As It Is Written . . .
God the Father
by Patrick Henry Reardon
When we Christians profess that Jesus is God's eternal Son, when we affirm that he came to us from God, it is important that we do not misidentify the God who sent him. Jesus is not the Son of a general, universally recognized, non-descript and conventional, all-purpose divinity. The God who sent Jesus is neither the Brahmin of the Hindus nor the Allah of the Muslims (who, let us remember, claimed not to have a Son).
Likewise, the God proclaimed and made known in Jesus is neither Aristotle's primum movens—the Unmoved Mover—nor "the One" of the Neo-Platonists. There is not the slightest resemblance between to Hen of Plotinus and ho ¯On revealed to Moses. Only this latter God—the God of the Burning Bush, the God who later addressed himself to Isaiah in the year King Uzziah died—is the God known to Jesus and confessed by Jesus.
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Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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