Lexicon

G3962 - pater

Strong's: G3962 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: pat-ayr' Part of speech: masculine noun Hebrew equivalent (LXX): H0001 - ab (אָב, "father"), the standard rendering. NT occurrences: ~414

Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG)

Biological / immediate father, male progenitor.
Male ancestor / forefather, extended forebears (e.g., Abraham, "our father Abraham," Romans 4:1).
Founder, originator, head of a people / movement / school, figurative paternity (Romans 4:11-12 Abraham as "the father of all who believe").
Author / source / progenitor of a thing, abstract origination (John 8:44 the devil as "father of lies"; James 1:17 God as "Father of lights").
God the Father, the first person of the Trinity; specifically:

Father of creation, God as Creator and source of all being (1 Corinthians 8:6 "one God, the Father, from whom are all things").
Father of Israel / of believers, covenantal relational fatherhood (Matthew 6:9 "Our Father"; Romans 8:15 "Abba! Father!").
Father of the Son, eternal Trinitarian relation (John 3:35; 5:20; 14:9-11; 17:1ff).

Theological force, God as Father

The word's most theologically loaded use is the Father as the first person of the Trinity. Three distinct senses converge:

Father of the Son eternally. The Father / Son relation is constitutive of the divine being, not contingent. The Father is eternally Father because He eternally has the Son. This is the doctrine of eternal generation (see G5207 - huios and G3439 - monogenes). The Father is not "first" temporally, He is primus in the Trinitarian taxis of relation, the unbegotten source from whom the Son is eternally generated.
Father of believers by adoption. Romans 8:15 / Galatians 4:6 / Ephesians 1:5, through the Son, by the Spirit, believers are adopted as sons. We can address God as Abba (Aramaic intimate address, "Daddy") because the Spirit of the Son cries this in our hearts. Crucially: adopted sonship, not natural sonship. We are children of God (tekna theou) by grace; only Christ is Son of God (Huios theou) by nature.
Father of creation. Less central in NT than the first two senses but biblically real (1 Corinthians 8:6; James 1:17). God's fatherhood toward creation is creational, not constitutional, He made all things; He sustains them; but they are creatures, not children in the relational sense.

The relationship between these three senses is critical: God is Father of the Son eternally; Father of believers derivatively, through union with the Son; Father of creation in the sense of origin and providence.

The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9 pending), Pater hēmōn ho en tois ouranois, captures the Christian distinctive: believers approach God in family-language, taught by the Son. This was striking in first-century Judaism, where address of God was typically more formal (Adonai, Hashem, etc.). Jesus's Abba is unprecedented in its intimacy.

Notable verses

The Father in Trinitarian formula

Matthew 28.19, "in the name of the Patēr and the Huios and the Holy Pneuma"
2 Corinthians 13:14, "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God [the Father], the fellowship of the Holy Spirit"
Ephesians 4:4-6, "one Spirit… one Lord… one God and Patēr of all"
1 Peter 1:2, "according to the foreknowledge of God the Patēr, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ"

Father / Son relation

John 3:35, "the Patēr loves the Huios"
John 5:19-23, Father / Son interrelation; "the Patēr loves the Huios and shows Him all things"
John 10:30, "I and the Patēr are one" (John 10.30)
John 14:6-11, "no one comes to the Patēr except through Me… he who has seen Me has seen the Patēr"
John 14:26, "the Patēr will send" the Spirit (John 14.26)
John 17, the High Priestly Prayer; Patēr address throughout
John 17.5, "Patēr, glorify Me… with the glory which I had with You before the world was"
John 1.18, "the only begotten God [or Son] who is in the bosom of the Patēr"
Hebrews 1:5, "I will be a Patēr to Him, and He shall be a Huios to Me" (citing 2 Sam 7:14, Ps 2:7)

Father of believers

Matthew 6:9, "Our Patēr who is in heaven"
Romans 8:15, "you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, 'Abba! Patēr!'"
Galatians 4:6, "God has sent forth the Spirit of His Huios into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Patēr!'"
Ephesians 1:5, "predestined to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself"
John 1:12, "to those who believe in His name, He gave the right to become children of God" (note: tekna, not huioi)
1 John 3:1, "see what kind of love the Patēr has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God"
2 Corinthians 6:18, "I will be a Patēr to you, and you will be sons and daughters to Me"

Creator-Father

1 Corinthians 8.6 (pending), "for us there is one God, the Patēr, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him"
James 1:17, "the Patēr of lights, with whom there is no variation"
Acts 17:28-29, "in Him we live and move and exist… we are also His offspring"

Earthly fathers

Matthew 19:5, "for this reason a man shall leave his patēr"
Ephesians 6:4, "fathers, do not provoke your children"
Hebrews 12:9, earthly patēr (discipline)

Father of lies / abstract

John 8:44, "you are of your patēr the devil… he is a liar and the patēr of lies"
Romans 4:11-12, 16-17, Abraham as "the patēr of all who believe"

Patristic / scholarly note

The doctrine of God-as-Father is codified in the Nicene Creed (AD 325, 381): "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth…" and in the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." The Nicene affirmation that the Son is gennēthenta ek tou Patros ("begotten of the Father") and homoousion tō Patri ("of one essence with the Father") establishes the Trinitarian framework.

Athanasius (Discourses Against the Arians I.14, c. AD 358; Letter on the Synods) presses the eternal-Father claim: God did not become Father; He is eternally Father by virtue of eternally generating the Son. This contradicts Arius, who held that there was "a time when the Son was not", implying there was a time when the Father was not Father, which would mean God's nature underwent change.

The Cappadocians (Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa) develop the doctrine of taxis, order in the divine persons without inequality, with the Father as "the cause" of the Son and Spirit (in the relational, not subordinationist, sense). Eastern Orthodoxy preserves this monarchia of the Father particularly strongly; Western theology (Augustine, De Trinitate) emphasizes the equal divinity and mutual indwelling more centrally.

Recent Reformed treatments: Robert Letham (The Holy Trinity, 2004), Fred Sanders (The Deep Things of God, 2010), and Scott Swain (The Trinity, 2020) develop the biblical theology of the Father in robustly Trinitarian terms.

Verses in this codex

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