The Son Abideth Ever, Pt. 2 - The Master's Trumpet

This is the second of a two-part series by Rev. Ian Macleod on the theology of Robert S. Candlish (1806–1873) who was a prominent figure in the Free Church of Scotland Disruption of 1843. The first part can be found here.

The Nature of Fatherhood: Towards a Definition

The first article, published in the previous edition of The Master’s Trumpet, forces the consideration of the question as to the nature of divine fatherhood: What precisely is meant by fatherhood? And what does such a relationship entail for Adam? Robert Candlish claims that it is incumbent, not on himself, but on those who would affirm the primitive filial relation to “define exactly, or to describe particularly, the relation now in question.” However, he continues that “they are more inclined to deal in somewhat vague generalities.”¹ Thomas Crawford retorts that this is an insufficient reason for Candlish to refrain from providing a definition, and furthermore, “Those who have hitherto affirmed the divine paternity as a natural relation, have never till now had any opponent to contend against.”² Others share Crawford’s position on this point. John P. Lee believes that Candlish was “obliged to [define the term ‘fatherhood’]” and that this failure results in “a lack of precision in his doctrine of fatherhood.”³ Although John Kennedy is an admirer of Candlish’s work as a whole, he also considers the failure to determine what the relation of Fatherhood implies from the outset to be one of the “marked defects” of the otherwise “remarkable work.”⁴

However, in the course of their writing, both Candlish and Crawford certainly speak to the nature of fatherhood: both in terms of what it is and what it is not. The closest Crawford comes to defining God’s fatherhood at creation is when he conjectures how others might have defined it, were they pressed for a definition: “They might probably have said that fatherhood implies the origination by one intelligent person of another intelligent person like in nature to himself, and the continued support, protection, and nourishment of the person thus originated by him to whom he owes his being.” He demurs from saying there is an exact and strict parallel between this relation and that which exists between an earthly father and son, yet this latter “paternity is the most appropriate type.”⁵ Further, he claims that the relationship between God and Adam, consisting in the likeness of Adam to God, has been “grievously defaced and distorted by the Fall,” but still remains.⁶ Crawford quotes James Buchanan (1804–1870) approvingly: “[Man] never ceased to be a creature, but he is now a fallen creature; he never ceased to be a subject, but he is now a rebellious subject; he never ceased to be a son, but he is now one of the children of disobedience and of wrath.”⁷

Several observations can be made regarding Crawford’s view of God’s Fatherhood to Adam. First, there is a clear, and perhaps even a strict, correlation in Crawford’s position between the filial relation and the imago dei. As above, the question might be pressed that if the image of God in man constitutes de facto and de jure a filial relation, might we not expect all the divines who hold this position to elaborate on this salient point in their treatment of the imago dei? Brown connects sonship and image in regard to the angels but omits this connection in regard to Adam: “Angels are called Sons of God, being made after his image.”⁸ Boston does not mention sonship in his treatment of the image of God in his sermon on “The Creation of Man.”⁹

Second, Crawford believes that the filial relationship, though tarnished, remains intact. In this he differs from Boston and Erskine. Boston writes concerning the Fall of men and angels: “Many of the family died such a death as quite dissolved the relation betwixt God and them, that they could no more call him Father, nor could he own them for his children.”¹⁰ Erskine writes, “Adam was declared to be the son of God at his creation, but he lost it to himself and us; but the second Adam brings us back again to God’s family.”¹¹ George Smeaton (1814–1889) also, speaking against the idea of a universal fatherhood, argues, “Men cannot, at one and the same moment, be of their father the devil … and yet be recognised or called sons of God.”¹²

Yet, Kennedy and John Eadie (1810–1876) both support the logical necessity of a created relationship remaining so long as the creature remains. In speaking of what remains and what is lost in the Fall, Eadie succinctly writes: “What belongs to his constitution he retains; what belongs to his character has been lost.”¹³ Kennedy puts it even more forcefully, “If creation constituted, annihilation alone can destroy, this relation. Man, if a child, because created, must be so in all conditions and forever.”¹⁴ This becomes a foundational point in Candlish’s arguments against a primitive filial relation. He cites Milton’s famous line in Paradise Regained, where Satan says, “The son of God I also am, or was, and if I was, I am; relation stands.”¹⁵ Candlish contends that logically, if the major premise is true, then the minor premise also holds.

Third, Crawford’s position allows for different senses, or perhaps degrees, of sonship. For instance, he gives three reasons why the sonship of the believer supersedes the sonship of Adam: “Its origin in the sovereign and discriminating grace of God, its connection with the person and work of the Redeemer, and its restriction to those who are united to Him by faith.”¹⁶ As with Shaw above, this raises the question of whether the sonship at creation is a qualitatively, or only a quantitatively, different thing to sonship by adoption. The manner of constitution, the accidental circumstances, the resultant enjoyment of the relationship, may be radically different, but does the same creation relationship not still remain? The implications that ensue lie at the center of Candlish’s objections to the position.

In reacting to Crawford’s definition of fatherhood, Candlish replies that such a conception falls short of authentic fatherhood, and indeed empties it of what is quintessential and most precious. He writes, “Such a universal fatherhood as that I do not care to call in question. But is there any relation of any sort defined or described here?”¹⁷ He suggests that what is described is “nothing more than a kind of quality of subjectship. It is subjectship realising itself, if one may so speak, in favourable circumstances and under favourable influences—causing it to partake not a little of the genial, cordial spirit which is wont to pervade the walk of a son with his father.”¹⁸ Candlish appeals that there is no inconsistency in a kind and gracious “sovereign ruler”: “Can a ruler not be kind and generous without being a father also?”¹⁹ To illustrate this point, Candlish suggests that there would be no incongruity were he to take Crawford’s following description of God as Father and substitute “our Father in heaven” with “our sovereign ruler, the God whose name and nature is love”: “An evident excess and exuberance of divine bounty, a constant and overflowing fulness of beneficence far beyond aught that mere equity or justice on the part of a sovereign ruler could have dictated, and such as can only be satisfactorily accounted for by ascribing it to the care and kindness of our Father in heaven.”²⁰

Candlish’s primary argument against the primitive filial relation is that there is no evidence for it in Scripture, and especially in the creation account. Instead, he believes there has been a confounding of creation and government on the one hand, and government with fatherhood on the other, as though the one necessarily implies the other. In approaching a definition of divine fatherhood (which Candlish believes to be essentially one, i.e. God does not have multiple kinds of fatherhood), Candlish’s argument might be summarized in three points.

First, divine fatherhood is more than the mere Creator-creature relationship. He argues that the relation resulting from creation implies preservation, benefaction and government: “If [the creature] is not to rule [God], [God] must rule [the creature].”²¹ Thus, the Governor-subject relationship is a necessarily correlate to that of the Creator-creature. However, according to Candlish, to argue for a necessary paternal-filial relationship merely on account of creation, makes fatherhood “little more than a euphonious synonym, or figurative personification, for causation; and in truth [denies] that there is any real paternal relation on the part of God at all.”²²

Second, to be a son of God requires more than being made in His image. There is a necessary co-ordination between the imago dei in man and God’s government of him by law. Yet, there is no intrinsic or necessary co-ordination between the imago dei and sonship. Martin, defending Candlish on this point, argues that if none will say that “the image of God is [identical to] the sonship of man … it will be difficult to prove that the creation of the one is the constitution of the other.”²³ If this were the case, Candlish contends, then regeneration would be all that is necessary to restore sonship.²⁴ Hence, in effect, the gracious act of adoption would be redundant. Regeneration would ipso facto restore the imago dei and its co-ordinate sonship. Kennedy makes the same point but takes it one step further by adding that this removes the objective relational status of sonship, making it something entirely subjective: “The Spirit makes them sons by creating them anew in the image of God. Sonship would thus be a subjective thing—a condition of soul, and not the relational status of a person; not the result of an act of grace on the part of God the Father, but something implied in a work of grace performed by God the Holy Ghost.”²⁵

Third, sonship is something that can be superadded to man. The proof for this is in the incarnation of Christ; the Son of God who assumed humanity (the form of a servant) into union with His divine Person (the Son of God). Candlish says that this shows us that sonship is not an incommunicable property, but rather, “it is a relation which may be communicated to a creature and shared in by a creature.”²⁶ Candlish believes that it is likely that sonship would have been graciously granted to Adam had he sustained his probationary period; that this had always been God’s design. He writes of Adam, “No doubt his Creator, having intended originally to adopt and own him as a son after probation may show his willingness to welcome him, on his return, with the fulness of the parental love and the parental blessing which he meant him from the first to possess, for which indeed, I repeat, he made him.”²⁷ In this configuration, therefore, sonship is something that will be graciously superadded in regeneration and adoption, not a restoration to a previously sustained relationship. Yet, it does appear to be a relationship God intended from the beginning to bestow.

None of the above, in Candlish’s mind, in any way denigrates or denies the great privilege and glory of man at creation. Nor does the denial of sonship denigrate in the least degree God’s goodness and love to man. He writes, “I hold it to be the very climax and consummation of the creature-state, when there comes forth a godlike person, intelligent and free, with whom the personal God may have personal intercourse and personal transactions. No limit can be set to the intimacy of personal communion and the reciprocity of personal affection thus rendered possible.”²⁸ However, sonship is something more, and if as Candlish contends, there is essentially only one kind of relationship or status of sonship, then the blessings that are intrinsic to the sonship of believers would also pertain to Adam as a son at creation. Many of these intrinsic rights and privileges form the basis of Candlish’s arguments against a primitive filial relation.

Candlish’s Arguments Against a Primitive Father-Son Relation

Candlish argues that to posit a primitive filial relation in Adam by virtue of creation presents a number of irreconcilable inconsistencies. This argument assumes the truth that God always acts in perfect consistency with the relationship He sustains to others. He will never act contrary to the responsibilities and obligations each relationship entails. Thus, for example, as the God of the covenant, God will always be perfectly faithful to His covenant promises and threatenings (Ps. 89:34; Ezek. 24:14). As a Judge, He will give perfect and righteous judgement to each one (Ps. 98:9). Similarly, as Father, God will always act in perfect consistency to all the obligations and responsibilities fatherhood requires. The following arguments may be systematically deduced from Candlish’s writings against the idea of a primitive fatherhood of God towards Adam.

Fatherhood Inconsistent with God’s Absolute Sovereignty as Creator

This principal argument is that, if God has created man as a son, then God has bound Himself by His own creation of man to act consistently with him as a father. In so doing, God’s absolute sovereignty as Creator is necessarily qualified by His obligations to him as father. God must be consistent with both relations. Of course, Candlish believes, God is free to superadd sonship ex gratia. This would be within God’s sovereign prerogative, though Candlish sees no trace of such a sonship constituted at creation.²⁹ However, that sovereign prerogative is removed, or at least qualified, when sonship is the necessary coordinate of man as created in God’s image. Candlish writes, “[It would be] as if the Creator owed something to the creature beyond strict legal justice; and as if the creature had some right or claim, irrespective of mere legal justice, which he might assert, if not against, yet at least upon, the Creator.”³⁰ The thrust of this argument lies in the stringent distinction between these two relations. He continues, “It is one thing for me to have God as my ruler, lawgiver, judge. It is another, and an altogether different thing for me to have him as my Father.”³¹ Roman Law, Candlish notes by way of illustration, knew no distinction between a father and a judge—a father would take a son home from the magistrate to punish him for a crime. In the theocracy, however, God required a father to take his rebellious son to the elders of the city, who in turn would administer the penalty for the crime (Deut. 21:18–21). The material point is this:

The limit of fatherly authority and fatherly discipline is pointedly marked. It reaches to chastisement, “when they have chastised him.” But there it stops. The rebel passes from the familiar house and warm heart of a loving and broken-hearted father, who has done his utmost and whose utmost has failed – to the cold, calm, tribunal of “the gate of his place;” the awful seat of judgment; there to be judicially tried by “the elders of his city,” and thence to be delivered over, for judicial execution, to the appointed ministers of the last sentence of the law.³²

Of course, Candlish recognizes that God is able to relate both as a Father and as a Ruler. He wants, however, to recognize and highlight the differences, the prerogatives, the obligations, and the limits of both relations.

Certainly, Crawford concurs that God always acts consistently to the relationships He sustains to others. However, he does not believe that fatherhood in God places Him under any obligation to His creatures. He writes, “If fatherhood be one of those relations, then certainly, He owes it to Himself to act towards them a father’s part.” In this same place, Crawford makes a distinction between God owing this consistency to Himself and to His creatures: “Instead of saying he owes it to them, we ought rather to say that He owes it to Himself.”³³ This certainly appears to be an equivocation, for if God owes it to Himself to perform the part of a father, then the divine consistency in that self-obligation will certainly find perfect expression in the way of obligation and privilege towards His created sons. Candlish retorts that he is in agreement with Crawford’s claim that we have no “right or claim upon [God] beyond strict legal justice,” but pointedly adds, “though I set little value on a fatherhood that implies no more, and in fact call it no fatherhood at all.”³⁴

The force of Candlish’s argument is highlighted by considering the stark statements many Scottish divines make regarding God’s absolute lack of any obligation to do good to man, as his creature. Some of these writers will challenge and qualify their own statements by an appeal to the consistency of God’s goodness and justice. However, the statements appear inadmissible when considered in relation to God acting as a father. Shaw writes, for instance, “Though man had gone through a long course of obedience, without a single failure, he could not have laid his Creator under any obligation to him or been entitled to any recompense.” Brown writes more graphically, “God could have done no injury to man, though he had reduced him to nothing that moment he had finished any prescribed course of obedience.” Boston writes that God was “free to dispose of man as he saw fit, however perfectly he kept the law,” and goes on to say God was free “to have annihilated all mankind.”³⁵ In their context, these statements are intended to highlight the confessional truth that man “could never have any fruition of [God] as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.” (WCF 7:1). However, when put in the context of a father-son relationship, they form a gross and even an offensive incongruity. Is it reasonable to suggest that an obedient son of God has no claim or entitlement to God’s favor or recompense? Or is it possible that God would do his faultless son no wrong by reducing him to nothing? Might God not protest, as he did in a different context, “If I be a father, where is mine honour?” (Mal. 1:6). Kennedy is to the point regarding the obligation of the father-son relation: “It is a relation requiring mutual love, or it is nothing.”³⁶

Fatherhood Inconsistent with Probation and Fall

The next inconsistency with a primitive filial relation is God’s placing His son under probation and then severing the relationship upon his disobedience. Again, Candlish sees no inconsistency in this when Adam is viewed as a servant but finds “God’s treatment of Adam in the garden [to be] palpably irreconcilable with the idea of anything like the paternal and filial relation subsisting between them.” He proceeds to notice that the language used in the account of the probation and Fall is “strictly,… exclusively, forensic and judicial. It is the legal condemnation of a servant; not the fatherly chastisement of a son.”³⁷ There is no mention of any violation of filial obligation.

Central to the objection of a primitive filial relation is the belief that, quintessentially, sonship is not something contingent. Simply put, a father does not put a son under probation. Candlish claims, “The paternal relation … implies the enjoyment by those towards whom it is sustained of a permanent footing in the family, as opposed to one that is contingent and precarious (John 8:35). It excludes the idea of punishment, properly so called. It is not the function of a father, as such, to try, or put [a son] upon probation.”³⁸ Crawford, on the other hand, sees no contradiction between sonship, probation, and the consequences of failure. He writes,

It is true, their sonship, as a relation, must still endure, but it may be a relation stripped of all its privileges; though continuing to be sons, they may be disowned and disinherited sons. Their Father-king, if He finds them to be incorrigible, may, in the exercise of His sovereignty, and without prejudice to His fatherhood, expel them from His household, deprive them of their birthright, and inflict upon them the just punishment of their evil deeds.³⁹

Certainly, it is true, that if sonship necessarily implies “a permanent footing in the family,” then there is indeed a conflict of interest, or a conflict of obligation in God’s dealing with His servant, who is also His son. Martin’s analysis of the coordinate relationship is pertinent: “We cannot conceive of them as both acted out freely and fully; one of them will inevitably influence and affect, condition, limit, and restrain the other.”⁴⁰

At this point, Candlish’s question concerning the nature of God’s Fatherhood returns: What does it actually entail? Do we not evacuate from fatherhood all meaning and make it an empty name, if we remove from it the right and privilege of permanence? By extension, what does this imply for the rights and privileges of those who are sons by adoption? If that relationship is essentially the same in kind, though not necessarily in degree or warmth or experience, then is there not inconsistency in appealing to the relation of adoptive sonship as permanently securing a place in the household of God? It would not therefore be sonship per se which secures permanence, but the manner in which it is constituted. In this case, sonship by creation is precarious, yet sonship by adoption is inviolable. Candlish objects that morally, a son is no less a son to a father, if he is so naturally, or if he is so by adoption. It is the relationship that determines the obligation and privilege, not the manner or timing of its constitution.⁴¹ It is the relationship of a servant that is tested and therefore precarious, but it is the relationship of a son that is permanent: “The servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever” (John 8:35).⁴²

In discussing the rights and privileges of the sons of God in adoption, the Scottish writers always include security, permanence and protection. The Westminster Confession of Faith confesses that adopted sons “are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by Him as a Father; yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation.” (WCF 12).⁴³ Dickson asks whether those “who are taken into the number and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God … are ever cast off” and answers with an emphatic negative. Shaw writes of God’s protection and the sons’ ultimate security: “They enjoy the protection of their heavenly Father. Numerous are their spiritual enemies, and manifold the dangers to which they are exposed; but he who neither slumbers nor sleeps, watches over them with unwearied care.… As their heavenly Father he will never cast them off, so he secures that they shall not totally and finally depart from him.” Brown lists among the benefits of sonship, “God’s Fatherly protection … the ministration of angels to attend, guard, provide for, and direct us … unfailing establishment in this adopted state … Fatherly comfort under every adversity … a full, free, and irrevocable right to all happiness in time and eternity.” Erskine writes of the privilege of adoptive sonship, that God will give “a place in God’s family that shall never be cut off.” In commenting on “the high dignity” of the title “children of God” in Romans 8:17, Ralph Wardlaw (1779–1853) writes, “It is accompanied with blessings inestimably precious … the paternal favour and blessing, the provision, instruction, guidance, support, consolation and correction of our heavenly Father; and, beyond this life, the ‘certain hope’ of an inheritance infinitely superior to everything earthly.” Haldane, in commenting on, “If children, then heirs” (Rom. 8:17), writes of “the certainty of their possessing the eternal inheritance.… The fact of their being heirs he deduced from their being children.… It is solely in virtue of their sonship.”⁴⁴

If there is essentially one relationship of fatherhood, and if these descriptions of the privileges of sons are even analogous to those of the alleged primitive relation, then the inconsistency is apparent. Where was the father’s protection and intervention on behalf of His sons from the fiercest of enemies and the most perilous of attacks? Why were these most basic duties of a father missing? There is no such obligation for a ruler, even a good and kind ruler, when a servant is under test and trial. However, is it not inconceivable and intolerable to consider such withdrawal from a perfect father? Could Adam not have expected that which Buchanan (cited approvingly by Crawford) applies to the sonship of a believer?

For just as a little child looks to the wisdom, and confides in the care of an affectionate father, and when he ventures out into the world feels all the more secure when he knows that a father’s foresight has arranged all his plans, and a father’s eye is still watching over his progress, just so the believer, looking up to God as his Father in heaven, and knowing that nothing can happen to him without His permission or appointment, that He is ever present to observe, and almighty to sustain, and unerring to direct him… the believer, I say, is able to say with the apostle, in the spirit of childlike confidence, “Therefore may we boldly say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear,” and with the Psalmist, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.⁴⁵

Why is all this denied to Adam, if he is a son by creation? Is he a son in name only? Candlish forces the dilemma, that either one includes in God’s paternal character “the imposing of an arbitrary or discretionary conditional test and the inflicting of penal judgement, in which case you make fatherhood little more than a name,” or one suggests that fatherhood does not entail “any special affection, or any special mode of treatment.”⁴⁶ In support of Candlish, Martin presses the argument: “If he does occupy the relation of sonship towards God, of what value is it to him? Of what value in the very crisis of his destiny, when all its value, if it has any, should come out? It is no privilege to him; none even in his hour of utmost need. It is no safeguard. It can do nothing for him; absolutely nothing.” For Martin, the inevitable conclusion is that, as must be the case, “the one relation dominates over the other … in a very remarkable manner.” He continues to press the unavoidable dilemma, “What a despicable subordination of sonship is this! Man is a subject: also he is a son. But his sonship is of no service to him in his calamity as a subject. His sonship cannot come into play at all; it cannot present itself in court. Nay more; in its very absence its annihilation is decreed.”⁴⁷

Does this not impugn the character of God? Does it not suggest an inability to harmonize the coordinate relations He sustains to man? Does it not strike against the glory of personal property of the First Person? Kennedy addresses this question concerning God’s character with particular poignancy. He says that to ascribe to God a fatherhood which does not secure eternal good to His children is “foully to dishonor Him.” He continues,

I cannot conceive of “the Lord Almighty” as Father, without regarding it as utterly impossible that His child can die. His love disposes Him to do good to His child, and His omnipotence can accomplish all the behests of His love. But what is His way of dealing with man in Eden? He places him under trial. He makes his life dependent on the issue of that trial. He allows the liar and the murderer to approach him. He knows his deadly intent, and yet He permits the serpent to enter Eden; and He allows man to fall. He lets man die under His all-seeing eye. Can that fallen man be the child of God? The very idea is revolting.⁴⁸

Fatherhood of God Inconsistent with Sola Gratia

If the relationship of sonship continues post-Fall, then Candlish sees the inconsistency concerning God’s absolute sovereignty as Creator extend to an inconsistency in the method of salvation by grace alone. The question might be thus framed: If Adam remains essentially a son of God after his fall, then does this not provide him with some inherent ground of appeal to God’s favor and mercy? And does this not in some way deny the correlate truths that fallen man has no inherent pleading ground for God’s favor and that salvation must be by grace alone? Or, does something other than free and sovereign grace induce God to restore man into His favor?

These questions receive greater difficulty by affirming that fallen man’s sonship has been vitiated. Crawford certainly believes that fallen man has “forfeited by [his] sins all title to [God’s] favor.” Yet, in appealing to the parable of the Prodigal Son, he writes:

May we not reasonably conclude that God, having brought such creatures into being, “will not forsake the work of His own hands”? Having so far acted towards them as a father in giving them existence and imparting to them His own likeness, we cannot suppose that He will thereafter leave them orphans. The same love which originally moved Him to the creation of them, will move Him still to watch over them with parental care, and to provide for them with parental kindness and liberality. And even when, like prodigal sons, they have departed from Him, and forfeited by their sins all title to His favour, and striven, as far as they could, to dissever, or at least to disown, the bonds of their relation to Him, it is no incredible thing that His fatherly love may still yearn after them, and may devise means whereby, without prejudice to the authority of His laws and the majesty of His government, His banished ones may, if penitent, be restored to the comforts of His home and the endearments of His fellowship.⁴⁹

This statement certainly raises and presses the questions stated above. If we cannot reasonably conclude that God will forsake His sons as “the work of His own hands,” then is their sonship inducing God to receive them back again? Is it not rather the case that belief in sola gratia corresponds precisely with the conviction that it would be perfectly reasonable for God to forsake all his fallen creatures? Why can we not suppose that God will leave all fallen mankind as orphans? And if it is “fatherly love” to his sons that still “yearns” for them, then surely in part it is a constrained love rather than one that originates in God’s free and sovereign grace alone? In this case, the Lord’s answer to Moses concerning why he loved his people would not simply be, “Because I loved you”; but rather, “Because I am your Father and I still yearn for you as my sons” (cf. Deut. 7:6–8).

Candlish, in commenting on the parable of the prodigal son, writes, “That is really its only meaning. It turns wholly on the love with which God regards lost sinners, and his willingness to have them reconciled to himself. It does not turn at all on the precise nature, either of their present relation to him, or of any previous relation in which they may have stood to him.” Hence, for Candlish, the parable speaks about God the Father’s desire in Christ that sinners would be received and by implication, their congenial reception: “He would have them to be sons … it is among these sinners that I am to find my brethren. These sinners, each and all of them, my Father longs to embrace, as any father worthy of the name would embrace a long-estranged child coming back to him.”⁵⁰ Certainly, it is clear for Candlish, that no basic point of doctrine can be drawn from the incidentals of a parable. There is evidently the picture of a father and a son, but the intention of the picture is only to highlight the freeness of the gospel and the cordial reception all sinners have in Christ.⁵¹ What magnifies the grace of God for Candlish is that God’s adopted sons will be found among those who are sinners; not that sinners are erstwhile sons who may as such appeal to God’s favor (cf. Luke 15:1, 2). Man’s hope of recovery, he writes, “is held out in a way strictly and exclusively indicative of legal judgment and legal deliverance.”⁵²

Discussions concerning the universal fatherhood of God and its implications for the nature of the atonement and the presentation of the gospel had been ongoing for some time when Candlish and Crawford were writing. In assessing the theology of John McLeod Campbell (1800–1872), a proponent of a universal fatherhood of God, Torrance writes, “It is as holy Father that God is Judge, and it is as holy Love that he is the Judge of all mankind. ‘It is only by the revelation of the Father that God succeeds in realizing the will of the Lawgiver in men. How much more can he thus alone realize the longings of the Father’s heart!’”⁵³ This is then used to argue for a universal atonement.

Although Crawford certainly would not countenance McLeod Campbell’s conclusions regarding the extent of the atonement, yet he does write that God provides the atonement “because God is Father”: “If it is because God is a King and Judge that the atonement was required; it is, on the other hand, because God is Father that atonement is provided.”⁵⁴ This is somewhat ambiguous and potentially misleading, especially given the context of the recent discussions on universal fatherhood and atonement. If Crawford means that God, as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, provides the atonement, none would object. Yet, if he means that God provides the atonement as the Father of mankind, then there are highly problematic implications impinging on the nature and extent of the atonement. Is God constrained because He is mankind’s Father to provide the atonement? If God provides the atonement as the Father of mankind, then does it not follow that the atonement extends to all mankind? Martin’s observation is again pertinent: one of these relationships must qualify or dominate the other. If God as Father provides the atonement, then is it God as Father, or God as sovereign, who limits the extent of the atonement to the elect sons?

The Scottish divines clearly taught that God was not under any obligation to save anyone and that man had absolutely no inherent claim on God’s mercy. Shaw writes, “Men adopt a stranger to supply a defect, but God had no such inducement to adopt any of the children of Adam.” Brown affirms that “it was impossible that [man’s] recovery should proceed from God by any necessity of nature.” Boston unequivocally denies that there is anything in man that induced God to save: “[God] found nothing in the creature to cast the balance of his choice, or to determine it to one more than another…. They were all his creatures, and all alike obnoxious to his wrath by sin. It was grace alone that made the difference.” Erskine gives this as the reason God has chosen to make faith the instrument of justification: “God will have man saved, under the new covenant, by such a mean and instrument, that so works and boasting may be forever excluded, and grace alone for ever exalted.” Dick, in writing on predestination, stresses that divine love is the source of election. Yet, he proposes the following as the reason some hold to a conditional election:

Man, fallen and degraded as he is, would still be great; and nothing comes with more reluctance from his lips than the right answer to this question: Who maketh thee to differ from another? He wishes to find some ground for saying, ‘I have made myself to differ, and fondly embraces any theory which makes him the arbiter of his destiny and suspends his final doom upon his own determination.⁵⁵

However, although the Scottish divines are dogmatic on man’s inherent and absolute demerit concerning God’s favor, and an unqualified belief that salvation is by grace alone, they also make statements that appear to place part of the source of the grace of God in salvation in the original paternal-filial relation. For instance, Boston speaks of “the suitableness of making up the family again by the way of adoption.”⁵⁶ This may be what Candlish would refer to as a logomachy, but it might reasonably be pressed as to what suitableness outside of free and sovereign grace is there to restore fallen man? In commenting on the words “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15), Haldane suggests that an appeal to the created sonship forms part, albeit an insufficient part, of our ground of comfort. He writes,

Being thus restored, we may indeed look back upon our creation, and remember in prayer that we are His creatures, the workmanship of His hands, and He in that sense our Father; but by reason of our rebellion this argument is not strong enough alone, but must be supported with this other (sonship by adoption), as the main ground of our comfort, and that wherein the strength our confidence lies.⁵⁷

Surely, as sinners saved by grace, the latter is our only ground of comfort, and the former gives no real comfort at all?

Positing an existing paternal-filial relationship between God and His fallen sons appears to influence the manner in which the gospel is presented. In the gospel, are sinners encouraged to cast themselves on God’s mercy alone in Christ, or is it permissible and even required to call all men as sons to return to their Heavenly Father’s house with the assurance that on that basis, favor will be granted? This might be the question that Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) was considering in a sermon entitled, “On the Universality of the Gospel Offer,” from the words, “good will toward men” (Luke 2:14). He writes, “It is the desire of God after you … it is His fatherly earnestness to recall His strayed children—it is this, which, by moving and subduing the will of man, exemplifies the assertion of the apostle when he says—‘Know ye not that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance?’ (Rom. 2:4).”⁵⁸ Here again, some questions may be posed: Does God’s “fatherly earnestness to recall His strayed children” extend to all his strayed children? Is this fatherly earnestness efficacious in achieving its desire? Is there not a real distinction to be maintained between God’s “goodness” and his “fatherly earnestness” in Romans 2:4?

Similarly, Eadie, in his lecture on Acts 17, speaks in terms that might be considered as militating against the absolute destitution of fallen man and his absolute need of free grace. He writes that “man, as God’s offspring, feels an instinctive impulse to recognize his Divine Father; has the means of knowing Him, of understanding this filial relationship, and profiting by it.” He continues, “Idolatry is a confession of man’s need that he must know his Father; the heart cannot be at rest without some deity to look up to and adore, to trust in and to obey.”⁵⁹ Surely, however, without special revelation, man has no way of knowing God as Father and far less of understanding this filial relationship? And does saying that fallen man can profit from this filial relationship not argue against his absolute destitution? And is there not a conflating of relationships that are quite distinct by first positing man’s need for “his Father” only then to speak of his restlessness without “some deity to look up to and adore”? Perhaps most striking of all is Eadie’s following statement in that same lecture:

His offspring walk in the lustre of His love. It rejoices them to know that the power which governs is no dark phantom veiled in mystery … but a Father with a father’s heart to love us, and to the yearnings of which we may ever appeal—a father’s ear to listen to us, and a father’s hand to bless with kind and continued benefactions. And, as we have wandered, shall not each of us say—“I will arise and go unto my Father?” Will not He accept the returning child, giving us the adoption of sons, revealing Himself graciously through Christ the Elder Brother who leads us to cry in true filial devotion—“Our Father which art in heaven?”⁶⁰

Is this the Reformed conception of fallen sinners, that they “walk in the lustre of [God’s] love”? That on the basis of their filial relationship, they will not be refused a hearing and a return into the Father’s favor? The strength of these questions is highlighted when you stress the perfect nature of God’s Fatherhood. As Kennedy says, “If God is Father, we must expect that disposition in infinite measure. He, as Father, cannot possibly fail to love, and to express His love in securing eternal good to His children.”⁶¹ Furthermore, the question may again be pressed: If those who are returning are in fact sons of God, then what is the need, and what place is there for the act of adoption? There is a manifest incongruity and inconsistency in the same line: “Will not He accept the returning child, giving us the adoption of sons”? If sons are returning, then all that is required for restoration is the gracious removal of all offenses. For a “returning child,” the “adoption of sons” is superfluous.

In addressing the same passage, Martin gives a different exegesis, reflecting his agreement with Candlish’s configuration of sonship. He highlights both the nature of the relationship that exists between God and man and “the true Fatherhood” revealed between God the Father and God the Son. He writes,

It is still more in point to observe that the call to repentance comes always in connection with the revelation of another—even the true, Fatherhood; for it comes from, and it points to, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and commands the sinner to contemplate his sin, and specially his sin of unbelief, as committed against Him. And here, indeed, “Paul,” preaching at Athens, “would himself direct us,” for, basing no argument or appeal in this matter on scraps of heathen poetry, he puts forward, as filling all the vision, the ordination, the death, and resurrection of God’s Eternal Son; and tells that God “now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead.”⁶²

Again, Candlish would claim substantial agreement with much of what all these writers say; the difference, he claims, is one of logomachy. That is certainly apparent here. Charitably, the above quotes are in no way intended to speak against sola gratia, but by appealing to an assumed paternal-filial relationship as the basis for the sinner turning to God, they end up with apparent inconsistencies or tensions within their system.

Exegetical Objections to the Fatherhood of God

Candlish’s introductory remarks insist that the answer to the question concerning the Fatherhood of God is one that must be answered from Scripture: “The inquiry concerning the Fatherhood of God … is one that ought to be conducted on the principle of a pure and simple appeal to Scripture; at least it is on that principle that I profess to conduct it.”⁶³ Candlish’s objections to a primitive paternal-filial relationship appear so strong to him that, “very plain and strong scriptural evidence is surely needed.” He believes that what Crawford provides by way of Scriptural counter-argument “seems to me to be of the weakest sort.”⁶⁴ However, it must be granted, as Kennedy states, “To say that man, as created, was not the son of God, is apparently to deny an express Scripture statement.” Kennedy writes this in critiquing Candlish’s failure to determine what the nature of fatherhood implies at the outset of his argument. The result is that “[a]n easy triumph thus seems to be allowed, to superficial thinkers, by the want of a distinct definition of the sonship, which is denied to man.”⁶⁵ Certainly, there are texts of Scripture that at face value appear to flatly contradict Candlish’s position. Several of these have been considered in part over the course of this paper: Luke 15, Acts 17. Two others will be considered here: Malachi’s statement in 2:10, “Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?”; and the Lukan account of the genealogy culminating in the phrase, “Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke 3:38).⁶⁶

Crawford believes these and other similar verses give adequate proof that the Word of God teaches “a general paternity, which may in some sense be ascribed to [God] with reference to all men, as his rational and moral creatures.”⁶⁷ In this regard, Kennedy’s above critique concerning the need for definition is apropos. Crawford is arguing for “some sense” in which a paternity might be ascribed to God. For Crawford, this proposition is very much substantiated when origination is affirmed. Candlish, on the other hand, insists on the affirmation of a very definite relationship of sonship, and though he affirms God as the originator of life, he refuses to call that relation of origination sonship. These presuppositions very much determine the exegetical result of these two texts.

Crawford accepts that Malachi 2:10 “may probably be viewed as specially referring to the Jewish nation” but that that still recognizes and sanctions “a principle on which God’s universal fatherhood may be established.”⁶⁸ Candlish admits Malachi 2:10 “looks like a strong assertion” but pleads that, in its context, “the prophet’s appeal turns, not on the universal fatherhood of God as regards mankind generally, but on his special fatherhood with reference to his chosen people Israel.” The verb “created,” in this sense, is the same as when God says in Isaiah 43:1, “Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob.” Candlish believes that to claim this as support for a fatherhood at creation is to misapply the text and is representative of a misapplying of many similar Old Testament texts.⁶⁹ Kennedy is scathing of Crawford’s interpretation of the text: “It is enough to show, to what shifts the advocates of a universal fatherhood are driven, that a learned professor quotes, as conclusive proof, the words used by sinners in Israel to justify their intermarriages with the heathen. ‘Have we not all one father?’ they asked, Mal. 2:10, ‘hath not one God created us?’” Kennedy believes the misinterpretation is driven by an eisegetical insertion of the conjunction “for,” as if the text read, “Have we not all one father? [for] hath not one God created us?” Yet, the word that brings out the sense of the passage, Kennedy claims, is “Adam”: “Have we not all one father, [Adam]? hath not one God created us?”⁷⁰

In the Lukan genealogy, Crawford believes that “if Adam be styled ‘the son of God’ in the same terms in which Seth is styled ‘the son of Adam…’ then there is a divine fatherhood declared with respect to Adam, in words so plain that it is impossible to misconceive them.”⁷¹ Candlish, however, notes that the phrase is elliptical throughout, “which was of God” (τοῦ Ἀδάμ, τοῦ Θεοῦ). He concludes, “In reality, there is no idea suggested in this whole pedigree or family-tree but that of descent; son descending from father, until Adam is reached, whose descent is from no human father, but must be said to be of God. There is nothing like real fatherhood and sonship, as a permanent and personal relation, asserted here.”⁷² In his later reply to Crawford, he writes that finding an assertion of fatherhood in this genealogy is analogous to finding fatherhood “in a line tracing one of an inferior race of animals to its divine source; the present representative being ‘of his predecessor,’ he again being ‘of his,’ and so on to the first of the family, ‘which was of God.’”⁷³

Martin affirms Candlish’s exegesis of the Lukan genealogy and in addition notes that the only time the phrase “son of” is used non-elliptically, at the beginning of the genealogy (verse 23), is not in fact a real father-son relationship, as the parenthesis makes clear, “Jesus being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph.” He concludes, “It is surely plain as day light, all he has in view is to express the successive origination of one generation after another, of course by natural descent, from Adam, who himself ‘was of God.’”⁷⁴ Kennedy also supports Candlish’s exegesis: “But that statement merely accounts for the existence of Adam. He came immediately from the hand of God. It tells us this, but it teaches no more.”⁷⁵ However, interestingly, Kennedy proceeds to make a distinction between parentage and fatherhood. This distinction is not explicitly recognized in Candlish’s work but is worthy of further consideration. In describing the distinction, he writes, “True, the human parentage involves the fatherhood. The human parent is bound to be a father to his offspring—to love his child and to do his utmost for his good. But his relation as parent is not identical with his relation as father to his child. The one is natural, the other is moral.”⁷⁶ Then, in speaking of Luke 3:38, Acts 17:28–29, and Heb. 12:9, he notes that they “merely indicate such a relation, of the Creator to man, as is analogous to that of a parent to his offspring. The proper idea of fatherhood, as distinguished from parentage, is not found in any of them.”⁷⁷

Conclusion

The Candlish-Crawford debate on Adam’s primitive relation to God yields several conclusions. First, it provides an example of the need for continuing and engaging theological discussion within the bounds of orthodoxy. As already seen, Candlish denies any substantial novelty in his position. He believes the subject of Divine Fatherhood “has not hitherto been adequately treated in the Church.” The necessity of establishing and defending other doctrines, such as justification by faith alone at the time of the Reformation, understandably occupied the minds of the Reformers. However, the result was that the doctrines of God’s Fatherhood, man’s sonship, and adoption, “did not… occupy the place and receive the prominency to which it is, on scriptural grounds and warrants, entitled.”⁷⁸ Candlish maintains that this is reflected in the ensuing confessions of faith, which are “for the most part extremely meagre and defective in what they say on the subject.”⁷⁹ At this point, Candlish concedes no disparagement to the confessions, but rather desires that the confessions take their place as subordinate standards. He writes concerning them,

By all means let them stand untouched; as monuments of the vast erudition and mental power of other days, and as safeguards of truth and bulwarks against error for ages yet to come. But it is no disparagement to these symbols to say of them that they do not exhaust the whole volume of revelation. For that is simply saying that the compilers were uninspired men, and that ‘the riches of Christ are unsearchable.’⁸⁰

The investigation on the subject of God’s Fatherhood and man’s sonship is therefore a noble one. From the beginning, Candlish’s desire was to “give fixity to theological investigations; to harmonise originality with conservatism; to stimulate fresh thought and inquiry in divines of the new generation; and yet to link them in close continuity with the graver and slower meditations of those who may be passing away.”⁸¹

The second conclusion is that this nineteenth-century controversy is worthy of renewed consideration. It would appear that what Kennedy said in the nineteenth century is still true today: “The position that no such relation was constituted by creation, is one of the outworks of Calvinism which has not hitherto been sufficiently strengthened.”⁸² This is primarily true because Adam’s primitive sonship often appears as something that is simply assumed a priori and without any reference to the theological and exegetical discussions of this debate. Garner, for instance, assumes this relationship throughout his book, Sons in the Son. He writes, for example, that “Paul’s theological perspective on adoption derives not first from Israel’s redemptively rich sonship, but rather from the covenantal sonship of Adam himself.” A passing reference to one of the disputed texts is enough to establish the position: “Bearing theological weight beneath Israel’s sonship is Adam’s own sonship (cf. Luke 3:38).”⁸³ Garner, however, is following a large number of prominent theologians who do the same. For instance, John Murray writes in his work on adoption: “It is true that there is a sense in which God may be said to be the Father of all men. Creatively and providentially he gives to all men life and breath and all things. In him all live and move and have their being. It is this relation that is referred to in such passages as Acts 17:25–29; Hebrews 12:9; James 1:18.” In his Systematic Theology, Kelly writes concerning God’s Fatherhood of man at creation, that this is something “the Gospel of Luke clearly implies (Luke 3:38).” Michael Horton also connects creation to sonship in a way that implies a created sonship in man: “Because we were spoken [into existence] by the Father in the Son, our personhood has a definite content, analogous to (but, of course, not identical with) the Father’s begetting of the Son.”⁸⁴

The third conclusion is that Candlish’s position on primitive sonship, together with Martin and Kennedy, provide a formidable exegetical and theological argument which merits reconsideration. The strength of the argument is twofold. First, there is no compelling account in the creation narrative in particular and in the Scriptural data as a whole for a created paternal-filial relation. When the distinction between what is “a fatherly disposition” and the definite status of “Father” is maintained, then evidence or proof for the latter seems minimal at best. This distinction forces us to define fatherhood precisely. We might do so in terms such as these: fatherhood is a fixed relationship with an enduring moral obligation, not least of which is the unconditional permanence of the son in the household. When fatherhood is framed in this way, Candlish’s claims of theological inconsistency receive more weight: how does this kind of fatherhood (the only true kind) fit with absolute sovereignty, with the probation and ultimately the capital punishment of the son, and how does it accord with the doctrine of sola gratia? With the ballast of these presuppositions and arguments behind them, the exegetical objections, which appear at face value to assert a primitive sonship, appear very weak. Several refer exclusively to God’s people, or at best, only show origination, which carries no intrinsic moral obligations of a father. And although many Scottish divines refer in places to Adam as God’s son by creation, yet these sparse references aside, there is no evidence of any substantial inconsistency between their theological systems and that of Candlish’s position. Hence, the conclusion of this paper is that Candlish’s position on Adam’s primitive relation to God is substantially consistent with and finds strong theological continuity in Scottish theology from the Reformation until his own time.

The fourth conclusion is to highlight the implications and ramifications of this belief. The assertion that the discussion is merely one of semantics and logomachy might appear to consign it to pedantry. However, the Candlish-Crawford debate evidences that the implications of the position stretch to questions regarding the nature of Christ’s sonship, the nature and extent of the atonement, the presentation of the gospel, and the nature and the manner of constitution of believers’ sonship in Christ. Candlish asserted that belief in the primitive filial relation undermines the blessedness of true sonship. Perhaps most pointed of all is the question as to the consistency of God’s character as Father. If God the Father could cast off Adam as a son, does this not make the sonship of adoption an intrinsically insecure thing? Should believers be discouraged from looking to their relationship to God as their Father with confidence that He will never cast them away? Surely the grounds for the believer’s confidence in their Father is weakened if it is only the manner of constitution, and not the constituted relation itself, which provides the security of which John 8:35 speaks: “The servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever.”

Footnotes

1
Robert S. Candlish, The Fatherhood of God: Being the First Course of the Cunningham Lectures (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1865), 9–10. ↩︎
2
Thomas J. Crawford, The Fatherhood of God Considered in its General and Special Aspects and Particularly in Relation to the Atonement (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1868), 9. ↩︎
3
John P. Lee, “Dr. R. S. Candlish as Preacher and Theologian” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1953), 234. ↩︎
4
John Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God (Wiltshire: James Begg Society, 1998), 19. ↩︎
5
Crawford, The Fatherhood of God Considered, 9–11. ↩︎
6
Ibid, 1. ↩︎
7
James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1984), 209, emphasis added; as cited by Crawford, The Fatherhood of God Considered, 141. ↩︎
8
John Brown, Systematic Theology: A Compendious View of Natural and Revealed Religion (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2015), 393. ↩︎
9
Thomas Boston, The Whole Works of Thomas Boston: An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion, ed. Samuel M’Millan (Aberdeen: George and Robert King, 1848), 1:177-85. The same is true for Shaw’s section on Creation. See Robert Shaw, An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith (Fearn, Ross-Shire: Christian Focus Publications, 1998), 97-102. ↩︎
10
Boston, Works, 1:617. ↩︎
11
Ebenezer Erskine, The Whole Works of the Late Rev. Ebenezer Erskine (Edinburgh: Ogle & Murray, 1871), 2:494. ↩︎
12
George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1958), 206. ↩︎
13
John Eadie, Paul the Preacher; Or, A Popular and Practical Exposition of His Discourses and Speeches as Recorded in the Acts of the Apostles (Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Company, 1859), 213. ↩︎
14
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 21. ↩︎
15
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, vii. ↩︎
16
Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 144. ↩︎
17
Candlish, Fatherhood of God (Supplementary Edition), 8. ↩︎
18
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, viii. ↩︎
19
Candlish, Fatherhood of God (Supplementary Edition), 12. ↩︎
20
Candlish, Fatherhood of God (Supplementary Edition), 12; citing from Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 17-18 (emphasis added). ↩︎
21
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 16-17. ↩︎
22
Ibid., 25. ↩︎
23
Hugh Martin, “Candlish’s Cunningham Lectures,” The British and Foreign Evangelical Review 14 (1865), 738. ↩︎
24
See his chapter on “The Plan of Redemption more than Remedial,” in Candlish, The Fatherhood of God (Supplementary Edition), 157-66. ↩︎
25
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 22. John Murray makes a related point forcefully in his Collected Writings: “We must appreciate the fact that the deed of adoption is clearly set forth in the New Testament, and it is apparent that adoption is quite distinct from regeneration. We may never think of sonship as being constituted apart from the act of adoption. If we should think of sonship as constituted by regeneration simply and solely then we should be doing serious prejudice to the necessity and the fact of the distinctive grace of adoption.” See John Murray, Collected Writings of John Murray (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977), 2:227. ↩︎
26
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 75. ↩︎
27
Ibid, 40. ↩︎
28
Ibid., 65. ↩︎
29
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 32. Martin agrees with Candlish on this point. He writes, “We affirm the impossibility of combining Fatherhood and moral government, except by special sovereign arrangement … On the original platform of creation, if they are both to be recognised, they cannot possibly be recognised as co-ordinate. One of them must necessarily dominate, assert its supremacy, and render the other more or less subordinate. We cannot conceive of them as both acted out freely and fully; one of them will inevitably influence and affect, condition, limit, and restrain the other.” See Martin, “Candlish’s Cunningham Lectures,” 746–47. ↩︎
30
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 27. ↩︎
31
Ibid., 33-34. ↩︎
32
Ibid., 38. ↩︎
33
Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 20. ↩︎
34
Candlish, Fatherhood of God (Supplementary Edition), 12; citing Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 24. ↩︎
35
Shaw, Confession of Faith, 123; Brown, Systematic Theology, 202; Boston, Works, 1:237. ↩︎
36
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 20. ↩︎
37
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 127. ↩︎
38
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 34. ↩︎
39
Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 22. ↩︎
40
Martin, “Candlish’s Cunningham Lectures,” 746–47. ↩︎
41
Candlish has a section in his fourth lecture on the manner of constitution of sonship. Here he is arguing that the Sonship of Christ is the same relation into which believers enter in adoption. For Candlish, neither the timing of constitution (eternity for Christ; in time for believers), nor the manner of constitution (eternal generation for Christ, regeneration and adoption for believers) suggest a different relationship. He illustrates this using the example of a father of two sons born twenty-five years apart. The older will certainly know and enjoy the father’s love and care in a far higher degree, yet the relation is the same. The same, he claims, is true by infinite extension with Christ. In a second illustration, Candlish argues that his son and his daughter-in-law both stand to him as his children, though the timing and manner of constitution is different. He says, “The law declares the relation to be the same, and my heart owns it to be so.” See Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 169–72. ↩︎
42
In Candlish’s exegesis of John 8:35–36, he argues that the sonship referred to is that of Christ’s alone, but that that relationship is one in which his people come to share in by grace. See Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 265–70. ↩︎
43
Martin, “Candlish’s Cunningham Lectures,” 732. In the same place, Martin also insightfully points out that to sever the created relationship “is to extricate the sinner in a very effectual, though very strange, way from his estate of sin by destroying his responsibility.” ↩︎
44
David Dickson, Truth’s Victory Over Error (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2007), 76-77; Shaw, Confession of Faith, 183-84; Brown, Systematic Theology, 395-96; Erskine, Works, 2:295; Ralph Wardlaw, Lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, ed. J. S. Wardlaw (Edinburgh: A. Fullarton & Co., 1861), 177-78; Robert Haldane, An Exposition of Romans (Virginia: Macdonald Publishing Company, 1958), 371. ↩︎
45
James Buchanan, The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1966), 262. ↩︎
46
Candlish, The Fatherhood of God, 35. ↩︎
47
Martin, “Candlish’s Cunningham Lectures,” 748. ↩︎
48
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 20–21. ↩︎
49
Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 16–17. ↩︎
50
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 199–200. ↩︎
51
Kennedy writes to the same effect as Candlish: “No parable should be strained to teach more than the lesson which it was intended to convey…. The relation between the father and his prodigal son indicates the relation of love between Christ and the sinners whom He saves. It teaches this and no more. It throws no light on the relation in which men stand to God, for it was not intended to do so.” See Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 24. ↩︎
52
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 127 (emphasis added). ↩︎
53
Torrance, Scottish Theology, 298. Earlier, in his critique of the Westminster Tradition, Torrance had claimed, “Divine Love and divine Law are one and the same; it is in and through his presence and activity as a Communion of Love, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that God is the supreme lawgiver and judge” (132). This is the theology that Candlish had initially spoken against in his Examination of Maurice’s Theological Essays, and which he felt was a danger in positing a universal fatherhood of God. ↩︎
54
Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 54. ↩︎
55
Shaw, Confession of Faith, 182; Brown, Systematic Theology, 226; Boston, Works, 1:304; Erskine, Works, 1:215-16; Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:364-65. ↩︎
56
Boston, Works, 1:618 (emphasis added). The suitableness for Boston seems to include a kind of parallelism with the angels. As some of the angels continued in their first estate, so there is a “suitableness” in making up part of fallen humanity. However, the force of the objection remains: can such a claim be consistent with salvation by grace alone? ↩︎
57
Haldane, Romans, 359. ↩︎
58
Thomas Chalmers, Select Works of Thomas Chalmers (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Co., 1855), 4:453. ↩︎
59
Eadie, Paul the Preacher, 215. ↩︎
60
Ibid., 216–17. ↩︎
61
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 20. ↩︎
62
Martin, “Candlish’s Cunningham Lectures,” 745. Martin says much the same thing in his sermon on 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God,” where he speaks concerning the nature of the love of God which makes sinners sons: “It is not the general beneficence of the divine nature. It is not the universal paternal indulgence of the Divine Being towards all his creatures. Creation has not told us of this love, no, not with all its myriad proofs of the goodness of him who created all things…. It is therefore not sufficient to call us, who are miserable aliens and unrighteous rebels, the sons of God. We need another and a new manner of love bestowed upon us ere we can be called or can become sons of God.” See Hugh Martin, Christ for Us: Sermons of Hugh Martin (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998), 227. ↩︎
63
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 7. ↩︎
64
Candlish, Fatherhood of God (Supplementary Edition), 15. ↩︎
65
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 19. ↩︎
66
Crawford devotes a whole lecture to the Scriptural arguments for the universal fatherhood of God. See Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 27–55. ↩︎
67
Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 27. ↩︎
68
Ibid., 28. ↩︎
69
Candlish, Fatherhood of God (Supplementary Edition), 16. ↩︎
70
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 24–25. ↩︎
71
Crawford, Fatherhood of God, 35. ↩︎
72
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 120–21. ↩︎
73
Candlish, Fatherhood of God (Supplementary Edition), 20. Interestingly, in his Systematic Theology, Brown notes that some have applied this text to Christ. He writes: “Adam was the Son of God, but some apply that text to Christ, who is the Son of God by natural, necessary, and therefore eternal generation.” See Brown, Systematic Theology, 393. ↩︎
74
77 Martin, “Candlish’s Cunningham Lectures,” 742. Martin has some further arguments of his own. He points out that if Adam was a son by creation, “It is rather singular that Satan, in the temptation in the garden, made no reference to the fact. He was ready enough to do so where the fact of true Sonship did exist. In the temptation of the wilderness, and in dealing with the last Adam, he placed the topic of Sonship in the forefront of his deceivable appeals…. The appeal would have served his purpose better in the former case, had there been ground for making it.” See Martin, “Candlish’s Cunningham Lectures,” 744. ↩︎
75
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 19. ↩︎
76
Ibid., 19. ↩︎
77
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 23. This distinction is worthy of further study, but lies beyond the scope of this paper. ↩︎
78
Candlish, Fatherhood of God, 282. ↩︎
79
Ibid., 284. ↩︎
80
Ibid., 285. ↩︎
81
Ibid., 3-4. ↩︎
82
Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God, 18. ↩︎
83
David B. Garner, Sons in the Son: The Riches and Reach of Adoption in Christ (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2016), 14, 45. ↩︎
84
Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 134–35; Douglas F. Kelly, Systematic Theology: Grounded in Holy Scripture and Understood in the Light of the Church (Fearn, Ross-Shire: Christian Focus, 2008), 1:17; Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 391. However, it might be noted that Murray does express some reserve concerning this primitive relation in an article on Adoption. He writes that “the concept of universal fatherhood, if used at all, must be employed with great caution.” In his exegesis of Luke 3:38, he writes, “The emphasis seems to be upon the fact that Adam owed his origin to God as no other man did. Adam was not generated by a human father.” See Murray, Collected Writings, 2:224–25. ↩︎

doctrine of God Robert Candlish

The Son Abideth Ever, Pt. 2Robert Candlish and Adam’s Primitive Relation to God

The Nature of Fatherhood: Towards a Definition

Candlish’s Arguments Against a Primitive Father-Son Relation

Fatherhood Inconsistent with God’s Absolute Sovereignty as Creator

Fatherhood Inconsistent with Probation and Fall

Fatherhood of God Inconsistent with Sola Gratia

Exegetical Objections to the Fatherhood of God

Conclusion

Footnotes

About the author

Table of Contents

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The Nature of Fatherhood: Towards a Definition

Candlish’s Arguments Against a Primitive Father-Son Relation

Fatherhood Inconsistent with God’s Absolute Sovereignty as Creator

Fatherhood Inconsistent with Probation and Fall

Fatherhood of God Inconsistent with Sola Gratia

Exegetical Objections to the Fatherhood of God

Conclusion

Footnotes

About the author

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