How do you explain this? (1 Corinthians 4:15) "Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your Father through the gospel."
For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. 1 Corinthians 4:15 NASB
The way you posted it one would think that's the whole verse.
Second, as Roman Catholics so often like to do you capitalized a word that shouldn't be in caps. Your rendering of the verse is a bit misleading on your part.
The Greek rendering of the part of this verse in question reads as follows:
...ἐγὼ ὑμᾶς ἐγέννησα
I you have begotten
ἐγέννησα is a verb. It is not a noun. That's a huge difference and a distinction that needs to be noted.
The verb carries the meaning of bringing forth, to produce offspring.
In this context Paul is not telling anyone to call him father. Rather, he is merely saying he was the one who lead them to Christ through the Gospel.
This harkens back to John and Jesus's conversation with Nicademous and the need to be born again.
If understood in proper context there is no contradiction to the words of Christ to call no man father.
Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. In that same context, the Christian practice of calling priests and monks “father,” or “Abba” or the equivalent, is in no contradiction to the words of Christ. And the same is true for the words “teacher” and “master” and their cognates (which I’d like for you to address).
The one place where I would differ from you, is that I would point out the tightly related significance of noun and verb. All these nouns have a meaning directly derived from, and dependent upon their verbs.
A teacher teaches.
A master masters.
A father fathers.
It is misleading to think of the nouns as if they were apart from their verbs, e.g. a teacher who does not teach? The noun not only implies, but requires the verbs.
A farmer farms.
A mother mothers.
A just man, as G.M.Hopkins says, justices.