Priesthood, Pastor, and People

The Lutheran Church - Canada (LCC) has published a doctrinal paper called Pastor and People Together in Christ's Church. It addresses the nagging question among LCMS Lutherans (and their descendants, such as the LCC) as to the relationship between the clergy and the laity.

Overall, the paper is excellent. It weaves together Scripture, the Lutheran confessions, and historical practice - especially in the more recent Lutheran experience of North America - and draws conclusions, offers criticisms, and points forward to a proper corrective against both clericalism and anticlericalism.

There is one aspect of the paper, however, where the authors adopt a peculiar way of speaking about the clergy/laity relationship that is, I believe, sectarian and unhelpful. This has to do with the use of the word "priest."

In the Old Testament, the priesthood was a hereditary office held by men from the tribe of Levi. Their job was to minister in the tabernacle/temple mainly through the offering of sacrifices. Of course, those priestly sacrifices were rendered obsolete, or more accurately perhaps, fulfilled, by the oblation of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. That all-availing sacrifice marked the end of the Levitical priesthood.

And yet, the Christian Church traditionally uses the term "priest" to describe the New Testament office of the ministry. The vast majority of Christians on the planet today employ the term "priest" in this fashion: Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and many Lutherans around the world.

In fact, the term "priest" is the most common term for office of the holy ministry in the Lutheran confessions, and is commonly used by Lutherans outside of Germany and the United States - particularly in those Lutheran church bodies that were able (unlike the Germans) to retain or recover traditional church polity (such as the Scandinavian, Baltic, and Russian Lutherans, as well as African Lutherans who were initially evangelized by the Scandinavians). Unlike in Germany, the early Swedish Lutherans were able to retain the traditional church structure of consecrated bishops and ordained priests (which is, incidentally, the preferred form of polity as expressed by the Book of Concord).

So, it is simply Germano- and/or North Americano-centrism to say "Today [pastor] has become our favourite term." The "our" must be understood as "Canadian Lutheran" or "North American Lutheran" or "Protestant" rather than speaking for all Lutherans. Indeed, the LCMS and the LCC are both in full fellowship with Lutheran bodies that shamelessly use the word "priest" in their hymnals and service books.

In fact, German and North American Lutherans have drunk so deeply from this well that one will often read theological writings by English- and German-speaking Lutherans where the term "priesthood" is used to mean the laity alone! Lutherans will speak about the office of the ministry as opposed to the priesthood and vice versa. This is a sectarian, if not ghettoizing vocabulary. It would be confusing (at best) if it were read by Christians of any other historic confession, not to mention by many Lutherans around the world.

Part of the justification of this use of "priesthood" to apply to the laity as opposed to the clergy stems from a narrow reading of 1 Peter 2:9:

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."

The line of reasoning is that in the Old Testament, the priests were only the hereditary temple priests, and the laypeople had no priesthood. But by virtue of the New Testament, since Christ is our High Priest, and since all have direct access to God the Father, now all baptized Christians are "royal priests" (Greek: basileion hierateuma). Hence the old restrictive "clerical" priesthood has given way to a universal priesthood of believers.

And since this priesthood is a priesthood of the laity, so the line of reasoning goes, the clergy no longer have a priesthood. It is as though their priesthood as baptized Christians is sucked out of them through the laying on of hands at ordination - hence the use of the term "priesthood" among many Lutherans to the exclusion of the ordained ministry!

Now, there is some truth in the above. All Christians are indeed priests. They are to offer themselves as sacrifices, to pray for others, and they indeed have direct access to God and are welcome in the sanctuary of the Lord's Presence.

But this is not an Old Testament/New Testament distinction as many seem to assume. Were the laypeople in Old Testament times also priests? According to Exodus 19:6, yes:

"and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests (Greek: basileion hierateuma) and a holy nation."

Notice that the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament for Exodus 19:6 uses the same words as the 1 Peter 2:9. The "priesthood of believers" existed in the Old Testament even as it does in the New - even side-by-side with the clerical priesthood.

Even though the laity of the Old Testament did not share in the ordained ministry of the Levitical priests, they still had a priesthood by virtue of being God's holy people, beholden to gather in a congregation, pray, and offer their own lives sacrificially - through their service, their tithes, and their leading of holy lives.

Another myth concerning the priesthood of believers is that this was a rediscovery of Martin Luther, that the Roman Catholic Church did not, and does not, recognize the priesthood of the laity. This is simply not true. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the priesthood of the laity. No traditional church body denies that all Christians bear a priestly office. And furthermore, the use of 1 Peter 2:9 as a theological linchpin to undermine the priestly role of ministers is just not done in the Lutheran confessions. In fact, 1 Peter 2:9 is only invoked once in the Book of Concord (Tr 69) which is addressed well in the LCC's paper.

The word "priest" is the most commonly-employed term in the Book of Concord for the office of the holy ministry. To call the use of the term "improper" is to condemn the Lutheran confessions themselves - not to mention centuries of pious Christian writings. It is important for laypeople to know, for example, if they read a copy of John Chrysostom's On the Priesthood, it is about ministers, not laypeople. It is equally important that they understand that the word "priest" used in the Augsburg Confession does not refer to the laity. We do no favors by introducing sectarian terminology. Of course, we English-speaking Lutherans have done much to confuse the laity with misused terms - such as "elder" - a term that is used Biblically as ordained pastor as opposed to lay assistants.

For there is a priestly component to the pastoral ministry - one that works with, not against, the priestly component to the laity. This is confirmed by St. Paul in Romans 15:16, where he refers to himself as:

"a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service (Greek: hierourgounta) of the gospel of God."

Interestingly, the LCC paper makes no mention of this scriptural passage in which St. Paul explicitly applies the word "priest" to the work of the pastoral ministry! The King James Version (and its updated descendant, the NKJV) translate this passage with no mention to "priestly service" - opting instead for "ministry" - perhaps owing to the battle between Catholic and Puritan factions in England in the 17th century.

I believe it is helpful to retain the use of the word "priest" for the pastoral office - not in order to displace other fine descriptive (and also Biblical) words like pastor and minister, and certainly not in any desire to diminish the priestly office of the laity. Rather, it befits pastors to see themselves in a priestly office. They are not hirelings, not functionaries - but like St. Paul, are offering "priestly service" to the people. They offer their lives in a sacrificial way. They handle holy things at the altar. They offer a sacrifice liturgically as well - not a propitious sacrifice to forgive sins, but rather leading the people in a sacrifice of praise and in offering the incense of prayer before the throne-room of heaven.

In this sense, the Levitical priesthood has changed forms, and a part of it does live on in the apostolic ministry.

In Isaiah 40:1-2, the prophet is writing to the people of Judah in the future, in their time of exile. He opens this part of his preaching with a call to preachers to proclaim the Gospel:

"Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

The Septuagint clarifies to whom God is giving these instructions, beginning in verse 2: "Priests (Greek: hiereis), speak..." And notice that in the time of exile, even though there was no temple and no temple sacrifices, the priesthood was not abolished. Rather their ministry changed from one of sacrificial offering to one of preaching the Gospel. They were to "speak" (Greek: lalesate, a word typically interpreted in the New Testament not merely as ordinary conversation, but as preaching) to the "people" (Greek: laon, from which we get the word "laity") that her "warfare is ended" and that her "iniquity is pardoned." The forgiveness of sins in this case was not something carried out by the hands of the priest, but by his mouth. And it was not effected through an offered lamb, but rather through the divine pardon of The Offered Lamb to be communicated by the priest to the people.

This preaching priesthood prefigures the New Testament office of pastor. For he doesn't offer a lamb as an oblation at the altar, but rather distributes the once-for-all sacrifice of the Lamb to the people at the altar. The post-temple priest also "speaks" a proclamation of "comfort" to the laity, to the people.

The Ancient Christian Commentary has several entries in which the church fathers understood the word "priest" in the Septuagint's rendering of Isaiah 40:2 to be applicable to Christian preachers of the Gospel: bishops and priests in the pastoral office.

The vast majority of Christians since, and today, understand the priestly role of the pastor. It isn't something to be discarded because of alleged confusion with the Levitical priesthood any more than we ought to cease using the term "priesthood" to apply to the laity for this same reason.

In giving pastoral care to my flock, I sometimes refer to myself as the parish priest. I have episcopal oversight and eldership over my congregation. I also tell the laypeople - especially the fathers - that they too are priests - exercising spiritual oversight and eldership over their families. The two priesthoods are similar, and yet they are distinct in many ways. And, as the LCC paper makes clear, Christ is ultimately the Head of both orders of priesthood.

Rather than speak of "the ministry" vs. "the priesthood," maybe a more healthy and less sectarian manner of speaking would be to speak about the "priesthood of the baptized" and the "priesthood of the ministry" working together under the Priesthood of Christ.