Should Lutheran Ministers Be Called “Father”?

“Yes.”

(Travis Heide, “Should Lutheran Ministers Be Called ‘Father’?”)

All facetiousness aside, an overwhelming number of honorific titles (or “styles”) can be used to address your parish pastor.

“Reverend” or, more accurately, “The Reverend” is standard – it officially replaces “Mister”. Due to the established patterns of inheritance, it applies in only rare cases – but the style Reverend would precede titles of nobility. (Ex. The Reverend King Henry VIII. Yes, you heard that right; he was the last and only English monarch to receive a religious education!)

The term “Pastor” refers to his profession. By way of comparison: Mr. Smith is a “Plumber” by profession. So you would say, “I’ll call Mr. Smith, the plumber” just as you would say “I’ll call Reverend Jones, the Pastor.” Some may recognize “Pastor” as derived from the Latin pastor, that is, “shepherd.” Shepherd is but one way to translate the Hebrew term for shepherd (re’ah) in the Old Testament; the term in the abstract also refers to kings in certain passages. But I digress. “Reverend” refers to the person, “Pastor” to the job he does.

Although rare in Lutheran circles, “Parson” has its place in history. I know little enough to believe that “Parson” is a corruption of the English “Person” – as in “the person” one goes to with questions relating to faith. Or a host of other subjects, since pastors were often required to have a classical education under their belt. They were taught the “gymnasium”, a curriculum which is roughly equivalent to a modern Liberal Arts degree – only far more comprehensive (shall we even say, “diversified”?).

Far less rare in Lutheran circles (bear with, as I am not speaking on behalf of the hyper-egalitarian North American tradition) is the title “Herr.” Herr is simply “Lord,” “Sir,” or “Mister” in German. In the Renaissance-era European cultural soil in which the Lutheran Confession first emerged, in particular the case in Protestant countries where pastors were expected to be loyal servants of their local rulers rather than the Papal monarchy, ministers were imbued with an air of nobility. (Now, if I have a pertinent observation on Western democracy to be made: it is interesting how a society without clearly defined hierarchy or status based on inheritance, land ownership, or achievement of particular honours, naturally produces artificial class divisions of its own. Here is an illuminating case.)

Our options are manifold: Reverend, Pastor, Parson, Herr… and so much by way of explanation. Here now are some compelling reasons why the honorific “Father” is an appropriate addition to this list.

1. It is Scriptural.

The Lutheran Confessions (cited below) cite from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians… but not, let it be known, toward the ends it has been twisted to by later doctrinal literature. Much has been made of the opening verse of chapter four:

“This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of Christ.”

(I Corinthians 4:1)

The ESV providentially avoids translating this term οικονομους as “custodian.” Now, with no disrespect to the noble profession of custodian (what some may choose to call a “janitor” or “sanitation engineer”), nowhere does the New Testament does that term imply that pastors carry out their duties on trust from a congregation. Rather, to whom does Paul’s management owe? Context is king, which specifies that Paul receives his pastoral authority immediately from God, and (safeguarding against any Enthusiast interpretation; see AC V; XIV) the Corinthian congregation receives the Word of God from that very office:

“Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. … What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”

(vv. 2-5, 7)

At last, however, we come to Paul’s self-styling:

“I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 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.” (v. 15)

Is this a passing reference? Or does the Apostle make further use of this metaphor? The answer, once again, is yes.

“I urge you, then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.” (vv. 16-17)

Teaching “everywhere in every church” certainly undermines a strictly local construction of the call to ministry. But without entering that quagmire, observe how Paul ups the ante in his concluding statement:

“For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” (v. 21)

Now, these hardly sound like the words of someone whose authority is derivative from a voting assembly (pace Richard C. Lenski), leave alone a figure lacking any intrinsic authority at all.

The Lord Jesus was not speaking to the royal priesthood (I Pet 2:9) but to a group of called preachers when he said these words:

“The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

(Luke 10:16)

In conversation with a Roman Catholic priest, the First Epistle of St. John was brought into view. Some selected verses address believers as τεκνια, “children”:

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.”

“I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.”

“And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence…”

(I John 2:1, 12, 28)

The address may be metaphorical, but it is an apt metaphor. “Children” implies a “father,” and John could hardly fail to understand himself in this relation to them. Ordinarily the term τεκνια denotes domestic children, but never the abstracted notion of “little ones.” The separate Greek term μικρον does.

But did our Lord not also say to his disciples (μικροι),

“call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven”

(Matt 23:9)

He also said immediately following:

“Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

(vv. 10-11)

This objection is easily dealt with. Christ did not come to abolish kinship ties, which included fathers and mothers, etc. No one (to my knowledge) applied this “rule” to their own parents, much less their teachers at school. Jesus’ rhetoric, as in other places, comes clear when he qualifies that the principle is humility. Humility and fatherhood (much less authority in general) are not mutually exclusive – American antiauthoritarianism and postmodernist attacks on the family be dashed. One would at least hope.

2. It is Confessional.

Many in the American tradition especially would balk at applying the Fourth Commandment to pastors. (In the eyes of this pastor, far enough has been made of obedience to “other [civil] authorities” at the expense of “our parents” – the natural object of the command to “honour your father and your mother” – leave alone spiritual authorities. But I digress.) I do not intend to explore here the manifold ways in which churchly authority has been undermined; but setting aside all subtle arguments, the Lutheran Confessions clearly, unreservedly, and authoritatively call pastors “spiritual fathers.”

Writes Bl. Dr. Martin Luther on the Fourth Commandment:

“[W]e have three kinds of fathers presented in this commandment: fathers by blood, fathers of a household, and fathers of the nation. Besides these, there are also spiritual fathers – not like those in the papacy who applied this title to themselves but performed no fatherly office. For the name of spiritual father belongs only to those who govern and guide us by the Word of God. St. Paul boasts that he is a father in I Cor. 4:15, where he says, ‘I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.’ Since such personas are fathers, they are entitled to honor, even above all others. But they very seldom receive it, for the world’s way of honoring them is to harry them out of the country and grudge them as much as a piece of bread. In short, as St. Paul says, they must be ‘the refuse of the world, and every man’s offscouring.'”

(Large Catechism, Part I, pars. 158-160)

Luther’s authority in this department should not be despised – especially by a Lutheran body that considers itself “confessional.”

Someone may, of course, object that Luther acknowledges pastors are often robbed or denied the respect demanded by the Office. But this is a clear case of abusus non tollit sed confirmat sustancia; and this sounds like resignation more than the suggestion that anticlericalism should be in any way normative.

As hinted at above, it seems to do no violence (in the eyes of this pastor) to even treat this as a casu confessionalis. No, this is not commanded in Scripture (adiaphora). But in the absence of Scriptural reasons for jettisoning this good and salutary practice, the question is raised as to why that has happened. An accommodation to a secular antiauthoritarian culture? A dubious interpretation of Scripture (cf. I Corinthians and Matthew 23:9 above)? Hardly compelling reasons to abandon such a practice “for the sake of good order in the Church and the sake of tranquility” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Art. XV, pars. 13-14).

Supposing you, dear reader, are not offended by this, then exercise your Christian freedom by calling me Father. Or Reverend; or Pastor; or Herr; or, if the circumstance requires, “Hey you!” (or some parallel term).