Calling Priests “Father” In Latin

They don’t.

Call priests "Father" in Latin, that is.

This is a fact that came to my attention recently when I was reading a volume of Roman Replies and CLSA Advisory Opinions (a canon law journal that prints what its name indicates) that had a revision from the reign of John Paul II of the rescript of laicization that is given to priests who are returned to the lay state (in terms of how they function in the Church; they still remain priests ontologically).

The revision was notable in that it allowed bishops to do things like, after a period of time, allow the ex-priest to serve as a lector or an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion.

What caught my attention, though, was the way the document refers to the priest.

In the English translation, it says something like "Father _____________ of the Diocese of ______________ is hereby . . . blah, blah, blah, etc."

But in the original Latin, it doesn’t say the Latin equivalent of "Father _____________," which would be "Pater _____________."

Instead, it said, "D.nus _____________."

D.nus?

I recognized that as almost certainly an abbreviation for "Dominus" or "Lord," which is a title that is still used for clergy in Latin, as it is in some countries (like England) as a title for nobility.

Thus when B16 was elected, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez announced:

« Fratelli e sorelle carissimi ! ¡ Queridísimos hermanos y hermanas ! Biens chers frères et sœurs ! Liebe Brüder und Schwestern ! Dear brothers and sisters ! Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum : Habemus papam ! Emminentissimum ac reverendissimum dominum, dominum Iosephum, sanctæ romanæ Ecclesiæ cardinalem Ratzinger, qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedicti decimi sexti. »

The blue part would be "Lord Joseph (Cardinal of the holy roman Church) Ratzinger."

(BTW, you can listen to that online HERE. I just love listening to it and recalling that day. I especially like the brief pause before he enthusiastically says "Ratzinger." WHEEEE! I love it. HERE ARE MORE HABEMUS PAPAM RECORDINGS OF OTHER POPES.)

Anyway, after looking at the rescript, I called a friend who is a Latinist and who is well acquainted with Church documents in Latin and asked two questions:

1) Is Dominus the normal honorific used for priests in Church documents.

Yes.

2) Do they use Pater or an synonym?

No.

So it seems that calling priests "Father" is something that happens in vernacular languages like English (Father) or Spanish (Padre) or Arabic (Abunah) but not (at least not typically) in the Church’s official documents.

Interesting.

I said to my friend: "I bet there are a bunch of priests who don’t know they are ‘Lord So-and-So’ in Latin."

My friend: "Let’s not tell them."

Christian Priesthood and Sacrifice: Part 2

SDG here. In my first post, I noted that while it is true that the NT writers do not use the word "priest" in relation to Christian ministers, it is equally true that — with the obvious exception of Hebrews — they also avoid using it in relation to Jesus.

In fact, in the NT the word "priest" overwhelmingly means one thing: the Levitical priesthood. (There are only a few passing references to the universal priesthood of all believers, and perhaps only a single reference, in Acts, to priesthood in a pagan context.)

This does not mean that the NT does not present Jesus as a priest. It does, and not only in Hebrews. Although only Hebrews uses the word itself, the theology of Christ’s priesthood in Hebrews is found throughout the NT.

Above all, Hebrews sees the priesthood of Christ in relation to Psalm 110:4: "The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."

Although this specific verse is quoted in the NT only in Hebrews, Psalm 110 is the single OT passage most quoted in the NT. Significantly, Jesus himself implicitly applies Psalm 110 to himself, challenging the Pharisees to explain the Messiah’s precedence over his own father David in the opening verse:

"What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David."

He said to them, "How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

‘The LORD said to my Lord,

Sit at my right hand,

till I put thy enemies under thy feet’?

If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?"

"The LORD" God here speaks to "my lord" the Davidic king, the son of David who is also somehow his lord. Since Jesus assumes that his hearers recognize this to be the Messiah, it follows that it is also the Messiah to whom the LORD God speaks in verse 4: "The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.’"

Jesus thus implies that the Messiah, the Christ, is a priest — not in the usual sense of the Levitical priesthood, but of an older order, the priesthood of Melchizedek aspired to by King David and the Davidic monarchy.

This, however, raises another notable point: Although Jesus effectively implies that the Messiah is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, the term "Messiah," like that of priest, is one with which Jesus avoids openly identifying throughout much of his ministry. In fact, when others recognize him as the Messiah, he orders them to secrecy (the so-called "Messianic secret"; cf., e.g., Mark 8:27-30, Matt 16:16-20, Luke 4:41).

A similar reticence seems to emerge at his trials, where Jesus gives the affirmative but ambivalent response "You say that I am" in response to questions ranging from "Are you the Christ?" (Matthew 26:63-64) to "Are you the Son of God?" (Luke 22:70) to "So you are a king?" (John 18:37).

These responses are apparently affirmative (Mark’s Gospel has Jesus saying simply "I am"), but also seem to express some level of reservation or evasion, perhaps a disclaimer regarding misunderstanding. I like the rendering in The Miracle Maker: "These are your words." Jesus seems to be saying something like: "Yes, it is true to say that I am [the Christ, the Son of God, a king], though what I mean by that and what you mean may not be the same thing."

A well-known triple formula (noted in the combox of my first post) acclaims Jesus as "prophet, priest and king." "Prophet" correlates with his messianic role (the "prophet like Moses"). "Priest" is the term under discussion. As for "King," Jesus was acclaimed "king of the Jews" by the Magi at his birth, and died under a titulus bearing that title; yet although he preached constantly about "the kingdom" of God or of heaven, he had very little to say about being a king, except in that ambivalent response to Pilate.

Although each of these terms is rightly ascribed to Jesus, and although he claimed them all in different ways, Jesus also distanced himself from each of them in certain ways as well. Disclaimers like "My kingdom is not of this world" offer a reasonably clear window into this ambivalence, certainly as regards "king" and "Messiah." In the first-century Judaism of Jesus’ day, such language was implicitly understood as a political and military challenge to the Roman empire; and whatever challenge Jesus’ teaching might have had for the Roman empire, he was not a revolutionary in the usual sense. Jesus was the heir of David, not of Judas Maccabeus. 

But it was more than that. If Jesus’ mission could be understood in terms of the Davidic and messianic hope of Psalm 110, it must also be understood in terms of the still older archetype to which, in that very psalm, the Davidic monarchy itself aspires: the royal priesthood, or priestly kingship, of Melchizedek, "king of Salem" and "priest of God Most High" (Gen 14:18).

Although Psalm 110 attests the hope of the Davidic monarchy for a restoration of this double office of priest and king, it was a hope never completely fulfilled in the Davidic kingdom. The Davidic kings did exercise some priestly functions, particularly in the early years, but the priestly function remained with the Levitical establishment, where it resided since Exodus 32.

It would be a mistake to reduce Jesus’ mission to any Old Testament type. Only Jesus is Jesus: He is unique, the one and only Savior. He is not simply the son of David, the Messiah or even the new Adam.

Still, the primeval blend of priest and king represented by Melchizedek, reaching back before such specifically Hebrew institutions as the Levitical priesthood and Davidic monarchy — a priestly kingship with one foot in the pre-Abrahamic world of the early chapters of Genesis — clearly represents an important touchstone in NT thought for understanding Jesus’ mission, one going back to Jesus himself.

In this connection, it’s helpful to remember that both the Levitical priesthood and the Davidic monarchy were institutions with origins in sin and rebellion. The origins of the Levitical priesthood are directly connected with the worship of the golden calf; the Davidic monarchy succeeded to the kingship of Saul, crowned by Samuel at the insistence of the people in spite of God’s warnings. Neither of these provisional and concessionary institutions is an adequate background to understand Jesus’ mission. If Jesus is a king and a priest, he is in a way less like Aaron and Levi, or even David and Solomon, than like Melchizedek.

All of this, though, is a nuance liable to be lost in a world in which words mean what people use them to mean. For first-century Jews, a "priest" was a Levitical priest — period. A king was either someone like Herod or Caesar, or else someone who would challenge the rule of these foreigners and restore the kingdom to Israel. For Jesus to openly claim titles like "king" or "priest" would inevitably have meant something to his hearers Jesus didn’t intend.

This continued to be the case in the early decades of the New Testament church. The process by which the Church’s sense of its own identity as a phenomenon separate from Judaism (or of Judaism’s emerging identity as a phenomenon separate from following Christ) has been much studied; here it’s enough to note that there was a process. In the very earliest days, the Christians continued worshipping in the Temple; as time went by, the Church continued to understand itself in relation to Judaism, though that relationship was increasingly one of opposition as well as continuity.

Although in time the language of Jesus as "our high priest" would be unreservedly embraced by the early fathers, especially after the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, the Levitical and Temple establishment continued to dominate the early Christians’ understanding of "priesthood" for decades. Jesus laid the foundations by quoting Psalm 110, but it was still a bold leap for the writer to the Hebrews to identify Jesus as "our high priest."

(To be continued)

California Home Schooling Update

EXCERPT:

I think the state court is looking at the state Constitution upside down. The court finds no constitutional right to homeschool one’s children. But in a free country, people are free to do anything not expressly prohibited by law. If the Constitution is silent about homeschooling, then the right is reserved to the people. That’s how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution said things are supposed to work.

Last week, the appellate court surprised everyone by agreeing to rehear the case.

GET THE STORY.

Christian Priesthood and Sacrifice: Part 1

SDG here with the first post in a series on Christian priesthood and sacrifice.

Among the doctrines of the historic Christian faith rejected by the Protestant Reformers was the understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice offered by a ministerial priesthood.

Although this language of priesthood and sacrifice was ubiquitous in the early Church, going back to the earliest days of the apostolic and post-apostolic church, and was both widespread and uncontroversial, Protestantism from its inception has considered considered it unscriptural.

For the New Testament writers, Protestants contend, the only Christian priesthood is the high-priesthood of Jesus Christ (especially in Hebrews) and the universal priesthood of all believers (cf. 1 Peter 2:9, Revelation 5:10); the only sacrifice is that of the Cross.

It must be acknowledged that the New Testament writers had the word "priest" (Gk hiereus) available to them; indeed, they used it to refer to the Levitical priesthood as well as the priesthood of Christ and of all believers. Yet for Christian ministers they appear to have scrupulously avoided this usage, preferring instead terms such as "elder" and "bishop" for church leaders, and never once designating such leaders as "priests." This usage cannot be dismissed as inadvertent; it is clearly intentional.

This is indeed a striking fact. Yet the usage of the apostolic and post-apostolic Christ is equally striking and equally intentional. The Fathers possessed and venerated the sacred scriptures, yet they unhesitatingly chose language that went beyond the NT record: From the beginning, Christian ministers were called priests (Gk hiereus, Lat sacerdos), and sacrificial aspect of the priesthood was explicitly developed in relation to the Eucharist.

This language of priesthood and sacrifice applied to Christian leadership and Eucharistic worship can be found from Clement, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and so on. Moreover, Christian history records no resistance, opposition or resistance on the part of any Father to this widespread usage.

From the facts briefly described so far, it appears only two conclusions are possible:

(a) Either the usage and theology of the apostolic and post-apostolic Church departed very early and very thoroughly from the biblical pattern, so much so that a covenant ordinance was converted into a sacrificial rite and a presbytery into a ministerial priesthood without anyone apparently noticing; or else

(b) the usage of the apostolic and post-apostolic Church represents the theology but not the language of the NT; in which case it is necessary to explain why the NT writers so carefully avoided terms readily available to them.

In seeking a solution, it should be noted from the outset that the biblical data has been somewhat oversimplified. It is true that the NT writers had the word "priest" available, and used it readily for the Levitical priesthood. Yet within a Christian context the word "priest" does not seem to have caught on particularly easily in any connection — either with respect to the priesthood of Christ or the universal priesthood of believers. 

Although it figures prominently in Protestant thought and is equally valid in Catholic theology, the universal priesthood of all believers is mentioned only fleetingly in two late NT books, 1 Peter and Revelation.

More strikingly, and crucially, throughout the NT the word "priest" is never once applied to Jesus Himself in any book but one — that one, of course, being the gigantic and enormously significant exception, the book of Hebrews.

Unquestionably, the magnificent treatment of Christ’s priesthood in that book more than makes up for the silence elsewhere, and (insofar as the canonicity of Hebrews is accepted as a settled matter) establishes this doctrine as unquestionably scriptural. Still, it leaves the question: Why did all the other NT writers consistently avoid applying the term to Christ?

It is not that the theology of Christ’s high-priesthood is contrary to the rest of the NT, or even that it is simply unknown to the other writers. Rather, the priesthood of Christ is present, though implicitly, in the teaching of Christ Himself and of the rest of the NT, and made explicit only in Hebrews.

But this only refocuses the question in a new form: Why teach the theology but scrupulously avoid the term? Why were the NT writers (with one major exception) so reticent to call Jesus a priest?

In considering this question, we may cast light on the NT church’s preference for the language of the presbyterate and episcopacy over the priesthood for its own ministers. It may be that whatever is at the root of the reticence here is also the reason that the term was not applied to church leaders.

(Continued in part 2)