Christianity
- Introduction
- The church and its history
- The essence and identity of Christianity
- The history of Christianity
- The primitive church
- The internal development of the early Christian Church
- Relations between Christianity and the Roman government and the Hellenistic culture
- The early liturgy, the calendar, and the arts
- The alliance between church and empire
- Theological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries
- Liturgy and the arts after Constantine
- Political relations between East and West
- Literature and art of the “Dark Ages”
- Missions and monasticism
- The Photian schism and the great East–West schism
- From the schism to the Reformation
- Christianity from the 16th to the 20th century
- Contemporary Christianity
- Christian doctrine
- The nature and functions of doctrine
- Scripture and tradition: the apostolic witness
- Evangelism: the first teaching about the God of Jesus Christ
- Catechesis: instructing candidates for baptism
- Liturgy: the school and feast of faith
- Ethics: obeying the truth
- Aversion of heresy: the establishment of orthodoxy
- Apologetics: defending the faith
- Restatement: respecting language and knowledge
- Inculturation: respecting places and peoples
- Dogma: the most authoritative teaching
- Consensus: patterns of agreement
- Theology: loving God with the mind
- Symbolics: creeds and confessions
- Development: the maturation of understanding
- Schism: division over substantial matters
- Controversy: fighting over the faith
- Ecumenism: speaking the truth in love
- God the Father
- God the Son
- God the Holy Spirit
- The Holy Trinity
- Anthropology
- What it is to be human
- The human as a creature
- The human as the image of God
- Human redemption
- The problem of suffering
- The resurrection of the body
- Progressive human perfection
- The “new man”: The human being in the light of Christ
- The “reborn human”
- Human liberation
- Joy in human existence
- The charismatic believer
- Christian perfection
- Fellow humans as the present Christ
- The church
- Church tradition
- Eschatology
- Expectations of the Kingdom of God in early Christianity
- Expectations of the Kingdom of God in the medieval and Reformation periods
- Expectations of the Kingdom of God in the post-Reformation period
- The role of imminent expectation in missions and emigrations
- Eschatological expectations and secularization
- Concepts of life after death
- Aspects of the Christian religion
- Christian philosophy
- Christian mysticism
- Christian myth and legend
- The Christian community and the world
- The relationships of Christianity
- Christian missions
- Ecumenism
- Christianity and world religions
- Related
- Contributors & Bibliography
- Year in Review Links
God the Father
On the basis of their religious experiences, the mystics of Christianity of all eras have concurred in the belief that one can make no assertions about God, because God is beyond all concepts and images. Inasmuch as human beings are gifted with reason, however, the religious experience of transcendence demands historical clarification. Thus, in Christian theology two tendencies stand in constant tension with each other. On the one hand, there is the tendency to systematize the idea of God as far as possible. On the other, there is the tendency to eliminate the accumulated collection of current conceptions of God and to return to the understanding of his utter transcendence. Theologians, by and large, have had to acknowledge the limits of human reason and language to address the “character” of God, who is beyond normal human experience but who impinges on it. But because of the divine–human contact, it became necessary and possible for them to make some assertions about the experience, the disclosure, and the character of God.
All great epochs of the history of Christianity are defined by new forms of the experience of God and of Christ. Rudolf Otto, a 20th-century German theologian, attempted to describe to some extent the basic ways of experiencing the transcendence of the “holy.” He called these the experience of the “numinous” (the spiritual dimension), the utterly ineffable, the holy, and the overwhelming. The “holy” is manifested in a double form: as the mysterium tremendum (“mystery that repels”), in which the dreadful, fearful, and overwhelming aspect of the numinous appears, and as the mysterium fascinosum (“mystery that attracts”), by which humans are irresistibly drawn to the glory, beauty, adorable quality, and the blessing, redeeming, and salvation-bringing power of transcendence. All of these features are present in the Christian concepts of God as explicated in the ever new experiences of the charismatic leaders.
Characteristic features of the Christian concept of God
Within the Christian perception and experience of God, characteristic features stand out: (1) the personality of God, (2) God as the Creator, (3) God as the Lord of history, and (4) God as Judge. (1) God, as person, is the “I am who I am” designated in Exodus 3:14. The personal consciousness of human beings awakens in the encounter with God understood as a person: “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11). (2) God is also viewed as the Creator of heaven and Earth. The believer thus maintains, on the one hand, acknowledgement of divine omnipotence as the creative power of God, which also operates in the preservation of the world, and, on the other hand, trusts in the world, which—despite all its contradictions—is understood as one world created by God according to definite laws and principles and according to an inner plan. The decisive aspect of creation, however, is that God fashioned humans according to the divine image and made the creation subject to them. This special position of humans in the creation, which makes them coworkers of God in the preservation and consummation of the creation, brings a decisively new characteristic into the understanding of God. (3) This new characteristic is God as the Lord of history, which is the main feature of the Old Testament understanding of God: God selects a special people and contracts a special covenant with them. Through the Law the divine agent binds this “people of God” in a special way. God sets before them a definite goal of salvation—the establishment of a divine dominion—and through the prophets admonishes the people by proclamations of salvation and calamity whenever they are unfaithful to the covenant and promise. (4) This God of history also is the God of judgment. The Israelite belief that the disclosure of God comes through the history of divinely-led people leads, with an inner logic, to the proclamation of God as the Lord of world history and as the Judge of the world.
The specific concept of God as Father
What is decisively new in the Christian, New Testament faith in God lies in the fact that this faith is so closely bound up with the person, teaching, and work of Jesus Christ that it is difficult to draw boundaries between theology (doctrines of God) and Christology (doctrines of Christ). The special relationship of Jesus to God is expressed through his designation of God as Father. In prayers Jesus used the Aramaic word abba (“father”) for God, which is otherwise unusual in religious discourse in Judaism; it was usually employed by children for their earthly father. This father–son relationship became a prototype for the relationship of Christians to God. Appeal to the sonship of God played a crucial role in the development of Jesus’ messianic self-understanding. According to the account of Jesus’ baptism, Jesus understood his sonship when a voice from heaven said: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” In The Gospel According to John, this sonship constitutes the basis for the self-consciousness of Jesus: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
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