Thursday, August 03, 2006

Q33 A3: Whether this name "Father" is applied to God, firstly as a personal name?

Yes. "Paternity" is applied to God first, as importing regard of one Person to another Person, before it imports the regard of God to creatures because the perfect idea of paternity and filiation is to be found in God the Father, and in God the Son, because one is the nature and glory of the Father and the Son.

But in the creature, filiation is found in relation to God (not in a perfect manner, since the Creator and the creature have not the same nature) but by way of a certain likeness, which is the more perfect the nearer we approach to the true idea of filiation.