We often hurry over this phrase at the beginning of the Creed without asking ourselves some obvious questions. Do we mean that God is our Father, or that God is Jesus' father? If God is "both male and female" (Gen. 1:27), isn't "Father" rather a patriarchal word, politically incorrect, even? Why "father almighty", and not "almighty father"? Isn't God a God of love, rather than a God of "might"? And if God really is almighty, why is there so much suffering in the world?
The two words of our title are not linked together in the Bible. God is often described as a father, often described as almighty, but never as an almighty father. The two words came together very early on in the church's life, but modern translations do well to separate them - so in the Nicene Creed, we say "the Father, the Almighty", and in the Gloria, we sing "almighty God and Father."
For God is a loving father, not one who beats children into submission. And not a God like the Roman Jupiter (literally "Father Jove"), chief of a pantheon of gods. God is our Father, as the Lord's Prayer teaches us to say.
In one way, this is patriarchal. Just as Abraham was "father" of the Jewish nation, so God too is described as "Father of Israel" (Deut. 32:6). Just as a family bore its father's name, so God's people are called by God's name (Isaiah 43:7). We are all children of God because we belong to God's people.
The New Testament portrays this relationship in a more intimate way. Each of us who has "received" Jesus, John tells us, has become "a child of God, born not of blood ... but of God" (John 1:13). Paul takes the same theme up in his letter to the Galatians: we have been adopted as God's children. And because of this, God has sent the Spirit into our hearts crying "Abba! Father!" (Gal 4:6-7).
This intimacy is one of love and tenderness, not domination. As well as a father's care, the Bible also compares God's protection to that of a mother bird nestling her young under her wings.
But in the Creed, "Father" relates first and foremost to Jesus, "the only-begotten Son of God". Our own adoption is brought about through Jesus' sonship. Truly God and truly human, Jesus allows us to share in God's life and to witness God's might.
Which leads us on to "almighty". We often forget that the word, like the Latin omnipotens and the Greek pantokrator, means that God "can do everything." Everything, of course, except die, or be untrue (2 Tim 2:13). God is not just powerful, but all-powerful.
The Bible is clear that God's might is not always shown in "mighty works", but also in mercy and pity. If God is indeed "able to do anything", what we expect on a human level, with our limited understanding, may well not be God's way. That would be too limiting. "My ways are not your ways." (Isaiah 55:8). God's way does not work through coercion, through force, through "making us" be good. And this is why we are not automata, not zombies, but able freely to choose for ourselves, and to get things wrong.
When the Archbishop of Canterbury was asked recently where God was in the slaughter of the schoolchildren in Beslan, he replied that God was there in the elder pupils comforting the younger ones and putting an arm round them to calm their fears. God is never absent. God never leaves us comfortless. This is God's power. God's ways are not always our ways.
God's way is through sharing in our human condition, in sharing our pains and our fears, but in being ready to carry us through them. This is just as much a sign of might as killing evil people with thunderbolts and diverting bullets with metaphysical forces. God's might lies in the power to forgive us and to go on loving us not matter how far we have fallen. To love us, indeed, with a heavenly Father's love.
HD