MetaCatholic

In an earlier post I sketched a brief approach to reading the New Testament in the context of the church that wrote, read, recognised, and collected it together, illustrated around the question of orders and priesthood. It was not intended to be a full treatment of the topic, and neither is this. In comments (lost when my blog and server went down – sorry) two particular objections were raised to using language of priesthood: first, the letter to the Hebrews is so emphatic about the priesthood of Christ that it renders such language wrong for any who follow him; second that the idea of priesthood necessarily entails sacrifice, at least in this early period, and that Christian ministers do not offer sacrifices. Between them these comments represent a significant part of the traditional evangelical case against catholic views of priesthood. I want to outline some strands of a response.

First, we need to note that the Fathers who sowed the seed for the development of a doctrine of Christian priesthood, read (at least some of) the same Bible. No-one made much of either of these objections, or indeed thought that they were the biblical teaching for some 1500 years. This, in itself, proves nothing, but should dissuade us from thinking the matter is quite so straightforward a reading of scripture as some evangelicals would have it be.

The earliest echoes of applying priestly language to Christian ministry (in a non-precise way) come in Romans when Paul writes of

… the grace given me by God to be a minister (λειτουργὸν) of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service (ἱερουργοῦντα) of the gospel of God, so that the offering (προσφορὰ) of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. (Rom 15:15b-16  NRSV)

The cultus provides Paul with a metaphor for proclaiming the gospel. It is in my view ambiguous whether Paul refers to the offering made by the Gentiles, i.e. the collection as a foretaste and fulfilment of the gifts they bring to God in Zion (e.g. Isaiah 60:5-7), or to the Gentiles themselves as an offering. In either case, Paul comfortably uses this cultic metaphor for his ministry, and others will follow him in developing metaphors of this sort more fully than he does.

Likewise, but with even greater ambiguity, Paul is the first to make a comparison between the Eucharist and sacrifices.

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?  Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?  What do I imply then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything?  No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons.  You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. (1 Corinthians 10:16-21 NRSV)

This hardly represents Paul at his clearest, but moving on from the language of “body” and “blood” which have their own sacrificial connotations, he links this eating, whether of the eucharistic bread, or the meat of Jewish and pagan sacrifices together in some way. Being partners of the altar, eating the sacrifices, and partaking at the table are all in some way comparable.

The fathers develop their own ways of speaking about both ministry as priesthood and prayer, and especially the Eucharist, as a sacrifice. There are a number of threads, of which these are three examples:

As noted before, Clement seeks to draw lessons from the Jewish priesthood for the Christian ministry in terms of order.

Athenagoras notes “And what have I to do with holocausts, which God does not stand in need of?–though indeed it does behove us to offer a bloodless sacrifice and “the service of our reason.” (A Plea for the Christians, Ch 13) This idea of a bloodless or perfect sacrfice becomes increasingly important. Athenagoras refers it to prayer and reasonable service apparently quoting Romans 12:1-2. This particularly serves to guard against charges of atheism. Christians do have a “sacrifice” but unlike the bloody sacrifices of the pagans, it is prayer in accord with reason, and pure.

Irenaeus deals with the point somewhat differently, (Adversus Haereses IV Ch 17-18) developing his thought (as many fathers did) from Malachi 1:11 “in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering” For Irenaeus, that universal pure offering prophesied by Malachi is to be found in the life and prayer of the Church, especially focussed in the Eucharist, which in the change (unspecified) of the eucharistic elements, signifies and mediates the change in our nature as fitted for heaven, and demonstrates that our prayers (Malachi’s offering of incense is also (cf Rev 8.3) the prayers of the saints) are truly offered at the heavenly altar. By tying the Christian sacrifice to the Eucharist, Irenaeus is in the end being polemical against Judaism (because Christians receive their food from the heavenly altar not the earthly one) and against Gnosticism (because the good things of this earth are offered to God for transformation).

In all these patristic examples, no-one is seeking per se to develop a doctrine of either priesthood or eucharistic sacrifice, any more than Paul was with his metaphors. But in the arguments Paul, Clement, Athenagoras and Irenaeus deploy, we see a pattern of the church not only becoming increasingly comfortable with the language, but finding it positively helpful in staking out their position in the world, in distinction from Judaism, paganism and internal division (heresy). It is a significant part of the evangelistic argument that they, as worshippers of the true God, offer the pure offering that was prophesied. Increasingly this focuses on the Eucharistic offering as the pure prayer of a bloodless sacrifice, a celebration of the sacrifice of Christ that reconciles us to God, and a corresponding share in the fruits of the heavenly altar.

They (and remember this is still while the books of the NT are being discerned, their authority debated, and their consonance with the faith recognised) in no way see any of this as detracting from the unique salvific value of Christ’s sacrifice, but a way of participating in it. These ideas were already part of the stock Christian vocabulary at a time when Hebrews was seemingly still not at a stage of universal recognition. It is, for example, apparently not part of the Muratorian Canon, while it appears bound with the letters of Paul in p46. Both these fall at the end of the time frame I have just looked at. But it is reasonable to suppose (in the absence of any clear evidence to the contrary) that it never occurred to anyone that what Hebrews said about the unique nature of Christ’s priesthood in any way contradicted the beginning use of language of clergy as priests, nor that anything it said about his once-for-all sacrifice contradicted anything in the growing intuition of the Eucharist as a sacrifice.

What Hebrews was perceived as doing was affirming the polemical and apologetic arguments the Church deployed against Judaism, and, (ironically in view of later debates) affirmed the superiority of the bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist over against the bloody sacrifices of the old covenant, precisely because the Eucharist enabled participation in the sacrifice of Christ, and our sharing in the food from the heavenly altar. It eventually made the use of Christian language of priesthood easier and not harder, again precisely because it established the unique, superior and non-hereditary priesthood of Christ, which would come to be seen as exercised particularly through those whom he called to be his ministers.

My concern in this outline sketch is not to argue that the fathers were right and the Reformers wrong, but to show that the Reformation reading of Hebrews is not in any sense the straightforward reading, or the natural plain sense. It is one reading among other older readings. The early fathers, following hints in Paul, offer a different reading, which invites us to see the Eucharist as a sharing in Christ’s sacrifice, and the priesthood of the Church as way of enabling the Church to participate in Christ’s priestly ministry. They can be ways of stressing that there is ultimately no prayer offered that is acceptable except through Christ’s sacrifice, no offering truly made to God that is not made in Christ the pure offering of humanity and creation, and no sanctification of God’s gifts and God’s people that is not the work of Christ the priest.

Something like this seems to be the intent of the reply of Canterbury and York (”the Archbishops of England”) in writing Saepius Officio to “to the whole body of Bishops of the Catholic Church” but in reality replying to Pope Leo XIII’s letter Apostolicae Curae.

We continue a perpetual memory of the precious death of Christ, who is our Advocate with the Father, and the propitiation for our sins, according to His precept, until His coming again. For first we offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; then next we plead and represent before the Father the sacrifice of the cross, and by it we confidently entreat remission of sins and all other benefits of the Lord’s Passion for all the whole Church; and lastly we offer the sacrifice of ourselves to the Creator of all things which we have already signified by the oblation of His creatures. This whole action, in which the people has necessarily to take its part with the Priest [in qua plebs cum sacerdote] we are accustomed to call the Eucharistic sacrifice [sacrificium Eucharisticum solemus nominare]
,,,
For the Priest, to whom the dispensing of the Sacraments and especially the consecration of the Eucharist is entrusted, must always do the service of the altar with the people standing by and sharing it with him. Thus the prophecy of Malachi (1:11) [that verse again!] is fulfilled, and the name of God is great among the gentiles through the pure offering of the Church.

That is a remarkably early reading of the scriptures, paying more attention to the metaphors of the language than seeking to treat them as a precise description, and going back, as is often Anglican custom, to the readings of the fathers to seek resolution to later disputes.