Abba (Father)

The direction of his [Jesus'] life, the origin and goal of his life, can be summed up in one word: Abba – beloved Father. He knew that he was never alone. His life – right up until his last words on the cross – was entirely directed towards another person, whom he calls Father. Consequently, his most glorious title is not King, Lord or such titles denoting the possession of power, rather he rejoices above all in that title which we may translate as “Child”. […] His highest dignity, pointing to his divinity, does not derive from his claim to power; his dignity is dependent upon his relation to the other – to God, the Father. Joachim Jeremias summed it up beautifully when he said that to be a child like Jesus means to learn how to say Father. […]

The ancient Greeks famously called their Zeus “father”, but that was not an expression of trust or familiarity. Rather it was expressive of the ambiguity of this god, of the tragic ambiguity and  evils of the world. When they called Zeus “father”, they simply meant that he was like human fathers: sometimes nice and pleasant, when in a good mood, but deep down somewhat egotistical, even tyrannical – unpredictable, enigmatic, even dangerous. This corresponded precisely to how they experienced the inexplicable, hidden power dominating the world. There was a nineteenth-century attempt to explain the origins of religion as a need to create a fantasy “heaven”, on which all that was known to be good and beautiful could be projected, in order to make life here on earth bearable. However, they merely projected their own selves and Zeus was the somewhat sinister result. On the other hand, God the Father as encountered in the Bible is not some kind of magnification of human fatherhood; his Fatherhood is something more and something different. Thus it serves as a corrective to human fatherhood. God sets his own standards.

We have no way of knowing the true meaning of the word “Father” without Jesus. The word is brought to light through the Lord's Prayer, and that prayer is also constitutive of our understanding of who Jesus is. A Jesus without constant dependence upon the Father, a Jesus without continuous communication with the Father, would be a completely different person to the Jesus we encounter in the Bible, who is the real historical Jesus. […]  But is this form of address, “Father”, used by the Son also somehow constitutive for who the Father is? Would the Father be someone else if he had not been addressed thus? Or is this form of address irrelevant to God's essence? The answer is simple: The Father would not be the same if he were not addressed as Father by the Son. God was love between Father and Son already before the creation of the world. This is precisely why He is the standard of all fatherhood – He is Father from eternity. The Lord's Prayer reveals to us what God really is, how he really is.