February 16, 2013
why priests?
Wills argues that an alternative understanding of Jesus and the eucharist, one more consonant with the New Testament (Hebrews excepted) and informed by Augustine, sees Jesus as coming to harmonize humanity with himself. The eucharistic meal remains a meal (as it was in the first century), not a sacrifice, one that celebrates the union between Christ and his followers. “One does nothing but disrupt this harmony by interjecting superfluous intermediaries between Jesus and his body of believers,” Wills writes. “When these ‘representatives’ of Jesus to us, and of us to Jesus, take the feudal forms of hierarchy and monarchy, of priests and papacy, they affront the camaraderie of Jesus with his brothers.” If some elements of Wills’s thesis sound familiar, they are. In the not-so-distant past, another formidable thinker and critic — someone who also favored Augustine over Aquinas — mounted a similar case. In his 1520 “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation,” Martin Luther argued against “Roman presumption” and punctured the pretensions of the clergy: “Priests, bishops or popes . . . are neither different from other Christians nor superior to them.” Similarly, in “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” published the same year, Luther wrote that “priests are not lords, but servants,” and “the sacrament does not belong to the priests, but to all men.”more from Randall Balmer at the NY Times here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 11:02 AM | Permalink
Comments
What is new here? Nothing. Do we really need George Wills theological babbling?
Posted by: Ross Williams | Feb 16, 2013 11:43:08 AM
It's a little hard to tell here if it is Wills getting things wrong here, or the reviewer. One can distinguish between the body and blood eaten as a meal, as recounted in the New Testament -- and the body and blood shared as the sacrifice, as explained by Aquinas, but we can't get the body and blood out of the experience, so it was never *just* a meal.
One thing is certain, though. Jesus appointed shepherds for his flock, and that is what priests are supposed to be.
Posted by: Carlos | Feb 16, 2013 1:39:24 PM
It's one thing to learn of Wills' ambivalence toward his youthful priestly aspirations but quite another to realize that an acting priest — Randall Balmer — is not taking Wills to task for his criticisms. Balmer's standing by rather than standing for his own calling can be read as a form of consent. What is a call to Holy Orders, anyway? Anyone who has claimed such a vocation and endeavored to follow it can attest to the burden it places on self and family, the vulnerability it renders, the responsibilities of time and energy it demands. It is an awful — awesome — balance between service and leadership — the latter being the lesser of the two job descriptions.
As for the Eucharist, sometimes a meal is just a meal and sometimes a few loaves and fishes become thousands of loaves and fishes for reasons no one can explain but that multiple witnesses report.
The atonement is a tough pill to swallow for anyone, let alone the nonbeliever or the self-identified liberal believer. Why would an "angry God" sacrifice his son? Citing Hebrews as the main, if questionable, source of emphasis on the sacrifice is doing a disservice to the precedent set in the Old Testament. Consider the binding of Isaac in Genesis, consider Abraham's hike up the mountain and his fielding of Isaacs's question: "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Read that passage every year and see if you don't begin to understand why atonement is the stuff of transformation.
Finally, does Balmer, an Episcopal priest, agree with Wills' view of Jesus not as Lord but as one of any number of other prophets? The Episcopal Church is in enough of a mess without its servant-leaders watering down the idea of Jesus, who said, among other things, that "No one gets to the Father except by me."
Strip the Episcopal Church of the sacramental liturgy — the belief that the sacraments are outward signs of inward grace — and maybe you've mollified the wrath of the agnostics, atheists and believers who regard traditions as de facto forms of "exclusion" — but you've deified the fallen world.
Priests are humans, broken and burned. Some have pursued the ministry for corrupt reasons or to evil ends, but others work tirelessly to "put down the mighty from their seat" and "feed the hungry with good things." With any hope, they are more concerned with plodding through the muck on the world's dark stage than with playing to the naysayers in the top balcony.
In the interests of full disclosure, like Wills, some of my best friends are priests. Truly. One of them is my spouse.
Posted by: A.Gordon | Feb 17, 2013 1:39:31 PM
A.Gordon. Christ's statement: 'no one gets to God but through me', does not mean that he thought that all teachers apart from himself are false. No one gets to the top of the ladder without the support of step number six, but that does not mean that, steps one to five, and seven to twelve, are termite ridden and unsafe.
Most Christians clutch at this quotation as a basis for a devilish arrogance that always puts them in conflict with the world's other great faiths. Including Judaism, which Christ clearly saw a a foundation for his teaching. According to the New Testament, Jesus promised he would send a Comforter, the Holy Spirit. This to many implies there are further steps subsequent to him.
By clinging to a false, exclusivist view of Christ, so-called Christians try to limit what is universal.
Helen Keller said that when she first learned about Chirst (after learning language through touch), she knew that He had already been a presence in her life for as long as she could remember. She was not a Christian, she had not heard the name of Jesus, or anything about him. Yet who would be mean enough to say that, feeling his presence, she would not have been saved without learning language and gaining a conceptual understanding of what most Christians think of as Christian faith?
I have known many people from other faiths who are closer to the qualities of Jesus than many who call themselves Christian. Jesus was nothing but love, innocence and selflessness embodied. Anyone who is like that, is admitted to God, regardless of whether they have a name for it or not, or whether or not they have orginised it into a doctrine.
Finally:
May the baby Jesus shut your mouth, and open your eyes.
Posted by: Owen | Feb 18, 2013 1:57:07 AM
(your own personal interpretation of scripture) is specifically rejected by that same scripture. Owen's comment above is a fine example why, and protecting the faith from the like is a primary task of the priesthood; face to face.
Posted by: carlos | Feb 18, 2013 9:04:36 AM
Carlos. Hellen Keller's experience is not MY personal interpretation of scripture. I don't recall being born blind and deaf.
I am not the only person in the world to recognise the contribution of non-Christian OT prophets to Christianity. This is also not my personal view.
The idea that Jesus is universal love, innocence and selflessness embodied - You think I made that up myself!
You desperately need the baby Jesus to shut your mouth and open your mind.
Posted by: Owen | Feb 18, 2013 9:33:01 AM
People don't need intermediaries.
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Feb 18, 2013 11:10:54 AM
Do we really need George Wills theological babbling?
Because the shallow end of the pool is safer.
Out in the deep end one must struggle and think.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Feb 18, 2013 8:19:50 PM
Garry (not George) Wills is a prominent Catholic intellectual who has written for the NYR and other periodicals for decades. He has been known to have his crises of faith. Whoever thinks he's stupid should probably get his name right.
How many non-believers out there have passed through horrific ordeals that make them think: If I were religious, I would be in deep enough shit right now to call a priest. Consider that this reflection is your way of saying you need more help than you are getting, that you cannot think where to turn, that you feel abandoned, endangered and comfortless. Been there? Then you know what it is like to need a priest. Don't make fun of it.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 18, 2013 10:46:20 PM
Elatia. For me, and just about everyone I know, it wouldn't even enter our minds to call a priest. At best I would call a professional trained to deal with the specific problem at hand,
or a secular help line.
Where in the comments above is anyone making fun of people going through crises?
Posted by: RDarcy | Feb 19, 2013 3:13:02 AM
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