Priesthood and Ministry: Some Major Themes
Priesthood and Ministry: Some Major Themes
It is impossible to talk about Christian ideas about the nature of the church without exploring questions about the nature of ministry within the church. So what are the main lines of thinking about ministry within the church? In this final section of this chapter, we shall look at some broad themes in Christian thinking about the nature of ministry.
Some readers of this work will be studying theology in order to enter ministry in a Christian denomination. This brief introduction cannot hope to provide details of the theologies of ordination and ministry associated with the major denominations, and you are recommended to consult more specific works for this information. However, what follows is a broad overview of some leading theological themes linked with Christian ministry.
The New Testament does not use secular language of “leadership” (e.g., the Greek term archon) but prefers to speak of “service” or “ministry” (Greek: diakonia), understood as the working of the Holy Spirit through each believer for the common good (1 Corinthians 12: 7; 14: 4) rather than as the preserve of the leading officers of the congregation. It identifies a number of “offices” or “roles” – such as deacons, elders, pastors, apostles, bishops, and evangelists. However, it is difficult to identify an overall framework within which these various roles are located.
Whereas the Old Testament used the term “priest” (Hebrew: kohen) to refer to an official who was set apart from the rest of the community in order to carry out certain duties associated with worship and sacrifice, this specific term is not used to refer to Christian ministers in the New Testament. Rather, the term “priest” is used to refer to Jesus Christ, who is seen as the fulfillment of the Old Testament ideal of a priest (see pp. 251–3) or to the church as a whole exercising a “priestly” ministry. Christians as a group are referred to as “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2: 9).
Most New Testament scholars hold that this first period of Christian history is marked by a fluid institutional structure, often adapted to local circumstances and small gatherings of believers. For example, it seems that prominent householders hosted groups of Christians in Corinth and Rome, and may well have presided over Eucharistic meals as an act of hospitality toward their guests. The roles of a “bishop” (Greek: episkopos) and “elder” (Greek: presbyteros) seem to have been largely interchangeable for most of the first century. As Christianity expanded, however, it became clear that a more structured form of ministry was needed. Three possible sources of models of leadership may be noted: the structure of large households, often used as meeting places by early Christians; the “council of elders” of the synagogue, already familiar to many Christians with a Jewish background; and the structure of the Graeco-Roman private religious associations.
By the first decades of the second century, a professional ministry was in the process of emerging, consisting of three main roles: the bishop, the elder, and the deacon. A large congregation would be led by a bishop, assisted by a council of elders and by deacons who served the poor and at the eucharist. This was given further development by Cyprian of Carthage in the third century, who held that a bishop was to be considered as a priest (Latin: sacerdos).
By the fourth century, the western church recognized three “orders” within the church: the “order of the bishops,” the “order of elders,” and the “ministerial order,” consisting of deacons. The laity were seen as a distinct group within the church, and the Latin term ordinatio (“ordination” or “appointment”) came to be used to refer to individual Christians being inducted into various orders of ministry.
Augustine argues that ordination confers some permanent change or “mark” on ministers, so that they retain their status – as, for example, a bishop – even if they no longer actively function in this capacity. In the Middle Ages, ordination was accepted as a sacrament within the church and understood to confer some ontological change in those who were ordained. The Second Vatican Council, for example, spoke of ordination of priests as follows:
By the imposition of hands and through the words of the consecration, the grace of the Holy Spirit is given, and a sacred character is impressed in such wise that bishops, in an eminent and visible manner, take the place of Christ himself, teacher, shepherd, and priest, and act as his representative.
Although there are considerable variations, Protestant understandings of ministry differ in two significant ways from those of Catholicism. First, Protestantism tends to emphasize the priesthood of all believers – not in the sense of every individual acting as a priest but in the deeper sense of the priestly role of the church being dispersed throughout its membership, including laity. This idea is emphasized by Martin Luther, a leading representative of the early phase of the Protestant Reformation. Citing 1 Peter 2: 9, which refers to believers as “a royal priesthood,” Luther argues that all believers have the status of priests. For the sake of convenience and good order, some are called to have the “office and work of a priest.”
Second, Luther does not accept any idea of ordination resulting in an “ontological change.” For Luther, clergy are “office-holders” who cease to have any distinctive identity once they step down from this role.
The wide readership of this textbook makes it unrealistic to attempt to provide any more detailed analysis of denominational theologies of ministry, which are often very specific. If you are using this book as part of a course leading to ordination, you will be given guidance on further reading in this area by those teaching you.
Having considered aspects of the Christian understanding of the church, we may now turn to a discussion of a related area of theology: the sacraments.