THE MINISTERIAL PRIESTHOOD AS A PURE GIFT: BIBLICAL, DOGMATIC AND THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS

Abstract

The priesthood is a cross-cultural reality. It is so common to nearly all humans that it could be used to buttress the fact that man is a religious being by nature. This is not different with the biblical conception of man. In the bible, the idea of priests and of relation with God occurs from the earliest chapters of the Old Testament. This idea is carried into the New Testament with a great diversity of language and modification. But the core of what the priesthood is remains. The problem is that modern and contemporary scholarship both in the scriptural and in the theological dimensions have seemed to take a direction that totally misrepresents the facts on the priesthood. It is boldly asserted that the priesthood of the Old Testament was homogeneously that of the whole nation or that of the family of Aaron alone. The various developments, nuances, distinctions, and specifications are hardly brought to bear on the reflections. The consequence is that when the idea of the New Testament priesthood is presented and examined, based on a few texts and a simplistic examination of terminologies, the full reality of a special ministerial priesthood willed by Christ and actually established by him is denied. But the reality on ground contradicts this theoretical explanatory scheme. The consequence is that the reality is reinterpreted in terms outside the New Testament itself and explained in terms of a heterogeneous development of a simplistic reality. This poses the risk of making the ministerial priesthood a totally human invention unconnected with the Founder of Christianity, Christ. This write up, seeks on the bases of a thorough analysis of Old Testament biblical texts, a theological interpretation of New Testament actions and gestures of Jesus, and a linguistic study of hieratic terminologies used in the Scriptures, to offer a reconciliation between the existent reality of an age old ministerial priesthood extant in Christianity and the more explicit use of the term for priests only for the common priesthood and the contemporary attitude of treating of the question with levity. The method is strictly biblical, dogmatic and theological. The difficulties include that the majority of the thinkers are not ready for a non-political theological correctness and that they would prefer a more democratic than theological attitude to the reality. The findings of the article is that a very dispassionate, logical and profoundly open attitude to the facts, will restore the dignified place and understanding of the ministerial priesthood to the image and consciousness of the average Christian and stop this current wild slipping of almost every one unto ministry in the understanding that it is a totally human subjective thing.