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Cvengr:

Well, Mt 23:7-8 in my RSV translation reads “But you are not to be called rabbit, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren.

The footnote here indicates that it is a Title for revered Jewish teachers meaning “my great one” and cross-references John 1:38 where it says “What to you seek? And they said to him, Rabbi {which means teacher} where are you staying.

The NAB renders MT 23:7-8 the same way, using Rabbi and teacher. In John 1:38, it is rendered the same way and in it states Rabbi {means teacher} in the text.

The Douay-Rheims translation of John 1:38 has in parentheses that Rabbi means “Master]

So Rabbi is a Master teacher of Jewish Law and doctrine and contains a meaning of “my great one” as well. Sort of like a PHD in Jewish doctrine.

So Saint Paul’s use of the term teacher in Eph. 4:11 can argued from a fundamentalist protestant perspective to be a forbidden title if you are going to take MT 23;7-9 as literal. If it is hyperbole, then the use of Father, teacher are not universally forbidden, but only when the titles are used by people to distort God’s role as the source of everything.

The content of passages in Romans, 1Cor and Eph refer to the unique spiritual gifts given to every believer by God the Holy Spirit when we are baptized by the Spirit.

One such gift provided to male believers is the gift of Pastor-Teacher. It is a very real spiritual gift. It is a spiritual communication gift for perceiving the requisite Gospel to be taught between the Pastor-Teacher and his flock in the local assembly.

Worldly religious organizations working independent of being in fellowship through faith in Christ in their thinking, confuse the thinking of a pastor-teacher with a worldly mastering of soulish thinking. Many worldly systems then require the office to be held by persons with academic credentials to validate their mastery of academic topics, so as to prepare them to minister to others. That is a false system of pastoring, similar to present scholarly approaches in modern Judaism or Catholicism.

Human anthropology for the believer is a composition of body, soul, and spirit. Isolating the human spirit and its system of perception from the body and the soul, fails to acknowledge the system of teaching, which God provides and is very actively works, in this present Church Age.

A parallel spiritual communication gift for communicating the Gospel to unbelievers is the spiritual gift of evangelism. A person with that gift is guided by God the Holy Spirit in the presence of other unbelieving persons to communicate the right thinks to the local audience to communicate His Word to them.

In both of these positions, the believer in the body of Christ serves a unique role predestined by God in His Plan.

The most embarrassing place to be for an unbeliever or out of fellowship believer, is in an audience of either an evangelist or pastor-teacher with these spiritual gifts. They have the ability from God the Holy Spirit to spiritually perceive exactly what is necessary to communicate His Word to individuals and collective groups in their local audience. In order to communicate to individuals, it frequently is required to catch their attention, or communicate a topic of faith directly perceivable by that listener. There is nothing hidden from God in our lives. It isn’t uncommon for a pastor-teacher to directly perceive explicit hidden sin in the lives of his audience in order for him to effectively communicate the Word to that audience.

Believers in sin, who conceal their thinking by counterfeit behavior, lay completely exposed before those with these spiritual gifts. Likewise, when searching for one’s pastor-teacher, not all people who hold the worldly office are uniquely gifted to perform that task with some other believers. Some pastor-teachers are logistically predestined for explicit audiences. The Body of Christ has many members and likewise for systems of teaching which He provides for His Body.

One might glean some academic information from other teachers, but knowledge of His Word is fed directly by those whom He has provided for His Body.