He is the God of hope (Ro 15'^). A despairing pessimism is rebellion against the good God who makes us to hope, and who promises to overthrow Satan.
He is the God of peace (Ro 15^3 IQ^, 1 Th 5^3, 2 Th 3>8, He 132«).
{g) God is Creator and Saviour. — That God the Father is the Maker of the world is again and again insisted on (Ac H'^-i^ IT-^-^a, Ro l-""^ 1P«, 1 Co 3^, Eph 2'" 39 [cf. v.i«-]. Col P"-, He P 4* 12^ [the spirits of men], Ja !"'• [' the lights,' the heavenly bodies]. Rev 4'i 10®). Man was made in God's likeness (1 Co IF, Ja 3^). That God made the world was also much emphasized by the sub-apostolic writers (Swete, Apostles' Creed, p. 20), in opposition to the Gnostic conception of a Demiurge, an inferior God who was Creator, and w-ho was more or less in opposition to the supreme God. (For God the Father as Saviour, see below, 6 (e) ; for the part of the Son and of the Spirit in creation see below, 6 (e), 7).
i. The Fatherhood of God. — We now pass to the great developments made by the Christian doctrine of God. In the OT it had been freely taught that God was Father ; but the conception scarcely went further than a fatherhood of the chosen people. 'Israel is my son, my hrst born. . . . Let my son go that he may serve me,' is Jahweh's message to Pharaoh (Ex 4'^-). The Deuteronomist goes no further (8^ 32®, and especially 14"*: 'Ye are the children of the Lord your God . . . for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth '). The restrictive words of Ps 103^3 are very signihcant : ' Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth the^n that fear him.' The prophets made no advance on this. To Judah and Israel God says : ' Ye shall call me. My father ' ( Jer 318 ; cf. Is 631" 391. 9^ jyial 1«) ; ' When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt' (Hos 111).
The NT greatlydevelopsthisdoctrine. It teaches that God is F"ather of all men, though in a special sense Father of believers. But, above all, God is the Father of our Lord in a sense quite unique.
(a) The Father of our Lord. — Jesus ever makes a difference between the Father's relationship to Himself and to the rest of the world. The striking words of the twelve-year-old Child : ' Wist ye not that I must be in my Feather's house?' (or 'about my Father's business,' iv rois ro\j 7rarp6s yttoi;, Lk 2''®) are the first indication of this. Jesus speaks of ' my Father ' and ' the Father ' and ' your Father, ' but never of 'our Father,' though He teaches the disciples to use these words (Mt 6^). In Jn 20" the Evangelist represents our Lord as using what would otherwise be an unintelligible periphrasis: *My Father and your Father, and my God and your God.' This same distinction is kept up in the rest of the NT. Thus in Ro & St. Paul calls our Lord God's ' own Son' (rbv iavroO vl6v), in a manner in which we could not be desig-nated 'sons' ; we can only be 'conformed to the image of his Son, that he might
be the firstborn among many brethren' (v."^), while Jesus is 'his own Son' (tov idiov vioD, v.^-; cf. Col 1'-*: ' Son of his love '). St. Paul exhibits a fondness for the phrase ' the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ' (Ro 15«, 2 Co P, Eph 1»; cf. Col P • God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ'), which is re-echoed by St. Peter (1 P P), and in the Apoca- lypse (Rev 1^: 'his God and Father'). (On the other hand, in Eph 1" we read : 'the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.') In Rev 3^^ our Lord is speaking, and uses the words 'my Father.' This distinction is at the root of the Johannine title ' Only-begotten,' applied to our Lord (1 Jn 4«, Jn !"• is 316-18). ggg Adoption, Only-Begotten.
(b) The Father of all men. — This relationship is expressly affirmed by St. Paul in his speech at Athens (Ac 17^^^). God has created us ; 'in him we live and move and have our being, as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also his oftspring.' And he endorses this heathen saying by continuing : 'Being then the ofispring of God,' etc. (v.-**). We maj' compare our Lord's saying: ' that ye may be sons of j-our Father which is in heaven, for lie maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust ' (JNIt 5^5) ; ' he is kind towards the unthank- ful and evil ' (Lk 6^^). The same thought seems to be at the root of St. Paul's saying that all father- hood (Trao-a Trarptd) in heaven and earth is named from God the Father (Eph 3^*^; see Family). ' There is one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all' (Eph 4^), 'To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things and we unto him' (1 Co 8^). In several passages in the Epistles where we read ' our Father ' (Ro V, 1 Co P, 2 Co P, Eph P, Ph 42», etc.), there is no special restriction to God's relationsliip to Christians, such as we find with regard to the chosen people in the OT passages. St. James speaks of 'the Father of lights' (Ja 1"), i.e. of the created heavenly bodies. And the Avriter of Hebrews refers to a universal Fatherhood due to creation. As contrasted with the ' fathers of our flesh,' God is 'the Father of spirits' — the Author not only of our spiritual being but of all spiritual beings (He 12^; see Westcott, Com. in loc).