The objection
The names Father and Son seem male and hierarchical. Does the doctrine of the Trinity not project human gender and power structures onto God and subsequently sanctify them?
1. God's being is no male organism
Jesus says that God is spirit. Fatherhood in God therefore designates neither bodily sexual characteristics nor sexual reproduction. Correspondingly, Thomas distinguishes the truth of a statement about God from its erroneous transfer to bodily attributes.[1]
This is also decisive for our understanding of humanity: According to Genesis 1,27, man and woman are created as God's image. Maleness is not the part of humanity that alone qualifies for likeness to God. The incarnate Son is truly a man; this does not turn divine being into a male body.
2. The names are nevertheless not arbitrarily interchangeable
Jesus teaches his disciples to pray to the Father and speaks of his own relationship to him. These names belong to revelation. They are not merely human designations for freely interchangeable religious functions.
Scripture can simultaneously compare God's comfort with a mother's comfort, for example in Isaiah 66,13. This entails neither God's female corporeality nor abolition of the Father's name taught by Jesus. Figurative speech about God's action and the revealed personal relationship of Father and Son must be distinguished.[2]
3. A divine relationship does not entail a human hierarchy
Anyone immediately deriving political domination from fatherhood or human inferiority from sonship needs additional premises. Humans are not divine persons, and social orders are not direct copies of relationships of origin within God.
Nor can a particular modern model of society be derived from Trinitarian fellowship without further justification. The same projection threatens in both directions: A preferred human order is first read into God and then invested with his authority.
4. Jesus' explicit instruction corrects abuse of power
Mark 10,42–45 contrasts domineering exercise of power with the service Jesus requires of his disciples. Precisely the Son who possesses divine dignity gives his life as a ransom. Anyone using his name for self-exaltation acts against his instruction.
Abuse of a doctrine is no proof against its truth. But it must be exposed by that truth. The appropriate answer therefore neither deletes God's revealed names nor sanctifies every human authority. It lets God's Word determine what the names mean and how Christians should treat one another.
Biblical texts in context
Sources and further study
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiaeI, q. 3, a. 1: God is no body; bodily expressions must be understood according to their substantive meaning.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiaeI, q. 29, a. 4: personal relationships are no bodily constituents of God.