SPECIAL TESTIMONIES ABOUT GOD THE FATHER

In the Sacred Scriptures God is called Father in a threefold sense: 1. in the broadest sense by reason of the creation, thus He is called the "father of rain" (Job 38:28); 2. in the broad sense by reason of the adoption of men as His sons, thus He is called our Father in the Lord's Prayer; 3. in the strict and proper sense by reason of the generation of His only-begotten Son. Thus Christ Himself, of whom it was said," his is My beloved Son" (Matt. 3:17), said, not "our Father, " but "My Father": "It is My Father that glorifieth Me" (John 8:54); "Come, ye blessed of My Father" (Matt. 25:34); "I must be about My Father's business" (Luke 2:49); "No one can snatch them out of the hand of My Father" (John 10:29); "They have both seen and hated both Me and My Father" (John 15:24); "I ascend to my Father and to your Father" (John 20:17). God is not the Father of Jesus Christ in the same way as He is the Father of His adopted sons, for in the prologue of St. John's Gospel we read: "The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" (John 1:18). Frequently St. Paul speaks of God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for instance," hat... you may glorify God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 15:6); and "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (II Cor. 1:3 and Eph. 1:3). Thus the Father is represented as a person and moreover as a divine person; no one has called this into doubt. The Father is called the Lord of heaven and earth and living God, as for instance, "Thou art Christ the Son of the living God." Throughout the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, Christ invokes the Father as God, and it is clear that the Father is a person distinct from the Son from the fact that he who generates is distinct from him who is begotten. This will appear more clearly when we speak of the Son.