Detailed Comment: 1 Peter 2:5, 9 and the
Doctrine of the Priesthood of all Believers
Since the period of the Reformation, the doctrine of the universal
priesthood of believers has been heralded in various ecclesial communions as
“the decisive formula of all non-episcopal Christendom” and “one of the basic
truths of Catholic ecclesiology” (K. E. Kirk and H. Küng, respectively, cited
in Elliott 1966b, 1). One cardinal text seen as the “locus classicus” of this
doctrine is 1 Pet 2:4–10, specifically vv 5 and 9. The popularity of this
doctrine in modern times is due primarily to the great influence of the
sixteenth-century reformer Martin Luther, who gave it a prominent place in his
ecclesiology, with an appeal to 1 Peter 2 as its biblical basis.
In response to the monopolization of the means of grace by an official
priesthood and the cleavage separating clergy and laity, Luther found it
necessary to emphasize the equality before God of all the baptized, laity as
well as clergy, as recipients and mediators of the means of grace. Through
baptism, he insisted, Christians “altogether are consecrated as priests”
(“allesampt durch die tauff zu priestern geweyhet,” WA 6.407.22–25; cf. also
6.564.6–7), pointing to 1 Pet 2:9 (and Rev 5:10) as biblical confirmation for
this thought. Among the features of this doctrine as stressed by Luther were
the equivalent dignity and status conferred on all Christians by baptism; the
Christian’s unobstructed approach to God and his word apart from a mediating
clergy; the priestly office of offering oneself to God and service to others;
and the commission of proclamation given to every Christian within certain
defined areas and occasions (Brunotte 1959, 200). This priesthood of all
believers complements the ministerial priesthood of the officially
ordained—itself, according to Luther, a divine institution. Both general and
specific priesthoods or ministries, moreover, according to Luther, participate,
each in its own fashion, in the priesthood of Christ. For relevant texts, see WA 6.370, 407, 408.32–35, 409.7, 440,
561, 564.6–13; 7.27.17–23; 8.486.27; 11.411.31–413.2; 12.178.26–179.40,
180.17–23; 18.202; 30.2.526–30, 554.2; 38.230.13, 299.19; 41.207.37;
50.632.35–634.15.
The association of this Petrine text with baptism, a general
priesthood, the priesthood of Christ, and Christian holiness and service by no
means originated with Luther but reflects a developing body of theological
thought from the early Fathers onward (see Dabin 1941, 1950, and other works
listed in the BIBLIOGRAPHY). From the second century onward, the development of
a notion of a special priesthood responsible for the eucharistic sacrifice was
paralleled, on occasion, by a notion of the priestly character of all the
faithful. Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Origen, and Chrysostom are representative
of a small chorus of voices. Tertullian, while acknowledging the former, also
gives expression to the latter. Asserting that “they who are chosen into the
sacerdotal order must be men of one marriage” (Exh. cast. 7.2–3), he observes: “It would be idle for us to suppose
(in the case of second marriage) that what is forbidden to priests is allowed
to the laity. Are not laymen also priests? The Scripture says: ‘He has made us
a kingdom and has made us priests for God and his father’ ” (citing Rev
1:6); for the idea that all believers are priests in respect to prayer and
service of God, see also Tertullian, Mon.
12; Or. 28; Exh. cast. 7.3 (cf. Irenaeus, Haer.
4.8.3, “All the apostles of the Lord are priests”).
Justin (Dial. 116) describes
the transformation experienced by those “who believe in Christ the High Priest”
and, alluding to the language and thought of Hebrews, concludes “we are the
true high priestly stock of God (archieratikon
to alēthinon genos), as even God himself bears witness, saying that in
every place among the Gentiles sacrifices are presented to him well-pleasing
and pure. Now God receives sacrifices from no one except His priests” (116.3),
sacrifices explained as the Eucharist and prayer in ch. 117. Origen, in his Homily on Leviticus (9.1), making a
similar point, cites 1 Pet 2:9 for support: “Do you not know that the
priesthood has been given to you, that is to say, to the whole church of God
and to the believing people? Hear Peter say to the faithful: ‘an elect people,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.’ You, then, have the
priesthood since you are a priestly people, and so you ought to offer to God a
sacrifice of praise, a sacrifice of prayers, a sacrifice of mercy, a sacrifice
of purity, a sacrifice of sanctity” (cf. also 6.1; 9.9 [believers are made
priests through baptism]; and Mart.
30). John Chrysostom (Hom. 1 Cor.
3.7) roots the laity’s participation in the triple role of priest, prophet, and
king in their reception of baptism: “In baptism you have become king, and
priest, and prophet,” with no reference, however, to 1 Peter. The Venerable
Bede (PL 93,50–51), commenting on 1
Pet 2:9 and representing the harmonizing typical of the Fathers, observes:
“They [the believers] are a royal
priesthood (regale sacerdotium)
because they are united to the body of Christ, the supreme king and true
priest. As sovereign he grants them his kingdom, and as high priest he washes
away their sins by the offering of his blood. Peter says they are a royal
priesthood; they must always remember to hope for an everlasting kingdom and to
offer to God the sacrifice of a blameless life.”
As this notion of a priesthood of all believers developed, with or
without reference to 1 Peter, it was thus variously associated with direct
access to the presence of God; union with the body of Christ, the high
priesthood of Christ, and Christ as king (concepts absent from 1 Peter); the
Church as a high-priestly stock; the missionary calling of the Church; and the
lives of spiritual sacrifice, praise, and holiness expected of all its members.
On the whole, however, the idea of a priesthood of all the faithful in the
early and medieval church, developed through a harmonizing of various biblical
themes and writings and remained an occasional and muted theme.
It was Luther’s creative combination and elaboration of these ideas,
however, to meet a crisis of his own time that enabled his thought to have a
profound and indelible impact upon subsequent thinking concerning the nature of
the Church, its ministry, and those who share its priestly character. On
Luther’s teaching concerning the priesthood of all believers, see Rade 1918;
Storck 1953; Brunotte 1959; Prenter 1961; Mühlhaupt 1963; and the works listed
in Elliott 1966b, 3. J. Reumann (1970) provides a nuanced summary of the
relation of universal priesthood of the baptized and the office of ministry in
the Reformation and post-Reformation Lutheran tradition (see also V. Pfitzner
1971). C. Eastwood (1962), in surveying the period from the Reformation to the
twentieth century, claims that “the history of the Reformation, the History of
Puritanism, and the History of the Evangelical Revival are the story of the
extent to which Christians have understood and applied the doctrine of the
priesthood of all believers” (Eastwood 1962, 241).
Luther’s initial ruminations on this doctrine and his recourse to 1
Pet 2 were prompted more by theological than exegetical concerns, and it must
be questioned whether this did not color his reading and use of 1 Pet 2. Until
this present century, however, 1 Pet 2:4–10 had not been subjected to an
independent and thorough exegetical analysis. This gap eventually was filled by
the articles of J. Blinzler (1949), L. Cerfaux (1939), and the monograph of the
present author (Elliott 1966b). One of the results of these investigations is
the conclusion that 1 Pet 2:4–10 has little, if anything, to do with the idea
of the universal priesthood of believers as this notion was expounded by Luther
and the theologians who followed his lead (see Elliott 1966b, 6–8, 219–26; W.
Pesch 1970). A recollection of the following points makes this patently clear.
(1) As is evident from its structure and content and from the
accentuation of the election of both Jesus Christ and the believing community,
1 Pet 2:4–10 is designed as an affirmation of the elect and holy character of
the believing community, which, through faith, is one with the elect and holy
Christ. Election rather than priesthood
is its central focus. The theme of election that extends from the letter’s
beginning to its end (1:1; 5:13) receives here its most profound articulation.
The passage, in fact, constitutes one of the most elaborate statements on
Christian election in the entire NT.
(2) The covenant formula of lxx Exod 19:6, which included the terms basileion and hierateuma, in accord with prior Israelite interpretation of this
text was one of several OT texts employed by the Petrine author to explicate
the elect and holy character of the covenantal people of God as once affirmed
at Sinai and now affirmed of God’s people of the end time.
(3) The term hierateuma,
like the other honorific epithets for Israel with which it is joined here
(“elect stock,” “holy people,” “people of God”), is a collective noun designating the believing community as a whole,
akin to the collective terms “brotherhood” (2:17; 5:9; cf. 5:13), “flock of
God” (5:2), and “household of God” (4:17). It does not mean “priests” (hiereis) or “priesthood” (hierateia), but “priestly community.”
The term cannot apply to the believers as individuals, but only to the
believing community as community, as
is true of the other collective terms as well. The substantive basileion, “royal residence” (v 9b),
likewise is applied to the believing community in its entirety and is
interpreted as the “house(hold) of the Spirit” (v 5d).
(4) In both 1 Peter and its source, Exod 19:6, “priestly community”
expresses the holiness of the
covenant community and the immediacy of its relation to God, both of which are
distinctive qualities of the believing community that the author stresses
throughout the first major section of the letter with other language as well
(1:2, 3–5, 14–16, 17–21, 22; 2:5 [“holy priestly community”], 9–10; cf. also
3:5, 15, 18c; 5:7a, 10). The action of the believers as priestly community is
to offer “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God” (2:5f), a cultic image that
occurs only here in 1 Peter and that is not elaborated on anywhere else in the
letter. Similarly, neither hierateuma
nor a concept of Christian priesthood occurs elsewhere in 1 Peter and hierateuma plays no independent role in
the ecclesial thought of the letter. The appearance of hierateuma in 2:5 and 9 is due solely to its place in the covenant
formula of Exod 19:6, which is used by the Petrine author to affirm the
election and holiness of the household of faith.
(5) No mention is made in 2:4–10 of baptism or any baptismal
“ordination” or “consecration” to priesthood on the part of the believers.
(6) Nowhere in 1 Peter is there any reference to the priesthood of
Christ or any suggestion that believers share in the priesthood of Christ by
virtue of their constituting a “priestly community.” In the book of Hebrews, on
the other hand, Jesus Christ is identified metaphorically as a priest (Heb
7:15, 21; 8:4; 10:21) or high priest (Heb 2:17; 3:1; 4:14–15; 5:5, 10; 6:20;
7:26; 8:1; 9:11). In Revelation, Christians are denoted metaphorically as
priests as well (Rev 1:6; 5:10; 20:6). In other NT writings, cultic metaphors
occasionally are used to describe the proclamation of the gospel (Rom 15:16),
the gift of material support (Phil 4:18), or aspects of salvation (Heb 4:16;
8:1; 9:11–14, 23–28; 10:10, 19–22; 13:10–16). No single NT author, however,
makes any attempt to integrate these random images into a unified teaching on
Christian priesthood, and this certainly includes the author of 1 Peter. To
attribute these various motifs to 1 Peter is to impute alien notions to this
text and to distort its focus (see Elliott 1966b, 219–22; and 1968). In 1 Pet
2:4–10, the association of believers with Christ is that of “living stones,”
who through faith are one with Christ, the “living stone,” and who are “elect”
as he was “elect” in God’s sight.
In the light of these facts, the claim that 1 Pet 2:5 and 9 provides
the biblical basis for a “priesthood of all believers,” as put forth by Luther
and others, is exegetically unwarranted. Although this text indeed celebrated
the dignity and honor of the Christian community before God, Luther fastened on
and singled out the term hierateuma,
inaccurately applied it to individual believers, and exaggerated its role and
significance within its context. Consequently, his preoccupation with the
concept of priesthood and his individualistic interpretation of the collective
term hierateuma resulted in a
misreading of 2:4–10 that ignored or obscured the actual aim of this text and
its stress on the believers’ union with Christ, their distinction from
nonbelievers, and their consolidation as the elect and holy people of God, the
household of the Spirit.
A broader “biblical doctrine” of a priesthood of all believers was
constructed by Luther and others only through a harmonization of images and
themes from originally distinct and independent sources: Paul’s writings,
Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation. In respect to Luther, specifically, see his
treatises “Concerning the Ministry” (LW
40:3–44), “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation” (LW 44:115–217), “The Misuse of the Mass”
(LW 36:127–230), and his “Sermons on
the First Epistle of St. Peter” (LW
30:1–145). Paul, however, while speaking of his own ministry in cultic terms,
never refers to Christ, himself, or other believers as “priest” or to followers
as constituting a “priesthood.” The image of the “body of Christ” he employs to
affirm the unity of Christ and Christians and the notion of diversity within
unity (Rom 12:3–8; 1 Cor 12:4–31) is unique to Paul and appears nowhere in
Hebrews, 1 Peter, or Revelation. Hebrews also describes Christian action in the
cultic terms of sacrifice, as do the other three documents, while also
presenting Christ as priest and high priest. But the point of this writing is
that the priesthood of Christ is unique and inimitable. Revelation describes
believers metaphorically as priests but focuses primarily on their reigning
with Christ, with no suggestion that believers as priests share in the
priesthood of Christ, a thought absent in 1 Peter as well. Attention to the specific content of all these
independent writings makes it clear that no single NT composition presents a
notion of a priesthood of all believers as constructed by theologians in later
time.
It has long been recognized that the Reformation doctrine of the
priesthood of all believers was a product of the ecclesiastical polemics of the
sixteenth century and an attempt to affirm the priestly character of all the baptized over against the
“papist” position that the status and responsiblities of priesthood were
reserved exclusively to ordained clergy. This was a time when the primary
content and intent of biblical texts were often misconstrued and misapplied in
the rush for proof texts used to bolster one theological position or another.
Luther’s use of 1 Pet 2:5 and 9 as the biblical basis for his position is a
case in point. Following Luther’s lead, the Reformation churches in particular
have continued to stress the rights, privileges, and authority of each
believing Christian and have continued to link these qualities with the text of
1 Pet 2, along with numerous other NT passages. Given the original polemical
context in which Luther formulated this doctrine, the affirmation of this
teaching by the Roman Catholic bishops of the Second Vatican Council is nothing
short of ironic; see the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church 9.10.34; the Constitution
on the Holy Liturgy 14; the Decree on
the Lay Apostolate 3; the Decree on
the Service and Life of Priests 2; and the Decree on the Mission of the Church 15. Here too, however, though
without explicit reference to Luther, one encounters a combination and
harmonization of biblical texts from diverse sources in a proof text method
that fails to respect their unique content and the function in their own contexts;
see the insightful critique of the Roman Catholic exegete H. Frankemölle (1987,
45) and, for a more exegetically nuanced appreciation of 1 Pet 2, the study on
the church by Roman Catholic scholar J. M. R. Tillard (1992). For an ecumenical
as well as historical perspective on the doctrine since Luther, see H. M. Barth
(1990).
However efforts at ecclesial reform and restructuration are to be
judged, and whatever other NT texts might support this notion of a priesthood
of all believers, any appeal to 1 Pet 2 must be regarded as exegetically
unfounded. According to the definition of this doctrine by the Danish Lutheran
theologian R. Prenter, “one speaks of a general priesthood (allgemeines Priestertum) when each member of the people can exercise
partial or entire priestly rights and
functions” (Prenter 1961, 581, italics mine). If Prenter’s succinct definition
adequately captures the central thrust of this doctrine as currently conceived,
then this doctrine and the related doctrine of a Christian ministry of the
laity will have to seek biblical support in texts other than 1 Pet 2:4–10,
which depicts not the rights and privileges of individuals but the electedness
and holiness of the communal people
of God. This Petrine passage ought not to be enlisted in considerations of the
distinction and relation of laity and clergy, the general ministry of the
faithful, or the special ministry of the ordained because these issues are
foreign to the actual point of this passage.
This is not to question the clear biblical foundation for a theology
of the ministry of all the faithful,
as Luther also stressed. That all baptized Christians are called to serve and
minister to one another is a thought abundantly documented in the NT and
evident in 1 Peter as well (4:8–11). Among the numerous treatments of ministry
in the NT, the essay of J. Quinn 1970 is especially succinct and instructive;
for more general observations and the preference for a “ministry of leadership”
over “priesthood,” see also the apposite remarks of H. Küng 1976, 486–88. This
is also not to challenge efforts to formulate a theology of priesthood (in the
sense of universal ministry)
consistent with the entire NT. The point of this comment is only to emphasize
that 1 Pet 2:4–10 is not directly relevant to these concerns and to insist upon
an appreciation of 1 Pet 2:4–10 on its own terms. (John
H. Elliott, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB
37B; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 449-55)
