But be not ye
called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And
call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in
heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.
(Matt 23:8-10)
In this week’s Come Follow Me Reading, Matt 23 is one
of the chapters we will be reading, and the above passage is sometimes used as
a “proof-text” against Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. However, I do
not believe it to be a valid text used against these groups. This morning, I
read the following from Steven Nemes (no friend to Catholic theology!) on this
passage which was pretty insightful:
These commands
addressed to his disciples are very provocative, but it is important not to get
distracted by facile and confused misreadings of Jesus’s words here. He very
clearly does not principally have in mind the mere use of certain titles to
describe certain persons within the community of his followers. He will later
refer to the “prophets, sages, and scribes” (v. 34) to be sent by him whom the
Pharisees would kill. There are even loftier titles than “rabbi,” “father,” and
“instructor.” Paul also would later say that Jesus left “teachers” in the
church (Eph 4:11). And he elsewhere says that he became a “father” to the
Corinthians whom he evangelized (1 Cor 4:15). Presumably he does not mean to
contradict Jesus—although it is admittedly one thing to describe a person as a
teacher or as a figurative “father” and it is quite another to adopt those
words as titles. The mere use of certain words is therefore irrelevant to
Jesus’s point. He is not forbidding his disciples from even uttering the word
“father” or “instructor” with respect to other persons. Neither does he mean to
say that it would be illegitimate for children to address their male parents by
the name “father,” which would be ridiculous. All such considerations are
entirely irrelevant to the real point that he means to be making. (Steven
Nemes, Theological Authority in the Church: Reconsidering Traditionalism and
Hierarchy [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2023], 27-28)
