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Saturday, April 09, 2005

Holy Father?

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church is called, and allows himself to be called, Holy Father.  The following verse would make me fear to take such a name.

"Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."  Matthew 23:9

This does not, of course, teach us to shun the term father as it pertains to natural parentage, but it does mean that we are to have no man to be God's vicar to us.  We are not to have the very type of priesthood that pervades the Catholic church because each believer is a "vicar of Christ" equally with every other.  There is to be no father among us, and there is to be no priesthood.  We are all priests for our own selves.  We certainly need apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers (Eph. 4:11), but we must not have priests.  Each man is his own agent with God, and God addresses Himself to each man directly.  As far as the Holy Father is concerned, there is none other than God.

Saturday, April 09, 2005 in Religion and Philosophy |

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