“Abba is not Hebrew, the language of liturgy, but Aramaic, the language of home and everyday life … We need to be wary of the suggestion … that the correct translation of Abba is ‘Daddy.’ Abba is the intimate word of a family circle where that obedient reverence was at the heart of the relationship, whereas Daddy is the familiar word of a family circle from which all thoughts of reverence and obedience have largely disappeared … The best English translation of Abba is simply ‘Dear Father.”
― Thomas A. Smail, The Forgotten Father
we have had in recent years a Jesus movement and a charismatic movement. The one has almost disappeared and the other is threatening to run out of steam, perhaps because each is in a different way inadequate to the gospel, which is basically a Father movement... It starts not with the cross of Jesus or with the gift of the Spirit, but with the Father who so loved the world that he gave his Son in his Spirit. And it achieves its purpose, not when the body of Christ is gloriously renewed in very part without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27), not even when the enthroned Christ has subdued all his enemies and brought every knee to bow before him (Philipians 2:11), but rather when that same Christ "hands over the kingdom to the Father, after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power" (1 Corinthians 15:24). "When he has done this, then the Son himself will be subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28).
(p.20, Thomas A. Smail, 1980, The Forgotten Father)