The controversy between those who maintain and those who deny that God is the Father of all men is a mere logomachy. God is physically and naturally the Father of all men; he is morally and spiritually the Father only of those who have been renewed by his Spirit. All men are sons of God in a lower sense by virtue of their natural union with Christ; only those are sons of God in the higher sense who have joined themselves by faith to Christ in a spiritual union. We can therefore assent to much that is said by those who deny the universal divine fatherhood, as, for example, C. M. Mead, in Am. Jour. Theology, July, 1897:577-600, who maintains that sonship consists in spiritual kinship with God, and who quotes, in support of this view, _John 8:41-44_—“_If God were your Father, ye would love me.... Ye are of your father, the devil_” = the Fatherhood of God is not universal; _Mat. 5:44, 45_—“_Love your enemies ... in order that ye may become sons of your Father who is in heaven_”; _John 1:12_—“_as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name._” Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 103—“That God has created all men does not constitute them his sons in the evangelical sense of the word. The sonship on which the N. T. dwells so constantly is based solely on the experience of the new birth, while the doctrine of universal sonship rests either on a daring denial or a daring assumption—the denial of the universal fall of man through sin, or the assumption of the universal regeneration of man through the Spirit. In either case the teaching belongs to ‘_another gospel_’ (_Gal. 1:7_), the recompense of whose preaching is not a beatitude, but an ‘_anathema_’ (_Gal 1:8._)”
But we can also agree with much that is urged by the opposite party, as for example, Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:193—“God does not _become_ the Father, but _is_ the heavenly Father, even of those who become his sons.... This Fatherhood of God, instead of the kingship which was the dominant idea of the Jews, Jesus made the primary doctrine. The relation is ethical, not the Fatherhood of mere origination, and therefore only those who live aright are true sons of God.... 209—Mere kingship, or exaltation above the world, led to Pharisaic legal servitude and external ceremony and to Alexandrian philosophical speculation. The Fatherhood apprehended and announced by Jesus was essentially a relation of love and holiness.” A. H. Bradford, Age of Faith, 116-120—“There is something sacred in humanity. But systems of theology once began with the essential and natural worthlessness of man.... If there is no Fatherhood, then selfishness is logical. But Fatherhood carries with it identity of nature between the parent and the child. Therefore every laborer is of the nature of God, and he who has the nature of God cannot be treated like the products of factory and field.... All the children of God are by nature partakers of the life of God. They are called ‘_children of wrath_’ (_Eph. 2:3_), or ‘_of perdition_’ (_John 17:12_), only to indicate that their proper relations and duties have been violated.... Love for man is dependent on something worthy of love, and that is found in man’s essential divinity.” We object to this last statement, as attributing to man at the beginning what can come to him only through grace. Man was indeed created in Christ (_Col. 1:16_) and was a son of God by virtue of his union with Christ (_Luke 3:38_; _John 15:6_). But since man has sinned and has renounced his sonship, it can be restored and realized. In a moral and spiritual sense, only through the atoning work of Christ and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (_Eph. 2:10_—“_created in Christ Jesus for good works_”; _2 Pet 1:4_—“_his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature_”).