God, so from everlasting to everlasting He is Father. He did not become
Father when His Son assumed human nature, but is such in virtue of His
eternal relation to the Word as the Son of God. It is the Son's
existence that constitutes Him Father; and that existence was in
eternity. "I and my Father are one,"[022] is the Son's testimony to His
eternal Sonship; and when He prays His Father to glorify Him, He asks to
be glorified with the glory which He had with Him before the world
was.[023] There are other senses in which the first Person of the
Godhead is termed Father. All men are declared to be His offspring, and
those who have received the Spirit of adoption cry, "Abba, Father," and
are taught, when they pray, to say, "Our Father."

In an exposition of the Creed the Fatherhood in relation to men
generally, or to believers in particular, need not be considered. Here
the name is used to indicate the relation in which the First Person
stands to the Second, in virtue of which alone those who are adopted
into fellowship with the Son become the children of God--the children
of Christ's Father and their Father. The Scriptures teach that the
Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Ghost is God. At
the same time the doctrine of the Divine Unity is affirmed.

The difficulty felt in connection with the doctrine of Trinity in Unity
has led to attempts in ancient and modern times to show that those
passages of Scripture in which it appears to be taught may be otherwise
interpreted. One explanation is, from the name of its first exponent,
termed Sabellianism, or, the doctrine of a Modal Trinity. The view which
it presents of the Divine Being is that the same Person manifests
Himself at one time and in one relation as Father, at another time and
in another relation as Son, and at a different time and in another
relation as Holy Ghost. It attributes divinity to this One Divine Person