Images of God in the Letters of Paul

Abstract

Using categories from cross-cultural analysis, this study identifies how Paul portrays God metaphorically as a patriarchal figure who relates to Israel as a father to his family. In so imaging God, Paul continues a Pharisaic concept of Judaism as a religion of the home and family, distinguished from a state religion whose centralizing strategies differed notably in doctrine and practice. Paul's adoptive filiation of gentiles into Christ as God's Son suggests how his missionary theology accorded with the familial metaphor for God, and represented an early level of Christian religious identification. Christians today can benefit from an awareness of what role the father played in first century Mediterranean cultures, and how such a role may differ markedly from contemporary American experience.