242. Augustine, bishop of the
Catholic Church, said: “I have a source, but it is Christ, whose apostle I hear
speaking: All are yours, but you are of Christ, Christ truly of God [1
Cor 3.22-23]. For even when the apostle said that he was a father, in order
that we should not believe human infirmity to be the foundation, as it were, of
his actual paternity, he added: I bore you through the Gospel [1 Cor
4.15]. The seed, therefore, and the nature of my seed is drawn from the Gospel.
For the sake of doing them honour we call those who have preceded us either in
time or in merits ‘fathers’. It is an entirely different matter when we ask
whom we have as a father in faith, whom we have as a father for eternal
salvation, and whom we have as a father for the purpose of preserving the
Church and obtaining the promises of God. It is a mark of honour that we say
every day ‘father ‘ to older men; daily we say ‘brother’ even to some who are
not with us in the one Church nor established in the same sacraments. Lot even
called the residents of Sodom ‘brothers’, certainly to appease their enmity, not
as a recognized brotherhood and a community of, as it were, a single
inheritance. Let all of this, therefore, be put aside, let us instead
distinguish between names which are due to men on the basis of honour and the
name which we need for salvation. For eternal salvation, I would say by permission
of the apostle, or rather, indeed, I would say the apostle’s command: The
apostle is not my father for eternal salvation who says to me: I planted,
Apollo watered, but God gave increase. And neither is he anything who plants,
nor he who waters, but he who gives increase, God [1 Cor 3.6-7]. About this
the Lord said: Do not call anyone on earth your father [Mt 23.9]. Just
as he knew that the apostle would say: I bore you through the Gospel [1
Cor 4.15]. Nor indeed would it contradict the Lord’s words, Do not call
anyone on earth your father when the apostle said, you do not have many
fathers, I bore you through the Gospel [1 Cor 4.15]. But because he drew a
distinction between the purpose for which the Lord established a father for us,
and the mark of honour by which we could accept the apostle as a father, for
that reason he spoke in this manner, so his words would not be contrary to the
Lord’s truth. In sum, whatever fathers I recognize on earth, I recognize them
for the sake of doing them honour. I do not have any father for my own
salvation except God, about whom the Lord said to me: Do not call anyone on earth
your father, and to whom we daily prayer: Our father, who is in heaven [Mt
6.9].” (“Transcript of the 411 Conference: Day 3” (June 8, 411), in The
Conference of Carthage in 411 [trans. Erika Hermanowicz and Neil McLynn;
Translated Texts for Historians 90; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
2025], 279-80)