Christian Priesthood Examined
Richard Hanson
Number of quotes: 12
Book ID: 55 Page: 9
Section: 2C
This concept of ministry, which I shall call “official ministry” is usually applied to full-time permanent ministers, but it can also be applied to part-time ministers and even to those who occupy a ministry for a defined period and then leave it. The essential point about this type of ministry is that it consists of an office to be filled, to which officials can succeed; also that it is either permanent or for a determined time, not occasional or ad hoc. This definition of ministry applies to almost all forms of ministry filled by Christian ministers today, whether they are popes or archbishops or bishops or priests or deacons or pastors or just ministers, whether they claim apostolic succession or scriptural authority or not, whether they are paid or unpaid, established or free, male or female, whether they wear clerical collars or do not whether they call themselves Catholic or Reformed, apostolic or evangelical.It must first be understood that in the earliest age of the church no such ministry as this existed, and therefore that no such ministry, in any of its forms, can justly claim that it was instituted by Christ or his apostles, nor that it has any particular right to call itself exclusively scriptural.
Quote ID: 1232
Time Periods: 234567
Book ID: 55 Page: 10
Section: 2C
In one sense, the church sprang out of the resurrection of Jesus, and it is this aspect of the church which Paul emphasizes most strongly. He is not interested in the church as an institution founded by Christ in the days of his flesh, but only in the church as those who live in the Spirit and belong to the body of the risen Christ.
Quote ID: 1233
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 55 Page: 16
Section: 2C
It is important to realize that the ministry envisaged in the three passages examined above is one entirely of function, not of office or ordination. Nobody could ordain anyone to have faith, and if the churches today could ordain people to give liberally or to utter wisdom there would be far more ordinations than there are. It is even incongruous to imagine anyone being ordained as a prophet. Prophets are known by their capacity to utter prophetic sayings, as speakers with tongues and interpreters of tongues are known by their functions, and healers by their capacity to heal.
Quote ID: 1234
Time Periods: 17
Book ID: 55 Page: 20
Section: 2C
The communities of the early church apparently came to their decisions by a unanimous vote which was neither achieved by head-counting in the modern democratic manner, nor was forced by coercion, physical or psychological.. . .
Authority in the primitive church, then, did not reside in official ministers but in the church as a whole, all of whose members felt themselves under the authority of Christ. The apostle of the church, as both the spiritual father (1 Cor. 4:14,15) and mother (Gal. 4:19) of his converts, can guide them, exhort them, attempt to persuade or shame them into a course of action; he can rebuke them as well as praise them. But he allows that authority to reside in the church as a whole.
Quote ID: 1235
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 55 Page: 33
Section: 2E1
It is a universal tendency in the Christian religion, as in many other religions, to give a theological interpretation to institutions which have developed gradually through a period of time for the sake of practical usefulness, and then to read that interpretation back into the earliest periods and infancy of these institutions, attaching them to an age when in fact nobody imagined that they had such a meaning. The simplest and least controversial example of this is the case of ecclesiastical garments, whether these are chasuble, amice, stole and alb or surplice, cope and mitre. Almost all these garments were first assumed for some non-theological reason. Either they were the ordinary wear for grand occasions of a layman of the time when they were adopted, or they were assumed in order to keep the wearer warm in cold climates or cool in hot climates, or they even (as in the case of the mitre) had originally a political rather than a theological significance. But in later ages religious fancy set to work on them and attributed to them all sorts of edifying theological reasons and symbolism: they stood for humility, for purity, they were emblems of the yoke of Christ or the linen towel with which he girded himself at the last supper, and so on.
Quote ID: 1236
Time Periods: 24
Book ID: 55 Page: 35
Section: 2C
No Christian priesthood is to be found in the New Testament. There is in fact no solid evidence that anyone thinks of Christian ministers as priests until about the year 200.
Quote ID: 1237
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 55 Page: 60
Section: 2A6,2D3B
Whoever therefore obeys all these heavenly commands is a worshipper of the true God, whose sacrifices are gentleness of mind and an innocent life and good actions. Whoever manifests all these, sacrifices as often he performs any good and pious act. For God does not want a victim consisting of a dumb animal nor its death nor blood, but that of a man and his life....And so there is placed on the altar of God, which is really the Great Altar and which cannot be defiled because it is situated in man’s heart, righteousness, patience, faith, innocence, chastity, temperance. (Div. Inst. VI.24, 27-29). . . .
. . .gift means integrity of mind, sacrifice praise and hymnody (25.7). Sacrifice on our part can only consist of blessing, made by words. There is no need for a temple in this worship; it can just as well be given at home: “in fact each man has God always consecrated in his heart because he is the Temple of God” (25.16). In this radical doctrine of offering there is no room at all for a priest offering the sacrifice of Christ to God.
Pastor John’s note: Lactantius
Quote ID: 1238
Time Periods: 34
Book ID: 55 Page: 67
Section: 2C
The reader must be reminded that the origins of episcopacy were not in any sense specifically sacerdotal. It is not true to say that epescopacy, of the kind in which the bishop is distinguished from the presbyter and the ranks above him, can only be found emerging in the 2nd century and was only accepted universally in the second half of it.
Quote ID: 1239
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 55 Page: 93
Section: 2C
The church developed the official ministry because it needed the official ministry. In the history of a great many institutions and religions, the first fine careless rapture is succeeded by a period of sober consolidation. The primitive church could not have continued indefinitely in its state of primordial charismatic bliss. Institutions and organisms grow and develop, and have to face the onset of time. The church was compelled to undergo what Charles Williams called “the reconciliation with time”. The world was not, after all, going to come to an end almost immediately. The second coming of Christ never materialized. Pressures and problems both outside the church and within it made it essential for the church to develop a permanent ministry, and if permanent then official and if official then ordained.
Quote ID: 1240
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 55 Page: 94
Section: 2C
More important, there is no reason for thinking that the actual form of the official ministry itself hindered that which was to be ministered being imparted as it should be, the gospel, the communication of the new being, the opportunity of experiencing God in Christ. The form of the ministry must be judged by what is ministered. I do not see how it can be plausibly argued that the ministry of bishops, presbyters and deacons, as they appear in the pages of Ignatius, of Irenaeus and of Tertullian, hinders the good news or stifles the life of the church or dilutes the truth of the revelation entrusted to the church.. . . .
If by unanimous consent all Christian denominations were to abolish altogether tomorrow the distinction between clergy and laity, within ten years groups would begin appearing everywhere throughout the church who by their dedication, their expertise and their activity would earn the status, if not the name, of clergy. The Holy Spirit does not always call the church to stand still, and its moving onward may as well take the form of raising up official ministers as of inspiring prophets and visionaries.
Quote ID: 1241
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 55 Page: 95
Section: 2C
The dream of a wholly formless, wholly charismatic, wholly spontaneous church in the 20th century is a fantasy.. . . .
Official ministry itself is a development. Within the tradition created by that development a Christian priesthood appeared. But we must here distinguish between two sorts of development. The official ministry was a quite new institution, having no continuity with the ministry of the Jewish religion, neither cultic sacrificing priest nor rabbi, carrying with it no theological significance, appealing to no tradition and no type, simply a development to meet the need of the church, taking such names as seemed suitable to express the very general functions of the various ministers.
Quote ID: 1242
Time Periods: 237
Book ID: 55 Page: 105
Section: 2C
What makes any minister a minister is the expressed intention of the church in ordaining him.
Quote ID: 1243
Time Periods: 234567
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