A Longish Addendum to Bryan’s Last Post
Mar 14th, 2010 | By Neal Judisch | Category: Blog Posts0.
This began as a comment on Bryan’s piece about authority and apostolic succession. It got long, and I decided it should either be a post in its own right or that it shouldn’t be posted at all. It’s possible it shouldn’t be posted at all. I decided to make it a post in its own right. Wisdom is vindicated by her children.
1.
An interesting feature of the thesis that apostolic succession can be reduced to (retentively reduced to, adequately understood in terms of) baptismal succession is that it (a) preserves the idea that holy orders are sacramentally conferred, and (b) repudiates the doctrine that holy orders constitute a sacrament distinct from the sacraments already allowed by Reformed Protestants (viz., baptism and Eucharist). It’s in this way that Protestants espousing this theory are able to affirm that holy orders are in a sense sacramental but that apostolic succession, as understood by Catholics and Orthodox, doesn’t have anything to do with holy orders. The thesis of the priesthood of all believers, as understood by Reformed Protestants, looks to cohere pretty well with it too.
A further interesting feature of this thesis is that some of the justification for it adverts to typological considerations, which absolves it of the crime of being dispensationalist or gnostic or anyway insensitive to the continuities existing between the new and the old covenants/testaments. Catholics (shall we say it?) pride themselves on occupying a golden mean between contrasting errors or exaggerations, and on upholding the right theological and hermeneutical relation between old and new. Reformed Christians do as well. The thesis before us is a case in which Reformed Christians (espousing the thesis) see themselves as maintaining the uniquely correct via media between two opposing errors or unbiblical extremes: they won’t abide the Catholic/Orthodox idea that (physico-sacramental-hands-laying-on-ish) apostolic succession is “spiritually” significant, and neither will they allow that anyone with a pulse may licitly found his own denominational empire just because he feels in his heart God’s telling him to do it and resolves, as a preparatory step, to lay hands upon himself. The sacrament of baptism is thought to help in this regard.
I admit I’m not in possession of a knockdown (biblical/theological/philosophical) proof that apostolic succession cannot simply be reduced to baptismal succession. But I do think it’s peculiar to affirm that such a view of apostolic succession can be somehow derived from the biblical data, or that typological considerations in particular can be shown to support it. I’m skeptical about this. What I want to do here is just to register my skepticism that this view is supportable in the aforementioned way, and offer a different way of viewing things that I hope is suggestive.
2.
We can summarily dismiss some potential proof-texts for this thesis without prejudice, at least in the present context. No Reformed Christian worth his or her salt thinks that when Joel says that the Spirit will be poured out on everyone indiscriminately (via baptism?), or that when Jeremiah says the law will be engraved upon each individual’s (baptized?) heart, or that when John says no one (who’s been baptized?) need look to another for instruction, or that when Jesus says we (the baptized?) mustn’t call anybody “teacher,” these things together or singularly imply that ordinations, or “preaching licenses,” or elder/church-member distinctions make no difference whatever as long as all parties have undergone the baptismal rite. No Reformed person would argue in this way, from those texts, I think. If a Quaker or an Anabaptist quoted those texts to a Reformed guy, the Reformed guy would know what to say about them. So I’m going to assume that these texts don’t serve to obliterate all distinctions as between ordained and non-ordained Christians, and that they don’t disprove any Catholic doctrines.
I don’t think I’m begging the question by doing this. Maybe I am. I hope not. Anyway, I’m going to do it.
3.
Also: I’m not going to proof-text from particular NT passages that say things about the laying on of hands and so forth. I saw an article from a Baptist exegete who said that the “laying on of hands” really just meant the “raising of hands,” which people do when they vote about things in an assembly. The idea is that Christians in the first century “laid on hands/raised their hands” to determine by vote who should serve as pastor or deacon for them, in the same way Baptists register their votes on these matters today.
That’s the problem with proof-texts.
4.
Speaking of Baptists and proof-texts, let’s make our way into the question of apostolic succession by comparing it with the question of paedobaptism.
The children of Christians ought to be baptized, but it’s a pretty bad idea to try to prove this to credobaptists by citing the “household baptism” passages, or by pointing out that Paul baptized somebody’s family, or by noting that Peter says in that sermon that the promise is to us and to our kids. Citing these proof-texts doesn’t persuade Baptists, and that’s because those verses don’t unambiguously prove that Baptists are wrong about baptism.
But we don’t believe in paedobaptism on the basis of those verses anyway, do we? Those verses serve at best to confirm or to corroborate the already-held belief that our children should be baptized, but they are hardly the “ground” or the “proof” or the “reason” for which we believe in paedobaptism to begin with. That’s not because we don’t care what Scripture says, it’s just because that’s not how we tend to read Scripture.
Here’s how we’re thinking. As a general matter we try to read the Bible in a covenantal, unified way – allowing “Scripture to interpret Scripture” so as to let the old testament shine its light on the new, and vice versa. So when we think about baptism we notice things like this: (1) that there is a discernable principle running throughout the Bible, to the effect that when a man enters into covenant with God he takes his children with him; (2) that baptism is the sign and seal of the new covenant, which replaces the sign and seal of the old covenant (circumcision), and that circumcision was applied to covenant children; (3) that the new testament is not radically disjoint from the old, but rather stands in relation to the old as the fulfillment – not the abolition – of what pointed ahead and led up to it; (4) that when we move from the old to the new we move from penultimate to ultimate, from partial to complete, from anticipated to more fully realized, from good to better, from less inclusive to more; (5) that there is nothing whatsoever in the new testament which indicates that that the children of covenant members are all the sudden no longer to be considered covenant members themselves, nor that the covenant’s sign and seal ought now to be withheld from them; (6) that the testimony of the early Church (and the history of the Church generally) overwhelmingly demonstrates unanimity of agreement that the kids of baptized Christians should likewise be baptized and they darn well always have been.
Those are the sorts of reasons that persuade us. We don’t take a proof-texting approach; we don’t rely on the “household” passages to prove paedobaptism. Rather, we become convinced of it in a more holistic, “whole Bible + tradition + history” way, and once we become convinced of it, we realize it’s only natural that we’d see whole households baptized when the head of the house came into the flock. “That’s just the sort of thing we’d expect to see,” we say to ourselves. And the reason the new testament writers didn’t take pains to make paedobaptism explicit, or to specify that there really were children in those houses, we figure, is because it was so obvious to them as to be taken for granted. It didn’t come up, in other words, because it wasn’t an item of dispute.
That’s how we end up thinking about paedobaptism. Isn’t it?
5.
Catholics think about apostolic succession in a similar way. “The sorts of considerations adumbrated in (1)-(6) above should guide our thinking here too,” we say. We don’t think there’s much use trying to proof-text from the material in Acts and the Epistles about transmitting the Spirit and prophetic gifts through the laying on of hands, for the same reason we don’t think proof-texting from household passages in discussions with credobaptists is particularly advisable. By themselves they don’t afford “proofs,” especially if we’re not looking through the “whole Bible lens,” or are not doing the sort of thing we do when we think about baptism.
At the same time, we think that once you look at the new testament material with this backdrop in place, it serves to corroborate or confirm something already arrived at in a more holistic way. We say to ourselves, “This laying on of hands business is exactly what we should expect to find,” given the structures of succession foreshadowing apostolic succession, and given the covenantal-it-really-does-all-elegantly-fit-together-ness with which Catholics approach the bible. We do not find it peculiar that people appear simply to have assumed that succession was still important, or that it didn’t have to be explicitly laid out in a “Thou shalt baptize thine infants” sort of way, and we don’t find it odd that people did not argue about whether succession mattered, or that they pointed to it so as to help determine right doctrine, or that the overwhelming testimony of the Church is in favor of it.
We feel pretty much the same way about it as we (as we all, Catholic and Reformed alike) feel about infant baptism.
6.
I think there is something like “dynastic succession” on display in Isaiah 22 and that it sheds a lot of typological light on the incident with Peter as recorded in Matthew 16. (You know the episode I have in mind; it’s where Jesus says to Simon “Tu es Petrus,” hands him an oversized hat, and shoots a puff of white smoke up the flue while the disciples all cheer “Habemus papem!” That’s how it goes in the NAB, anyway.)
I won’t try to argue for a Catholic reading of Matthew 16 here, but I think most readers know how Catholics believe Isaiah 22 relates to it. What I want to point out is that the dynastic succession in evidence in Isaiah 22 is just one example of a much broader motif woven throughout the Old Testament as it leads up to Christ and the kingdom; that there are additional, interlocking “old covenant succession” parallels to it, which need attending to as we search through the new testament data on apostolic succession.
This is to be expected. Jesus didn’t only fulfill the type of David’s royal Son; He was the consummation of all that led up to His coming. He was Prophet and Priest, as well as King. So it shouldn’t be surprising to note that Jesus fulfills the old testament types of patriarch and high priest as well. I think the new testament material concerning succession and the priesthood makes a lot of sense, and that it tends toward a Catholic orientation, when illuminated by the light of these anticipatory themes in the old testament. Because I’m no professional theologian I’ll just try to draw an impressionistic sketch of what I have in mind.
7.
That Jesus is High Priest in the new covenant – fulfilling the types of Aaron and Melchizedec, e.g. – is perhaps the most familiar theme. Hard to read Hebrews and not be struck by it. But Scripture also presents our Lord as the new prophet and patriarch – fulfilling the types of Abraham and Israel (among others) by assuming the gravitational center of God’s new covenant family. Now that Jesus has arrived, the new testament says, gone are the days when “father and brother and houses and land” are definitive of family and inheritance; for when we leave those behind for Jesus’ new family, we receive a hundred times back the family and inheritance we’d left (Matt 19:29). Gone are the days when the boundary markers of God’s holy nation – Sabbath, diet, and all else Jesus kept subverting to Pharisaic and scribal chagrin – kept the family of God separate from all who could not claim Abrahamic descent. The Lord can raise up sons of Abraham from the very stones of the earth (Matt 3:9, Gal 3:29); and when He Himself is raised up, all men will be drawn unto Him (Jn 12:32).
So He, not Abraham, will be the Center of the new family. He, instead of Abraham, will oversee, not twelve tribes, but twelve apostles – who would themselves “sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt 19:28). He, not Abraham, will stand as Cornerstone of a global filial communion, whose “mothers and sisters and brothers” are tied together by love of the Word (Matt 12:48-50), by the outpouring of God’s own family-life within them, through water and the Spirit (Jn 3:3-5) – and, not least, by participation in the Flesh and Blood of God’s only begotten Son, through which they become bound by the ties of Flesh and Blood kinship themselves (1 Cor 10:16-17).
In this act of assuming the patriarchy and fathering this new family, Jesus shows Himself to be the Fount of all those blessings which the patriarchal head of the covenant alone could bestow, because only the patriarchal head possessed them to begin with. To be sure, the blessings flowed from Abraham to his Seed, and through his Seed to “all the families of the earth.” But that’s only because Abraham himself had received these covenant blessings from God, the source from whom all blessings, promises and prerogatives must ultimately derive – that was, in fact, the only reason Abraham had anything at all to give.
And that is why, when the blessings were imparted to Isaac, not Ishmael, and then Jacob, instead of Esau, they really got something their elder brothers did not – and so on down the line, right through David and up to Christ. In other words, the old testament covenant promises were passed on, via patriarchal blessing, through a particular chosen line: a line of covenantal succession. Esau couldn’t just declare himself to be the “blessed” one if Isaac gave the blessing to Jacob; Isaac wouldn’t have been in a position to transfer any covenant blessings at all if Abraham had passed them to Ishmael, rather than him; and Abraham, for his part, had not a single covenant promise, not a single blessing to transmit, apart from what had been specifically given by God to him. So you get your covenant blessings from somebody else, and they can pass them to you only if they have them to give – but ultimately, however long the line, they had to trace their way successively back to God, because they cannot come from man.
8.
Consider now the old covenant priesthood. It was the sons of Levi who, at the golden calf incident, threw in their lot with Moses over against their idolatrous brethren, and who were thenceforth commissioned by God to carry forward the exclusive priestly line (Exod 32:25-29). No more could the firstborn son of any tribal family lay claim to the prerogatives of priest. From that point forward any would-be priest would have to cough up the right credentials: Levitical, biological succession. You couldn’t, in other words, affirm that you felt a vocation to the office of priest and let that suffice. Still less could you found your own Temple and declare that your interpretations of Torah carried forward a Levitical spirit, even if you were just as circumcised as any old Levite. These things were not enough. There wasn’t any point in submitting an application to the office unless you could demonstrate that you stood, as heir, to the priestly prerogatives and promises, handed down through genealogical succession.
Here again, whatever priestly authority, whatever priestly prerogatives you possessed were not sui generis; they couldn’t come from you. You had to get them from someone, and they had to get them from someone – but ultimately, however long the line, they had to trace their way successively back to God, because they cannot come from man.
9.
In Christ, of course, in the new, all of these old covenant structures – royal, patriarchal, episcopal – have found their definitive fulfillment. No doubt. But this leads straightaway to an unavoidable and unavoidably crucial question. Where, in the new, does “to fulfill” mean “to destroy?”
To be sure, there’s a nice question about what Jesus means when He says that He hasn’t come to abolish but to fulfill. Clearly some things have been abolished; I know this because I put ham in my breakfast tacos this morning and felt no compunction. Some others, though, have been taken up and transformed in a way that leaves a definitive similarity between type and antitype in place. It seems to me to make more sense out of Scripture and Church history if the new covenant priesthood retains a succession-structure, like unto the familiar structures of the old.
10.
Here’s some relevant new testament data.
Right before His Passion, at the only point in which the words “new covenant” ever fall from His lips, Jesus imparts to His apostles their priestly mandate to “Do this in memory of Me” –
This is My Body, broken for you … This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in My Blood. (Lk 22:19-20)
Directly upon instituting this new priestly function, this Eucharistic mandate, He declares His intention to pass over the kingdom to those who would thenceforth rule over the house –
And I assign [‘covenant’] to you a kingdom, as My Father assigned [‘covenanted’] a kingdom to Me, that you may eat and drink in My kingdom, and sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (28-29)
And to the fearless leader, who would soon betray his Master from fear, Jesus announces that his faith ultimately will not fail –
And you, when once you have returned, strengthen your brethren. (32)
Now, fast-forward to the appearance of the resurrected Lord – the Prophet, Priest and King – who does something else to the disciples, so as to render their initial apostolic commission both coherent and complete:
Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (Jn 20:21-23)
And to the fearless leader, who now has returned, Jesus gives the threefold charge to
Feed My lambs … Tend My sheep … Feed My sheep. (Jn 21:15-19)
It’s a lot to take in. But notice, first, that each of Christ’s Offices is present in these episodes taken together: (i) Jesus the Patriarch imparts His blessing (“My peace I give to you…”), (ii) Jesus the King delegates authority over the kingdom (“I assign a kingdom to you … you will sit on twelve thrones…”), and (iii) Jesus the Priest confers authority to offer the Eucharist, the sacrificial meal of the new covenant, and to forgive (or retain) sins (“This is the New Covenant in My Blood … Do this…” “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, whose sins you retain are retained…”).
Notice, too, that (iv) in each case we see a transference of authority from Christ to the apostles, an authority which ultimately traces its way back to God (“As My Father assigned a kingdom to Me, so I assign a kingdom to you…,” “As the Father sent Me, so I am sending you…,” cf. Lk 10:16). In the same vein, Peter is once more singled out as receiving from Christ what Christ received from the Father (“I am the Good Shepherd. I know My own and My own know Me … So there will be one flock … My Father, who is greater than all, has given them to Me…” (Jn 10:14, 16, 29), “Feed My lambs … Tend My sheep … Feed My sheep…”). And finally, note that (v) what makes all this possible is the transmission of the Holy Ghost (“And He breathed on them saying, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit…’”).
That last bit, in fact, seems particularly illuminating, because it’s somewhat puzzling what the gift of the Spirit means at this junction – after the Spirit had already been active among and through them, in their preaching and healing and exorcisms, and presumably after they had been baptized, but before the Spirit came at Pentecost, signifying the constitution day of the Church at large. But try this out. Suppose that the gift of the Spirit at this point has less to do with a new kind of presence among them (individually or collectively) than it has to do with a new kind of authority they were receiving, which was to be exercised and passed down in Jesus’ earthly absence.
Of course, if we think of apostles and their successors in the way Catholics do, it makes sense that they’d need a new kind of authority. They’d need a new kind of authority, transmitted directly from God through Christ to them, if they were to fulfill the priestly/sacerdotal functions Jesus assigned them to perform when He was not around: if Jesus was accused of blasphemy for presuming to forgive sins (Lk 5:20-26), how much more would these mere men be guilty of blasphemy for the same? But “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,” a fact confirmed by the subsequent miracles, and if the Son of Man passes along this authority to men – who would likewise perform miracles in His name – then what would otherwise surely be presumption-at-best-and-blasphemy-at-worst simply becomes a day in the life of a priest (cf. Jas 5:13-16).
So too for their authority over the kingdom: no man could possibly assume such a position of authority, or claim that his words were Christ’s, or that his mission was the Lord’s, and still less could he pass all this along to others – unless the King was prepared to delegate that kind of authority to him, which Christ, at the moment of initiating the new covenant, according to the Catholic Church, did.
11.
Naturally, the new priesthood is both similar to, and different from, the old. No longer does the priestly office depend upon flesh and blood, biological succession; but that isn’t to say that no genealogical succession is required at all. As in the old, so in the new: whatever priestly prerogatives and authority a person has must trace their way successively back to God, because they cannot come from man. It’s just that in this case it isn’t genealogical succession of the Levitical ancestry by the “laying on of genes,” it is Spiritual succession of the apostolic ancestry “by the laying on of hands.”
Baptism provides an important link between Christ/His apostles and the baptized. But it isn’t clear why this should make us think that it (baptism) suffices for priestly ministry. Nor, if baptism does suffice, does this explain what all the remarkable material in the new testament – which makes good sense if we think in terms of apostolic succession – is supposed to signify.
I’m not sure how many readers are persuaded by Wilson’s interesting suggestion that Catholics actually denigrate the power and significance of baptism by denying that every gift or prerogative required for the priesthood are contained within it. But I think it’s no denigration of baptism to say that (a) it effectively accomplishes exactly what it is supposed to, and that (b) it doesn’t accomplish things it was not intended to accomplish. Wilson himself does not, in my view, denigrate the sufficiency of baptism for priestly orders by appending to it additional requirements for priestly service (being male, for instance). And Catholics don’t, in my view, denigrate baptism by affirming that priests have to have male hands laid on them too. Everyone requires something in addition to baptism, some further set of conditions that have to be met, for a person to become a fully functional priest. The question is just about what those additional requirements are, and it won’t do to say there’s something deficient about baptism if baptism alone does not satisfy those additional conditions.
Anyway, with these things in view, it seems to me that the proof-texts for apostolic succession are indeed “just what we would expect to see” if we already believe in it. [Spoiler alert: here come proof-texts.]
To be sure, the apostles exercised their power to transmit the Holy Ghost to all believers, through baptism and the laying on of hands (as in Acts 8:17, and 19:6; cf. Heb 6:2). Yet equally was this sacramental action used for the commissioning of a person to the ecclesial office (as in Acts 6:6 and 13:3). Thus St. Paul tells Timothy to remember the “gift of God” he has received “through the imposition of my hands” (2 Tim 1:6) so as to encourage him in his ministry, and that he should let no one look down on his youth, nor “neglect the gift you have which was conferred on you through the prophetic word and the imposition of hands of the presbyterate” (1 Tim 4:14) – a gift he should be careful not to transfer to others until they’re proven worthy of the office: “Do not lay hands too readily on anyone, and do not share in a person’s sins” (5:22; cf. the passing of authority from Moses to Joshua by the imposition of hands in Nm 27:18-23 and Deut 34:9).
And similarly with Jesus, who says “to the crowds and to the disciples, ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you – but not what they do. For they preach, but they do not practice” (Matt 23:1-2). Here Jesus reminds His followers that they have an obligation to listen to and obey the scribes et al. irrespective of their wickedness – wickedness for which He reserves His most heavy duty invectives (23:4-36) – precisely because they hold the office that they do, and despite the fact that they weren’t at all worthy to hold it. They weren’t Moses, in other words, but the Jews still had an obligation to respect the decisions and disciplinary measures of these lawyers because they sat “on Moses’ seat.” (It interests me that this passage comes on the heels of Christ’s conferral of the power to bind and loose.)
Nota bene: I’m not using this passage to “prove” something about the “seat” of Peter, for example, or to “prove” anything else really. What I’m wanting to note is something that I think should not be very controversial. It is that in reminding them of this obligation, Jesus clearly isn’t (i) appealing to anything in the old testament which says that Moses had a “seat” upon which scribal and Pharisaical folks would later “sit,” nor is He (ii) introducing some novel idea they’d never heard of before or voicing some alien concept for which their culture and tradition hadn’t prepared them. It was all very ho-hum; everybody knew about this stuff and those were the categories in which they thought, which is why He could just shoot off the remark and move on without offering any explanation as to what He meant.
Same goes for Peter. When he says of Judas’ vacant spot, “Let another take his office,” and claimed to see a “prophecy” to this effect in the old testament, nobody needed any explication of what was going on. That’s how things worked.
12.
Apostolic succession, as noted ad nauseam, is much like paedobaptism as regards the “proofs” and “proof-texts” for it. Like infant baptism, the fathers and new testament authors did not treat it as some kind of additional doctrine which required justification or elaboration; they seemed to appeal to it as a piece of common knowledge, especially when doctrinal purity or Church unity were at stake. That’s why there is a noteworthy dearth (argument from silence! like infant baptism!) of controversies erupting about the principle of succession itself back then. What you see instead, from time to time, is people relying on or appealing to the succession of bishops in order to resolve the disputes which did erupt. In other words, it seemed to be something you employed, inter alia, to test theological claims against the standard of orthodoxy, but not something whose orthodoxy itself needed to be tested. This makes sense from a Catholic perspective.
Lest my ambitions be exaggerated: let me make clear that I’m not offering this as an argument that deniers of apostolic succession should find entirely persuasive. I’m offering a sketchy, alternative way of pulling the data together, and I commend it to you for consideration.
The best way to argue against it typologically, I think, would be to say that the new covenant restores things to the way they were in pre-golden-calf days, wherein first-born sons could evidently assume a priestly mantle in and for their families. That would be an interesting line to take, and I think I’d try to argue like that if I were a proponent of succession-by-baptism. Perhaps one of our readers would like to take that point of view up.
I would maybe say more about this possibility, but if I did I think I would need a new section break, and I really want to end this post with 12.
Discuss…
Neal,
Very thought provoking. I think the comparison between the two arguments from silence breaks down in this case (in your favor).
It seems to me that the controversy over succession among the fathers would have been way more fierce than over paedobaptism. So if it is true that there is a dearth of controversy over succession, that makes the silences all the louder!
Neal, here are some quick thoughts [though subsequently modified and expanded, having been too quick] on your last section, concerning the priesthood of the first-born sons:
Christ did a lot of things for Israel (and all the rest of us, as it turns out), which are pretty closely related: He bore the curse of the law, fulfilled the law, set aside significant bits of the law, opened up the way for mortal men to become God’s kinfolk. As for that last bit, isn’t it pretty clear who among all God’s family is the first-born son? (I just did a word search on “firstborn” and checked out the NT references.) A typological reading of the consecration of the firstborn in the old covenant pretty easily comes to the conclusion that the anti-type is Jesus Christ himself. The baptized have become “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ,” yet He is the firstborn among many brethren.
It is true that the new covenant people, as a whole, are identified in terms of Exodus 19.6, a priestly kingdom (see Revelation 1.6). The thing to remember, however, as regards the typology of the firstborn, and my suggestion that this is fulfilled by Christ in particular, is that the firstborn of Israel were consecrated to the Lord prior to the people’s apostasy involving the golden calf. (See Exodus 13.1) This particular distinction of some among others was not occasioned by the sinfulness of Israel.
This is to say, even prior to the imposition of the centralized, tabernacle cult and the Aaronic / Levitical priesthood, there existed a distinct, consecrated “order” within Israel; namely, the firstborn sons. Not everyone in Israel was a firstborn son, although all of Israel was called to be a priestly nation. The firstborn among Israel are not to be played off against the priestly people of Israel, as though the priestly character of the former mitigated against priestly identity of the non-firstborn. Nor are the firstborn sons to be simply conflated with everyone else in Israel, qua priestliness. Rather, we should consider that it is by virtue of the consecration of the firstborn sons that the entire nation takes on a priestly character.
Like the things that you discuss in the post, this fits pretty well with what we find in the Catholic Church. All the baptized are made to participate in Christ in such a way as to be able to do priestly things, such as taking up our crosses and following him. Some among the baptized are conformed to Christ in such a way as to do priestly things that pertain specifically to the office of priest, such as celebrating the Eucharist and forgiving sins. Just as the cross-bearing of the baptized does not detract from or add to the Passion of Christ, the priestly actions of the ordained do not detract from or add to the Priesthood of Christ. The idea is that we all participate in the one ministry of reconciliation, albeit not all in the same way.
So … I think a typological interpretation of the firstborn sons leads directly to Christ, and the question of where this leads with respect to Holy Orders takes us back to the question of the ways in which one is configured to Christ, and whether something in addition to baptism is one of those ways, and what that something additional is, and how it is bestowed, and by whom. These are the things already discussed in your post. So, I am thinking that you have something else in mind regarding the possibilities presented by the priesthood of the firstborn for the thesis of succession by baptism.
Since this comment is already long, I’ll just make it longer by speculating on what might be in your mind.
Maybe something like this (presuming that you would also understand the typology Christologically): Even though Christ is firstborn among many brethren, all the brethren, as heirs, and as partakers of the divine nature, participate in the first-born-ness of Christ (when we are thinking in terms of participation, it is best not to rush to dichotomies). Therefore, all the baptized are, in essence, a consecrated, firstborn son kind of priest.
Well, I’ll not labor at any commentary on this hypothetical hypothesis, except to point out that such a reading would be too flat, not responsive enough to the contours of either covenant, pre-golden calf or the new covenant. If the latter in some sense gets us back to the former, then we have to reckon with these facts: (a) the former features a priestly order within a priestly people (see above), a priestly order that is conferred not by covenant membership, nor by vote, nor by personal decision, and (b) this covenant situation is presented as a good state of affairs, unlike the covenant conditions that obtained after the apostasy.
Andrew,
Thanks much for these comments. It’s gratifying to see that your line of thought here matches my interior monologue on important points. For example, the first things I would mention in response to this kind of hypothesis are that (a) there is still a priestly distinction between first- and non-first-borns, and (b) the Presentation in the Temple amounts to the (beginnings of the) restorative fulfillment of the first-born typology in Jesus Himself. So we’re on the same page here. Then you offer as a tweaked hypothesis:
Maybe something like this (presuming that you would also understand the typology Christologically): Even though Christ is firstborn among many brethren, all the brethren, as heirs, and as partakers of the divine nature, participate in the first-born-ness of Christ (when we are thinking in terms of participation, it is best not to rush to dichotomies). Therefore, all the baptized are, in essence, a consecrated, firstborn son kind of priest.
This is a lot closer to what I’d had in mind. Notice that it takes into account our own priestly identity “in” Christ or via our participation in Christ, and notice too that it is sensitive to the fact that the Levitical priesthood was something that was brought about through sin, something that shouldn’t have come about (in some sense) and is part of that second Sinaitic phase. We should then expect to see a “return” to something better through Christ — but not *just* a return, not *just* a simple restoration of the way things were pre-golden-calf. For those pre-golden-calf days were also days of shadows and figures leading up to something better. So it could be argued that given (a) our participation in Christ’s priestly ministry and given (b) the greater inclusiveness of the new vis-a-vis the old (we baptize girls now, e.g.), that the typology of the first-born son applies derivatively to all the baptized while applying primarily to Christ.
That is the kind of argument I was thinking I would try to run.
Whether it is flat and insensitive to everything I do not know; I do think it doesn’t help to illuminate the other new testament material I lingered over in the post (the material in St John, e.g.). I think it is not on the whole quite as good at handling the material. I was just thinking this would be an interesting and prima facie not silly way to try to argue typologically for succession-by-baptism.
Neal
Neal,
The key bit in this thought experiment (typological interpretation of the firstborn sons as supporting baptismal succession to the priestly office) seems to be the following:
Something interesting about this, and I am not sure if it weakens or strengthens the overall case for succession by baptism, is that the same thing seems to be going on already in ancient Israel:
“Israel is my son, my firstborn.” (Exodus 4.22) Given what we know about the priestly character of the firstborn sons at this time, this verse indicates that the nation, as a whole, bore a priestly character (serving as a mediator between God and the surrounding nations).
So, the priesthood of the first-born sons in the pre-golden-calf-days applied to all Israel, while also applying to the consecrated firstborn sons among Israel. Thus, it seems that the priestly participation we find in the anti-type cannot be construed as better, in the sense of more inclusive, than what is already found in the type.
I think that the “baptismal succession” advocate would simply have to say that Christ fulfills the role of the firstborn sons in such a way that he alone, to the exclusion of other specially consecrated priests among the baptized, ministers as firstborn son to the Church, while everyone else (all the baptized) participates in his firstborn-priestly ministry in the same derivative sense. But that just takes us back to square one, as regards the question of ordination.
Andrew,
This is nice, but let me see if I’m following you right. You say:
Given what we know about the priestly character of the firstborn sons at this time, this verse indicates that the nation, as a whole, bore a priestly character (serving as a mediator between God and the surrounding nations).
So, the priesthood of the first-born sons in the pre-golden-calf-days applied to all Israel, while also applying to the consecrated firstborn sons among Israel. Thus, it seems that the priestly participation we find in the anti-type cannot be construed as better, in the sense of more inclusive, than what is already found in the type
Here is how I’m understanding you. Israel as a nation had a priestly role vis-a-vis all the other nations — Israel as a whole was supposed to do what the Levites in particular were later commissioned to do, after the golden calf. That’s why the Levites were subsequently spread out around the tribes of Israel, so as to quarantine and preserve and instruct them, in the way that all the tribes were supposed to have gone into Canaan with a similar priestly/preserving/teaching/light-of-the-world type mission. I agree with this.
Then you say that the priestly participation we see in the antitype can’t be construed as better or more inclusive than the participation we see already in the type — by which I think you mean the pre-golden calf status quo. (Am I following you right?) But what if the succession-by-baptism guy said this: The New Covenant situation is better for two reasons: first, it “undoes” the exclusivity of the Levitical priesthood, which was “added because of sin” and was not a part of God’s original intention for His “royal priesthood,” Israel; and second, because whereas all and only biological first-born sons could count as priests in the pre-golden-calf Old Covenant, now all (male?) baptized persons count as “first-born sons” in their own right — not in the same way that Jesus is the First-Born-Son, but by way of participation in Christ’s priestly office through baptism.
Would that make the New Covenant situation superior and more inclusive, as an antitype should be? (Not a rhetorical question; I’m trying to figure out what the best succession-by-baptism typological arguments would look like, and I’m trying to respond in the way I think a proponent of such arguments would try to respond.) What do you think about that?
Neal
Update/PS: I didn’t respond to your last paragraph when I first wrote this. I might not understand it right. So let me ask: couldn’t the advocate of succession through baptism be happy, if he or she were able to get the result that every (male) baptized person shares or participates in Christ’s first-born-son priestly status through baptism? It would take us back to square one in re the additional conditions for ordination, but couldn’t they argue that the additional conditions are not sacramentally conferred, but are a matter of gender + moral/intellectual virtue + whether they have or haven’t been “called” by a particular presbytery?
Neal,
I think that for the new covenant to be better than the pre-golden-calf Sinaitic covenant, in the sense relevant to succession by baptism, it has not merely to do away with the Levitical priesthood (which was not imposed in the p-g-c Sinaitic covenant), nor only to provide for participation in a better priesthood (everyone admits that the new covenant provides a better priesthood than any previous). It has to allow more people to participate in the priesthood of the consecrated, firstborn sons. But every covenant member thus participated in the p-g-c Sinaitic covenant (Exodus 4.22), and you can’t get more inclusive, from within the covenant, than every covenant member.
[I am here assuming that (a) the priestly identity of the nation as a whole confers a priestly identity upon every citizen (i.e., covenant member), and (b) the priestly identity and activity of the firstborn sons was intended to be constitutive of the nation's cultic life. This constitutive role of the firstborn sons is the reason for interpreting Israel's firstborn/priestly identity (Exodus 4.22) as a participation in the priesthood of the firstborn sons.]
In response to the idea that both covenants are equally inclusive, you suggested that the succession by baptism proponent might say:
This bit, which is supposed to show a contrast between the p-g-c covenant and the new covenant concerning who counts as a firstborn son (a contrast involving greater inclusiveness in the new covenant), seems to involve an equivocation: Counting as firstborn sons “in their own right” in the new covenant is apparently consistent with being as a firstborn son “by way of participation” (rather than simple identity). But in the p-g-c old covenant, firstborn sonship by participation in the priesthood of the firstborn sons of Israel is supposed not to count as being a firstborn son in one’s own right.
There is no doubt that firstborn sonship by participation in the priestly, firstborn sonship of Christ is greater far, objectively and in the mode of participation, than participation in the priesthood of the firstborn sons of ancient Israel. But it is not greater in the most relevant sense: in terms of inclusiveness. Every Israelite was a firstborn son by way of participation: “Israel [not just the firstborn sons of Israel] is my son, my firstborn.” Every baptized Christian is a firstborn son by way of participation: we are co-heirs with Christ.
In both cases, of course, there is also a distinction (which is why we speak of participation rather than strict identification): Christ alone is, by nature, God’s “firstborn” (in the sense of only-begotten) Son. (Christ alone is also God’s only firstborn son in the the legal and moral sense of inheritance by right [condign merit].) The firstborn sons of Israel alone were, by natural birth, specially consecrated to God. And of course Catholics will argue that all the baptized are priests by participation in the priesthood of Christ, but that the ordained priests alone participate in the priesthood of Christ in a hierarchical manner, such that “the presence of Christ as head of the Church is made visible in the midst of the community of believers.” (CCC 1549)
Regarding your update/ps: I had actually written another paragraph in my last comment, in which I explained why succession by baptism does not yield an essential difference between ordained and non-ordained priests. Then I deleted it. It is gone forever, and no great loss to the universe. It did partially address the points you raise. Shoot.
I do not think that an ordained priesthood that is rooted in succession to the ordained priesthood by means of baptism, but which requires something besides baptism to make an ordained priest, can sustain a “specially consecrated priesthood among the baptized.” Whatever the baptized might do to one among them to turn him into a specially ordained priest, they can’t give him any more priestly juice (potency) than they already possess as non-ordained priests-by-baptism, since this would undercut baptism as the means of succession. One could say that the community of the baptized, in ordaining one among them, sort of channels what is already there by virtue of baptism, such that the ordained priest can now do certain things that he couldn’t, or was not allowed to (big difference), do before.
But this raises several questions: (1) Why is every baptized person given, in baptism, a supernatural potency (ordained priesthood) that some of them are unable, or forbidden, to actualize? (2) If potential ordination is not conferred upon everyone who is baptized, then in what sense can we speak of succession by baptism? (3) How does this model prevent the ordained priesthood from being redundant, if, that is, the ordained ministry is a specifically priestly ministry? (4) If the ordained ministry is not a specifically priestly ministry, then how is the priesthood of the baptized at all relevant to ordination?
These are not rhetorical questions, but I cannot think of any good answers myself.
Andrew,
I’m sorry, but I was just in the middle of writing a reply to you, and when I was half-way through I think I pressed “ctrl” or “fn” or something and then my browser took me to the last place I’d been and I totally lost what I was writing to you. That so sucks. There’s no way I’m going to start writing everything again tonight. I want to go to bed. But look: the overall idea was that I agreed with you/had the same questions as you when it came to roughly the last half of your comment, but then I was writing some really stupendously awesome stuff in response to the first half (roughly) that will now be forever lost to posterity.
Maybe I’ll rewrite it tomorrow, but maybe not. It isn’t really essential, since we don’t really disagree about this stuff anyway, and I wasn’t saying anything that fatally compromised your remarks or anything.
Urrggh, it so sucks losing all that stuff I wrote. It was so cool. It would have like unified the Church and stuff, like Bill and Ted did with Wild Stallions.
I’ll probably come back to this tomorrow, but in the meantime, thanks for taking the potential Protestant argument I offered seriously.
Neal
Neal,
I know the feeling. To paraphrase Chesterton: Like all of the comments I never posted, it is the best comment I ever made. The stuff in the first half of my last is pretty rough, and might not hold up at all under a close reading of these bits, and the rest, of the OT concerning the priestly nation and the priesthood of the firstborn. But I suppose that it wouldn’t be too hard to argue that the baptismal participation in Christ’s firstborn-priestliness is so much more profound (ontologically and functionally) than the non-firstborn’s part. in the firstborn’s priestly office in the pgc covenant as to make the requisite difference re more inclusiveness. My interest was in working out whether and how it is that the nation’s firstborn-divine-son-priestly status is related to the priestly status of those first-born from the womb Israelite males. Thus far, I haven’t done much to make a case, only asserted a rough construal of the relation, and that might not do the work nec. to establish the relevant parity between covenants.
Neal / Andrew,
If I may add a few thoughts. First, I think many of the lines of thought so far developed surrounding OT typology and its relation to the sacrament of Holy Orders are rich. I also think that these various lines of thought generally outshine those being employed by Doug Wilson in his attempt to eek apostolic succession (or perhaps just apostolic authority) out of baptism. In the last few posts, the focus seems to be upon explanations resting upon OT typologies that precede the Golden-Calf event. I understand that this event does represent a demarcation between the 1st giving of the law (Plan A) and the 2nd; such that the 2nd can be viewed as a kind of plan B initiating an entire spectrum of additional requirements due to the Golden-Calf infidelity (Aquinas, I believe, takes this view). Now I am not saying that either of you have stated an intention to restrict continuities between the New Covenant (NC) and Old Covenant (OC) to only those OC typologies that fall within Plan A type situations. I just want to propose that we need not do so, since there appear to be clear continuities between the NC and Plan B situations. As just one example; consider the initiation of a natural kingship (kingdom) among the Israelites. It appears that God did not intend, nor approve of, such a kingship; in fact, He warns Israel against the consequences. Thus, a non-kingship governance seems to have been God’s Plan A (although I cannot imagine how that might of actually worked out in practice). Nevertheless, given their faithlessness, He allows them their wish; a Plan B, if you will. Yet, one of the results of this Plan B is the establishment of the Davidic kingdom. The gospels, of course, make many explicit references to Christ’s fulfillment of promises related to the Davidic kingdom/covenant (as Neal points out in the post). The giving of the “keys” to Peter seems to hearken back to the “keys” of the Davidic kingdom mentioned in Isaiah. Thus, it would seem that Christ’s fulfillment of OT typologies have reference to the entire scope of God’s interaction with the covenant people throughout their history; not merely those periods prior to alterations in the scope and nature of the covenants due to gross infidelity. Neal says as much when he relates all the ways in which Christ fulfills the roles of Prophet, Priest and King: roles which find their typological basis throughout the entire epoch of the OC people of God. You guys are better biblical scholars than I; so I am sure I am just preaching to the choir on this point.
Of course, the real problem is that if Jesus, and the work He is undertaking in the gospels, represents a “fulfillment” of the OC with regard to typologies found throughout the history of Israel; who gets to decide exactly how this fulfillment works? I mean there are continuities AND discontinuities (such as dietary laws) between the covenants, even though we say Jesus “fulfills the Old in the New. From a purely exegetical POV, the Reformed Protestant and the Catholic would appear to be in a competition as to who can develop the most creative and persuasive continuity / discontinuity framework in support of their particular doctrinal positions (of course, I think the Catholic position is stronger). Nonetheless, all such constructions are probabilistic at best. The only way around this probabilistic competition would be to recognize an authority who can definitively state what elements of the OC are in continuity with the NC, over against those elements that are dis-continuous with the NC. Clearly, Jesus, Himself, has the teaching authority to distinguish between continuous/discontinuous, and thereby clarify all that His “fulfillment” of the OC entails. But, of course, unless Christ has provided a means by which His teaching authority can be applied in the “hear and now”; we are left with fallible, probabilistic, constructions concerning the precise delineation between continuities and discontinuities. As has been argued over and over again on CTC; without a clear and present infallible teaching authority, there is no principled way to distinguish orthodoxy from heterodoxy on any level – including the relationship between OC/NC. Thus, to come to a non-probabilistic solution, we need to identify an infallible authority that represents the historical extension in space and time, of Christ’s own authority. The inability to postulate such an authority, given a Protestant paradigm, is what ultimately abolishes any meaningful orthodox/heterodox distinctions among our separated brethren.
So identifying a means by which Christ’s infallible authority can travel the corridors of history and reach us in the present becomes crucial. As Catholics, we think immediately of apostolic succession and the infallible authority (conditional, of course) of the Magisterium. One thinks of the Jerusalem Council in Acts where precisely such an authority seems to speak specifically to the OC/NC continuity/discontinuity issue. I for one, think a great deal of weight should be placed upon Christ’s choosing of the 12 disciples as a NC fulfillment and re-constitution of the “people of God”. One can ask “what was Christ doing in choosing the disciples”. One reasonable response is that Christ was very aware of the fact that THE most fundamental feature of the NC was the way in which the “people of God” transition from a ethnically identifiable nation; to a trans-national global family. Biological relation to the 12 sons of Israel represented the relational boundaries identifying the people of God in the OC. Sacramental relation to the 12 apostles will represent the relational boundaries identifying the transnational people of God in the NC. If one employs the sacrament of baptism to dissolve any distinction between the ecclesial authority of the 12 and all baptized Christians; then it seems to me that the only means for distinguishing the people of God on earth – the Church, is commonality of faith. But clearly, all the baptized do NOT share the same faith on many issues – the most crucial being the affirmation or denial of a living teaching authority. For without such an authority one simply cannot know exactly what the content of “the faith” is in any definitive way. Some argument similar to this is what leads Catholics like myself to the conclusion that “what Christ was doing” in choosing the 12 must include some notion of authority / status / succession quantitatively distinct from that derived through baptism.
But all of that is just ANOTHER exegetical construct to which the Protestant will certainly oppose an alternative. In my mind, the crux of the problem comes down to this: if what is needed to definitively resolve disputes concerning OC/NC continuities/discontinuities (or disputes with regard to any point of doctrine at all) is a living, infallible, teaching authority; then how do we establish the very doctrine that there IS such an infallible teaching authority. At first glance, this seems like a circular argument such as: “I have access to an infallible interpretation of the deposit of faith by means of an infallible magisterium; but the existence of an infallible magisterium is part of the deposit of faith”. This is exactly what many Reformed authors in the comboxes on this site try and level at Catholics when we point out their inability to distinguish between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in a principled way, given the lack of an infallible magisterium. They say that our fundamental postulate of an infallible magisterium, though effective as a solution to the orthodox/heterodox dilemma ONCE ACCEPTED; is nonetheless accepted on a “fallible basis”. That is, we as Catholics derive our conviction concerning the existence of an infallible magisterium from our own study of scripture, history, etc. But since we, as individual Catholics, are fallible; our convictions concerning the fact of the magisterium can at best rest on fallible, probabilistic grounds. I think they are correct in this critique; but I also think it does no real harm to the Catholic position. It simply points out that the question of an infallible magisterium (which encapsulates the issues of apostolic succession, holy orders, and the charism of apostolic authority) is a watershed issue – a meta-issue – much like that which faces any non-Christian who first considers the historical claims of Christ. It is something that, ideally, should be addressed before one’s Christianity “gets going”.
The strength of the Catholic position is at least two-fold. First, a powerful theoretical argument can be made that one cannot ultimately distinguish Christianity AS Christianity without an infallible magisterium. This theoretical argument gives good antecedent reasons why one would expect Jesus Christ to anticipate this problem. Secondly, when one finally dive into the waters of Christian history with this antecedent expectation; one finds exactly what one expects – ubiquitous affirmation of the existence of an infallible magisterium constituted by apostolic succession through the administration of Holy Orders (I think of Newman’s quip that “to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant”). Because of considerations like these, I think the most powerful rebuttal to Doug Wilson’s baptismal ecclesiology is not so much the establishment of a more persuasive exegetical construct; but rather a clear exposition of both the theoretical and historical deficiencies of his theory.
I said I would add a “few” thoughts – oops, I lied!
Pax et Bonum
Ray Stamper
I messed up the indentations – sorry!