Priesthood for All Believers

Clericalism and How to Avoid It

Simon Cuff

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780334061021
• eBook ISBN: 9780334061045
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Clericalism is everywhere in the Christian life and perhaps not where you might expect. It elevates certain models, vocations, or ways of being Church in such a way as to diminish others. In 'Priesthood for all Believers, Fr Simon Cuff argues that a radical focus on the particularity of vocation and intentionality of living out vocation are central tools in the Church's tool box to stop clericalism in its tracks. Some attempts to be less clericalist by doing away with certain forms of ministry can, he suggests, encourage clericalism. One of the best ways to overcome clericalism is a more intentional focus on particular ministries and the particular ministry of the ordained. Exploring these particular ministries afresh, grounded on Christ's priesthood and the importance of a diaconal commission to overcome processes of marginalisation, this book offers a vital perspective both for those preparing for ministry and those trying to make better sense of the ministry they already hold.

1. Christ’s Unlikely Priesthood

If the ordained minister is not to be reduced to the level of a professional manager or administrator or even just a delegate of the Christian congregation, we need a firmer grounding of our theological vision in our understanding of the person of Christ. If Christ exercises no control on our theologising, then we had better admit that we have abandoned any attempt at continuity with mainstream Christian tradition. (Rowan Williams1)

It’s never a bad idea to begin theological thinking by reflecting on Jesus. In this chapter we seek to explore how ordained ministry generally and priesthood in particular might be exercised in an anti-clericalist way, through reflecting on the example of Christ’s priesthood. The phrase ‘Christ’s priesthood’ should immediately cause us to sit up and stop our theological thinking in its tracks. However, we are so used to thinking of Christ as the priest (one of three titles: Prophet, Priest and King) that we often draw lines from Christ’s priesthood to the ordained priesthood or priesthood of all believers without spending a lot of time thinking precisely how it is that Christ is priest. Indeed, we rob Christ’s priesthood of something of its unlikeliness by making Christ’s priesthood foundational without pursuing our precise understanding of what it means for Christ to be priest.

This is not to say that Christ’s priesthood is not foundational for all priesthood, indeed all forms of ordained ministry. Rather, for Christ’s priesthood to be regarded as foundational in a way that liberates us from clericalist patterns and ways of holding office and power, rather than confirming and establishing them, we must constantly focus our attention on the way that Christ is priest. Doing so will perpetually surprise and upset our notions of priesthood in such a way as to refocus the manner in which we inhabit and discern vocation. The unlikeliness of Christ’s priesthood enables us to keep God’s search for the unlikely and the unexpected consistently at the fore. This is one of the surest guards against the ‘likely’ or the ‘expected’ or the ‘entitled’ gaining a foothold in our ways of being and existing as Church.

There is a danger in how we think about and live ordained ministry or those particular ministries we saw are liable to be elevated through the dynamics of clericalism. This danger stems from a lack of attention to the particularity of Christ’s priesthood. All too easily Christ’s priesthood is seen simply as a continuation par excellence or culmination of the cultic priesthood of Jesus’ day. Jesus is seen as the best or sole example of priesthood and his priesthood is viewed as the example to which all other forms of priesthood relate. However, viewing Jesus’ priesthood this way opens the door to a kind of clericalism of looking at priesthood simply as the domain of a priestly elite.

Looking at Jesus’ priesthood this way finds its basis in Hebrews 7, a vital text in establishing precisely how it is that Christ functions as priest. As we shall see below, this view of Christ’s exemplary priesthood flows from a particular one-sided reading of Hebrews 7. Jesus is seen as replacing – or at least surpassing – the old cultic priesthood of the temple by surpassing it in his death. Hebrews 7 is the earliest sustained witness to a long theological tradition of referring to Jesus as priest, even if our understanding of how it is Jesus is priest is remarkably underdeveloped in modern theological thought. Gerald O’Collins and Michael Keenan Jones note that, ‘perhaps surprisingly, little reflection on Christ’s own priesthood is available from modern works in Christology and soteriology’.2 As O’Collins and Keenan Jones note, the theological foundation for Christ’s priesthood is his role as mediator. Christ’s humanity uniquely mediates our humanity with divinity. This mediation is a reflection of the understanding of the role of priest in the cultic sacrificial system of priesthood of Jesus’ day. If we are to understand how Christ exercises his priestly ministry, we must look briefly at the role of the priest in the ancient world and in Judaism in particular.

Cultic priesthood

Priests were everywhere in the ancient world. Likewise, animal sacrifice was a regular feature of religious and daily life. It is worth noting that in scholarly terms it is perhaps harder to answer what priesthood is in the ancient world than we might expect.3 Partly this is because our English word for ‘priest’ comes from a different word than is used in the Greek-speaking world for a religious ‘official’. The English ‘priest’ derives from a contraction of the Greek ‘presbuteros’ (from which we derive the term ‘presbyter’). ‘Presbyter’ or elder is one of the favoured words for what we might call a Christian minister in the New Testament, as we shall see. The word for the kind of priest we are referring to when we speak of ‘priesthood’ in the ancient world is the Greek ‘hiereus’ which derives from ‘hieros’ and reflects the sacred or divine connotation of the ancient priesthood. It is used to translate the Hebrew for priest (cohen).4

Understandings of ancient priesthood have also been difficult to establish independently of the conceptual framework of notions of medieval Christian priesthood in scholarship following in the wake of the European Reformation. Medieval understandings of priesthood became the norm that Post-Reformation figures either rejected or modified in Reformed tradition or affirmed and modified in Catholic circles. Albert Henrichs cites Mary Beard and John North with approval when they note how difficult it is to separate our contemporary and Christian notions of ministerial priesthood when using the term ‘priest’ of an ancient figure. They argue that the ‘decision to translate any given title by the word “priest” not only involves imposing our own categories, but also may obscure from us the distinctive nature of that official’s role in his [sic] own society’.5

Sacrifice was an essential part of the role of the ‘hiereus’. Priests offered animal life and gifts to various gods in a pagan context, while the Israelites differed in offering sacrifice to the God of Israel alone. Sacrifices could be and were offered by those who were not priests in the ancient world. There is evidence of this in the Hebrew Bible. The first sacrifice mentioned in the Bible is offered by Abel, with no indication that he is a priest (Genesis 4.4). Further, while animal sacrifice was an essential part of the role of the priest in the ancient world, the role of priesthood was likely wider than animal sacrifice alone. We see this in the Old Testament in, for example, the consultation of the priest concerning the uncleanliness or cleanliness of lepers (Leviticus 13—14). In the first century AD, Josephus (the Jewish historian who is one of our main sources for the Judaism of Jesus’ day) ascribes a variety of functions to the Jewish priesthood beyond simply animal sacrifice as administrators of general affairs and conduct in public life.6

The act of animal sacrifice offered the life of the animal to God, for a variety of reasons from thanksgiving to appeasement for sin. The role of the priest in offering this animal sacrifice to God on behalf of others means that the priest is seen as a mediator figure. We see this mediatory role not only in Jewish priesthood – the priest offering sacrifices on behalf of the people, the high priest offering sacrifice for sin on the Day of Atonement – but also in wider Hellenistic society. Henrichs cites the example of Plato’s definition of the spiritual as mediating between the earthly and heavenly and the role of priestly figures in ‘interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above: being midway between, it makes each to supplement the other, so that the whole is combined in one’.7 He notes further how such a mediatory role also leads to the priest becoming so closely associated with the divine that the priest can become a quasi-divine figure.

Gradually a system emerged in Israel by which only Aaron’s descendants were permitted to offer sacrifices. In Exodus 28, the Lord tells Moses to consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve as priests, a statute which is made perpetual for ‘him and for his descendants after him’ in Exodus 28.43. In time, a second ‘priestly’ order evolved of Levites – descendants of Levi, not descended through Aaron – who, while not priests offering sacrifice, were permitted to assist those called to serve as priests within this sacrificial system (see Numbers 8.19, 22 and 18.1–7). The particular calling to priesthood of the sons of Aaron and the particular calling to serve as assistant and attendants of the sons of Levi is granted through biological descent. The seriousness with which this particular assigning of tasks in the worship of God is made clear to Aaron:

So bring with you also your brothers of the tribe of Levi, your ancestral tribe, in order that they may be joined to you, and serve you while you and your sons with you are in front of the tent of the covenant. They shall perform duties for you and for the whole tent. But they must not approach either the utensils of the sanctuary or the altar, otherwise both they and you will die. (Numbers 18.2–3)

In addition to this particularity within the order of Levites as assistants and the cultic priesthood descended through Aaron, there was further particularity within the priesthood itself. For example, only the high priest was permitted to enter the Holy of Holies and then only on the day of Atonement (Leviticus 16).

Later Israelites differed from their pagan neighbours – at least theologically – not only in insisting on the Aaronic descent of their priests, but insisting that all sacrifice could only take place in the temple in Jerusalem. We see this reflected in the Samaritan woman’s discussion with Jesus in John 4: ‘Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem’ (John 4.20). The use of the plural ‘you’ here along with the Samaritan woman’s opening question in John 4.9 (‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’) suggest that the Samaritan woman is viewing Jesus as representative of Jewish attitudes towards right worship.

This restriction of sacrifice to Jerusalem is understood to have been enforced in the reforms to worship in Jerusalem enacted in the seventh century BC by Josiah (recounted in slightly different versions in 2 Kings 22—23 and in 2 Chronicles 34—35). Josiah rediscovers the book of the law (2 Kings 22.11; 2 Chronicles 34.14–16), proclaims it to the people (2 Kings 23.2, 2 Chronicles 34.30) and sets about reforming heterodox practice and pagan worship. A long tradition identifies Josiah’s centralization of the temple cult with his rediscovery of the book of Deuteronomy, and especially Deuteronomy 12.13–14:

Take care that you do not offer your burnt-offerings at any place you happen to see. But only at the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes – there you shall offer your burnt-offerings and there you shall do everything I command you.

In the first century AD, Josephus writes of the suitability of having only one place in which sacrifice is permitted and God worshipped: ‘There ought also to be but one temple for one God; for likeness is the constant foundation of agreement. This temple ought to be common to all, because he is the common God of all.’8

There is some evidence that while Josephus might be reflecting the majority view within Judaism of the first century, there are also some other sites outside of Judea in which cultic priests offered sacrifices to the God of Israel. Josephus himself writes of a Jewish temple in Egypt located at Leontopolis and archaeological evidence has emerged of another temple associated with a military garrison in Egypt at Elephantine.9 Moreover, Jordan Rosenblum has surveyed evidence of the extent of the practice of animal sacrifice at home altars to suggest that there is limited but unexpected evidence of the practice of animal sacrifice at home altars outside of the cultic priesthood required by the Jewish Law. However, he notes that it is not perhaps unexpected as a widespread feature of ancient Mediterranean society in which Jews lived and of which they were a part.10 While Jesus’ prediction in John 4.21 that the time is coming when worship will no longer take place in Jerusalem, this evidence for priestly sacrifice outside of Jerusalem in Jesus’ day remains out of step with the normative view. The theological focus we f...

Table of contents

• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Christ’s Unlikely Priesthood
• 2. Clericalism and the Priesthood of All Believers
• 3. Clerics and Anti-clericalism
• 4. Worship and Priesthood
• 5. Priestliness of the Diaconate
• 6. Anti-clericalism and Anti-racism: A Test Case for an Anti-clericalist Church
• Conclusion: Unlikely Priesthood and Getting Out of the Way