A 07 - What is a Priest

Ryder PLHV: 07 What is a Priest? WHAT IS A PRIEST?

It was asked on the eve of the great French Revolution, " What is the Tiers État? " The answer was "The Tiers État is the nation, less the clergy and the noblesse." So to the question "Who are the laity?" the reply must be "They are the body of the Church, less the clergy, or, as St. Paul expresses it, marking union and not separation, "They are all the saints (with the bishops and deacons)." The inference to be drawn from the French answer no doubt was that the two privileged classes were exotics, existing only by the will of the people, and liable to be swept away at any moment. The inference would be utterly inadmissible in relation to the Church of Christ. There is a primitive distinction between clergy and laity, and it will continue to the end of the age in which we live. But by distinction is not meant separation. There is no reason to regard the distinction as anything more than a provision for the purpose of developing the fullness of the corporate life of the Church, which is Christ’s body, and for maintaining in it the fullness of the truth.

Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a great priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our body washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:19-22.

Now we have such a high priest, who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. Hebrews 8:1-3.

Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, seeing there are those who offer the gifts according to the law. Hebrews 8:4.

Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus. Hebrews 3:1.

Having then a great high priest, who hath passed through the heavens,... Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need. Hebrews 4:14; Hebrews 4:16. THE word "priest" is the storm-centre around which the tempest of controversy revolves. It is most important at the outset to make clear the meaning of the word. A priest is one who is a representative of the people before God, and sometimes the representative of God to the people. As one who propitiates God by appointed sacrifice he represents the people before God; as one who blesses and absolves he represents God to the people. It is a word so often used in the Old Testament and in pagan literature that we must acknowledge that as a rule it implies one who by the sacrifice of slain victims propitiates the Deity and gains pardon for man from God. The words "cohen," "hiereus," "sacerdos" have a connotation which in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin cannot be set aside or explained away. The word in Hebrew and classic writers is usually associated with animal sacrifices and dread rites. According to the Mosaic law, with out shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. It is closely connected with sin and reconciliation. Yet in the Greek title "hiereus" itself the simple significance is one who is busied about "hiera" sacred things. But we must insist that this word has a special connotation. Thus in the New Testament the word "hiereus" is properly used of Jewish or pagan priests. Most accurately and consistently this use is observed in the New Testament books. It meets us first in our Lord’s words, "Go, show thyself to the priests." It meets us again in the title of those who demanded St. John the Baptist’s credentials: "The Jews sent unto John priests and Levites to ask him, Who art thou?”

5: It meets us in the Jewish sense in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, seeing there are those who offer the gifts according to the law." In the pagan sense we meet with the term on the occasion of St. Paul’s visit to Lystra: "And the priest of Jupiter, whose temple was before the city, brought oxen and garlands to the apostles, and would have done sacrifice." The term "hiereus" thus is well known, and used in the New Testament, but known only to be rejected when reference is made to any human Christian minister. In this dispensation it is only used in the singular, and of Christ alone, of whom it is said, "Having boldness to enter the holy place, and having a great priest (megaj iereuj) over the house of God," and in a quotation from the Psalms, "Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." Similarly in the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is called High Priest, because by undergoing death He offered Himself as an expiatory sacrifice to God, and has entered the heavenly sanctuary, wherein He continually intercedes on our behalf: " Wherefore it behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people " (Hebrews 2:17). When we have examined the use of the word as applied to Jewish and Pagan high priests and the references to Christ, we have exhausted all its applications. After this there is a significant silence. This word, so common, so necessary in the past for the very existence of religion, never occurs as a title for any human Christian minister. We can trace its rise in history and Christian literature, but the silence of Scripture, so marked, so startling, might have been wisely observed. The reticence observed in the application of the title extends also to the words which describe the action of the priest. Ierateuein ("to act as priest ") we find once only when Zacharias executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course. In the whole New Testament the word never occurs again, and so remarkable a limitation cannot be without significance. Lastly, we come to the word Ierateuein ("to minister in the manner of a priest, to minister in priestly service)." Here at last a verb derived from iereuj is applied to an apostle. Yet the special use is a stronger proof of the reticence on this subject than actual silence. St. Paul says: " But I write the more boldly unto you in some measure, as putting you again in remembrance, because of the grace that was given me of God, that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles (ierourgounta to euaggelion); that the offering up of the Gentiles might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost."

What is here required to make this word a sacerdotal term in the modern use of the word is any reference to gifts, or oblations, or the Eucharist. There is no reference to the elements of bread and wine. There is no reference to the body and blood of Christ. The object of the verb is the Gospel of God. The only offering specified are Gentiles brought to the feet of Christ. St. Paul plainly states that the sphere of action he refers to is the Gospel message souls won for Christ he offers in thanksgiving and humility. The very fact that a verb of this kind is once used is more significant than silence, for it specifies the new sphere in which such offerings are made.

Over against this withholding of the term "priest" from the offices of the Christian Church stands the collective title ierateuma. This word is defined, the office of priest, the order or body of priests. To the ministerial office this is never applied. But, as if to enforce recognition of the reticence in the case of the ministerial office, the word is used twice of the Christian body: " Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood (ierateuma), to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ " (1 Peter 2:5); "Ye are a royal priesthood " (1 Peter 2:9). In the same sense the plural of iereuj is used: "Thou didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth" (Revelation 5:9). "He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father" (Revelation 1:6). "Over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years" (Revelation 20:6). It must be reiterated that there is an entire silence about priestly functions. A definition of terms is here necessary. On no subject has more serious error arisen from confusion of titles. The word “priest” in English has two different senses. In the one it is the only equivalent in English to the Latin "sacerdos," the Greek iereuj, the Hebrew "cohen" the offerer of animal sacrifices, the performer of mediatorial offices between God and man. In the other it is a true derivative of the word "presbyter" or "elder," and is the title of the minister who presides over and instructs the Christian congregation. The confusion between these two meanings has greatly influenced the history and theology of the Church. The word "priest" in this lecture will be used in the former sense only, so that "priestly" will be equivalent to "sacerdotal" or "hieratic." However, according to etymology, the word "priest" is a shortened form of "presbyter." The confusion arises from the fact that the English language has only one word to translate iereuj on the one hand and presbuteroj on the other. In this lecture, when the Christian elder is meant, "presbyter" will be used. The etymology seems to have been thus derived: Greek "presbyteros," French "pretre," German "priester," Anglo-Saxon " preost," English "priest." We may remark two things in this etymological survey. First, that by derivation "priest" is the same word as "presbyter," and that this is the only valid reason for the retention of "priest" in the Book of Common Prayer. Milton, in his Sonnet on the Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament in 1649, writes: When they shall read this clearly in your charge, New Presbyter is but old priest writ large.

He spoke no doubt of the doctrinal pretensions of some presbyters in his day, but he stated an etymological fact, and conversely he might have said, "New priest is but old presbyter writ small." The misfortune came in the utterly wrong use of "priest" for iereuj. The second point to be noted in this connection is, that if "priest" originally meant " elder " the sacerdotal idea has been imported and was not original. The Greek word presbuteroj, while by phonetic decay it has changed into French "pretre" and English "priest," should have kept its meaning, "an elder in the church," like the Anglo-Saxon "alderman," "an elder in the city." Truly in this case it has happened that words from being counters have been regarded as money! Because it happened that the English word "presbyter" was shortened into the word "priest," and because the word "priest" was the term also used to translate a widely different title, namely, iereuj, when used in a Jewish or pagan sense, therefore (at a period which can be dated and marked) all the ideas of the word iereuj in the Jewish sense became gradually transferred and imported into the context of the word "presbyter" in a Christian sense. There had to be a victim, a material sacrifice, an altar, physical flesh and blood, and, as a corollary, transubstantiation. The retention of the word "priest" in the English Book of Common Prayer has much to answer for; for not every one knows or remembers the etymology of the word, i.e. that it was originally "presbyter." But every one knows that the English word is also employed to translate the word for the Jewish "priest" and the term for the office of Christ in heaven. It cannot be denied that unreflecting persons have attached certain ideas to the word; priest," which we shall see are opposed to the Christian polity, as seen in the New Testament writings, and of those of the Christian Fathers who, as they lived closest to apostolic times, have preserved the Christian tradition best. This is conceded by Hooker (Eccks. Polity, v. 78, 2-3):

“Seeing then that sacrifice is no part of the Church ministry, how should the name of Priesthood be thereunto rightly applied? Surely even as St. Paul applied the name of flesh unto that substance of fishes which hath a proportionate correspondence to flesh, though it be in nature another thing.... The Fathers of the Church with a like security of speech call usually the ministry of the Gospel Priesthood, in regard to that which the Gospel hath proportionable to ancient sacrifices, namely, the Communion of the Blessed Body and Blood of Christ, although it have properly now no sacrifice. As for the people when they hear the name, it draweth no more their minds to any cogitation of sacrifice, than the name of senator or of an alderman causeth them to think of old age, or to imagine that every one who is termed elder must needs be ancient because years were respected in the first nomination of both.

“Wherefore to pass by the name, let them use what dialect they will, whether we call it a Priesthood, or Presbytership, or Ministry, it skilleth not. Although in truth the word presbyter doth seem more fit, and in propriety of speech more agreeable than * priest with the drift of the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ."

Bishop Lightfoot distinctly asserts that the word "priest" in the Book of Common Prayer is misleading:

“If therefore the sacerdotal office be understood to imply the offering of sacrifices, then the Epistle to the Hebrews leaves no place for a Christian ministerial priesthood. If, on the other hand, the word be taken in a wider and looser acceptation, it cannot well be withheld from the ministry of the Church of Christ. Only in this case the meaning of the term should be clearly apprehended: and it might have been better if the later Christian vocabulary had conformed to the silence of the Christian writers so that the possibility of confusion would have been avoided." For communicating instruction and for preserving public order, for conducting religious worship, and for dispensing social charities it was necessary to appoint special officers. But the priestly functions and privileges of the Christian people are never regarded as transferred or even delegated to these officers. Their title is stewards, messengers of God, servants, ambassadors, members of the Church. But the sacerdotal title is never once conferred upon them. The only priests under the Gospel called as such in the New Testament are the saints, the members of the Christian brotherhood. As individuals all are priests alike. As members of the corporation they have their several and distinct offices. Here I would like to oppose a very specious analogy. Bishop Moberly of Salisbury lays undue stress on the analogy of the human body. He says that the ministerial priesthood form the organs of the body of Christ. "The analogy," he says, "so much presented to us in Scripture of the natural body can hardly be pressed too far in its strong and close bearing on my present point. One vitality diffused over the whole, special organs for special and indispensable use all needful for each, each needful for all." He traces the analogy and says when any organ is removed or inactive, compensation is made by special sensibility of the organs left as a blind man gains quickness of touch and hearing. He concludes an eloquent passage with the words: "Not all the nervous power and health of the rest of the body can make an eye, nor enable a man to see, nor can all the lay people together either be or make a priest."

Thus he holds that the priesthood forms the organs by which the Church communicates with its Head. Differentiation of function is the characteristic of all rightly organised life. The various organs are adapted to their various functions, and if they interfere with each other the result is disease. If the organs of sight and hearing fail, the body is deprived of those senses. This is a very specious analogy, and requires to be carefully considered. We may admit that in all matters of discipline the analogy of the body is thoroughly sound. The Church needs a hierarchy of officers with sufficient authority to secure order and obedience. This principle demands that no religious ceremonies certainly not the most important rites shall be administered by unauthorised persons. We may go farther, and say that any such infringement of Church order must be highly displeasing to God. But as applied to ministers and laymen this figure of the body may be exceedingly dangerous and misleading. It is true the brain is connected with the limbs and nervous system, which latter may be said to mediate between the brain and the muscles. But Jesus Christ is not the brain of His mystical Body. He is its life. The physical body may be blind or deaf without the eye or ear, but it is not true that a Christian soul or a Christian community is deprived of the power of seeing Christ or hearing the voice of God if by some accident it is temporarily deprived of its duly appointed ministers. We are all in direct relation to Him. We not only need not, but we cannot approach Him through any human mediator. In Holy Communion the officiating minister, as representing the congregation, exercises prerogatives which strictly belong to the Church as a whole. The congregation is not composed of spectators, but of participators in the office. If this is so, it is clear that the metaphor of the body and members must be used with the utmost caution when we speak of the relations of clergy and laity. The notion of priesthood can hardly be disassociated from the kindred notion of sacrifice, which has been generally regarded as the priestly function par excellence. Canon Moberly, in his Ministerial Priesthood, seems to me to be very vague in his special pleading when he says:

“The inwardness, then, of priesthood is the spirit of sacrifice, and the spirit of sacrifice is the spirit of love in a world of sin and pain, whose expression in the inner soul is priestly intercession and whose utterance in the outward life is devotion of ministry for others for others from the Christ-like point of view, as for those for whom Christ died. The Levitical priesthood belonged distinctively to the side of ceremonial function, and might be both adequately fulfilled and defined in terms of ceremonial enactment only; but a Christian priesthood misapprehends itself which can be content to find the beginning and the end of its definition or meaning in terms only of what is outward and ceremonial or in any sacra mental service, however intelligent it may be, or reverent in itself which does not sweep in the whole heart and action and life."

Now if we could accept this mild definition of apologetic sacerdotalism as "the spirit of love in a world of sin and pain," there would be no objection to calling the Eucharist, and many other things, sacrifices. The word, we can see by this special pleading, has happily come to be used in a thoroughly Christian sense, but it has other and inherent associations. Lightfoot and Hooker, as we have seen, have both had the courage to express regret that the words "priest" and "sacrifice" have established themselves in our Church not because they have not acquired a sense in which they can be safely used, but because they are clearly associated with errors into which religion is very prone to fall, and which it was the main object of the Christian revelation to banish for ever. For us the Holy Communion is a sacrifice that of ourselves, our souls, and bodies, which we thereby consecrate to God; it is the commemoration of a sacrifice that of Christ upon the Cross. It is also the representation of a sacrifice, that of the Son of God regarded as an eternal act. Let us remember it is the Eternal Act that we are symbolically re presenting, not the temporal act we are repeating or continuing when we celebrate the Eucharist.

Offered was He for greatest and for least, Himself the victim and Himself the priest.

If to this statement it be objected that the inference is built upon the silence of the apostles and evangelists, and that such reasoning is precarious, the reply is that the sacerdotalism of one privileged class, in the common acceptance of the word "sacerdotalism," contradicts the general tenor of the Gospel. The strength or weakness of an argument from silence depends wholly on the circumstances under which silence is maintained. And in this case it has the greatest weight. In the pastoral epistles, for instance, which are largely occupied with questions relating to the Christian ministry, it is scarcely possible that this aspect should have been overlooked if it had any place in St. Paul’s teaching. The apostle discusses at length the requirements, the responsibilities of the ministerial office. He regards the presbyter as an example, as a teacher; never as a priest. Sacerdotal privileges are unmentioned. Why, then, are the sacerdotal privileges of the Christian minister not referred to? If they existed at all they should have resounded throughout the discussion. The same argument applies with not less force to those passages in the Epistles to the Corinthians where St. Paul asserts his apostolic authority on his detractors. But this silence was maintained under the greatest difficulty.

It was part of our Lord’s method to use the old wherever He could. A large number of His maxims had been uttered before by the Rabbis. The same thing could be said of the Lord’s Prayer. Whatever He took He made His own. The new spirit without danger transmuted the old. Our Lord did not attempt to utilise the existing cultus of His own nation. He did not enjoin circumcision. The new covenant He came to proclaim was never connected by Him with the Jewish sacrifices and priesthood. Though He Himself and His disciples had been born under and were obedient unto the law, yet He declared that the law and the prophets were until John, and that a new order was marked by the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, Under these circumstances there can be no more perverse error than to suppose that He intended the Eucharist to be the continuation of the Jewish sacrifices, or the Christian ministry to be in any sense the successors of the Jewish priests. This would, indeed, have been to pour the new wine into the old wine-skins. The series of Jewish sacrifices culminated in the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross, and ended there. He made the full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice. These sacrifices, like those of early religions, had been partly presents or tenders of hospitality to the Deity and partly the forms by which the covenant between God and His people were ratified and renewed. The true idea of sacrifice is realised when priest and victim, God and worshipper, are atoned or united. This atonement, which had been already symbolised in the sacrifices under the Old Testament, was achieved once for all by Christ when He who is both God and man offered Himself, and us in Himself, as an expiation for sin. In this the idea which has been demonstrated by all previous sacrifices was fully realised. The antitype had been manifested, and the type and symbol were now abrogated for ever. It is plain that this abrogation of the old sacrificial priesthood was understood by the Christian Church in the generation after our Lord. When St. Paul enumerates the various offices to which men are called, he mentions apostles, prophets, workers of miracles, but he never says "He gave some priests."

Among the detailed directions which he gives to the Christian churches there is not a word about the proper way of offering sacrifice. He recognises no sacrifices excepting on the one hand the sacrifice of Christ, and on the other the sacrifice of our bodies in reasonable service. The breach of continuity between the Jewish priesthood and the Christian ministry is complete. The former ends with Christ; the latter begins afresh from Him. The conquering Christian Church took its hierarchic weapons from the arsenal of the enemy.

MOMMSEN.