Emergence of the Christian Priesthood

In order to address and define the Pauline view of a Christian priesthood, it is necessary to look at how Paul could have come to conclusions or indeed hypotheses about the proper configuration of a priesthood for the nascent Christian cult in the first century AD. To do that, it is necessary to look not only at Paul's own writings, which are evidence of how his thought had been shaped around the issues confronting the new church, but also at writings roughly contemporaneous with his own, which reflect a larger body of thought emergent in the apostolic and post-apostolic periods that was shaping the religious sensibilities of all of those who intended to have a voice in church structure, hierarchy, doctrine, and praxis. According to Roman Catholic doctrine, the idea of a Christian priestho

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iverse, was the only meaningful element of preservation in a world that was about to end. Other issues might arise, but in the scheme of things they would be subsidiary to the overriding issue of the second coming. An important component of such an organization had to be spiritual unity. This, it must be pointed out, is a doctrine of Catholicism that has not changed from the first century onward, and it is connected to the role of the clergy in the spiritual life of the community. In this regard, Thiel (623) cites the Second Vatican Council to the effect that the "'whole body of the faithful who have an anointing that comes from the holy one . . . cannot err in matters of belief.'" Similarly, Osborne develops the idea of what he terms the "ecclesiological presupposition" of Catholic doctrine, which connects the establishment of the institution (and authority) of the church to Jesus's behavior either before or after the Resurrection. Osborne quotes official pre-Vatican II Catholic dogma in this regard: "Christ established the Church as an hierarchical society by bestowing on the Apostles the threefold power of teaching, of ruling and of sanctifying the faithful" (Osborne 32). Whether this declaration accurately reflects Jesus's m
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Approximate Word count = 10757
Approximate Pages = 43 (250 words per page)

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