Call no man father with capital "F"?

[rien]

An evangelical friend defends the calling that no man father in Scripture does not apply to our bilogical fathers because Scripture capitalizes “Father” and is referring to not bilological fahters. So a different thing.

And that Catholics calling priests “Father” is in contradition to Scripture given the capitlization - as in Father Joe.

She argues that is where the Catholic church denies Scripture.

Its an argument I had not heard before - the capitialization thing - any comments?

 

[JimG]

Someone who knows something about the original languages should answer this. I doubt that those languages used capital letters, but I’m not sure.

In any case, it says “call NO man father.” When we call our fathers “Father” he can’t tell if we’re using capitals or not.

It also says “call NO man 'teacher”! Does anybody follow that one?

 

[Tim_Kirchoff]

Your friend is apparantly also in favor of changing the rules of English grammar

In addressing one’s father, or referring to one’s father without the possessive, it is more correct to capitalize the “f” in father, the “M” in mother, etc. This is true because the title “father” is being used in place of the name. for example, in, “Mother sent Father to the store to buy bread and milk,” the “m” in mother and “f” in father are capitalized. If the sentence were, “My mother sent my father to the store to buy and milk,” capitalization is incorrect. Phew. Thank you, 6th grade English class

All smart-alek explanations aside, your friend is ignoring the other possible (and frankly, more likely) interpretations of this passage…besides the fact the Bible was first written in another language Latin doesn’t even have a lower-case, and in English it is accepted to have all pronouns, etc. referring to God, to start with a capital letter, completely seperate from the use of capital letters in titles, like “Mister.” As an example…

“Jesus established Peter as leader of His Church, thus, Peter is the first Pope.”

Oh, yes, and tell your friend that if she says Catholics can’t call priests “Father”, she can’t call anyone “Mister” because Mister is, in fact, derived from “Master”, and “No man can serve two masters”

Howzat?

 

[canne]

you may want to have your friend read this
catholic.com/library/Call_No_Man_Father.asp

 

[rien]

Someone who knows something about the original languages should answer this. I doubt that those languages used capital letters, but I’m not sure.

In any case, it says “call NO man father.” When we call our fathers “Father” he can’t tell if we’re using capitals or not.

It also says “call NO man 'teacher”! Does anybody follow that one?

That is good - what is the verse?

 

[Hastrman]

Capitals in Greek didn’t develop until the early Byzantine period, so no, there would be no capital letters.

QED.

 

[JimG]

That is good - what is the verse?

Matthew 23:10, just following the verse about “father.”

Matt 23:9-10 “Do not call anyone on earth your father. Only one is your father, the One in heaven. Avoid being called teachers; only one is your teacher, the messiah.”

 

[epostle]

The evangelical argument is based purely on a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words. He is using a device called hyperbole. Matt. 23:8 – in this teaching, Jesus also says not to call anyone teacher or rabbi as well. But don’t Protestants call their teachers “teacher?” What about this commandment of Jesus? When Protestants say “call no man father,” they must also argue that we cannot call any man teacher either.

What evangelicals refuse to see is that Jesus is saying not to give any human being the role of “Father”. Jesus clarifies this when He says we have one Father who is in heaven. “Father Joe” does not mean “God Joe”.

1 Cor. 4:15 - Paul writes, “I became your father in Christ Jesus.” According to the interpretation rules of evangelicals, St. Paul is calling himself God. Of course, this is unacceptable to evangelicals but they would never call St. Paul, “Father Paul” as Paul refers to himself. Evangelicals contradiction is obvious.

see scripturecatholic.com/the_priesthood.html for a comrehensive list of scriptures refuting the pretzel theology of “call no man father”.

 

[JimG]

Yes, people seem to forget that hyperbole is common even today. (“I’ve told you a thousand times!”) And it was frequently used by Jewish rabbi’s of NT times to make a point. (sucn as " I tell you, you must forgive seventy TIMES seven times!" I sure hope that nobody is translating that nowadays, as you must forgive 490 times.)

 

[Tim_Kirchoff]

Yes, people seem to forget that hyperbole is common even today. (“I’ve told you a thousand times!”) And it was frequently used by Jewish rabbi’s of NT times to make a point. (sucn as " I tell you, you must forgive seventy TIMES seven times!" I sure hope that nobody is translating that nowadays, as you must forgive 490 times.)

So I’ve been keeping a tally, all these years, and all for nothing?

 

[Irish_Saints]

An evangelical friend defends the calling that no man father in Scripture does not apply to our bilogical fathers because Scripture capitalizes “Father” and is referring to not bilological fahters. So a different thing.

And that Catholics calling priests “Father” is in contradition to Scripture given the capitlization - as in Father Joe.

She argues that is where the Catholic church denies Scripture.

Its an argument I had not heard before - the capitialization thing - any comments?

The original autographs or manuscripts were written in what is called uncial (or sometimes, majuscule) text. We might refer to them today as “capital letters”, but there would be no lower case (or “miniscule”) alphabets in Greek until sometime between the 11th and 12th centuries (a bit earlier for Roman, quite a bit later for English and related languages.) Early writings are also noted for their lack of what we call “spaces” between words. They tended to all run together, and one simply learned through usage and context where one word ended and the next began.

So, aside from the many other quality answers you’ve already gotten, this sort of pokes a big hole in the whole “Father vs. father” theory.

 

[ricko]

St. Stephen called the members of the Sanhdrin “my brothers! Fathers!” Acts 7:2

St. Paul addressed a crowd as “my brothers and fathers” Acts 22:1

“Fathers, I address you, for you have known him who is from the beginning” 1 John 2:13

All quilty of calling someone Father. Hyperbole or extravagant speech to make a point. Jesus was referring to the Pharisees who loved to "lord’ it over people by taking places of honor and basically acting as if they were better than everybody else. There are also plenty of spots in the bible were “Teacher” is used.

Explain this to your friend. Tell her also that many people pick and choose verses like this thereby taking them out of context.

P.S. The capital ain’t got nothing to do with it. Where do they get this stuff?

 

[JustinMartyr100]

An evangelical friend defends the calling that no man father in Scripture does not apply to our bilogical fathers because Scripture capitalizes “Father” and is referring to not bilological fahters. So a different thing.

And that Catholics calling priests “Father” is in contradition to Scripture given the capitlization - as in Father Joe.

She argues that is where the Catholic church denies Scripture.

Its an argument I had not heard before - the capitialization thing - any comments?

Just an observation, I pulled this out of their very own NIV:

Matthew 23:9 - And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.

Notice, in the protestant Bible, that the first father is lowercase, and the second Father is not? English was not my subject at all, but maybe you could call him on that? With your friends logic, it would be like Jesus is saying, “don’t call anybody lowercase father.” As I said, English was not my subject, but Tim is right, this is just a grammar issue here. Don’t forget all of the other great replies you got in this thread, especially my favorite, 1 Cor 4:15!

 

[Feedmysheep]

To reinforce an earlier post:

Dictionary.com Word FAQs

**When do you capitalize words like “mother,” “father,” “grandmother,” and “grandfather” when writing about them?
**
You should capitalize these when referring to your own relatives: “Hello, Mother.” A good rule to follow is to capitalize them if they are used as proper nouns. If used as common nouns, don’t capitalize as in: We honor all mothers in May. In other words, capitalize words such as “Mother,” “Father,” “Grandmother,” “Grandfather,” “Son,” “Daughter,” and “Sis” when they are used in place of the person’s name. Do not capitalize them when they follow possessive pronouns such as her, his, my, our, your.

Guess your friend needs to find another word for her male parent.

 

[robert_ambrose]

An evangelical friend defends the calling that no man father in Scripture does not apply to our bilogical fathers because Scripture capitalizes “Father” and is referring to not bilological fahters. So a different thing.

And that Catholics calling priests “Father” is in contradition to Scripture given the capitlization - as in Father Joe.

She argues that is where the Catholic church denies Scripture.

Its an argument I had not heard before - the capitialization thing - any comments?

on her reasoning no should be called doctor, teacher, master and so on as these titles trace back to the latin root word.

 

[mark_a]

An evangelical friend defends the calling that no man father in Scripture does not apply to our bilogical fathers because Scripture capitalizes “Father” and is referring to not bilological fahters. So a different thing.

And that Catholics calling priests “Father” is in contradition to Scripture given the capitlization - as in Father Joe.

She argues that is where the Catholic church denies Scripture.

Its an argument I had not heard before - the capitialization thing - any comments?

Ask her if its at all possible that Jesus was using hyperbole.