SECTION 3.—­THE FATHER

The first Person in the Godhead is the Father.  This name may be viewed (a) with reference to the second Person, Jesus Christ His only Son, or (b) as descriptive of His relation to believers in Christ Jesus, or (c) as indicating His universal Fatherhood as the Author and the Preserver of all intelligent creatures.  The relation in which the Father stands to the Son, that He is His Father and has begotten Him, is one that we cannot explain.  Any attempt to do so must be arrogant and misleading, for who “by searching can find out God"?[020] Secret things belong unto God, but revealed things unto us and our children.[021] The term “Father” is a relative one and involves the idea of sonship.  No one who accepts the teaching of Scripture can doubt that the Father is God.  The statements as to His attributes and universal government are so many and so strong that, but for other affirmations regarding Deity, we should naturally conclude that the Father alone is God.  But the very name “Father” corrects such a view, and when we search the Scriptures we find it untenable.  God is our Father, but He was “the Father” before He called man into being.  From all eternity He was Father.  As from everlasting to everlasting He is God, so from everlasting to everlasting He is Father.  He did not become Father when His Son assumed human nature, but is such in virtue of His eternal relation to the Word as the Son of God.  It is the Son’s existence that constitutes Him Father; and that existence was in eternity.  “I and my Father are one,"[022] is the Son’s testimony to His eternal Sonship; and when He prays His Father to glorify Him, He asks to be glorified with the glory which He had with Him before the world was.[023] There are other senses in which the first Person of the Godhead is termed Father.  All men are declared to be His offspring, and those who have received the Spirit of adoption cry, “Abba, Father,” and are taught, when they pray, to say, “Our Father.”

In an exposition of the Creed the Fatherhood in relation to men generally, or to believers in particular, need not be considered.  Here the name is used to indicate the relation in which the First Person stands to the Second, in virtue of which alone those who are adopted into fellowship with the Son become the children of God—­the children of Christ’s Father and their Father.  The Scriptures teach that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Ghost is God.  At the same time the doctrine of the Divine Unity is affirmed.