The Priesthood of All Believers - Part 4
Just a bit more on the objection to pastor-led liturgical worship based on the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. This is the last, but most important installment in this series.
First, there's a great deal of confusion about what a "priest" was in the OT before Christ transformed the world. In too much Protestant literature one gets the impression that the priests of Israel were akin to Roman Catholic priests and that we can rejoice because Christ put an end to all that.
Sadly, it is an all-too-common mistake to identify the rites and rituals of the Mosaic covenant with Roman Catholicism. (I should say also that this goes hand in hand with the notion that the problem with the Roman church has been that she never quite got out of the Old into the New Testament.) It's just not the case. But all of this is impossible to explain in any detail here. (You can listen to an old lecture of mine that I gave at the Biblical Horizon’s annual conference in 1993 for more on this).
Suffice it to say that Yahweh did not deliver to Moses on Mt. Sinai a proto-Roman Catholic liturgical ritual system, especially as some Protestants often characterize Rome's system.
If one grants that the Mosaic ritual system was not Romish, then certain things follow. For one thing, we might actually benefit from going back and carefully analyzing the OT liturgical system of sacrifices. As I have argued quite extensively in my book, the way that the NT uses the language of "sacrifice" and "offering" and even priestly vocabulary to describe the worship of the saints in Christ, assumes that we know something about Israelite sacrificial rituals and are able to make the necessary adjustments given the new situation in Christ when applying them to the Church's worship.
In other words, it's a good thing to study the sacrificial rituals for insight on how to worship. The New Testament encourages us to do so.
Second, priests in the old order before Christ were "palace servants." They were brought near to God in order to serve in his temple/palace/house. The Lord's house was a place of meeting, the location chosen by him in which Israel would find restoration and fellowship. Leviticus begins with Yahweh calling from inside of his house, the tent of meeting, and giving directions through Moses to the Israelites about how they are to "draw near" (qrb) and meet with him at his house.
Since "drawing near" to God was a frightening prospect for people that continued to offend the Lord of the house, Yahweh gives the protocols necessary for people to "enter" his courts properly. The climax of this process was a fellowship meal eaten with the Lord in his house. I analyze these matters in detail in my book The Lord’s Service.
In case you didn't make the connection, this is not much different than what happens when you invite someone to your home for a meal. We are, after all, made in God's image. If someone who was out of sorts with you knocked on your door, you wouldn't immediately walk into the dining room and start eating with him or her. No, rather, you would expect the person to patch things up at the doorstep or at least inside the door at the threshold of your home. We don't normally eat friendly meals with people with which we are not reconciled. So if you invite your neighbor over for lunch, something like this might happen at the doorstep:
You say, “Sam? Wow. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
"Jeff, I'm sorry about screaming out the window at you the other day. That chain saw you were using was driving me nuts. I should have come over and talked to you. You had no idea that I was home to rest that day and the noise kept me awake. Will you forgive me?"
You say, "Sure, neighbor, I accept your apology. Come on inside and sit down for a while. Honey, would you get something for Sam and I to drink while we talk. Thank you. Now, Sam, I'm sorry, too. I didn't realize you were sleeping. I would have been happy to wait. By the way, how are things going at work for you. . ."
Eventually, you eat and renew your friendship at the Table. Now you can do all this yourself because you're only dealing with one neighbor and a handful of friends and acquaintances. You are not a king or a president who cannot meet personally with everyone. And, of course, you are not Yahweh who is throned above the cherubim in the Most Holy Place. Yahweh, the great Lord over Israel and the world, assigns priests to help him with these household necessities.
That is what priests do. They serve the Lord of the house/palace. When the people draw near to visit their Lord, the priests help them. They assist the Israelite who has come to renew fellowship with the Lord. This means that they walk them through the process of animal sacrifice. They inspect the beasts. They insure that everything is done properly so that the Lord of the house will accept the worshipper at his Table. They also guard the house, keeping it from thieves and robbers. And they spend a good deal of time teaching the people how to approach their Lord and what all this implies for their daily lives. If you want to research this more, start with Peter Leithart’s book The Priesthood of the Plebs.
Third, a great deal could be said about this as it relates to “the priesthood of all believers” in the New Testament. But let me make just one point here at the end of this post. And that is this: it is the essence of the priesthood to help people draw near to God. Yes, you get to go into God's house yourself as a priest. The High Priest even gets to go into the Most Holy Place where Yahweh is enthroned. But whether you are a priest or a High Priest, you only enter the house for someone else. In other words, priests are always helping other people. They are priests to assist others. They are not priests for their own individual selves. The priesthood is about service to others.
Therefore, when the whole of Israel is called "a kingdom of priests" it means that the entire nation has a calling to serve, to assist the nations in drawing near to the true God. Priesthood makes no sense without the other that the priest is called to serve.
What bothers me about the way the priesthood of all believers is commonly conceived in American Protestantism is that it becomes some sort of authorization for the individual believer to worship by his lonesome apart from any help he may give or get from anyone else. But if we are all genuinely called to be priests, then we are called to assist others in drawing near to God. A corollary to this is the fact that we all need the assistance of others when we draw near to God.
So the real thrust of the priesthood of all believers principle is often lost in American individualistic religious thought. Every Christian is a priest comes to mean that we don't need any help from anyone; it's just me, God, and my Bible. Don't tell me that I need help with approaching God! I'm just fine without anyone else's help! If you say that I need help and assistance, then you are subtly introducing Roman Catholic priesthood again in the church. No one comes between me and Jesus. The “me, God, and the Bible” mentality of American Christians is pure arrogance.
But it is one thing to insist that no one comes between you and Jesus—after all, he is the one mediator between God and man—but it is something else entirely to say that I don't need anyone to come alongside of me and help me draw near to the Lord.
I'll say this again in a slightly different way to make the point clear: priests always help others into God's presence. That's what the OT priests did at the altar. They didn't inspect the animals, and help with the preparation of God's food to feed themselves. They didn't go into the Tabernacle or Temple for themselves but for others.
Therefore, if the New Testament says that Jesus is now our high Priest, then he enters God's heavenly house for us. And he assists us in our approach (Heb. 2). But if we are all priests as well, after the image of Jesus, then we also enter for others as well. So saying that Christians are priests does not mean that we don't need others to help us into God's house. That's just what priests do!
The doctrine of the priesthood of all believers means that we also all need one another to exercise that priesthood in service to each other. The pastor is the one who models that behavior because his priestly work is for the whole community. He helps everyone approach God in Christ. As I explained in an earlier post, the pastor is the servant priest ministering to the royal priests.
And people learn how to help others at church. To say we don't need anyone to help us enter into God's presence because we are all priests is a contradiction. If that is true, then no one dare exercise his duty as a priest! The priesthood of all believers means that we don't "go in" alone. We need each other. If this is true, then using the priesthood of all believers to eschew any help from other believers, including the pastor, is to deny the very doctrine you are proclaiming.
Rather, we all benefit from the priestly work of others for us—whether they are guarding us from evil, serving us food, or helping us approach God. If we don't need this from others, then there is no need for the priesthood of all believers.
Which means that everyone needs priestly service from others in the body in order to find assurance and approach God! Have I said this enough yet?
Let me cap this off by quoting from the Reformed Baptist theologian and historian Timothy George. This is from his book The Theology of the Reformers (Broadman, 1988):
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Luther's greatest contribution to Protestant ecclesiology was his doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Yet no element in his teaching is more misunderstood. For some it means simply that there are no priests in the church, the secularization of the clergy. From this premise some groups, notably the Quakers, have argued the abolition of the ministry as a distinct order in the church. More commonly people believe that the priesthood of all believers implies that every Christian is his or her own priest and hence possesses the "right of private judgment" in matters of faith and doctrine. Both of these are modern perversions of Luther's original intention. The essence of the doctrine can be put in one sentence: Every Christian is someone else's priest, and we are all priests to one another (pp.95-96).
Objections To Liturgical Worship #4
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
