Remember Gill is addressing this as Peter quoting a hypothetical group of yet to be born mockers in the last days. So there’s no prerequisite that these “fathers” are internal to the church or even the faithful OT believers, but may simply represent the ancient peoples generally. The mockers being quoted are unbelievers, so it stands to reason they would not necessarily limit themselves to church history, but would rather be talking about human history generally.
This is actually the case with modern evolutionary skeptics, who have argued against the global flood, and also reject the apocalypse, because they reject that God intervenes in human history with these large scale judgments. In fact, many Protestants think these skeptics are probably at least a partial fulfillment of Peter’s prophecy.
As for the Father versus father controversy, I want to ask you to acknowledge something. I’m not asking you to agree, but just recognize this, that we are not saying, none of us, that these terms are off limits for descriptive use, only for use as ecclesiastical titles, which is a very narrow application. None of us has ever denied that Paul could teach or be a spiritual father to those he actually helped find faith in Christ. We only deny that such descriptive terms should evolve into formal religious titles, because as Augustine suggests, this can lead to pride and even idolatry. No one ever called Paul “Rabbi Paul,” or “Father Paul,” etc. That’s our point, and if you make it out to be more or less than that, you are not faithfully representing our actual argument.
Now I’m an attorney (plus a few other things), and I can tell you it’s cool to have that “Esq.” appended to your signature line in Outlook. But as a Christian I can also recognize the temptation to pride, to regarding oneself to being in some superior clique that can look down on others, and the badges of pride, titles and such other indicators of status, contribute directly to that temptation.
That’s what I think Jesus was getting at. It’s a narrow command but extremely useful, not hyperbole at all. He doesn’t want pride in the church leadership. He wants a servant heart. But the prohibitions are real. If you have a role in someone’s life as father, someone you actually know personally, then use of the right term to describe that role is fine. But not as part of your name. You may be revered, but you cannot be “Reverend.” You may be a father or teacher to someone, but you are not allowed to be “Father CT,” or “Rabbi SR.”
Anyway, I’m not asking you to agree, but I think it would be very helpful if you could at least acknowledge that this is our argument. Because then we could stop going on these defensive rabbit trails of “that’s not what we said,” and we could get down to addressing what we think is the real point, why you allow your clerics to bear such titles, when it would be so easy to comply with this command of Jesus by just using people’s names, as exampled by Paul, Peter, and everyone else in the New Testament church.
Peace,
SR
Springfield:
It is true titles can lead one to pride, which of course, was the source of the fall in Genesis, thus one needs to be careful with anything that can cause pride, not only titles.
I understand your concerns of titles for clergy as one of the key principles of Protestantism is the stressing of the universal priesthood, which Catholicism affirms as all baptized are baptized into Christ and thus part of the universal priesthood. There is a danger that the non ordained clergy could be seen as not on equal standing with God. So I do recognize your concerns. But I would argue that would apply to anyone who is in any type of leadership position in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church, who do use the term father in the context of spiritual father and Protestants who don’t. For example, a Protestant clergyman who use the term Doctor such and such [if they have a Phd from a Protestant seminary] or maybe some other term or don’t use any term at all, but still because they are the pastor of a local protestant group, is subject to the same temptations that the Catholic and Orthodox clergyman called Father Peter or Father Petros is subject to, which is of course pride.
As for Saint Augustine, he did refer to the Bishop of Rome by the term Papa [Father/Pope] as well as venerable, so while Augustine certainly understood the Christian should guard against pride, lest you fall, he did not take Christ words in Mt 23:7-9 to restrict titles such as father for Bishops and in the case of Augustine, the Bishop of Rome was the only one I can find that he called Papa [Father/Pope]. Here is the translation from schaff at ccel as I wanted to avoid any Charges of translation bias
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf101.vii.1.CCIX.html
So while I do recognize your concerns, I don’t agree with the restrictions you are making with respect to the word father. I will point out that the Catholic term Monsignor has come to be associated with careerism and thus is a title that many Bishops now shy away from as it promotes in language, a tiered system among parish priest, and Monsignor does not give anything in terms of Holy Orders. As one priest once told me, the Bishop if the chief Pastor of the diocese and on faith and moral teaching, that is his job. But in terms of pastoral ministry, I [this priest speaking] am in the front lines so sometimes when the Bishop makes a pastoral decision about how we are going to prepare kids for the sacrament of The Eucharist or Confirmation, I feel that sometimes I need to tell the Bishop what he is proposing is not the best way. Some priests would just kiss the Bishop’s you know what and play along. As this priest noted, it was these types of priests who were the careerist and many times, not all, got the titles of Monsignor. In other words, this particular priest was not fond of the term Monsignor to differentiate parish priests who were pastors. And no, he was not a spirit of Vatican II lunatic, very solid Irish priest who was my pastor back in the 90’s.
Good job with your post and I appreciate the respectful dialogue. I do and I will commend people who post the way you do, of course those who don’t, I freely acknowledge I sometimes loose my cool with some here and post accordingly.
That is a very precise description. and the ongoing conclusion is exactly right.
GREAT post.