The Assault on Priesthood

A Biblical and Theological Rejoinder

Lawrence B. Porter

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781610972925
  9781498259965
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630876067
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

The concept and institution of priesthood in the Catholic Church has been the subject of serious challenge not only since the time of the Protestant Reformation but also, more recently, from within the Catholic Church, as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and theologians afterward have reconsidered the place and function of priests in relation to both bishops and laity. In dialogue with those challenges, and by means of research into Scripture and the theological tradition--patristic, medieval, and modern--the author of this book considers classic images of priests and priestly ministry as a way of recovering an understanding of the priesthood that is at once both biblically and theological sound.

1

Imperfections in a Priest

The Example of Aaron, the Brother of Moses

Post-Tridentine language about priests exhibits, at times, an extreme idealization of ministerial priesthood. Take for example The Catechism of the Council of Trent of 1566. Part 2, chapter 7 treats of the sacrament of orders. There we read “that no dignity on earth excels the Order of the priesthood.”1 Moreover, there we find Scripture, cited as evidence, that priests “are rightfully called not only angels [Mal 2:7] but even gods [Ps 82:6] because they represent among us the power and majesty of the immortal God.”2 Such exalted claims and hyperbolic language are perhaps understandable as an exaggerated response to the Reformation polemics against ministerial priesthood or as motivational tools intended to encourage a striving for moral perfection that would work to remedy the moral decadence among Catholic clergy that was one of the causes of the Protestant Reformation. Nevertheless, while such Counter-Reformation insistence upon the sacredness of the priestly office and the requisite moral perfection of its members might have served to motivate and inspire to high sanctity some aspirants to the Catholic priesthood, those same methods might also have worked to set up others for the serious disappointments, indeed grave disillusionments, that occurred a few years ago when, yet again, the serious moral failures among priests were revealed. These moral failures are clear evidence that many priests are not “angels” and that their behavior at times is far from godlike. I believe a more balanced and realistic understanding of both the dignity and fragility of priests can be gained from the story of the very first priest whom we consider here.

Aaron’s Less than Perfect Ministry

Aaron was the brother of Moses and the very first among the Hebrew people to be publically designated and formally installed as a priest. Aaron’s life was less than perfect, both before his ordination as a priest and afterward. Before his ordination, Aaron served as an assistant to his brother Moses. For the most part, Aaron’s service to God and Moses at that time was exemplary, but there was at least one glaring failure, an episode called the Worship of the Golden Calf. More precisely, while Moses communed with God on the summit of Mount Sinai, Aaron was at the base of the mountain leading the people into idolatry. Even after Aaron was chastened for that mistake and ordained, his life was full of problems, some of his own creation. His priestly sons proved liturgically inept, for example. There was jealousy in the ministry, his own and that of others, and, yet again, the people of God proved to be not just a major challenge to Aaron but a source of failure. Nevertheless, we will also see that, despite all his failures in life and ministry, Aaron came to be revered in both Jewish and Christian tradition as a great figure in the history of faith. Aaron’s story asks us to consider and question what place “perfection” has in the life of God’s people and their ministers. I think we shall see something of an answer when we very carefully trace the life and ministry of Aaron.

The major events of Aaron’s life are related in several discreet, often only loosely connected, narratives spread across four books that form part of the very first division among the books of the Bible, indeed the very first part of every Bible, the part that is called the Pentateuch, the Torah, or sometimes simply the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The reason for the disconnectedness of the account of Aaron’s life in the last four books of the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) is that Aaron is but one figure in the larger narrative, which is the story of the Hebrew people’s deliverance from bondage in Egypt. Moreover, Aaron is not the central figure in that drama; rather, it is his brother Moses. Nevertheless, here we ferret out and focus upon those parts of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy that feature or even just mention Aaron (only three mentions in Deuteronomy). When we treat these references or narratives in chronological order, we are able to get an idea of the history of Aaron, the course of his life, and, most importantly for our interests here, the shape and character of his ministry as a priest.

Aaron’s Vocational Call

It seems that Aaron was born in Egypt around about the middle of the fourteenth century before Christ, that is, around the year 1350 BC, when the Hebrew people dwelt and worked as slave labor in Egypt. The meaning of Aaron’s name is uncertain, and scholars conjecture its origin is Egyptian rather than Hebrew. He was the second of three children born to the man Amram and his wife Jochebed, a married couple from the Hebrew tribe or clan called Levi (a detailed genealogy is given in Exod 6:14–24). Amram and Jochebed’s first and thus oldest child was a girl whom they named Miriam. Aaron was their second child. Moses was their youngest, that is, their third and final child, who was born three years after Aaron. Aaron’s infancy and youth and even middle age seem to have been normal and uneventful. Of those years we are simply told (in Exod 6:23) that he married Elisheba and she bore him four sons: Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. It seems that as a mature man Aaron developed a reputation of being “an eloquent speaker” (Exod 4.14) and perhaps developed some measure of stature among his people (for when in Exod 4:29–30 he addresses the elders, they listen). But late in life everything changed dramatically for Aaron when he was reunited with his long estranged brother Moses.

Moses’ life had always been much more eventful than Aaron’s. Indeed, Moses’ birth and infancy were high drama. Exodus 2 tells us how Moses was conceived and born at a time of tension between the Egyptians and their servant class, the Hebrews; such tension that Moses’ mother, in order to save the life of her child, had to devise a clever way to get him adopted into the royal family of Egypt, the family of the Pharoah. But the drama does not stop there. For when Moses was a young man, he murdered an Egyptian in a fit of rage and then left Egypt seeking refuge in the land of Midian. There Moses met and married a Midianite woman and worked for his wife’s father, Jethro, who was a shepherd. Indeed, it was while tending Jethro’s flock that Moses had an intense religious experience that would change not only his own life and that of Aaron’s but also that of the Hebrew people.

Exodus 3 and 4 contain the narrative of the call of Moses by God to lead the Hebrew people out of bondage in Egypt. Chapter 3 tells us of Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai, where God speaks at length to Moses, detailing precisely for him the mission for which God has called him. Aaron enters into this drama when, in chapter 4, we are told of Moses’ less than enthusiastic response to God’s call. In fact, Moses points out what he feels is his serious inadequacy for the task God has designated him. This is where Aaron enters, and here is how the incident is described in Exod 4:10–17:

Moses, however, said to the lord, “If you please, lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past, nor recently, nor now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and tongue.” The lord said to him, “Who gives one man speech and makes another deaf and dumb? Or who gives sight to one and makes another blind? Is it not I, the lord? Go, then! It is I who will assist you in speaking and will teach you what you are to say.” Yet he insisted, “If you please, lord, send someone else!” Then the lord became angry with Moses and said, “Have you not your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know that he is an eloquent speaker. Besides, he is now on his way to meet you. When he sees you, his heart will be glad. You are to speak to him, then, and put the words in his mouth. I will assist both you and him in speaking and will teach the two of you what you are to do. He shall speak to the people for you: he shall be spokesman, and you shall be as God to him. Take this staff in your hand; with it you are to perform the signs.”

And, sure enough, in Exod 4:27–31, we read of the meeting between Moses and Aaron:

The lord said to Aaron, “Go into the desert to meet Moses.” So he went and when they met at the mountain of God Aaron kissed him. Moses informed him of all the lord had said in sending him, and of the various signs he had enjoined upon him. Then Moses and Aaron went and assembled all the elders of the Israelites. Aaron told them everything the lord had said to Moses, and he performed the signs before the people. The people believed, and when they heard that the lord was concerned about them and had seen their affliction, they bowed down in worship.

From now on the two brothers work together so intimately that, in Exodus 5, immediately after the call of Aaron, we begin to see the use of what will become an almost formulaic phrase that yokes them closely together: the words “Moses and Aaron.” For example, in Exod 5:1 we are told, “After that, Moses and Aaron went to Pharoah and said, ‘Thus says the lord, the God of Israel: “Let my people go.’” And in verse 4, we are told, “The king of Egypt answered them, ‘What do you mean, Moses and Aaron, by taking the people away from their work?’” And then in Exod 5:19–21, we are told how, when the Hebrew people get in trouble with Pharoah, they complain to both Moses and Aaron: “The Israelite foremen knew they were in a sorry plight, having been told not to reduce the daily amount of bricks. When therefore, they left Pharoah and came upon Moses and Aaron, who were waiting to meet them they said to them, ‘The lord look upon you and judge! You have brought us into bad odor with Pharoah and his servants and have put a sword in their hands to slay us.’” This formula “Moses and Aaron” is repeated again and again (Exod 7:6; 8:1, 4, 8, 21; 9:8, 27; 10:3,16, 24; 12:1, 31, 43, 50 and many more).

Aaron’s Ministerial Authority

Without doubt, in all this narrative Moses is the most important figure, for it is Moses who speaks with God and later relates it to Aaron. Nevertheless, there are some passages in the Exodus narrative where we see Aaron portrayed not simply as Moses’ assistant. He is given some power in his own right. One example is that both Moses and Aaron are given pastoral staffs. In Exod 4:1–5, the shepherd’s staff, which Moses had been carrying when tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, on Sinai, is endowed by God with miraculous power as a confirmation of Moses’ authority now to lead not sheep but God’s people:

“But,” objected Moses, “suppose they will not believe me, nor listen to my plea? For they may say, ‘The lord did not appear to you.’” The lord therefore asked him, “What is that in your hand?” “A staff,” he answered. The lord then said, “Throw it on the ground.” When he threw it on the ground it was changed into a serpent, and Moses shied away from it. Now, put out your hand,” the lord said to him, “and take hold of its tail.” So he put out his hand and laid hold of it, and it became a staff in his hand. This will take place so that they may believe,” he continued, “that the lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, did appear to you.”

In Exodus 7:8–12, we hear how Aaron too is given by God a pastoral staff that is equally miraculous:

The lord told Moses and Aaron, “If Pharaoh demands that you work a sign or wonder, you shall say to Aaron: Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh, and it will be changed into a snake.” Then Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did as the lord had commanded. Aaron threw his staff down before Pharaoh and his servants, and it was changed into a snake. Pharaoh, in turn, summoned wise men and sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did likewise by their magic arts. Each one threw down his staff, and it was changed into a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed their staffs.

And it is indeed Aaron’s staff, not Moses’ staff, that is used in Exod 8:1–8 to bring down the plague of frogs on Egypt and in Exod 8:12–13 the plague of gnats. Aaron’s role in the infliction of the ten plagues is recorded in Exodus, chapters 7, 8, and 9. By stretching out his rod at the behest of Moses, Aaron brought on the first three plagues (blood, frogs, and lice). Together they were involved in producing the sixth plague (boils) and the eighth one (locusts). Only Moses is mentioned in connection with the other five.

But we must also be aware of the fact that there are other passages that portray Moses working quite independently of Aaron. For example, it is Moses alone who parts the Red Sea so that Israel might pass through. Indeed, there is no mention at all of Aaron in Exodus, chapters 13, 14, 15, and 16, and only two small mentions of Aaron in the events after the crossing. In Exod 17:8–13, ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Imperfections in a Priest
• Chapter 2: The Importance of Permanent Pastors
• Chapter 3: Money, Sex, and Ministry
• Chapter 4: Anticlericalism and Violence Against Priests
• Chapter 5: Priesthood, Power, and Ambition
• Chapter 6: The Importance of Learned, Well-Educated Priests
• Chapter 7: Social Justice and Splendid Liturgies
• Chapter 8: Pop Culture Versus Priestly Ministry
• Chapter 9: Sacrifice, a Dangerous Notion
• Chapter 10: The Lot of a Simple Priest
• Chapter 11: The New Liturgy According to the New Priest
• Chapter 12: The Relation between Preaching and the Sacraments
• Bibliography