Certainly no lower class families around here would use old man or old lady! But then the US is a very large place, so I find that most people who generalize about the whole country don't know what they are talking about. In other words, those terms could be seriously used somewhere in the U.S.
In the gospel according to John, Jesus refers to God as being The Father on many occasions. I will always regard God as being The Father
But the whole point of the Trinity is that God is not only the Father. Jesus also refers to God as the Holy Spirit.
Which is also a potential issue with changing "Our Father" to "Our God". Not that I have a good solution; Our Parent sounds weird and you can get very tied up with alternative descriptors for the First Person of the Trinity which always seem to teeter on the edge of an accusation of one heresy or another.
Does reclaiming the original term with something like "Perfect Father" have any legs?
Absolutely "God" does not substitute for "Father" to a trinitarian Christian. I am reminded of the IS/IS NOT triangle aka the Shield of the Trinity. The Father is but one of the persons of God, not God in God's entirety.
I don't recommend using the term 'embolism' in English. To most of those that have ever heard of the word at all, it means a blocked artery.
Catholics have been using this term in English for centuries. I don't think they are going to stop at your recommendation. Plenty of words with specific religious meanings have other meanings.
Enoch didn't say they would forbid it, only that they wouldn't recommend it. Since the Catholics are already doing it, it would be pointless to recommend it to them.
It would strike me as very wrong if one small, but possibly fairly vociferous, minority were allowed to demand that everybody else forgoes something that for the rest is valuable, important and hallowed by Jesus's own authority, just to fit in with their particular sensitivity.
Really? It strikes me that it would be an application of Paul's principle when he goes on about meat sacrificed to idols. As C S Lewis summarised it - "the human without scruples giving way to the human with scruples".
I love the way that requests and suggestions become "demands" when people want to deny them.
I don't recommend using the term 'embolism' in English. To most of those that have ever heard of the word at all, it means a blocked artery.
Catholics have been using this term in English for centuries. I don't think they are going to stop at your recommendation. Plenty of words with specific religious meanings have other meanings.
Enoch didn't say they would forbid it, only that they wouldn't recommend it. Since the Catholics are already doing it, it would be pointless to recommend it to them.
What if someone had a specific unpleasant experience with their parents.I can't then see how the word 'parent' would be any better or worse than using 'father'
As nick T. pointed out Jesus in the Gospel account said 'pray like this' and not 'pray this'so we should be quite entitled to raise our prayers to God in any way which recalls the ideas which Jesus gave in what we often call the Lord's prayer.
In the gospel according to John, Jesus refers to God as being The Father on many occasions. I will always regard God as being The Father
But the whole point of the Trinity is that God is not only the Father. Jesus also refers to God as the Holy Spirit.
Which is also a potential issue with changing "Our Father" to "Our God". Not that I have a good solution; Our Parent sounds weird and you can get very tied up with alternative descriptors for the First Person of the Trinity which always seem to teeter on the edge of an accusation of one heresy or another.
Does reclaiming the original term with something like "Perfect Father" have any legs?
Absolutely "God" does not substitute for "Father" to a trinitarian Christian. I am reminded of the IS/IS NOT triangle aka the Shield of the Trinity. The Father is but one of the persons of God, not God in God's entirety.
And yet Paul—who twice says the Spirit enables us to cry out “Abba, Father”—wrote to the church at Corinth: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
Whatever the status in Hebrew which the word 'abba' has, it is the basis for many words with differing levels of formality or informality.
However and in what order the words have developed in various IndoEuropean languages they are all related.
The normal word for 'father' or indeed a senior man in Arabic is 'abu'
'abuela' is the word in Spanish for English 'grandfather'
Sometimes order of letters can be changed or consonants can be changed from soft to hard sounds.
'babbo' is a word in Italian for 'father although at a slightly more formal level 'papá' can be used as indeed is 'papa' with accent on first syllable the word for 'pope'
For those interested in non binary terms all these words,including the more formal 'pater' are all connected with the word 'paps' (nipples or tits)
The other word for 'father' in English 'dad' 'daddy' 'da' is connected with 'duds','diddies' or 'titties' and all have to do with giving or receiving sustenance from these parts of the human body.
'papp' also is a word connected with this referring to a somewhat milky form of sustenance.
Men's paps do not normally provide any sustenance for another word connected with this idea ,namely 'baba' or baby.
Finally it is maybe worth mentioning that the word 'Lord' means originally 'loaf guard' or life guard. (As Lady is responsible in the division of labour for the 'loaf dough'
Not sure about all that @Forthview, and particularly not about there being any connection between Semitic languages and Indo-European ones on this.
'Father' is closely cognate with Vater which is German for father. That in its turn is clearly cognate with Latin pater, and Greek, which is similar. Pere, French, is cognate with the Latin, as are Italian and Spanish, both padre.
Papa, pop, pa etc all seem to be related in some shortened way to the Latin/French/Italian/Spanish cluster of words.
'Dad' appears to have been picked up from Welsh, which is Tad. Whether that's ultimately cognate with the others, I've no idea.
The wider connection between all these words for parents is that papa and mama and daddy and such (probably abba too) are all based on the first sounds babies make. And then the more formal words like father and mother and pater are thought to have derived from those.
<snip>all these words,including the more formal 'pater' are all connected with the word 'paps' (nipples or tits)
The other word for 'father' in English 'dad' 'daddy' 'da' is connected with 'duds','diddies' or 'titties' and all have to do with giving or receiving sustenance from these parts of the human body.
Source for this?
Wiktionary suggests the Proto-Indo-European etymology for pater comes from the verb to shepherd or guard.
<snip>all these words,including the more formal 'pater' are all connected with the word 'paps' (nipples or tits)
The other word for 'father' in English 'dad' 'daddy' 'da' is connected with 'duds','diddies' or 'titties' and all have to do with giving or receiving sustenance from these parts of the human body.
Source for this?
Wiktionary suggests the Proto-Indo-European etymology for pater comes from the verb to shepherd or guard.
If you look in the OED, paps and pater both are linked to what I said about children's language.
Yes @fineline your comments about children’s language were familiar to me. It was @Forthview’s links to breasts/ nipples/ tits that I was querying.
Yes, my comment included 'paps' because the OED mentions child language in the etymology of that too. Though not related, semantics-wise, to papa/dad. More, I assume, about children referring to their mothers' breasts. There is also the word pap, referring to semi-liquid food suitable for babies, which is also thought to be related to baby speech.
The link I was seeing was they are all from child speech, so similar in structure for that reason - it is a basic etymology they all share, regardless of language.
I didn't look up tits, because I didn't notice that part of the post, but I just did, and it also is thought to originate from child language:
Cognate with Middle Dutch tette , tet (Dutch tit , †titte , regional (southern) tet ), Middle Low German, titte , Middle High German zitze (German Zitze ), all feminine, apparently originally a nursery word, perhaps ultimately imitative of the sound of sucking.
I don't recommend using the term 'embolism' in English. To most of those that have ever heard of the word at all, it means a blocked artery.
Catholics have been using this term in English for centuries. I don't think they are going to stop at your recommendation. Plenty of words with specific religious meanings have other meanings.
Enoch didn't say they would forbid it, only that they wouldn't recommend it. Since the Catholics are already doing it, it would be pointless to recommend it to them.
In the gospel according to John, Jesus refers to God as being The Father on many occasions. I will always regard God as being The Father
But the whole point of the Trinity is that God is not only the Father. Jesus also refers to God as the Holy Spirit.
Which is also a potential issue with changing "Our Father" to "Our God". Not that I have a good solution; Our Parent sounds weird and you can get very tied up with alternative descriptors for the First Person of the Trinity which always seem to teeter on the edge of an accusation of one heresy or another.
Does reclaiming the original term with something like "Perfect Father" have any legs?
Absolutely "God" does not substitute for "Father" to a trinitarian Christian. I am reminded of the IS/IS NOT triangle aka the Shield of the Trinity. The Father is but one of the persons of God, not God in God's entirety.
And yet Paul—who twice says the Spirit enables us to cry out “Abba, Father”—wrote to the church at Corinth: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
This was before the Trinity was worked out. We don't have that excuse.
I don't recommend using the term 'embolism' in English. To most of those that have ever heard of the word at all, it means a blocked artery.
Catholics have been using this term in English for centuries. I don't think they are going to stop at your recommendation. Plenty of words with specific religious meanings have other meanings.
Enoch didn't say they would forbid it, only that they wouldn't recommend it. Since the Catholics are already doing it, it would be pointless to recommend it to them.
I know. That's what I was saying.
Clearly not clearly.
You may decide to blame me for not being clear, or blame yourself for not reading more carefully, but the point of communication is to communicate, and clarification is a normal, healthy part of it, because different people do communicate differently and understand differently. So blame is a bit pointless. I'm not interested in your snark.
In the gospel according to John, Jesus refers to God as being The Father on many occasions. I will always regard God as being The Father
But the whole point of the Trinity is that God is not only the Father. Jesus also refers to God as the Holy Spirit.
Which is also a potential issue with changing "Our Father" to "Our God". Not that I have a good solution; Our Parent sounds weird and you can get very tied up with alternative descriptors for the First Person of the Trinity which always seem to teeter on the edge of an accusation of one heresy or another.
Does reclaiming the original term with something like "Perfect Father" have any legs?
Absolutely "God" does not substitute for "Father" to a trinitarian Christian. I am reminded of the IS/IS NOT triangle aka the Shield of the Trinity. The Father is but one of the persons of God, not God in God's entirety.
And yet Paul—who twice says the Spirit enables us to cry out “Abba, Father”—wrote to the church at Corinth: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
This was before the Trinity was worked out. We don't have that excuse.
But it is a clearly Trinitarian formula, and it has been used as such liturgically—both in the East and the West—since the earliest days of the Church. That use was not discontinued after the doctrine of the Trinity was more explicitly defined.
So it is simply incorrect to state categorically that “[a]bsolutely ‘God’ does not substitute for ‘Father’ to a trinitarian Christian.” It has done so on a regular basis in the liturgy for almost two millennia.
I seem to remember back in the dim and misty past some Orthodox on the old boards maintaining that in the Nicene Creed's first clause, "I believe in one God, The Father", "the Father" is in apposition to "one God" so that "one God" refers to the Father.
I am not qualified to judge the grammar of the Greek to know if they were correct.
I seem to remember back in the dim and misty past some Orthodox on the old boards maintaining that in the Nicene Creed's first clause, "I believe in one God, The Father", "the Father" is in apposition to "one God" so that "one God" refers to the Father.
I am not qualified to judge the grammar of the Greek to know if they were correct.
The Greek text has no article in front of "Father". It is better rendered as "I believe in one God, Father, Almighty, ..."
I seem to remember back in the dim and misty past some Orthodox on the old boards maintaining that in the Nicene Creed's first clause, "I believe in one God, The Father", "the Father" is in apposition to "one God" so that "one God" refers to the Father.
I am not qualified to judge the grammar of the Greek to know if they were correct.
That would seem to be the position put forth by this Orthodox blogger, citing St. Gregory of Nazianzus and quoting Fr. John Behr:
The Father alone is the one true God. This keeps to the structure of the New Testament language about God, where with only a few exceptions, the word “God” (theos) with an article (and so being used, in Greek, as a proper noun) is only applied to the one whom Jesus calls Father, the God spoken of in the scriptures. This same fact is preserved in all ancient creeds, which begin: “I believe in one God, the Father …”
“For us there is one God, the Father … and one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 8:6). The proclamation of the divinity of Jesus Christ is made not so much by describing Him as “God” (theos used, in Greek, without an article is as a predicate, and so can be used of creatures; cf. John 10:34-35), but by recognizing Him as “Lord” (Kyrios). Beside being a common title (“sir”), this word had come to be used, in speech, for the unpronounceable, divine, name of God Himself, YHWH. When Paul states that God bestowed upon the crucified and risen Christ the “name above every name” (Phil 2:9), this is an affirmation that this one is all that YHWH Himself is, without being YHWH. This is again affirmed in the creeds. “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God … true God of true God.”
How reflective this is of broader Orthodox understanding, I cannot say.
The phrase "The Father alone is the one true God" seems to contradict "Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God … true God of true God"
Yes, I agree it can be read that way, though the author clearly didn’t intend for it to be. I took it to be saying that when Scripture in particular, or the Creed, speaks simply of “God,” the reference is almost always to the Father. Likewise liturgical use, when modifiers like “triune” are absent. The position seems to be that the God-ness of the Son and the Spirit are typically expressed and affirmed in ways other than by calling them simply “God.”
Again, how reflective this is of broader Orthodox understanding, I cannot say.
At any rate, to my mind, it demonstrates the challenge of trying to nail down the mystery of Trinity.
I'd have to see John Behr's comments in a larger context I think.
FWIW I think some Orthodox over-emphasise the differences between Western and Eastern understandings of the Trinity. Equally, I also think it's possible to underestimate them.
It's all above my pay grade, as they say. I think I can see what Behr is saying though.
I have heard "the Father is the source of the Trinity" but the Kid and the Spook are co-eternal with the Father, yet not the same person. The Father is not God simpliciter (do not read as "is not simpliciter God") The Father alone is not the fullness of the Godhead. If prayer is addressed to a person and not to an entity, then praying to the Father and praying to God do not describe the same thing.
I'd have to see John Behr's comments in a larger context I think.
FWIW, the blog post to which I linked, and which quotes two paragraphs of Behr, links to this longer quote from Behr, which in turn appears to be from a publication called The Living Pulpit (about which I know nothing).
In that longer quote, the two paragraphs quoted in the blog post to which I linked are preceded by this paragraph:
My comments here follow the structure of revelation as presented in Scripture and reflected upon by the Greek Fathers of the fourth century, the age of trinitarian debates. To avoid the confusion into which explanations often fall, it is necessary to distinguish between: the one God; the one substance common to Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and the one-ness or unity of these Three.
Comments
Absolutely "God" does not substitute for "Father" to a trinitarian Christian. I am reminded of the IS/IS NOT triangle aka the Shield of the Trinity. The Father is but one of the persons of God, not God in God's entirety.
Enoch didn't say they would forbid it, only that they wouldn't recommend it. Since the Catholics are already doing it, it would be pointless to recommend it to them.
Really? It strikes me that it would be an application of Paul's principle when he goes on about meat sacrificed to idols. As C S Lewis summarised it - "the human without scruples giving way to the human with scruples".
I love the way that requests and suggestions become "demands" when people want to deny them.
I know. That's what I was saying.
As nick T. pointed out Jesus in the Gospel account said 'pray like this' and not 'pray this'so we should be quite entitled to raise our prayers to God in any way which recalls the ideas which Jesus gave in what we often call the Lord's prayer.
However and in what order the words have developed in various IndoEuropean languages they are all related.
The normal word for 'father' or indeed a senior man in Arabic is 'abu'
'abuela' is the word in Spanish for English 'grandfather'
Sometimes order of letters can be changed or consonants can be changed from soft to hard sounds.
'babbo' is a word in Italian for 'father although at a slightly more formal level 'papá' can be used as indeed is 'papa' with accent on first syllable the word for 'pope'
For those interested in non binary terms all these words,including the more formal 'pater' are all connected with the word 'paps' (nipples or tits)
The other word for 'father' in English 'dad' 'daddy' 'da' is connected with 'duds','diddies' or 'titties' and all have to do with giving or receiving sustenance from these parts of the human body.
'papp' also is a word connected with this referring to a somewhat milky form of sustenance.
Men's paps do not normally provide any sustenance for another word connected with this idea ,namely 'baba' or baby.
Finally it is maybe worth mentioning that the word 'Lord' means originally 'loaf guard' or life guard. (As Lady is responsible in the division of labour for the 'loaf dough'
'Father' is closely cognate with Vater which is German for father. That in its turn is clearly cognate with Latin pater, and Greek, which is similar. Pere, French, is cognate with the Latin, as are Italian and Spanish, both padre.
Papa, pop, pa etc all seem to be related in some shortened way to the Latin/French/Italian/Spanish cluster of words.
'Dad' appears to have been picked up from Welsh, which is Tad. Whether that's ultimately cognate with the others, I've no idea.
Wiktionary suggests the Proto-Indo-European etymology for pater comes from the verb to shepherd or guard.
If you look in the OED, paps and pater both are linked to what I said about children's language.
Yes, my comment included 'paps' because the OED mentions child language in the etymology of that too. Though not related, semantics-wise, to papa/dad. More, I assume, about children referring to their mothers' breasts. There is also the word pap, referring to semi-liquid food suitable for babies, which is also thought to be related to baby speech.
The link I was seeing was they are all from child speech, so similar in structure for that reason - it is a basic etymology they all share, regardless of language.
I didn't look up tits, because I didn't notice that part of the post, but I just did, and it also is thought to originate from child language:
Clearly not clearly.
This was before the Trinity was worked out. We don't have that excuse.
You may decide to blame me for not being clear, or blame yourself for not reading more carefully, but the point of communication is to communicate, and clarification is a normal, healthy part of it, because different people do communicate differently and understand differently. So blame is a bit pointless. I'm not interested in your snark.
So it is simply incorrect to state categorically that “[a]bsolutely ‘God’ does not substitute for ‘Father’ to a trinitarian Christian.” It has done so on a regular basis in the liturgy for almost two millennia.
I am not qualified to judge the grammar of the Greek to know if they were correct.
The Greek text has no article in front of "Father". It is better rendered as "I believe in one God, Father, Almighty, ..."
Again, how reflective this is of broader Orthodox understanding, I cannot say.
At any rate, to my mind, it demonstrates the challenge of trying to nail down the mystery of Trinity.
I'd have to see John Behr's comments in a larger context I think.
FWIW I think some Orthodox over-emphasise the differences between Western and Eastern understandings of the Trinity. Equally, I also think it's possible to underestimate them.
It's all above my pay grade, as they say. I think I can see what Behr is saying though.
In that longer quote, the two paragraphs quoted in the blog post to which I linked are preceded by this paragraph: There’s more at the link to the longer quote.
Thanks to you both.