Even Fathers Need Fathers
For in Christ Jesus I became your father . . .
— St. Paul
(1 Corinthians 4:15, NASB)
It seems to me we are living in a time when spiritual fatherhood — guidance in the Christian life provided by one who is more mature to one who is less mature in the Faith — is being rediscovered. At first the idea may bring with it a degree of fear: what is it like to be guided in my walk with Christ?
But then the thought brings comfort. Here is someone I can talk with. Finally, there's a source for some oversight for my soul. I don't have to struggle alone anymore to discern God's will.
Perhaps you have noticed the significant number of evangelical Christians, especially leaders, who have become involved in "accountability groups" or a "covenant network" with others. At a Christian conference in Chicago recently, I was honestly surprised by the
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number of pastors and denominational leaders who have committed themselves to mutual oversight. Such willingness to receive direction is a welcomed first step toward a rediscovery of biblical spiritual fatherhood.
But how on earth can we be willing to look at the issues of spiritual fatherhood and to consider the Fathers of the Church as models for our lives, if we believe we are transgressing our consciences even to use the title "father" in reference to any man? This is a very difficult, but crucial, question to those who, like myself, were raised and formed in the modern Protestant tradition. In my opinion, we have suffered a great loss in the understanding of fatherhood through a rather new and tragic misinterpretation of the words of Christ, "Call no man father." We must pause here and consider the Church's historic understanding and teaching of these words of the Lord.
Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the
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synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, 'Rabbi, Rabbi.' But you, do not be called 'Rabbi'; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ. But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Matthew 23:1-12).
These words have been the source of great controversy both inside and outside Christianity. A number of years after the Protestant Reformation, this passage of Scripture was reduced by some to a legalistic, reactionary interpretation, according to which not only church leaders, but in some cases even biological fathers, were stripped of the title "father." "Call no man father." The misunderstanding of these words in the last three hundred years of Protestant Christian history has borne bad fruit, both in loss of historic continuity and in loss of humility and respect.
Until well after the time of the Protestant Reformation, nothing other than the following was taught anywhere in the Christian world. Even some of the more prominent Reformation figures like Luther and Calvin stood by the historic understanding of Christ's words in Matthew 23, as well. What was that understanding?
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Fathers in the Scriptures
The original use of the word "father" in Scripture refers to a biological progenitor: "A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife" (Genesis 2:24). However, over 1,150 Old Testament references and over 430 New Testament references also contain several other uses of that term. Sometimes it refers to God the Father, sometimes to biological fathers, sometimes to the Patriarchs and the Prophets, and sometimes to spiritual fathers. Abraham, of course, was called "a father of many nations" (Genesis 17:5). And after our Lord spoke the words, "Call no man father," He Himself applies the term "father" to Abraham in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31).
You see, if Christ's saying here is to be taken literally, other passages in the Bible are immediately in conflict with what He said, including some statements by the Apostle Paul. To the church at Corinth Paul wrote, "For in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel" (1 Corinthians 4:15, NASB). Does not Paul here claim to be the spiritual father of the Corinthians — Father Paul, if you please? Furthermore, in the same letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul boldly refers to his ancestry as "our fathers" (1 Corinthians 10:1). And he addressed earthly biological fathers in Colossae in this way: "Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged" (Colossians 3:21).
We also know that from ancient times the term "father" was given to teachers and leaders of Israel.
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The underlying idea is that teachers are procreators of a student's spiritual personality. That is why we also have the Apostle Peter referring to Mark as his son, the same term Paul uses to describe his relationship with Timothy (1 Peter 5:13; 1 Corinthians 4:17). This spiritual use of the term "father" continued in the earliest Christian communities. It was applied to bishops and presbyters because they represented the fathers in the Church.
The greatest preacher and Bible teacher of all time, St. John Chrysostom (A.D. fourth century), wrote concerning the understanding of "call no man father," Not that they should stop using the name father, but that they may know whom they ought to call Father, in the highest sense."1
The two most prominent "fathers" of the Reformation, Luther and Calvin, did not speak against the use of the title "father" in regard to clergy or biological fathers. In fact, Calvin wrote the following:
We are not only allowed to call men on earth fathers, we do wrong to deprive them of the name. The distinction some allege that men who beget children are fleshly fathers while God alone is the Father of spirits — is of no weight. I would agree that God is sometimes distinguished from men in this way (as at Hebrews 12:5), but as Paul more than once calls himself a spiritual father (1 Cor. 4:15; Phil. 2:22), we must see that this fits the words of Christ.2
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The same persons who advocate the prohibition of the term "father," interestingly enough, don't seem to notice that Jesus, in the same context, also said, "And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ" (Matthew 23:10). Yet He Himself acknowledged Nicodemus to be a "teacher of Israel" (John 3:10). And in the church at Antioch, certain men were called "prophets and teachers" (Acts 13:1). The Apostle Paul not only recognized teachers as gifts of God to the Church (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11), but he also did not hesitate to call himself "a teacher of the Gentiles" (2 Timothy 1:11).
I've never met a Christian in my life who refused to use the term "teacher." Why did certain English Puritans throw out the term "father" but keep the term "teacher," when (according to their interpretation) Jesus said not to use either term in reference to men? Could it be that they were arbitrarily selective in their disdain for the sixteenth-century Roman Catholic hierarchy? Their actions have left many confused.
In this "call no man rabbi, father, or teacher" passage, our Lord is contending with certain Pharisaic rabbis of His day who were using specific titles to accomplish their own ends. The final outcome of all this was a tradition of men which made the true Mosaic tradition of no effect. To these very rabbis Jesus said, "For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men" (Mark 7:8).
In order to cut through all this tradition of men and bring people back to the truth, Jesus told His disciples,
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"But you, do not be called Rabbi." In other words, He was teaching them in hyperbole (as He did with His call to hate our fathers and mothers in Luke 14:26) to make His point. He was telling them not to use their position as fathers and teachers as an opportunity to build disciples around their own private opinions, thus taking the place of God in their people's lives. For to do so would only serve to "shut up the kingdom of heaven against men" (Matthew 23:13). Ironically, I believe this is precisely what happened with this new and self-serving modern interpretation of the words of Christ, which contradicts the first fifteen hundred years of witness by the historic Church.
This novel prejudice against the use of the term "father" brought, into some segments of the Christian world, a divisive suspicion against the Apostolic Fathers and spiritual fathers of the ancient Church that has lasted until this present day. God knows how much we need the instruction of these holy men. To come back to the Fathers of the Church, we need to be willing to restore the use of the term "father" to its proper place.
Spiritual Fatherhood
In addition to getting past our phobia about the use of the term "father," we must also come to understand how spiritual fatherhood relates to the health of our souls as followers of Jesus Christ.
When St. Jude exhorts us to "contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints"
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(Jude 3), he is not talking about a system of doctrinal belief alone, but about a living unity with the Apostles that includes a way of believing and of living.
St. John wrote in his first epistle about that "which we [the Apostles] have seen with our eyes [that is the incarnate Christ], which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled [they saw Him transfigured and touched His resurrected body] . . . the life was manifested [that is, it became visible in flesh and demonstrated true life in the flesh] and . . . that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship [koinonia or communion] with us [that is, with the Apostles]; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:1, 3).
Communion is not limited to the Lord's Table, but also includes the whole way of life of the Apostles, as they transmitted, by the way they lived, the grace-filled life of Christ. Salvation is not only a matter of believing the right things about God; it includes a way of living that is filled with His life!
Recall in the New Testament how, with great boldness, the Apostles urge their flock to imitate the way they follow Christ. They offered their own lives as icons, models for how a transformed life in Christ is lived out. St. Paul told the church at Philippi, "The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you" (Philippines 4:9). Earlier in the same epistle he said, "Brethren, join in following my example, and
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note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern" (Philippians 3:17).
And in his second letter to St. Timothy, he writes, "You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also . . . . Continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from who you have learned them" (2 Timothy 2:1, 2; 3:14).
What this means is that the conduct of St. Timothy's life in the Faith was not to be determined by his own ingenuity. How he prayed, what he prayed, when he prayed; his bearing and demeanor; his approach to food, to work, to entertainment — the whole manner of the conduct of his life — was not determined in isolation. It was, rather, a consequence of a humble disciple receiving and following the example of what was given to him by Christ, the Apostles, and, specifically, St. Paul. The grace of living in peace with God was ministered in that kind of father-son relationship. Even Father Timothy, himself a pastor, needed a father.
Let me repeat: growing in the spiritual life, the one thing needful, was never a matter of one's own ingenuity. The Scriptures tell us it is an organic process, a family process if you will. In this dynamic, spiritual sons and daughters learn the God-pleasing way of life from spiritual fathers and mothers through obedience to their words and imitation of their way of life. St. Paul describes this relationship when he tells the church at
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Corinth, "Therefore I urge you, imitate me. For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church" (1 Corinthians 4:16, 17).
Later in the same letter he tells them, "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ. Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you" (1 Corinthians 11:1, 2).
Through Titus, Paul encouraged the older women to be models for the young women, admonishing them "to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands." Why? ". . . that the word of God may not be blasphemed" (Titus 2:4, 5).
He commended the Christians at Thessalonica by saying, "You also became imitators of us and of the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 1:6, NASB) In a subsequent epistle he goes on with the same theme: "Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep aloof from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example [imitate us], because we did not act in an undisciplined manner among you . . . but [acted in the way we did] in order to offer ourselves as a model for you, that you might follow our example" (2 Thessalonians 3:6,7,9, NASB, italics added).
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For me the most powerful expression of this tradition is stated in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the outcome of their way of life, imitate their faith" (Hebrews 13:7, NASB). The next verse is vitally important, yet it is seldom put together with the previous one: "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). As we keep in mind those who have transmitted the Faith to us in words and deeds, humbly conforming our lives to the pattern they made visible to us, we can be certain we are following the grace-filled, God-pleasing way of life in Christ Himself, who never changes. The grace that comes in that kind of life is transforming.
But it is not popular. This kind of obedience, patterning our lives after righteous people, is considered a repulsive thing in the American culture. It is condemned by the world as an infringement of personal freedom, and by individualistic Christians as legalism. But, in fact, it gives us the freedom we desperately want, freedom which can only come through the dying of self-will in submission to another. In this way we are freed from the tyranny of self-will. (Note, however, that we are talking about submission not to just anyone who claims to trust in Christ, but to the example of those departed believers whom the church has glorified, and to those who are living examples of the Christian way of life.)
The Scriptures and spiritual writings of our Fathers confront us with the reality that the spiritual life is
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transmitted to us in a lineage from saint to saint throughout the ages of the church, the Body of Christ, the dwelling place of God in the Spirit. One of these Fathers, St. Isaac the Syrian, wrote concerning the holy Prophets, Apostles, martyrs, the righteous, and the just:
By God's decree their teaching has been preserved for our instruction and strengthening . . . that we might become wise and learn the ways of God, and keep their histories and lives in view as living and breathing icons, and take our example from them, and run their course, and make ourselves like unto them. The words of God are as sweet to the soul possessed of great understanding as food that delights the body; and the histories of the righteous are as desirable to the ears of the meek as continual watering of a newly planted tree . . . Ponder, consider, and be taught by these things, that you may learn to hold the remembrance of the greatness of God's honor in your soul, and thus find life eternal for your soul in Christ Jesus our Lord.3
The great Christian preacher, St. John Chrysostom, said:
Let us keep the saints near us, and there will be no tempest: or rather, though there be a tempest, there will be great calm and tranquility, and freedom from dangers . . . the wicked one fears the tracks of saints,
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as foxes do lions . . . . Let us bring these lions into our house, and all the wild beasts are put to flight, the lions not needing to roar, but simply to utter their voice.4
And St. Athanasius (a fourth-century bishop who, in his early twenties, wrote the most profound work about the Incarnation that Christendom has ever received) speaks of the connectedness of the lives of the saints with the commandments of Christ when he says, "Let us then, just as it is right and at all times, be doers of the commandments of our Savior and not hearers only; that having imitated the behavior of the saints, we may enter together [with them] into the joy of our Lord which is in heaven."5
Another universally respected father, St. John of Damascus, writing about our devotion to the honoring of the saints, said, "Let us observe the manner of life of all these and let us emulate their faith, charity, hope, zeal, life, patience under suffering and perseverance unto death, so that we may also share their crowns of glory."6
As we embrace the saints as the models of our own lives; as we seek to know the way of the God-pleasing life by imitating their sanctified way of life, then the grace of the Holy Spirit for the healing of our sin-sick souls is ministered to us. If we are going to attain the spiritual health we desire, we must be intimately involved in the imitation of the lives of the saints. Again, we must not only pursue the same pious or godly ideals that they
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pursued, though that is certainly part of it; but in addition, we must take for our own the forms of their piety, their godly way of life, to be our own way of life.
I often encounter people who want a faith that requires from them a radical change in their life, in their world-view and in the objectives, designs, and purposes of their life. They are tired of religious doctrinal formulas to which they give intellectual assent and then adjust them to fit their tastes. They know that Christ's life is to be a transforming power in their life, and they want to see it happen.
When we read the lives of the saints, we come face to face with that transforming power. We will find on every page something contrary to the conventional wisdom that forms the secular world-view. People know the secular world-view is sick and dying. They don't want to just flavor it a little with Christian ideas. When they are confronted with the world-view manifested in the lives of the saints, a world-view that puts Christ and His holy Church before all other agendas; a view that embraces suffering and the Cross and martyrdom as treasures to obtain; a view that exalts enemies and persecutors as the benefactors of our soul; a view that reorganizes our time for constant prayer, fasting, and giving of one's self and one's wealth in service and obedience — then they find their heart's desire. They might argue with these things as they are first confronted with them. But as they embrace them for their own, I have seen the whole definition of what life is about change radically for them.
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Imitating what we see in the lives of the saints, who pass on to us the context of our faith, can be of far greater help to us than any church growth strategy ever devised. It is a life in which all we do is oriented around conforming our lives to the image of Christ that we see in the Gospel, the Gospel commandments, and those truths revealed in the lives of the faithful who have finished the race that we are now running.
Living Links
I was a participant in a retreat for Christian leaders a few years ago. The main speaker at the retreat was a Christian leader and author who had entered into a serious, ongoing adulterous relationship. It was at that conference that he had re-entered the ministry after a two-year sabbatical.
He opened the retreat, made up of over two dozen other leaders, saying something like this: "We evangelical Protestants are trying to re-invent a wheel that has already been invented. We have cut ourselves off from an historic Church which has had nearly two thousand years to learn how to minister to every problem. Because of this disconnection, we have many missing spokes in the wheels of our reformational churches. When I first began to enter into my sinful lusts and passions, I had no one to go to whom I could trust to help me. This is no excuse. But I know the historic Church had spiritual fathers to whom one could confess and receive guidance. Without this office and ministry in our lives, we [evangelicals] will continue
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to see casualties such as myself increase."
The Fathers of the Church have left a well-worn path for others to follow, a path that stretches down to us today. The evangelical leader I just referred to, through much personal suffering, came to know how important it is for us to have living spiritual fathers, as well. I was not only startled by these opening remarks, but was also encouraged that this well-known author and leader was pointing the conference in this direction due to the crisis in his own life and marriage. I was also encouraged because I had begun my own discovery of spiritual fatherhood in my journey to the historic Faith.
I've made three pilgrimages to Russia, in which I have had the opportunity and privilege to touch the reality of the spiritual life handed down through a thousand years of holy Christian struggle in the Russian Orthodox Church. The seventy years of communism produced the greatest holocaust in the history of mankind — three or four times more people were killed than in the horrific massacre of the Jews during World War II. Members of the Russian Orthodox Church are estimating that over twenty million of their clergy and faithful were martyred. But the flame of faith in Christ could not be stamped out. Why? Because the spiritual roots of the people ran so deep that their souls could only flourish by being watered by the blood of the Russian martyrs. They were prepared for martyrdom by many famous spiritual fathers who, before it ever began, prophesied the seventy years of communist captivity.
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Seraphim of Sarov and John of Kronstadt were two of the holy Christian saints who influenced millions of Russian Christians at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. They prepared the faithful to receive the crown of martyrdom for Christ because they were part of that living, organic transmission of the Faith "once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3).
The historic Church has always had holy men like these in her midst throughout the ages. This ministry is not given automatically through ordination, nor is it limited to the clergy. In fact, this particular ministry, like that of the prophets of old, is given only to a few. These are the shining lights whose lives helped form not only the believers of Russia, but their pastors as well. Through the example and writings of St. Seraphim and St. John, later generations of pastors learned to give personal, loving pastoral guidance and developed the ability to clearly articulate a very real interior life.
This kind of understanding of spiritual fatherhood is not only found among the Christians in Russia, but can also be found among Christians throughout the Middle East, Greece, and Eastern Europe. Western Christianity, by contrast, has not been very successful in producing a spiritual environment which forms or gives birth to this kind of special people. I'm not saying there aren't any; I'm just saying they are hard to find in America.
These are men and women who, in everything they do,
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are truly "not of this world" — people whose lives call us to a higher, heavenly path. However, we are not hopeless. We do have access to a treasury of books concerning their lives and their teachings. Interestingly enough, because of our disconnection from the historic Church, most of us do not even know that these books exist. We Americans are like the man who died in poverty not knowing that his uncle had left a fortune for him in the bank. If you want to grow in the knowledge of spiritual fatherhood, you must discover your family inheritance. I've included a reading list from early Christian writers in the Appendix.
I know of no other way to stay on the true path and to become holy fathers to our families without the love for the spiritual fathers and mothers who have graced the life of the Church with their presence — for they are the examples for us to follow. We must connect with them and with living, breathing people who have faithfully passed on what has been received from them.
Living links are important for us to tap into the treasury of the fathers. One twentieth-century pastor put it well when he said, "It was never enough to speak for Patristic Orthodoxy; one must be in the genuine tradition of the Holy Fathers . . . actually receiving their tradition from one's own (spiritual) fathers. A merely clever explainer of Patristic doctrine is not in this tradition, but only one who, not trusting his own judgment or that of his peers is constantly asking his own (spiritual) fathers what is the proper approach to and understanding of the Holy Fathers."7
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We must also come to grips with the need for living, earthly spiritual fathers for our own individual lives as well. We most likely will not do well without one. In fact, according to the Fathers, "He who has chosen himself as a spiritual guide has chosen a fool."
At this point you may be saying to yourself, "All right, I'm convinced that I need to imitate the saints and that I need a living person to be my spiritual father. But how do I do it? Where do I find someone who can help me to discern God's will and lead me closer to God?"
That, my friend, is the crux of the matter. In our spiritually impoverished land, the saints are virtually unknown, and genuine spiritual fathers are few and far between. But there are still a few of them within the living tradition of the historic Church. This tradition has preserved spiritual fatherhood in an unbroken line from the earliest times of Christianity until the present. Within this tradition, people can go either to their parish priest, to a holy monastic, or sometimes to an exceptionally wise layperson to receive the guidance, counsel, and direction so essential to living the Christian life.
These people have always known that the Christian life is far too difficult and full of pitfalls to pursue safely on one's own. And the spiritual directors realize this as well. That is why they remain accountable to someone in authority over them, so that the people they counsel can be confident they are not being led astray from the true path. If you can connect yourself with this tradition,
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you will be on the road to the kind of spiritual growth every Christian, and every father needs to pursue.
Chapter 12 || Table of Contents
1. St. John Chrysostom, "Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew," Homily 72, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 10, p. 438.
2. Calvin's Commentaries: A Harmony of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), Vol. 3, p. 51.
3. The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily III (Brookline, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984), pp. 27, 28.
4. St. John Chrysostom, "Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans," Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 11, p. 319.
5. St. Athanasius, "Selected Works and Letters," Letter II, Easter 330, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 4, p. 510.
6. Fathers of the Church: St. John of Damascus (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press), p. 371. (Italics added.)
7. Christensen, Not of This World, p. 472.
