Priesthood

GEORGE E. DEMACOPOULOS

The term “priesthood” (hierosynes) in Orthodox thought simultaneously refers to the clerical orders in general and the specific clerical rank of the priest or presbyter (presbyteros). The concept of Christian priesthood originated during the 1st and early 2nd centuries through a conceptual bridging of the Eucharistic meal and the ancient Hebraic practice (shared by many Greco-Roman cults) in which a specific group of leaders was responsible for making a sacrificial offering to God on behalf of the community. In Christian theology, of course, the Eucharistic meal is understood to be a bloodless sacrifice through which Christ himself, in the form of the High Priest (Heb. 2.17, 3.1, 4.14), offers the sacrifice of himself in order to reconcile to God those who consume the meal. In the celebration of the divine liturgy, the priest stands in the place of Christ, leading the community in the presentation of the bread and wine as the sacrifice. As a consequence, the celebrant is sometimes understood to represent Christ within the community of believers. With time, the function ofthe priesthood expanded greatly beyond its initial Eucharistic role to incor­porate other sacramental, pastoral, and administrative responsibilities.

In the New Testament the terms for presbyter (literally, “elder”) and bishop (episkopos, literally, “overseer”) seem to be interchangeable (e.g., Titus 1.5–7). By the late 1st or early 2nd century, however, the bishop emerged as the clear leader ofthe local community. Presbyters played a subordinate role as teachers, administra­tors, and as a council of advisers, but were clearly seen to outrank the order ofdeacons. As Christianity expanded and local com­munities grew larger than a single (cathe­dral) city church could contain, both urban and rural bishops began to invest individual priests with the authority to celebrate the Eucharistic meal in outlying parishes and perform baptisms in their stead. In this early period the priest was only permitted to serve this function within those parishes directly under his bishop’s jurisdiction and he was not permitted to serve private chapels (see Trullo, Canons 31, 59). More­over, a priest was not permitted to move to another diocese without approval. Simi­larly, teaching authority remained techni­cally within the bishop’s domain, but parish priests increasingly assumed primary catechetical and doctrinal instruction for most Christian communities.

The New Testament does not offer specific instructions regarding the selection of presbyters. Both 1 Timothy and Titus list a number of regulations concerning the appointment of bishops and deacons and we might reasonably assume that the earliest selection of presbyters followed sim­ilar criteria. In the Byzantine period, canon law increasingly incorporated Old Testa­ment proscriptions to block certain persons (e.g., the deaf, the blind, the deformed, pro­scriptions that were often subjected to allegorical interpretation) from the priest­hood. Canon law also set a minimum age for ordination at 30 (by comparison, a deacon was required to be 25 and a bishop 35). And while ordination to the deaconate and the priesthood was certainly possible for married men (unlike bishops, who after the 4th century were drawn from the celibate clergy), most patristic descriptions of the ideal priest are laden with ascetic credentials.

Theological reflection on the priesthood began in earnest with Gregory the Theo­logian’s (330–90) Apology for Flight (Oration 2), which was the first Christian treatise to explore in detail the criteria for ordination and the pastoral responsibilities for leadership. Written ostensibly at the time of his ordination to the deaconate, Gregory moves frequently between generic terms for Christian leadership and that of the bishop specifically. He argues that all Christian leaders should possess an advanced education and extensive ascetic experience. Gregory further suggests that the ideal leader must learn to strike a balance between private ascetic retreat, in order to experience the contemplative life, and active service in the form of ministering to others. His model of an “active contem­plative” became the prevailing model for the priesthood in the Byzantine period and remains so for the Orthodox Church to this day. Not surprisingly, John Chrysostom’s (349–407) rhetorical masterpiece, On the Priesthood, which borrows extensively from Gregory’s Apology, cautioned that the balance between service and personal con­templation was often elusive. Like Gregory, Chrysostom typically employs the generic term hierosynes, rather than presbyteros or episcopos, in his description of the pastoral leader. While it did little to alter Gregory’s theology of the priesthood, On the Priest­hood enjoyed one of the largest readerships of any Greek text in the Middle Ages and did much to advance the idea of clerical importance. It suggests, for example, that the priest is more important than the angels because he, unlike they, baptizes and celebrates the divine liturgy.

The most sophisticated treatise of pasto­ral literature in the Orthodox tradition is the Treatise on Pastoral Care (Liber regulae pastoralis) by Pope Gregory the Great (540–604), which was the only Latin treatise of the Middle Ages to be translated into Greek and disseminated by imperial order during the author’s lifetime. Like Chrysos­tom, Pope Gregory borrowed directly from Gregory the Theologian’s concept of the active contemplative. He also greatly expanded the earlier Gregory’s list of spiri­tual characteristics, which required individ­ualized spiritual remedies. Indeed, the Liber pastoralis describes 72 spiritual personality traits set in pairs of opposites, for which he offers a corresponding regimen for spiritual therapy. The pastoral solutions, especially, demonstrate Gregory’s extensive familiarity with the patterns of spiritual direction then operative in the ascetic community and represent a direct bridging of the monastic and lay patterns of spiritual direction.

In the modern Orthodox world the most thorough treatment of the priesthood came indirectly through the work of Fr. Nicholas Afanasiev (1893–1966), a prominent Russian theologian and member of the St. Sergius faculty in Paris. Afanasiev’s Eucharistic ecclesiology radically challenged contempo­rary bifurcations between lay and cleric, priest and bishop, and local church versus institutional church. Afanasiev viewed the local Eucharistic community as a complete embodiment of the entire Christian community and held that the clergy and laity were ontologically equal. Relying on the bib­lical concept of a priesthood of all believers (cf. 1Pet. 2.9) and the interchangeability of presbyter and bishop in the pastoral epistles, Afanasiev took aim at what he perceived to be an Orthodox form of clericalism that had initially developed in the Byzantine period, but also later seeped into the Orthodox tradition from Roman Catholic sources. The ritual for Orthodox priestly ordination states: “The divine grace which always heals that which is infirm and completes that which is wanting elevates through the laying on of hands, the Reverend Deacon -N- to be a priest» The secret prayers of the bishop accompanying the laying on of hands speak also about the “great grace of the Holy Spirit” which is to be conferred, the advancement to the degree of priesthood, the standing at the altar, the ministry of the word, the proc­lamation of the gospel, the offering of gifts, and the renewing of the people through baptismal regeneration.

SEE ALSO: Baptism; Contemporary Ortho­dox Theology; Deacon; Eucharist; St. John Chrysostom (349–407)

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Afanasiev, N. (2007) The Church of the Holy Spirit, trans. V. Permiakov. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Brown, R. E. (1970) Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections. New York: Paulist Press.

Chryssavgis, J. (1992) “Ministry in the Orthodox Church,” Sourozh 50: 27–30.

Gregory the Great, St. (2008) Book of Pastoral Rule, trans. G. Demacopoulos. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Gregory of Nazianzus, St. (1994) Apology for his Flight (Oration 2). Nicene, Post-Nicene Fathers series, second series, vol. 7, trans. C. Browne. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

John Chrysostom, St. (1984) On the Priesthood, trans. G. Neville. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Norris, R. A. (1984) “The Beginnings of Christian Priesthood,” Anglican Theological Review, Supplement Series 9: 18–32.