“Jesus said, ‘Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven.’ (Matthew 23:9)”
Someone is certainly going to come back to you that in that case, you can’t even call your own daddy your father. Of course, that comeback indicates that they don’t believe Christ’s words there had any meaning at all.
The context, obviously, is speaking of religious epithets, not familial ones.
I heard one idiot one time say that he would no longer call his “Mommy mother,” because the Bible says that “Jerusalem which is above is the mother of us all.” (Galatians).
We have no “fathers” in the religious context. One may remark that a man is his “father in the faith” meaning merely that the elder had led the younger to Christ. Paul called Timothy his “son” in the faith. but these are not references to religious position or level of authority, or priesthood.
You must not have read post 41 before you wrote this...