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

Why I'm Not a Protestant

Alice C. Linsley

I was raised a Protestant in the Baptist Church and over many years I found my way to catholicity. My first encounter with Anglicanism was at St. Luke’s Anglican Mission in Isfahan, Iran. Being a Christian in that country was a serious matter. Persecution of the Iranian parishioners was common and the expatriate community was aware of their hardships.

The fervency of commitment and the humility of the English missioner priest left a lasting impression on me. When I joined the Anglican Church, I believed that I was entering into the fullness of the “one holy catholic and apostolic faith.” In retrospect, I believe that I had merely entered a liturgical form of Protestantism.  

Years later, the crisis of authority in the Anglican Communion has confirmed my suspicion. The crisis clearly involves Anglo-Catholics as well, so inclinations to Rome do not constitute the kind of catholicity that makes for unity in faith and practice.

Clergy seeking refuge from the Anglican crisis through the Personal Ordinariate are likely to be disappointed. They may be able to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Roman Catholic Church, but the crisis of authority will follow them. It seems inherent in the Anglican Tradition that they hope to take with them.

As an Anglican I was never persuaded by the Protestant view of Scripture and Tradition. It simply is not possible to separate the two in the way that Protestants do. The Protestant disposition to set aside Tradition makes it easier to embrace modernist innovations such as same-sex ceremonies and women priests. The Episcopal Church exemplifies this, as well as the loss of theological sagacity.

The Protestant flavor of Anglicanism is more than a reaction to Rome and more than a product of historical events. Among some Anglicans it is the heritage of revivalism. Certainly, this is the case among many East African Anglicans and among low church Evangelicals.

Among others, it is often a preference motivated by denominational pride. Some Anglicans prefer the Articles of Religion above the writings of the Church Fathers. I regard the 39 Articles as a significant historical document that reflects a specific period of Anglican theology development, but not as an Anglican confession, the way the Book of Concord is for Lutherans. 

I remember being asked to teach an adult class on the Articles of Religion because the priest considered this an essential feature of Anglican identity, but when I asked about teaching all the historical documents, I was told that Chalcedon Doctrine on the Two Natures of Christ and the Creed of Athanasius were too difficult for the laity to grasp. I was never very interested in making better Anglicans. In my view, the best Anglicans are thoroughly catholic. I think of figures such as Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, and Evelyn Underhill.

In my experience, thoughtful Protestants gravitate to catholicity because they sense that ultimately Protestantism lacks authority. It is removed from the fullness of holy Tradition concerning the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the ecumenical councils of the Church.  

St. John of Damascus wrote, "I beseech the people of God, the holy nation, to hold fast to the tradition of the Church... for the gradual erosion of what has been handed down to us will bring down the whole fabric in ruins."  St. John's warning has found fulfillment within Protestantism, especially in America where tradition is not valued.

What I experienced and learned as a "Priest"

Serving as a "priest" revealed to me the theological and hermeneutical weaknesses of Protestantism. I grasped intuitively that the full sacramental life of the Church had been lost by Protestants. I had yet to figure out how my being a priestess added to the confusion. That would come after years of research into the etiology of the priesthood among Abraham's Hebrew ancestors.

As a priest I leaned toward the high church Anglo-Catholic wing but found no acceptance there. Instead, I was often confronted by harsh words, and even verbal abuse, especially from gay clergy of that persuasion. I recall a drunk Church of England cleric, who upon discovering my opposition to his homosexual agenda, launched into an embarrassing tirade at a dinner hosted by my Senior Warden and his gracious wife.

Ultimately, I am not a Protestant because Protestants are removed from catholicity, in the fullest sense of that term. They claim Scripture as a first and only authority (Sola Scriptura) but invent doctrines like Young Earth Creationism, Antinomianism, Pentecostalism, and the Rapture. They show evidence of being confused about the Gospel, the Trinity, and the two natures of Jesus Christ.

There is a rush to the Christmas and Easter seasons without periods of preparation. The Communion of Saints is a foreign concept, and the idea the justified living and the justified reposed are united in Christ and not separated by death is regarded as heretical.

The Incarnation is rarely spoken of, and the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary is misunderstood and misrepresented as idolatry. This reveals how poorly most Protestants understand the Bible. In a true sense the Bible is Mary's story from Genesis to Revelation. She is alluded to in Genesis 3:15. She was anticipated among the widely dispersed Hebrew clans. She is identified in the New Testament accounts, and the Book of Revelation proclaims the supernatural preservation of Mary and her child Jesus.

Mary is the "Woman" who brings forth the “Seed” of God. Through His death and Resurrection, He crushes the serpent’s head and restores communion with God. Jesus claimed to be that Seed in John 12:24. The Bible and Holy Tradition are consistent in what they testify concerning the fulfillment of the first biblical prophecy in Genesis 3:15.

The "reformed and always reforming" tendency among Protestants leads to continual efforts to update worship, preaching styles, and congregational structures to make them relevant. This tendency expresses itself in contemporary praise music, largely passive audiences, a consumer mindset, and self-help sermons. There are few sacred mysteries such as can be experienced only through the full sacramental life of the Church.

Related reading: Another Response to "Why I'm Not a Protestant"; Why Women Were Never Priests; Adam Named the Animals; The Unintended Reformation; Ideologies Opposed to Holy Tradition; What is Holy Tradition?; What is a Priest?; Christianity Lacks Originality; Some Thoughts on Women Priests; Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, The End of American Protestantism