The doctrine of the universal
priesthood or the priesthood of all believers was at the heart of Luther’s
reform. It figured more prominently in his popular pamphlets than the doctrine
of justification by faith alone. It is not an appendage to evangelical
theology; it is nothing less than a paraphrase of the Reformation concept of
the Church. In the protestant tradition, the universal priesthood has sometimes
become merely a shibboleth, invoked to cast a cloak of spurious sanctity over
abuses of the right of private judgment. As Gordon Rupp remarked: ‘The
priesthood of all believers never means for Luther what it has sometimes meant
in degenerate protestantism, the secularisation of the clergy, the doctrine
that we are all laymen’ (E. Gl Rupp, Patters of Reformation [London, 1969],
315). (Paul D. L. Avis, The Church in the Theology of the Reformers [London:
Marshall Morgan and Sons, 1981], 95)
Luther’s statement of the
universal priesthood derives directly from his fundamental concept of the
Church. The gospel is the Church’s true treasure and the source of its life; it
is expressed and embodied in the preached word and the sacraments) visible
words); the gospel is the possession of every true believer. Thus all
Christians are constituted priests by the gospel in its twofold form of word
and sacrament, for all partake of these. If we have Christ’s word, Luther asserts,
we have Christ himself and all that is his, so sharing in his priesthood. ‘Now
he who has faith and is Christian also has Christ; now if he has Christ, so
that everything Christ has is his, he also has the power to forgive sins; and
if a Christian has the power to forgive sins, he also has the power to do
everything a priest can do.’ (Ibid., 97)
THE
REACTION AGAINST LUTHER’S EARLY VIEW
Among second-generation Reformers,
there was a marked reaction against the spontaneity and liberty of the early
years: a turning away from charismatic ministries, a stress on structure at the
expense of spirit, a growing clericalization of the evangelical Churches. Even
for Melanchthon, so close to Luther himself, ‘the idea of the universal
priesthood had only minor significance’ (Werner Elert, The Structure of
Lutheranism [St. Louis, 1962], 342). At the Diet of Augsburg in 1530,
Melanchthon advised against discussion of the priesthood of all believers,
relegating it to the category of ‘odious and inessential articles which are
commonly debated in the schools’, and the doctrine is not mentioned in the Augsburg
Confession.
Melanchthon’s position is the
antithesis of Luther’s. For Melanchthon, it has been said, the ministerial
office is the living nerve of the Church, on which all depends. The universal priesthood
stands unquestionably in the background of his thought, having little
constitutive significance for his doctrine of the ministry (Helmut Lieberg, Amt
und Ordination bei Luther und Melanchthon [Gottingen, 1962], p. 259). He
goes as far as to say that, just as the Church cannot be without the gospel, so
it also cannot exist without the ministry: ‘To be without pastors would be
tantamount to being without the keys, the gospel and the forgiveness of sins’
(C[orpus]R[eformatorum] 8. 430). God does not save except through the ministers
he has ordained; if the ministry ceased the Church would not exist (CR 12.490).
Where there is no ministry, there is no Church (Non est ecclesia, ubi non
est verbum ministerium: CR 14. 892; cf. 21.832). (Ibid., 102)