Luther Was Wrong About the Priesthood

Alice C. Linsley

I question Martin Luther's interpretation of 1 Peter 2:29 whereby he generalized a historical reality of a Hebrew priest caste to all Christians. His "priesthood of the believer" helped him to undermine the authority of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but it obfuscated the identity of the Hebrew ruler-priest caste from whom the Church receives the Messianic Faith.

It is likely that 1 Peter was addressed to Hebrews in the Diaspora. The Hebrew were indeed a "nation of priests" or a priestly caste. Being a Christian means being grafted into the Faith of Abraham the Hebrew (according to Paul), but it does not make each of us a priest. That comes with Apostolic ordination, a sacrament of the Church.

The Church exists where the priesthood exists. The marks of the Church are apostolic preaching, right doctrine, and the sacramental agency of the priest. Speaking from the perspective of Biblical Anthropology, the priesthood of the Church stands in continuity with the Hebrew priesthood that was known to Abraham and his ancestors. The priest's office is unique, very ancient, and stands as an ensign of the hope for immortality. The priesthood is about the blood. Life is in the blood!

Christianity is a received tradition. It didn't begin with Jesus and the Apostles, as if they founded a new religion. This view suggests discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. Christianity represents continuation with, indeed, the fulfillment of the faith of Abraham and his Hebrew people, all of whom were in the priest caste, though not all served as sacrificing priests. For example, Horite women did not serve as priests, neither did all Horite men. The offering of blood sacrifice was reserved for the spiritual head of the clan. He was to be a righteous ruler like Job and Abraham.

The priesthood can be traced to before the time of Abraham. The Christian Faith emerges from the faith of Abraham's Horite people, a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus. The Greek word for priest which appears in the New Testament is ἱερεύς (hiereus). It is derived from the ancient Egyptian word Horus and related to the word hierogylph, meaning priestly writing.

Horus was the pattern by which the early Jewish Christians recognized Jesus to be Messiah. Jesus' birthplace was Bethlehem, an ancient Horite settlement (I Chronicles 4:4). Herod's wise men knew Bethlehem was the place Messiah was expected to be born. The whole of Israel's Messianic expectation was rooted in the tradition they received from their early Hebrew ancestors (4200-2000 BC). Even today Jews refer to their forefathers as Horim, another word derived from Horus. (For other words derived from Horus and the early Hebrew worldview, see this.)

Hiereus is used in the New Testament as the equivalent of the Hebrew/Arabic kohen, having to do with the Horite priests who were related by blood and marriage. Horite priests married the daughters of Horite priests. Jesus is the direct descendant of the early Hebrew ruler-priest lines through Mary, the daughter of a shepherd priest Joachin.

The earliest Christians had "kohens" (kohanim) among them in the persons of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, that is, Yosef of the Ar clan of Matthew. He was a Horite priest of the line of Matthew. They recognized the spiritual authority of such men. Neither of these were the High Priest, however. The whole sacrificial system was about atonement for sin, and that was the special work of the High Priest only. He was the mediator between God and the people. The early Christians recognized Jesus Christ as their High Priest, that is, the only mediator between God and the community of the redeemed.

Christian priests stand in the tradition of the ancient priesthood, but are not a caste, and the sacrifice they offer is not a bloody one, as least not in the sense of crucifying Christ over and over. In catholic tradition, priests are the Church's Apostles and are said to stand in "apostolic succession". The charisms of the priest are received at the laying on of hands by bishops who are the spiritual heirs of the Apostles commissioned by Jesus Christ.

The priesthood originates in Christ and is fulfilled in Christ. Without Christ our Great High Priest there would be no priesthood. The priesthood is not a human invention. The priesthood is a divinely established ordinance. Every true priest reflects the purity, sobriety, humility and compassion of Jesus Christ.

God's self-revelation to the world is perfected in Jesus Christ. Ultimate authority is attached to our Great High Priest who has gone into the Most Holy Place through the veil of His own flesh. The author of Hebrews speaks of the old sacrificial system as a prefiguring of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Jesus is not so much the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrificial system as He is the reason for the system and for the priesthood. Every priest is ontologically like the one True Priest, Jesus Christ. If he is not like Him in purity, grace, humility and sobriety, he is not an "in-Christ" priest. He is an impostor, a phony.

St. John Chrysostom wrote that the priesthood "is ranked among heavenly ordinances. And this is only right, for no man, no angel, no archangel, no other created power, but the Paraclete himself ordained this succession..." (On the Priesthood, 1977, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, p. 70). A "heavenly ordinance" is eternal in essence and cannot be changed by man.


The "priesthood of all believers"

There are serious historical and exegetical problems with using I Peter to support the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, as Luther did. Luther went too far in his attempt to undermine the authority of Rome. I'm not sure he even believed this, since he insisted that confession be made to a priest.

Possibly this epistle of Peter was written to Bible-believing Karaite Jews who were shunned by the orthodox Jewish leadership. The Jerusalem leadership persecuted the disciples and the Karaites who did not accept oral Torah. Oral Torah refers to rabbinic expositions of the Hebrew Scriptures, many of which seek to divert the plain meaning of Messianic passages that clearly are fulfilled in Jesus Messiah.

Many Karaites became Christians; what we might call "Messianic" Jews. The Old Testament references for I Peter 2:9 are Isaiah 43:20,21 which is about doing a new thing... making a new way for God's chosen ones. Also Isaiah 28:16 which refers to the orthodox Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, telling them that God is laying a new foundation. Are we to generalize the historical reality of a sacrificing priest caste to all Christians on the basis of this one passage? I think it is a mistake, as do other scholars who see this epistle as addressing the parting of ways between two groups of Jews: those who placed Talmud above Torah, and those who saw Torah as their sole authority.

The "priesthood of all believers" is a phrase that alludes to Jews living outside of Palestine. They were Jews whose families had been living in Southern Europe for many generations. Their ancestors had dispersed widely before Abraham. 

In I Peter 2 we read, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom." Since the Hebrew practiced endogamy, it is a genetic fact that they were a nation of priests. Here Peter is speaking of an historic reality that should not be generalized to believers who are not descendants of the Hebrew. Peter is speaking to people of the priestly clans whose ancestors lived long before Judaism.

Since Abraham's people practiced exclusive intermarriage (endogamy) between the priestly clans, it is possible to speak of the Hebrew as a "nation of priests" or a people belonging to the priestly caste that originated in Eden. It was to the Edenic forefathers of the Horite Hebrew that the promise was made that a woman of their ruler-priest lines would bring for the the Seed of God who would crush the serpent's head and restore Paradise (Gen. 3:15). Jesus claimed to be this Seed when He spoke of his death being like a seed that falls into the ground a dies in order to bring life (John 12:24).

This is an historical and anthropological discovery that Martin Luther did not recognize when he railed against the Roman priesthood and all that he considered idolatrous. Let us check the facts.

In 1520 Luther wrote a treatise To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation in which he proposed this innovation: that all baptized Christians are priests. He wrote:

That the pope or bishop anoints, makes tonsures, ordains, consecrates, or dresses differently from the laity, may make a hypocrite or an idolatrous oil-painted icon, but it in no way makes a Christian or spiritual human being. In fact, we are all consecrated priests through Baptism, as St. Peter in 1 Peter 2[:9] says, "You are a royal priesthood and a priestly kingdom," and Revelation [5:10], "Through your blood you have made us into priests and kings."

Luther further developed this idea in his treatise On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), in which he wrote:

How then if they are forced to admit that we are all equally priests, as many of us as are baptized, and by this way we truly are; while to them is committed only the Ministry (ministerium Predigtamt) and consented to by us (nostro consensu)? If they recognize this they would know that they have no right to exercise power over us (ius imperii, in what has not been committed to them) except insofar as we may have granted it to them, for thus it says in 1 Peter 2, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom." In this way we are all priests, as many of us as are Christians. There are indeed priests whom we call ministers. They are chosen from among us, and who do everything in our name. That is a priesthood which is nothing else than the Ministry. Thus 1 Corinthians 4:1: "No one should regard us as anything else than ministers of Christ and dispensers of the mysteries of God."

The historical background is important. The Diet of the Holy Roman Empire met at Worms in 1521. Martin Luther appeared there before examiners to respond to charges of heresy. Pope Leo X condemned 41 of Luther's propositions and when Luther refused to recant, he was excommunicated in January 1521. Luther had anticipated this possibility and sought to redefine the priesthood on the basis of baptism, rather than priestly succession. He was determined to cast doubt on the authority of the Roman Church, even if that meant redefining the priesthood by latching onto 1 Peter 2:9. However, Peter's letter is directed to believing Hebrew people living in the Diaspora. They are a "nation of priests" who ancestors were the Hebrew ruler-priests. 1 Peter 1:1 and 2:12 make it evident that Peter is writing to Jews, not Gentiles.

It is ironic that Luther, who insisted that Church doctrine must be accountable to the teachings of Scripture alone (sola scriptura), should resort to wrongly handling Scripture to justify and encourage the Lutheran movement.  His interpretation runs contrary the historical reality that the priesthood of the Church is continuous with the sacerdotal priesthood of Abraham and his Horim. Instead of questioning the Roman Catholic narrative of priestly succession from Peter as the Rock upon which the Catholic Church was founded, he invented a notion of the priesthood that departs from Holy Scripture and lacks facticity. His is a false picture of the Christian priesthood and, as with all falsehoods, causes division in the Body of Christ.

Related reading:  What is a Priest?; Christianity Lacks Originality; Martin Luther on Genesis; The Horite Marriage and Ascendancy Pattern; Mary's Ruler-Priest Lineage; Why I am Not a Protestant; What is the Priesthood?; The Talmud Versus the Doctrine of the Lord; The Priesthood in Anthropological Perspective

Martin Luther on Genesis

Alice C. Linsley

Having completed a series of lectures on the Psalms, Martin Luther lectured on Genesis beginning in 1535 and until his death in 1545. He moved deeply into the patriarchal narratives and yet he recognized that there was still more to be said, deferring to later commentators: “This is now the dear Genesis… God grant that after me others will do better.” (Martin Luther “Lectures on Genesis,” J. Pelikan, ed. Luther’s Works, Vol. 1., Concordia Publishing, p. 333.) 

Luther’s words are an invitation to subsequent generations and indeed many have taken up the study of this remarkably rich book: E.A. Speiser, Gerhard Von Rad, John Wesley, and Matthew Henry, to name but a few. Luther’s Interpretive Method found Christ prefigured in the Psalms and in other books of the Old Testament, but in his commentary on Genesis he focuses more on traditional Lutheran doctrine. 

His reflections on Genesis were to refine reformed dogma. James Arne Nestingen suggests that one receives this impression because, as Peter Meinhold argued fifty years ago, the lectures were edited by Viet Dietrich and his colleagues to enlist Luther’s authority in support of Melanchthon’s theological revisions in the 1540s. There is little doubt that Luther used Scripture polemically. He, more than any other writer, is responsible for the Protestant doctrine of "the priesthood of the believer", an innovation which logically, make ordination unnecessary.

Given the consistency with which Luther interpreted Scripture, it seems likely that he found Christ throughout the book of Genesis, especially as he read it through the lens of the Pauline epistles. Clearly, Luther regarded Gen 3:15, the “proto-evangelion,” as the first promise concerning Christ. From this promise the history of salvation begins to unfold. “Christ is the Lord of the Scripture,” Luther wrote in a letter to Erasmus, “take Christ out of them and what do you have left?” (De Servo Arbitrio, 1525) 

On the Authorship of Genesis Luther believed that Genesis is attributed to Moses and that “Moses spoke in the literal sense, not allegorically or figuratively.” Yet, referring to the placement of the sun in a watery mass (Gen. 1:14-16), Luther admits that “I for my part shall confess that I do not understand Moses in this passage.” 

Luther accepts that there are mysteries in the Genesis, such as the Trinity. He wrote, “Of course, he [Moses] does not say in so many words that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the one true God; this was to be reserved for the teaching of the Gospel.” Luther writes repeatedly in his Lectures on Genesis that the plural Elohim can only refer to the Trinity, but he claims that this mystery would have been incomprehensible to those who lived before the appearing of Christ. 

On the Fall Luther regarded Satan to be the great enemy of God and Man and he saw fighting the devil through the grace of Christ to be the duty of every Christian. He wrote, “Let this, then, my dear sirs and friends, be the first consideration to influence you, namely, that herein we are fighting against the devil as the most dangerous and subtle enemy of all.” He regards the serpent as the devil embodied, and concerning the devil’s cunning he writes. “He does not immediately try to allure Eve by means of the loveliness of the fruit. He first attacks man’s greatest strength, faith in the word. Therefore the root and source of sin is unbelief and turning away from God.” (LW, Vol. 1, p. 162) 

Luther writes: “the pattern of all the temptations of Satan is the same, namely, that he first puts faith to trial and draws away from the Word. Then follow the sins against the Second Table. From our own experience we perceive that this is his procedure. The events which now follow deal with the description of sin: what its nature is when it is active, and what it is later on when it lies in the past. For while it is active it is not felt; otherwise we would be warned and draw back. But because these lie hidden, we proceed smugly to the deed itself after we have forsaken our uprightness and faith. Eve trespassed similarly in the instance of the fruit after she had been persuaded, contrary to the Word of God, that she would not die.” (LW, Vol.1, p. 163)

On Adam and Eve as Historical Persons “Afterwards, when Eve was with child again, they hoped to have a daughter, that their beloved son, Cain, might have a wife; but Eve bearing again a son, called him Abel—that is, vanity and nothingness; as much as to say, my hope is gone, and I am deceived.” On Locating the Garden of Eden Concerning the rivers mentioned in Genesis 2:10-14, Luther says: “…one must not imagine that the source of these rivers is the same today as it was at that time; but the situation is the same today as in the case of the earth, which now exists and brings forth trees, herbs, etc. If you compare these with the uncorrupted creation, they are like wretched remnants of that wealth which the earth had when it was created. Thus these rivers remain like ruins, but, to be sure, not in the same place; much less do they have the same sources.” (LW, Vol. 1., p. 99.)

Related reading: Luther Was Wrong about the Priesthood