradition – a tradition which I believe I have good grounds for being part of – and am not in a position to give a blanket blessing to however anyone may choose to speak of God. I presume we would all object to language which implied that God approved of slavery or torture; but on what grounds do we do so apart from the language we’ve learned to speak about God with in our own tradition?

    Sure, I agree with that. And of course I, too, would speak out against a connection between God’s love and something like slavery or torture using language learned from the Christian tradition. And it’s not even particularism in the liturgy I’m on about.

    My contention is just that the traditional Trinitarian formula isn’t all the tradition gives us. Not only are there plenty of other names available from Scripture, but the tradition certainly does grow to embrace names not necessarily found in Scripture. It does so precisely by experimenting and dumping everything that doesn’t work for some relatively broad range of Christians. I don’t think the experiment with alternative formulations of the trinitarian formula is far enough along to determine what will and will not become a part of the tradition, though I share the perception that “Parent, Child, and Spirit” or whatever isn’t going to stick around and that “Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier” is limited.

    I don’t mean to sound acrimonious, either—sorry that I have probably come off that way. I don’t know why, but for me (and I think a lot of cradle Lutherans, if I can go out on a limb and generalize), something kind and gentle just switches off in my brain when liturgy is brought up and my lizard brain starts working overtime. 🙂

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  25. Lee

    Judging by the number of comments, liturgy pushes a lot of people’s buttons!

    I think you’re right that experimentation with new language is necessary. Obviously that’s happened throughout the history of the church. The Nicene Creed incorporates language drawn from Greek philosophy, for instance (though have some argued that the Creed was part of the fatal “Hellenization” of the church). Also, we may recover biblical images and expressions that have been relatively neglected (Wisdom/Sophia for example).

    I do still think that the traditional Trinitarian name should continue to be a central part of our language, for the reasons I’ve already mentioned – that it ties us to the story of Jesus and because all the proposed replacements seem to have grave theological defects, but we can definitely benefit from an enrichment of our language.

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  26. graham old

    I think that’s a much better approach, Lee. However, I still think it is unnecessary.

    If what we are arguing for is keeping the analogy of relationship expressed in a father-son relationship (not the word “Father” as such), then what do we do with cultures where fathers and sons don’t relate as they did in the time of Jesus. Does using the word not then hide the analogy?

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  27. Lee

    Graham, that’s a good question, and not one to which I think I have an “in principle” answer. I think it will vary from place to place depending on circumstances.

    I do think we need to remember, though, that it was never the case that God was simply assumed to act like a human Father (or King, or Lord, or what have you) as though it’s merely a projection of a human concept. The divine character frequently subverts the expected notions of how Fathers (Kings, etc.) behave.

    By way of analogy, it seems clear that many of Jesus’s contemporaries expected a very different Messiah than the one he turned out to be, but the church still used/uses messianic language in talking about Jesus, while filling it with new content. I don’t see, in principle, why “Father” can’t function the same way. If anything, Messiah-talk is more remote from contemporary people’s experience than Father-talk, but I don’t think we should, for that reason, ditch it.

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  28. Jesus Our Redeemer « A Thinking Reed

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