Excerpted from my upcoming book on the Papacy, here are my thoughts on why Matthew 23:9's "Call no man father" is not in any way a problem for Catholicism.
I have today posted two youtube videos with regards to this, the text of which is given below. Here are the links to the two youtube videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07L9G7X3O_E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB2nr5_
Enjoy.
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2.) Call No Man Father?
It is often asserted that we should call no man father, at all. This charge essentially always comes from Protestants who have read Matthew 23:9, where Jesus says:
“Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven.”
While I can appreciate that many individuals may read this verse on their own, it seems to me that the majority of people who take this to mean that the practice of calling priest “Father” have first been told that by others upon being introduced to the verse, effectively being told, “Did you know that while Catholics call priests “father” Jesus says to call no man father?” The seeds of misinterpretation have already been sowed. As is the case with many other verses, like 1 Timothy 2:5, this verse alone is memorized by a huge number of people, recited from memory, and used as a proof text. The problem with this approach is that it fails to take the Bible in context; it fails to recognize that individual verses must be read within their context, and that without doing so, the proper meaning of those verses becomes obscured. So, let’s take a look at the context:
Matthew 23:5-12, “All their works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation 'Rabbi.' As for you, do not be called 'Rabbi.' You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven. Do not be called 'Master'; you have but one master, the Messiah. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
Is Jesus saying that we must not call anyone other than God the Father by the title of “Father”? No, the answer to that question is absolutely not for Jesus provides an entire list of titles which, if literally forbidden, would make nonsense out of the rest of the New Testament where all of those titles are used to refer to individuals other than God. Jesus doesn’t just forbid “father,” but He forbids master and teacher as well. I will not take up much of the reader’s time in delving into all of the relevant examples, but a few will suffice:
"For this gospel I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher" (2 Tim. 1:11)
“And he [Stephen] replied, "My brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia, before he had settled in Haran,” (Acts 7:2)
Are we to assume that Paul and Stephen never bothered to listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 23:9?
The problem is that Jesus often spoke using the form of expression known as hyperbole, in which radical exaggeration is used to stress a particular point. If I tell my friend, “You should have gone to this party, everyone was there,” I am making use of hyperbole in order to point out that there were many people there. Hyperbole is alive and well in today’s culture, and it was certainly quite prevalent in first century Palestine amongst the Jews.
This typically does not make much sense to many fundamentalists, and this is not altogether surprising, for when one is accustomed to reading the Bible as a legal document containing explicit instructions and regulations, nuance is completely lost and some verses cannot be interpreted correctly, leaving one with a bizarre reading. Some parts of the Bible are like that. However, many parts are not, because, quite frankly, that is not the genre of most of the Bible. Jesus was often prone to make hyperbolic statements, statements of radical exaggeration in order to make a point. Sometimes, they can still be taken literally without resulting in the complete loss of their meaning; Jesus’ instruction to sell everything and give it to the poor is not an absolute requirement, but greater holiness results from doing so; one can understand it as subordinating the earthly pleasures and goods in one’s life to obedience to God and love of others, and one can understand this being perfectly achieved for some through the complete renunciation of wealth. However, there are other times when a completely literal interpretation totally destroys the meaning, like in Matthew 5:29-30:
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.
Precious few Christians, particularly fundamentalists, interpret Jesus’ words here in Matthew as an absolute, literal command. Jesus was not encouraging mutilation, and if He was, then the majority of Christians on the planet would probably be obligated to become blind amputees. No, Jesus is saying something different. In order to emphasize the effort we should make in avoiding sin, He speaks about what is “better” to do. One is better off as a blind amputee, because the current physical state of our body is not as important as the current spiritual state of our soul. Jesus is using hyperbole, bringing up examples of clearly immoral actions against our body to emphasize the need to remove from one’s life those things which cause one to sin.
Now, for another point – I myself have heard atheist debaters try to argue that Jesus was speaking literally when He said that if your hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off, for the purposes of taking a stance against Christianity on the basis of incredulity at the straw man that has been created and propped up. If this is the manner that hostile non-Christians approach the Bible, taking things out of context, oversimplifying what is written, and taking things with an extreme literalism so that the Christian position is ridiculed and viewed as unpalatable, as untenable…then why should any Christians choose to adopt the same approach???
Did John Calvin believe that we should call no man father? Let’s take a look:
Wicked magistrates are indeed appointed by God, but it is in his anger, and because we do not deserve to be placed under his government. He gives a loose rein to tyrants and wicked men, in order to punish our ingratitude, as if he had forsaken or ceased to govern us. But when good magistrates rule, we see God, as it were, near us, and governing us by means of those whom he hath appointed. The Prophet means that Eliakim will perform the part of a father, because he has been endued with the Spirit of God. At the same time he reminds all godly persons that they will have good reasons for wishing the government of Eliakim, because it tends to the general advantage of the Church.
By the appellation father, he shews what is the duty of a good magistrate. The same thing has been taught by heathen writers, that “a good king holds the place of a father;” and when they wished to flatter those who crushed the commonwealth by the exercise of tyranny, nature suggested to them to call the tyrants by the honorable title of “fathers of their country.” In like manner, philosophers, when they say that a family is the picture of a kingdom, shew that a king ought to hold the place of a father. This is also proved by the ancient titles given to kings, such as “Abimelech,” (Gen. 20:2, 8,) that is, “my father the king,” and others of the same kind, which shew that royal authority cannot be separated from the feelings of a father. Those who wish to be regarded as lawful princes, and to prove that they are God’s servants, must therefore shew that they are fathers to their people.
But what about Matthew 23:9? Clearly, Calvin must have ignored that verse in favor of the traditions of men, just like Catholics…or not. Let’s see what Calvin has to say:
9. And call no man on earth your Father. He claims for God alone the honor of Father, in nearly the same sense as he lately asserted that he himself is the only Master; for this name was not assumed by men for themselves, but was given to them by God. And therefore it is not only lawful to call men on earth fathers, but it would be wicked to deprive them of that honor. Nor is there any importance in the distinction which some have brought forward, that men, by whom children have been begotten, are fathers according to the flesh, but that God alone is the Father of spirits. I readily acknowledge that in this manner God is sometimes distinguished from men, as in Heb 12:5, but as Paul more than once calls himself a spiritual father, (1 Cor. 4:15, Phil. 2:22,) we must see how this agrees with the words of Christ. The true meaning therefore is, that the honor of a father is falsely ascribed to men, when it obscures the glory of God. Now this is done, whenever a mortal man, viewed apart from God, is accounted a father, since all the degrees of relationship depend on God alone through Christ, and are held together in such a manner that, strictly speaking, God alone is the Father of all. (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. 33: Matthew, Mark and Luke, Part III: Matthew 23:1-12; Mark 12:38-39;
Luke 11:43, 45-46; 20:45-46)
I could hardly make this argument better. Calvin rightly acknowledges the context of Matthew 23; Jesus is effectively using hyperbole in order to emphasize that one must not forget or try to replace the role of God as Spiritual Father of all, as He saw the Pharisees and Sadducees doing. They were supplanting God’s role of Father, and Christ’s role as teacher and master, not realizing that their particular roles were from the Father, and from Christ. Such is made evidently clear in Hebrews 12:9:
Besides this, we have had our earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not (then) submit all the more to the Father of spirits and live?
So we see how God’s fatherhood in this chapter is related to earthly fatherhood. God being the ultimate Father does not involve a rejection of human fatherhood; rather, it is the source of human fatherhood, both physical and spiritual. If withholding the role of “father” is required, and using that term as a title is forbidden, than numerous verses of the Bible need to be thrown out. The problem is not with those others verses; the problem is when we take “call no man father” as something other than hyperbole.
Calvin even touches upon the fallback of those who hold to the more-literal view, that titles related to spiritual fatherhood are what Jesus is prohibiting. Such is not the case, otherwise Paul violated that command time and time again, calling the Corinthians his “children” and referring to Timothy as his child and son, when we know that the celibate, and Jewish, Paul was most certainly not Timothy’s father (see Acts 16:1-3). The Apostle Peter refers to Mark as his son, and the Johannine Epistles abound in reference to “fathers and children” – rather awkwardly, if a spiritual fatherhood is not being referred to.
1 John 2:12-13, “I am writing to you, children, because your sins have been forgiven for his name's sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have conquered the evil one.”
And
3 John 4, “Nothing gives me greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
It’s likely that John was referring to his spiritual children, as well as to his fellow spiritual fathers – fellow priests. Only if one has a prior bias against spiritual fatherhood will they insist that these references must be to biological children. We already know Paul used the same kind of terminology in his letters, so there is already a biblical precedent for how the Johannine author speaks.
- Sean
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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