Episode 50: Year A – 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we spend our time focusing on two details found in the second and Gospel readings for this upcoming 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A. The first detail comes from the second reading, which is taken from 1 Thessalonians 2:7b-9, 13. The relevant apologetical topics are Sacred Tradition and the Protestant belief in Sola Scriptura—the belief that Scripture alone is our infallible rule of faith. The second detail, which is found in the Gospel reading, taken from Matthew 23:1-12, relates to the Catholic practice of calling priests “father.”
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Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In this episode, we’re going to spend our time focusing on two details found in the 2nd and Gospel readings for this upcoming 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year. The first detail comes from the second reading, which is taken from 1 Thessalonians 2:7b-9, 13. The relevant apologetical topics are Sacred Tradition and the Protestant belief in Sola Scriptura—the belief that Scripture alone is our infallible rule of faith. The second detail, which is found in the Gospel reading, taken from Matthew 23:1-12 relates to the Catholic practice of calling priests “father.”
Let’s get started from the first reading. Again, it’s taken from 1 Thessalonians 2:7b-9, 13. Here’s what Paul writes:
We were gentle among you, as a nursing mother cares for her children.
With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you
not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well,
so dearly beloved had you become to us.
You recall, brothers and sisters, our toil and drudgery.
Working night and day in order not to burden any of you,
we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.
And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly,
that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us,
you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God,
which is now at work in you who believe.
The detail that I want to highlight for our purposes here is Paul’s statement, “in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God.”
Notice Paul speaks of the “word of God.” What is he referring to?
He can’t be referring to the New Testament because this letter to the Thessalonians is one of the first inspired documents of the Christian tradition. He also can’t be referring to the Old Testament because the immediate context reveals he was preaching to the Thessalonians “the Gospel of God” (vv. 2, 9), which for Paul is the good news of Jesus Christ.
So, for Paul, the “word of God” that he speaks of goes beyond the boundaries of the written Word of God. It is identified as the truth of Jesus Christ transmitted through the apostolic preaching.
Now, why is this relevant for apologetics?
Well, as many of you know, a pillar of Protestantism is the belief that the Scriptures alone are considered the “Word of God” and thereby our only infallible rule of faith. This belief is known as Sola Scriptura, which is Latin for Scripture Alone.
The “alone” part of this belief is emphasized in contrast with the belief held by Catholics and Orthodox that Sacred Tradition, along with Sacred Scripture, makes up God’s word, or divine revelation.
Paul’s statement in our second reading for this upcoming Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word proves otherwise. For Paul, the “Word of God” is not restricted to the inspired writings of the apostles. The “Word of God” also includes the apostolic preaching.
Now, the apostolic preaching is not “inspired” in the way that the sacred writings are, where the form of the message has God as its author. Rather, the apostolic preaching is “inspired” in its origin—that’s to say, the content of the message that they proclaimed, including their interpretations of the Old Testament prophecies, comes directly from God.
Given this belief of Paul, we can see that for the first century Christians both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition made up the sacred deposit of divine revelation.
The question now becomes, “Does this form of the ‘word of God’—the apostolic preaching— continue to be present for Christians after the apostles died off when the apostolic preaching ceased?”
As Catholics, we answer yes. This form of the “Word of God,” or Sacred Tradition, was entrusted to the bishops who succeeded the apostles in the apostolic office, the episkope (1 Tim. 3:1-3). Why would God make this “Word of God” present only for first-century Christians and not for Christians of all generations? It’s not fitting that God would will such divinely revealed truth to die off with the death of the last apostle.
So, the Catholic paradigm of Scripture and Sacred Tradition is supported by the New Testament.
Let’s now turn to the Gospel reading, which, again, is taken from Matthew 23:1-12. Jesus says the following,
The scribes and the Pharisees
have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.
Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you,
but do not follow their example.
For they preach but they do not practice.
They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry
and lay them on people’s shoulders,
but they will not lift a finger to move them.
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 Christ.
The greatest among you must be your servant.
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;
but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
For many of you listening who swim in the waters of apologetics, you know the detail that I’m going to focus on here: Jesus’ command, “Call no one on earth your father” (v.9).
The apologetical import is evident: How can Catholics call their priests “father” when Jesus explicitly commands us not to call anyone father? There seems to be a contradiction here between Catholic practice and the Bible.
How can we reconcile this apparent contradiction?
I’m going to share with you three ways that we can respond. The first two give reasons why Jesus can’t be forbidding the use of “father” in an absolute sense. The third response provides an explanation as to what he means. All three ways are taken from my book Meeting the Protestant Challenge: How to Answer 50 Biblical Objections to Catholic Beliefs.
Here’s the first: the Bible approvingly uses the term father for individuals other than God. Therefore, Jesus can’t be restricting the use of the term “father” to God alone in an absolute sense.
The Bible uses father to refer to biological fathers, which Protestants don’t deny. Paul quotes the fourth commandment in Ephesians 6:2: “Honor your father and your mother.”
Paul refers to himself as a spiritual “father” in 1 Corinthians 4:15: “For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” If Matthew 23:9 forbade calling any man “father,” then Paul would be disobeying Jesus’ express command. But Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 4:15 are divinely inspired, and therefore can’t contradict what Jesus says.
It’s also not uncommon in the New Testament for Christ’s ministers to view themselves as a spiritual father, showing that taking the role of father is also not off-limits.[i] Paul calls the Galatians his “little children” (Gal. 4:19). He also views Timothy (1 Cor. 4:17; 1 Tim. 1:2, 18; 2 Tim. 1:2, 2:1), Titus (Titus 1:4), and Onesimus (Philem. 10) as his spiritual sons. Peter calls Mark “my son” (1 Pet.5:13), and John, like Paul, refers to his audience as “my little children” (1 John 2:1; 3 John 4).
Here are a few other examples where father is used for people other than God, even in respectful and reverential ways:
- Abraham (Luke 16:24; Acts 7:2; Rom. 4:12; James 2:21)
- Isaac (Rom. 9:10)
- Jacob (John 4:12)
- David (Acts 4:25)
- The Jewish elders (Acts 7:2)
- Older Christian men (1 John 2:13-14)
A Protestant may object that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David are not men “on earth,” and thus can’t be used in response to the challenge. But the Jewish elders and older Christian men were individuals on earth.
Lest we say that the Holy Spirit is contradicting himself, and that the early Christian leaders directly disobeyed a command of the Lord, we must conclude that Jesus’ command to “call no man father on earth” doesn’t forbid calling anyone “father” other than God. There must be something else going on.
A second response is that the principle of this challenge leads to absurdities when it’s applied to other things Jesus says in the immediate context.
Before Jesus gives the instruction to “call no man father on earth,” he gives the same sort of instruction concerning calling men “rabbi”: “But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher [Greek, didaskalos], and you are all brethren” (Matt. 23:8). John tells us in John 1:38 that rabbi means “teacher” (Greek, didaskalos).
If we were to follow the logic of this challenge from Matthew 23:9, we would have to conclude that we cannot call another person “teacher,” either, since Jesus is our one teacher. But several times the Bible uses didaskalos for people other than Jesus:
- 1 Timothy 2:7: “For this I was appointed a preacher and apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher [didaskalos] of the Gentiles in faith and truth.”
- 1 Corinthians 12:28: “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers [didaskalous]”
- James 3:1: “Let not many of you become teachers [didaskaloi], my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness.”
As with Paul’s use of father to describe himself, here we must conclude that Paul and James, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, were not disobeying Jesus’ instruction when they referred to teachers other than God.
As mentioned above, the first two responses give reason why Jesus can’t be forbidding the use of “father” in an absolute sense. Naturally, then, the question becomes, “So what does Jesus mean?” Our answer to this questions constitutes our third response to the objection: Jesus is using hyperbole to indict the scribes and Pharisees for their pride.
Since the Bible elsewhere uses teacher and father for persons other than God, it’s likely that instead of forbidding those words in an absolute sense, Jesus is using hyperbole (exaggeration to make a point)—as when he commands to gouge out our eye or cut off our hand if one of them causes us to sin (Matt. 18:8-9).
The purpose of this hyperbole in Matthew 23:8-9 is to indict the religious leaders for the disordered love they had for their roles of leadership. A disordered love that apparently led them to hold in contempt those they were appointed to lead. There are two clues that suggest this.
First, in the verses preceding the teaching in question, Jesus says that the Pharisees “love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues” (v.6), and that they love “salutations in the marketplaces, and being called rabbi by men” (v.7). Then, immediately following the teaching in question, Jesus pronounces a series of “woes” to the Pharisees for their hypocrisy (vv.13-36).
The second clue is found in verse 8, where Jesus emphasizes equality, saying, “You are all brethren.” This is not to say that all members of God’s family have equal roles. But it is to remind the religious leaders that before God they are equal in dignity with their brethren. Their leadership roles don’t make them any better than others insofar as they are all God’s children.
The Pharisees had allowed pride to well up in their souls with the honorific titles of rabbi and father. Consequently, they began to have a disordered love for their superior roles, puffing up their self-importance and forgetting that their worth came from God—who is our ultimate Father and Teacher. It’s for this reason that Jesus rebukes them and puts them in their place, employing hyperbole to drive home his point that they need to be more humble and recognize that their leadership roles don’t make them better than others.
Moreover, Jesus is teaching us not to confuse the unique role of teacher that Christ has—which is ultimate and permanent—with the role of teacher that anyone else has on earth, which is conditional and temporary. Likewise, we must avoid confusing the fatherhood that God has—which is absolute and not dependent on anything else—with the conditional fatherhood that anyone has on earth, which, whether biological or spiritual, depends on God’s fatherhood.
Paul expresses this in Ephesians 3:15, where he writes, “For this cause I bow my knees to the Father [Greek, patera] of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity (Greek, patria, “family” or “fatherhood”) in heaven and earth is named” (Douay-Rheims). Paul’s point is that all fatherhood, whether biological or spiritual, participates in the one unique fatherhood of God, and establishes it on earth.
As we’ve seen, God has given the role of teaching and fatherhood to people. And since he has chosen to do so, he’s not going to have a problem with our recognizing that truth by calling those people “teacher” and “father.” God is all in favor of us acknowledging his truth.
Well, my friends, that does it for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The second reading and Gospel for this upcoming 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year gives us opportunity to do some apologetics when it comes to defending the Catholic understanding of Sacred Tradition and the practice of calling priests “father.” These are two very common topics and it’s necessary for us to be prepared to engage them.
As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well at sundaycatholicword.com. You might also want to check out the other great podcasts in our Catholic Answers podcast network: Cy Kellet’s Catholic Answers Focus, Trent Horn’s The Counsel of Trent, Joe Heschmeyer’s Shameless Popery, and Jimmy Akin’s A Daily Defense, all of which can be found at catholic.com.
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I hope you have a blessed 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time.
See Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense, 32.