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THREAD "Call no man father..."
A rebuttal of the common Protestant interpretation that accuses Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox of acting against scripture.
Matthew 23:9
RSV-CE = "And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven."
KJV1611 = "And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."
RSV-CE = "And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven."
KJV1611 = "And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."
Many contemporary protestants like to accuse followers of pre-Reformation Churches of being heretics for calling our priests by the honorific title "Father". To them, this is a direct contradiction of, their interpretation of, scripture. On a surface level, they are correct.
Matthew 23:9 is explicitly clear in saying "call no man your father on earth". Of course, if we accept the literal interpretation then we must accuse Joseph of being a heretic, for in Gen 45:8 he says "[God] has made me a father to Pharaoh".
And I suppose Job as well, who in Job 29:16 styles himself as "father to the poor". Even more worrying, what about Saint Paul? He referred to himself as father multiple times - in 1st Corinthians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, and letters to Titus, Philemon and the Philippians.
Finally, Saint Peter and Saint John would also be classed as heretics, for the former referred to himself as Father to St. Mark (1 Peter 5:3) and the latter referred to the leaders of Christian communities as fathers (1 John 2:13).
So with the prominence of the title father in scripture - both before and after Christ's condemnation of its use - we can make the reasonable assumption that the Protestant interpretation is false. With that out the way, what does the verse truly mean?
To refuse to allow us to call a man on earth Father would make calling God the Father meaningless. We would not be able to truly grasp the meaning of the Father and the Son without common usage of the term father. Deuteronomy 5:16 tells us to honour our father and our mother,
coming after God tells us to honour Him. God recognizes there being individuals on earth who we can call father. In Matthew 19, Christ echoes this when He says "Honor your father and mother" when asked how to attain salvation.
With this in mind, it is further evident that Christ has no inherent issue with the term father.
Matthew 23:9 is the perfect example of how dangerously wrong someone can get when they don't interpret scripture following a holistic reading of both Old and New Testaments.
Do not just interpret in the context of the verse, the chapter, or even the book, but the whole Bible. With it now established that the term Father is prevalent in the OT and NT, I will look at Matthew 23 itself.
It is reasonable to assume that this was one of the many examples of Christ being hyperbolic. He was not outright forbidding the use of the term Father, but he warning people to not apply it inaccurately. "Call no man on earth father" comes during a speech against the scribes and
Pharisees. They were not worthy of the title of Father, but others might have been, which is why it is used later on by the Apostles.
