Soft sacerdotalism

Tom Wadsworth’s 2021 paper, The Shift, for the ETS (available here) gives a good account of how the New Testament’s primarily “horizontal” concept of “meeting for mutual edification in the Spirit” became a vertical “meeting to serve God in worship” by the fourth century. Essentially, the Christian assembly became temple worship redividus despite the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, and the culprit was sacerdotalism.

The rot set it as early as the end of the first century, when the Lord’s Supper, a love-feast celebrating the unity of believers in Christ’s body as a remembrance of his once-for all offering of himself as a sacrifice on the cross, started to be seen as a repeated offering, by us, of the body and blood of Christ over and over again.

Once that idea took hold, erroneous parallelism both with the Mosaic pattern, and with gentile religion, meant that the table on which this “sacrifice” was offered became an altar. Naturally, the man offering such a holy oblation became a priest rather than an overseer (episkopos) or shepherd (poimen) or elder (presbuteros) who would need not only to be duly consecrated, but to be virtually “descended” from the new Aaron, Christ, and the apostles by apostolic succession. Priestly “otherness” became absolute once the doctrine of transubstantiation made the Eucharist literally miraculous. That’s why a young Martin Luther was so nervous he almost dropped the host when he led his first Mass.

Priests need vestments to set them apart, together with sole authority to minister the sacred mysteries to the laos, the “lay people.” And they minister in God’s house, so that by the time of Eusebius in the fourth century, Constantine’s great new church-buildings were actually referred to as “temples.” It’s not hard to see the parallel between lining the walls of these with images of super-christians called “saints” (abandoning the NT usage that all God’s people are hagioi) and decorating the familiar pagan temples with idols, nor is it hard to deduce how Mary as theotokos, God-bearer, a term coined to stress Jesus’s true humanity, should eventually gain her place among the statues as “Queen of Heaven” and even “Co-redemptrix.” Scruples about this led to the iconoclastic destruction of images in the 8th and 9th centuries, but veneration of images won out in both the Catholic west and the Orthodox east to this day.

This whole cult was, of course, condemned by the Reformation. And incidentally, if you doubt Wadsworth’s analysis of our current errors on the Christian assembly because “the Church couldn’t have had it wrong for 2,000 years,” remember how it embraced sacerdotalism almost unchallenged for 1,500 years. In effect, those like Wadsworth (and I must include myself) are saying that the Protestant Reformation missed some tricks, though I would suggest it was often that Christians subsequently fell away from the Reformation’s insights.

For example, in the early reform of the Church of England, it was legislated that stone altars be removed from churches, and a decent wooden table be placed in the body of the nave (not behind rails in the choir) for the celebration of the Lord’s supper. But Archbishop Laud reversed this, so that every Anglican church today has its altar set behind rails. Laud was helped in this “deform” by the fact (obvious if you think about it) that Gothic church architecture loosely apes the Mosaic tabernacle, only the priest being allowed behind the altar-rail (like Aaron making atonement on the holy of holies once a year), and the people only permitted to enter the choir (behind some real or vestigial rood screen) to take communion (like levitical priests serving their turn in the temple), before returning to the “court of Israel” in the nave.

However our Non-conformist ancestors, I believe, had the situation pretty much sussed out, though I think we fail to recognise how much closer to Scripture their practice was than ours. My own Baptist fellowship, whose records begin as early as 1653, was not a church, but an “assembly of the people called Baptists,” and their newly-completed purpose-built edifice was “Loughwood Meeting House,” still open to the public now. There, the church-book tells us, the 105 members in good standing met not for a service, nor for worship, nor to have a Holy Spirit encounter, but “to observe Christ’s holy ordinance [ie share the Lord’s supper] and to edify and comfort one another.” They forestalled our theologians by three centuries in returning to the New Testament pattern.

Their inability to find a pastor at first was a nuisance, not an obstacle, and in fact their all-day meetings included times for “trial of gifts,” which probably meant allowing members to expound Scripture, under helpful criticism, and certainly didn’t involve members seeing “pictures” or identifying sick folk through “words of knowledge.” The leadership was collegiate – a situation this particular fellowship has only really recovered since a re-organisation in 2017.

It was only decades later that singing was first allowed, and it is significant that it was for “those who wished to sing.” This suggests that singing was not, primarily, intended to worship God, or surely it would have been deemed obligatory, but as yet another channel by which to encourage each other in the Lord. They would certainly have sung only the psalms, and not “hymns of human composure,” which were only just beginning to make an appearance in the Established church.

I probably don’t need to spell out the more obvious vestiges of sacerdotalism in Evangelicalism today, even amongst Non-conformists. The first Baptist Church I attended had a “sanctuary” in which it would be sacriligeous to prop a bicycle or play ball. The high pulpit replaced a high altar, but though that was a conscious attempt by Protestantism to make Scripture central rather than sacrament, it was still the holy place where only the Minister (in his dog-collar and preaching bands) could go, six feet above contradiction, as the adage runs.

Non-con churches don’t have altar rails, but they do have platforms for the “leaders” and the communion table is usually there, rather than in the middle of the room. By NT standards, even the “Lord’s supper” of gluten free bread, non-alcoholic wine and mood music is a temple sacrament: David Peterson suggests, I think rightly, that the early church had an actual meal together, which was sanctified by starting it with the breaking of bread in Christ’s name, and concluded by sharing the cup of blessing of the New Covenant. Thus, as Paul certainly teaches in 1 Corinthians 11:27-32, “the body” partakers must recognise is surely the sacred body of believers as Christ’s body. Paul’s emphasis in that chapter even makes the “holy ordinance” pre-eminently “horizontal.”

I’ve said before, and will say again, that Charismatic theology, historically arising directly from Pentecostalism, is essentially sacerdotal, despite appearances to the contrary. Pentecostalism was generated in American revivalism involving the super-gifted preacher, sometimes even in priestly robes, and at his rallies he taught pumped-up people how to exhibit glossolalia and other “supernatural” phenomena, that confirmed his own anointing by manifesting the presence of God in “worship.” This “top-down” emphasis continues now in the evangelist or apostle lengthening legs to cure backache by stage chicanery (trust me on this – I was a back specialist), or pushing people like my wife over and calling it “slaying in the Spirit” (“No – he pushed me,” she insists).

Or, more generally, it means the “anointed worship leader” being a priestly channel for the Holy Spirit to bring the laity into God’s presence. Just to remind you, 1 Corinthians doesn’t teach that we meet in the hope that God will manifest himself to us in some “breakthrough” never mentioned in the Bible, but that we will manifest him to each other by the gifting we bring with us. There were zero worship leaders in Britain for the first ten years of my Christian life, and for two millennia before that. When did they become canonical?

I want to conclude this piece by highlighting some more subtle disadvantages that viewing the assembly through “worship” assumptions, aka soft sacerdotalism, brings. But first let me address the truth that, despite all the failings even in the most superstitious pre-Reformation age, there were many genuine disciples and many examples of “horizontal” concern for other believers and for the poor outsider. I venture to suggest that this was because, despite the sacerdotal model, for the most part the Church had not fixed on “worship” as the activity of Christian assemblies. Salvation and damnation were key themes, leading to stress on ethical matters.

And of course, wherever Scripture was read its eternal teaching reached the Christian soul… though at times the Church seems to have done its best to prevent that by insisting on Latin and treating sermons as an occasional chore. However, now the Pentecostal agenda, making experience of the Spirit the overwhelming priority, often leads to a noticeable lack of good teaching in the endless cycle of “revivals” over the pond. Prophetic words from the apostle and, of course, unprecedented outpourings of what’s already been outpoured for 120 years now as Christianity declined remorselessly are preferred to the sound exposition of Scripture, or to the mutual edification of the group Bible Study. Thankfully I’ve been in churches with an ingrained culture of biblical teaching, but in 54 years exposure to the Charismatic movement I’ve seen the downgrading of serious Bible work repeated over and over again, because experience always trumps the word in that tradition.

Since the “worship wars” of the 1990s, the emphasis on “worship” as such has been codified, almost absolutised, in the multi-billion dollar Contemporary Christian Music industry. The cult of the worship-leader carrying us into God’s presence through “vertically-orientated” songs makes it very hard to see the meeting in terms of mutual upbuilding. Often the songs are near to impossible for congregations to sing, so that the onstage band for all the world resembles those Roman Catholic services with a small cast of priests, servers and other robed individuals as the sole performers.

Thus when Matt Redman sings about the “Heart of Worship,” he repents (I guess) of seeing himself as the Star, but insists it’s “all about you, Jesus,” with no mention of the prime duty to edify the people. I’ve heard “Forget the person next to you – it’s all between you and God,” but I’ve not had the courage to shout out, “No it’s not! Scripture says Everything must be done for the building up of the assembly!” It would be like wearing a MAGA hat at a Greta Thunberg rally.

For to the extent that our whole attention is on “coming into God’s presence,” it is not on coming to church to use my gifting to help others reach Christian maturity. Tom Wadsworth points to the result of a long-term lack of depth in discipleship from this: people are very good at singing praise to God, but less good at brotherly love, forbearance, love for neighbour and the other fruits of Jesus’s command to “love one another,” which is the primary biblical reason for meeting.

One local example: our church is growing, but it’s really hard to fill rotas for necessary tasks like manning the creche, making coffee, and so on. But if our reason for coming to church is to experience the worship, then these tasks militate against the reason we’re there. Who would miss out on a “breakthrough” to mind toddlers? On the other hand, if we come together in order to “edify and comfort” one another, like the old days, then signing on to a rota is a great way to do it.

But equally, if the main emphasis of meeting is to wait on God to do something miraculous, then people are not learning that they are supposed to bring “a hymn, or a word of instruction, or a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” We expect the priest pastor to prepare his sermon, and the band to practise, whilst we ourselves come empty-handed.

As I wrote recently, I’m a believer in the trained teaching and pastoral ministries and thus in the larger fellowships that both enable them and result from them. I don’t think that house-churches alone are the best model. But many of you are aware of the problems of the pastor-laity dualism, whether in terms of the cork-in-a-bottle autocracy of too many seminar-trained ministers, or the burn-out of the person who, nowadays, is expected not only to teach and counsel, but to be a psychotherapist to several hundred people day and night, manage safeguarding, obey charity law, etc, etc. The temptation for congregations to devolve responsibilities back to the priest pastor is almost overwhelming, unless a very solid model of every-member ministry has taken hold. That’s easier for a fellowship that has grown out of a house-church than one that’s trying to course-correct sacerdotal errors. But we would lose fewer pastors to stress or sin that way.

Lastly, the difference between worship-led meetings and edification-led meetings is the difference between unattainable goals and attainable ones. That need not be the case, if we could say that our worship is pleasing to God and fulfilling for us. But we seldom do, especially under the Charismatic model. Under the worship model, there seems always to be somewhere better we ought to be.

Under Moses, the rules on worship were clear-cut, and if their hearts were right, and their temple-service compliant with them, they knew that God would accept them. Now, though, the goal is always round the next corner, despite two generations of the Charismatic movement. Once, it was getting your church to “move in the gifts” (and often still is – why, after all these decades, aren’t they universal?). Then it was getting in on Wimber’s signs and wonders, which moving in the gifts missed out, it seems. Then the Toronto Blessing with manifestations Paul would have been embarrassed to describe. Then we needed Passion. And I’ve already mentioned “breakthrough” a few times, for which the nearest biblical similarity I can find is God’s threatening to “break out” against the people of Jerusalem for their idolatry in Jeremiah 4:4.

By contrast, whilst building each other is also a goal-orientated activity, never completed, it is always a successful work-in-progress. There will be some in any church who are already mature, and they will be helping the younger in the faith to grow more mature, whilst the zeal and faith of the newly-converted will help keep the fires of the old-guard burning.

In the end, the seeds of the end of sacerdotalism, in all its forms, were sown by the Old Testament prophets. As Jesus teaches, true worship is the life lived in the light of God, in the temple of Jesus’s body, sacrificed once for all. The rest is building up others. Micah 6:6-8:

⁶ With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
⁸ He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.