Annotation CCLXXIX

”God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” — Galatians 4:6

Whether it is lawful to call the prefects of monasteries abbots or fathers.

Jerome, [in] book 2 on the epistle to the Galatians, in the explanation of this comma [clause], is believed to have disapproved the pious custom of the monks, who, for honor’s sake, call their prefects Abbots and Fathers. But besides this, he also seems to take away from Christians the right of swearing. For he has in that place words of this kind: “SINCE, moreover, ‘Abba, Father’ is said in the Hebrew and Syriac tongue, and our Lord in the gospel commands that no one be called father except God: I know not by what license, in the monasteries, we either call others by this name, or acquiesce in being [so] called. And certainly he commanded this, who had said that we must not swear, [namely] if we do not swear; let us not even name any [man] father. If we shall interpret [the matter] of ‘father’ otherwise, we shall be compelled also to think otherwise concerning swearing.” These [things] he [Jerome]. I judge this period was written on the front [top] of the page by some seditious little monk, and thence afterward translated [carried over] into the context [main text] by yawning [careless] copyists. And that I am not deceived, [those things] are argument, which Jerome, with a plainly contrary opinion, and professedly, wrote [in] the fourth book on Matthew, where, inquiring how that command of the Savior is to be understood — “Be not called masters,” and “Call no [man] father to you upon the earth,” etc. — he thus says: “IT IS ASKED, why, against this precept, the Apostle called himself the Teacher of the Gentiles; or how, in common speech — especially in the monasteries of Palestine and Egypt — they call one another fathers? Which is thus resolved: [that] it is one thing to be a father, or master, by nature; another by indulgence [courtesy]. If we call a man father, we defer honor to age; we do not show [him] the author of our life. Master too is said from consortship with the true Master. And, not to run through infinite [instances]: as one [being] God by nature, and one Son, does not prejudice the rest, [so] that they be [not] called gods and sons by adoption: so also one father, and master, does not prejudice the others, [so] that they be called fathers and masters abusively [in a transferred sense].”