Are the terms “God” and “Father” interchangeable in scripture?

The following is an excerpt from a conversation I had with a trinitarian friend who was responding to my claim that scripture uses the terms “God” and “Father” interchangeably.

Patternist: In my view, I believe that scripture uses the terms God and Father interchangeably, in a way that makes the term Father refer to the entire union of the godhead, not just one person.

Trinitarian: Does that mean that if I point out to you the many, many places in which Scripture refers to Jesus Himself as “God”, you’ll change your mind? Because that would mean that that it does NOT always use those terms interchangeably, right?

First let’s acknowledge the point being made by my friend. The word for “God” in the new testament (theos) is not always used interchangeably with the term “Father.” For example, taking the discussion away from the complexity of Christ and the hypostatic union, scripture even uses the word “theos” to speak of idols, which are clearly not used interchangeably with the “Father” who is described as the one true God (e.g. Act 19:26-27). So yeah, it would be silly to apply a wooden hermeneutic to scripture that acts as if every time the word “God” appears, it must be referring to the being/person described in scripture as “the Father.” The context determines the meaning.

The point that I was making in my statement isn’t that theos is always used interchangeably with the Father, but rather that scripture uses them interchangeably (in one or more places) in a way that makes the term Father refer to the entire union of the godhead, rather than one person in the godhead. Perhaps a clearer statement would be to say, “Many scriptures exist that use the terms God and Father interchangeably, specifically in a way that makes the term Father refer to the entire union of the godhead, not just one person.”

The fact that “God” and “Father” are often used interchangeably is recognized even by trinitarians. Wayne Grudem says the following:

When we realize that the New Testament authors generally use the name “God” (Gk. θεός, G2536) to refer to God the Father and the name “Lord” (Gk. Κύριος, G3261) to refer to God the Son, then it is clear that there is another trinitarian expression in 1 Corinthians 12:4–6: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.”

— Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, chapter 14

Certainly Grudem has no problem saying that Jesus is God (“theos”), and is referred to as such in scripture. But he’s highlighting a trend in scripture where the Father is referred to with the term “God”, and this person is viewed as distinct from Jesus. For example,

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:8-11 ESV)

In this passage, Jesus is described as living his life unto God, in the same way that Christians are to live our lives unto God (i.e. for the glory of God, obedient to God etc.). This causes a tension, because we all agree that Jesus is God. Why then does it speak of God here as a different person?

Trinitarians generally resolve this by appealing to the plurality of persons within the godhead. They claim that “God” here is to be understood as “God the Father” in the trinitarian sense of the phrase — “God” is the first person out of three in the trinity. This is supported by the fact that Paul identifies God as “the Father” earlier in Rom 6:4; clearly “God” and “Father” are being used interchangeably in this context. Trinitarians will therefore take all of the theological meaning that their system ascribes to the term “Father,” and import it into the term “God” when it’s used in passages like Romans 6. This is why Grudem says, “the New Testament authors generally use the name ‘God’ (Gk. θεός, G2536) to refer to God the Father.” He is acknowledging the distinction that is often made between “God” and “Jesus/Christ/Lord” in the new testament, and prescribing a hermeneutic (method of interpretation) that allows this phenomenon to align with the trinitarian system.

However, this hermeneutic seems to have some cracks, some places in scripture where it doesn’t work well, some of which we’ll look at in depth below. At the very least, it’s an odd choice of words for the new testament authors to use, if they were truly trinitarian in their theology. Trinitarians in our day are very careful to speak with terminology that ascribes the word “God” to all three persons — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Yet the language used here and in many other places (by many different authors) draws a distinction between Jesus and God, and views Jesus as having a relationship with God that is similar to ours (e.g. vv 10-11 above, “For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”).

So bringing forward scriptures that refer to Jesus as “God” (theos) would not impact the discussion in any way, because patternists agree with trinitarians that Jesus is truly God and truly man, and that scripture speaks of Him as God in many places (e.g. Jhn 20:28). The issue at hand is that scripture also speaks of Jesus as someone who is distinct from God; trinitarians and patternists then disagree on how best to resolve that kind of language in our respective theological systems.

To better understand the disagreement, we’ll consider the opening to Jesus’ high priestly prayer.

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (Jhn 17:1-3)

Here again we have a distinction being made between “the only true God” and Jesus. Trinitarians and patternists will of course agree that Jesus too is the only true God; he is immanuel, God with us (Mat 1:23); he views himself as the great I AM who was before Abraham (Jhn 8:58). Thus when we pull together the language of various scriptures, we have to acknowledge a tension, that scripture speaks of Jesus as being God, and also (simultaneously) as being distinct from God.

When faced with language like the above, where Jesus is speaking to “God” or the “only true God” etc., trinitarians will generally reconcile this in one of two ways.

1. Like what we saw with Grudem, some will claim that this is a conversation between two persons within the godhead, God the Father and God the Son. Whenever Jesus refers to someone else as “God,” this should be interpreted as God the Father, and he is speaking as God the Son. (e.g. David Guzik’s commentary on John 17)
2. Others claim that this is a conversation between Jesus’ human nature, and his divine nature. (e.g. Matthew Henry’s commentary on John 17)

In other words, you can appeal to a distinction between two persons within the godhead, or you can appeal to a distinction between Jesus’s humanity and his divinity. The former approach has the difficulty of reconciling the fact that God the Son spoke as if God the Father alone is the one true God, which doesn’t fit well with monotheism and/or the true divinity of Jesus (see also my discussion of the Shema and the person of the Father). The latter approach requires us to grant distinct personhood to Jesus’ human nature, which is generally considered a heresy by trinitarians (see my discussion on nestorianism).

Patternists take the second approach, believing that it provides more explanatory scope (i.e. it explains more passages of scripture, better preserving the natural sense of the text). I’ll quote Matthew Henry’s treatment of John 17 to get the sense of his view, which I would agree with.

1. He prays to God as a Father: He lifted up his eyes, and said, Father. Note, As prayer is to be made to God only, so it is our duty in prayer to eye him as a Father, and to call him our Father. All that have the Spirit of adoption are taught to cry Abba, Father, Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6. If God be our Father, we have liberty of access to him, ground of confidence in him, and great expectations from him. Christ calls him here holy Father, (v. 11) and righteous Father, v. 25. For it will be of great use to us in prayer, both for direction and for encouragement, to call God as we hope to find him.
2. He prayed for himself first. Though Christ, as God, was prayed to, Christ, as man, prayed; thus it became him to fulfill all righteousness.

— Matthew Henry, Commentary on John 17

According to Matthew Henry, Jesus here is praying to God as a man. Rather than view John 17 as a conversation between two co-equal and co-eternal persons of the godhead, it’s also possible to interpret this chapter as a man (Jesus) speaking with his God in the same kind of a way that Christians would speak to God. Thus the terms “God” and “Father” in this passage come to refer to the God of the Old Testament, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the one true God of the Shema. Whatever plurality of persons may exist within the godhead, the terms “God” and “Father” are interpreted as referring to God as a whole.

One verse in John 17 challenges the idea that Jesus here can be speaking according to his human nature (Jhn 17:5); I dealt with that in depth in my article on the Angel of the Lord. With that objection set aside, we can affirm that scripture provides us with excellent support for the idea that Jesus had a human relationship with God. Throughout his earthly life, he worshiped Yahweh through his participation in the synagogue, temple worship, and sabbath feasts and sacrifices (Mat 13:53-58, Jhn 13, Mat 5:17). Furthermore, we have strong evidence of a human relationship with God in his temptation in the wilderness.

Three times, he made a decision to obey God rather than Satan.

• But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”
• Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'”
• Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'”
  (Mat 4:4, 7, 10)

We know that God cannot be tempted with evil (Jas 1:13), and that Jesus here was truly tempted to commit sin (Heb 4:15) — to depart from the word of God, to put God to the test, and to worship and serve Satan rather than God. So it would be wrong to interpret this passage as teaching that God the Son was being tempted to depart from worshipping God the Father. The relationship between Jesus and God in this passage is not a relationship internal to the godhead, but rather a relationship that is external to the godhead, between Yahweh God, and Jesus the man. Jesus overcame the temptation to forsake this relationship, and became the only man to ever worship God without spot or blemish.

So when we encounter passages that describe Jesus as having a relationship with God, or interacting with God in some way, we have the option to view this through the lens of Jesus’ humanity. My contention is that doing so leads to a better, more consistent understanding of scripture than viewing it through the lens of his divinity (i.e. a relationship between God the Father and God the Son). Emphasizing his humanity in these passages doesn’t deny Jesus’ divinity in any way; it simply changes how we interpret his relationship to “God.”

With that said, it does change our understanding of the Father.

If the God that Jesus worshipped was Yahweh (and all the persons included therein) — the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the one true God comprised of multiple persons — then we need to change our understanding of the Father. Passages that use the terms “God” and “Father” interchangeably would lead us to understand Yahweh (God) to be the Father of Jesus, and of the Christian. For example, after his work on the cross, Jesus said to Mary Magdalene,

Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ (Jhn 20:17)

Here Jesus says that he’s ascending to his God, who in the truest sense is also now his disciples’ God, through his work on the cross. In the same breath, he also says that he is ascending to his Father and our Father. I suppose that some fancy footwork could allow there to be a distinction between the Father to whom he is ascending, and the God to whom he is ascending, such that he is ascending to one person in the trinity according to his divine nature, and also ascending to the entire trinity according to his human nature. But this grates against the natural reading of the text, particularly since he begins by speaking only of one person to whom he is ascending, namely “the Father.” He seems to treat “God” and “Father” interchangeably — he is ascending to one person, the Father in heaven, who is our Father and his Father, Our God and his God — namely Yahweh. “Father” therefore becomes a term that describes the entire godhead, not just one person within the godhead.

Similarly, a couple passages in the new testament explicitly teach monotheism, and the language they use describes the Father as the one true God (Yahweh), in distinction to Jesus.

For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth–as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”– yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1Co 8:5-6)

​​There is one body and one Spirit–just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call– one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph 4:4-6)

Again, without question Jesus is truly God, the one true God of the universe. But the term “Father” is used to describe that one true God. That means that “Father” must refer to the entire godhead, Yahweh, not just one person. Whatever persons may compose Yahweh (I believe in two, the Word and the Spirit), the godhead itself is also personal, the person identified as Yahweh God in the old testament, and the “Father” in the new testament. This is why patternists say that the Father dwells in Christ through the Word; it is appropriate to call him both the Father (God) incarnate (Isa 9:6), and the Word incarnate (Jhn 1:14).

Similarly, it’s also appropriate to say that the Father dwells in the bride of Christ through the Spirit (with of course some qualifications; we are not divine as a result of our indwelling). Consider Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians.

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” (2Co 6:16-18)

In this passage, God speak about and to his people. The question we have to ask is, which person of the godhead is speaking? Is it the Father, the Son or the Spirit? Well we know that Christians are a temple of the Holy Spirit (1Co 6:19, Jhn 14:16-17). Paul here is making a point about our being a temple within which God dwells, so presumably the person who says, “I will make my dwelling among them; I will be their God, and they will shall be my people” is the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit dwells with and within us. Yet at the end of the thought, the “God” who is speaking says, “I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me.” So it seems that our Father is the person who is speaking, and claiming that he will dwell with and within us as He would a temple made with hands. And we know that the Father of the Christian is the Father of Christ (1Pe 1:3, 1Jo 4:7-9, Jhn 20:17).

So if “Father” refers to only one person in the godhead, this passage becomes difficult to interpret. We have one speaker claiming to be both the Father and the Holy Spirit, which doesn’t fit well within a trinitarian paradigm that views a hard distinction between those two persons, without any sort of overlap. However, if the godhead itself is a composite person — two persons who are one, the Word and Spirit who together form the Father (God) — then God can speak in a more fluid way that allows for overlap between the Father and the Spirit. Here God (the Father of the Christian) says that he will dwell within the Christian, and we know from other passages that God does this through His Spirit (cf. similar language in Eph 2:13-22).

We also see fluid language used concerning the Father and the Word (granting that this may actually be due to a different cause). At the same moment, they can be viewed as distinct from one another, and also the same person.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (Jhn 1:1)

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life– the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us– (1Jo 1:1-2)

Trinitarians rightly identify the “God” of John 1:1 as the Father who was with the Word. As highlighted above, John himself verifies this in the parallel opening of his first epistle. But this raises a subtle problem when you look closely at the phrasing of John 1; replacing “Father” for “God” leads to a non-trinitarian idea.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the Father, and the Word was the Father.

Trinitarians draw a hard line between the personhood of the Word (who they call God the Son) and the Father, such that the Word is not the Father in any sense (aside from sharing a divine essence with him). So when John 1 says that the Word was with God, trinitarian theology can handle this if the term “God” is understood as “God the Father.” However, when John 1 says that the Word was God, trinitarians have to shift the meaning of “God” within the span of a single verse from “God the Father” to “divine” or “part of the one true God”

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the Father, and the Word was divine.

I view this as a problem for trinitarian theology, as we have no indication in John 1 that the meaning of “God” changes from one breath to the next. Rather, there needs to some way in which the Word can be God, and at the same time be distinct from God, similar to how the Spirit is God (our Father), and is also distinct from God (our Father). If we view the godhead itself as the Father, composed of two persons who are one, the Word and the Spirit, then we are better able to address the fluidity of language like what we find in John 1 and and Ephesians 2.

As I said the beginning of this article, the terms “God” and “Father” are not always used interchangeably in scripture. However in those (many) places where they are interchangeable, and where “God” is described as a person who is distinct from Jesus, we need to explain why the new testament authors chose to write this way, given that Jesus is God. Some will appeal to a plurality within the godhead, and claim that the authors intended to differentiate between two persons in the godhead, “God” (the Father) and the “Son of God” (God the Son). Patternists view this as a forced or unnatural hermeneutic that encounters some difficulties when certain scriptures are examined carefully, such as those we looked at above. Instead of appealing to plurality within the godhead, patternists view Jesus as a human son of God (like Adam, like the Christian), who relates to God as his Father, through his human nature.

This allows us to use “God” and “Father” interchangeably in passages that require us to, without having to change the meaning of “God” that we’ve inherited from the old testament. “God” is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — he is not one person within the godhead; rather he is the godhead; he is Yahweh, the one true God. This still allows for plurality within the godhead; we just don’t include the Father as one of those internal persons. The Word is the Father, and the Spirit is the Father. They are also both distinct from the Father, being only one person out of two that compose the godhead. This concept of a composite union allows two people to be viewed as one person, not unlike the language that we also see speaking of Jesus and God as distinct persons, yet also one person.

Hopefully that clarifies the point that I was trying to make. I’ll close this article with a sampling of verses that I found concerning the interchangeability of “God” and “Father” and other topics discussed. Many more could be added, and further elaborated.

In Christ,
~ trinity berean

• Jesus has a God: Rom 15:5-7, 2Co 1:1-4, Rev 1:4-6, Eph 4:4-6, Eph 1:1-3, 17, 2Co 11:31
• Jesus is viewed as distinct from God: Jhn 14:1-2, Rom 6:8-11, Rom 15:5-7, 1Co 1:3-4, 9, Jhn 6:44-46, Jhn 13:1-3, Jhn 17:1-3, Jhn 20:17, 1Co 8:5-6, 2Co 1:1-4, Jhn 5:18, Jhn 16:2-3, 1Jo 4:14-16, 2Jo 1:9, Eph 4:4-6, Rev 1:4-6, Rom 6:8-11, Phil 2:5-11, 2Co 11:31, 1Ti 1:1-2, Tit 1:1-4
  
• Jesus and Christians are both children/sons of God: Rom 8:15-17, Heb 12:5-11 (cf. Pro 3:11-12), 1Co 1:3-4, 9, Jhn 20:17, 2Co 1:1-4, Eph 1:1-3, 17, 1Jo 3:1-2, 2Co 11:31, Gal 1:1-4, Col 1:1-3, 1Th 1:1-4, 1Th 3:9-13, 2Th 1:1-12
• God is the Father: Rom 15:5-7, Jhn 6:44-46, Jhn 8:41-42, Jhn 17:1-3, Jhn 8:41-42, Jhn 16:27-30, Jhn 20:17, 1Co 8:5-6, 2Co 1:1-4, Jhn 5:18, Jhn 6:31-33, Jhn 16:2-3, 1Jo 4:14-16, 2Jo 1:9, Eph 4:4-6, Rev 1:4-6, Heb 12:5-11 (cf. Pro 3:11-12), Jas 3:7-10, Eph 1:1-3, 17, Jhn 4:23-24, Jhn 5:44-45, 1Jo 3:1-2, 2Co 11:31, Gal 1:1-4, Col 1:1-3, Col 3:16-17, 1Th 1:1-4, 1Th 3:9-13, 2Th 1:1-12, 1Ti 1:1-2, 2Ti 1:1-3, Tit 1:1-4
• Jesus came from God / was sent by God: Jhn 13:1-3, Jhn 16:27-30, Jhn 8:41-42, Jhn 6:44-46, Jhn 17:1-3
• The Father dwells in Christ / the Christian: Jhn 14:10, Jhn 10:38, Jhn 17:21, 1Jo 4:14-16, Eph 2:18-22, 2Co 6:16-18