Abba, Father

Abstract

The use of “inclusive language” in Christian discourse poses the question of whether gender is theologically salient in the sense of either revealing theologically significant differences between men and women or prescribing different roles for them. Donald Hook and Alvin Kimel claim to “demonstrate that the divine title “‘Father’...possesses privileged and foundational status within Christian discourse” and that alternative nomenclature, specifically the use of “Mother,” is illegitimate. They argue that this result follows from the fact that Jesus authoritatively invoked God as “Abba” or Father together with a causal account of reference according to which current attempts to invoke or refer to God do so to the extent that they figure on a causal chain which originates in Jesus’ authoritative act of dubbing. Their arguments however presuppose an untenable version of the causal theory of reference as well as questionable assumptions about Jesus’ intention in invoking God as “Abba” which imply that gender is theologically salient. Arguably both conservative views about the significance of gender and allegedly progressive doctrines about the theological salience of gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation are contrary to the radical, countercultural teaching of the Gospel that in Christ there is no male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free man. I Hook and Kimel argue that “we name God ‘Father’ because, and only because, we are instructed to do by the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.”2 On their account, Jesus decisively fixes the privileged mode of nomenclature by invoking God as “Father” and this mode of address passes down a causal denoting chain maintained by the Church so that “if we wish to invoke God or refer to him successfully, we rightly return to the ecclesial d-chain. It is the historical community of the Church that equips us to name God truly...for reference to be successful there really must be a path leading back to the object.”3 Hook and Kimel claim that their thesis does not presuppose any additional controversial views about the nature of gender but comes solely from the authoritative utterance of Jesus as mediated through Scripture and the Tradition of the Church: When God is identified as Father, the model of fatherhood is proposed as a paradigm by which deity is to be interpreted. Because the mode of presentation is metaphorical, such usage commits one to saying that God both is like and is not like a human father in specific ways....By this metaphorical presentation biological sex and cultural stereotyping may be excluded from our understanding of deity.4 Hook and Kimel suggest that Jesus’ invocation of God as “Father” is revelatory as well as authoritative: “kinship terms of address...spoken within the familial relationship” are especially apt in revealing the nature of our relationship to God in Christ.5 “Father,” they argue, enjoys a privileged status that other kinship terms, including “Mother,” do not in light of the following considerations: