Gary North

Peter’s announcement of the universalization of the Old Testament priesthood was the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel that they, if they were obedient to His commandments, would become a kingdom of priests, a holy nation (Ex. 19:5-6). It is this New Testament passage, perhaps more than any other, which has served Protestants as the foundation of their opposition to the Roman Catholic Church’s system of sacerdotalism, the doctrine that a priesthood mediates salvation between God and men. The heart of Luther’s message, salvation through faith alone, necessarily challenged the sacerdotalism of his day, and it earned him excommunication. He had denied the mediatorial position of the priesthood as the sole agency for the dispensing of personal salvation to church members. In opposition to sacerdotalism, Luther preached that most Protestant of doctrines, the priesthood of all believers.

(Actually, this was not the most Protestant of doctrines. The one doctrine universally held in the seventeenth century by every Protestant church, from the highest of high church Anglicans to the wildest of the Anabaptist of Fifth Monarchy sects, was the identification of the papacy with the antichrist. This doctrine was inserted into the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter XXV, section 6, to the embarrassment of modem American Presbyterians, who have seen fit to footnote this passage into oblivion, and quite properly so. However, it is interesting to witness the most orthodox of Presbyterians drop the one doctrine which was the touchstone of Protestant orthodoxy from Luther’s day until about 1930. At least they set a most-needed precedent, namely, confessional revision of even the most universally accepted traditions of Protestantism. They recognized that the presence in the Confession of unsubstantiated human opinion, in contrast to clearly revealed biblical truth, should not be tolerated, once men realize that the traditional opinion is incorrect. It is a precedent that should be honored.)

The problem with the priesthood of all believers, in the eyes of most ecclesiastical authorities, is that one never knows exactly where such a doctrine will lead. From the beginning, Luther and the other orthodox Protestant reformers worried about this theological weapon. It was an ideal tool in their battles against Roman Catholic priests, but it could also be used effectively by revolutionary sects against the authority of ordained Protestant ministers. Since these ministers were usually on the side of the political authorities in the struggle against the revolutionary sects, the leaders of the left-wing sects found it convenient to preach this doctrine to their followers. The doctrine was immediately modified by Lutheran and Calvinist theologians. While the priesthood was not to be understood as the sole means of imparting grace to the faithful, meaning special grace or saving faith, the ordained leaders still had to be respected as ministers of God and as leaders within the congregations. They were more than laymen, possessing the exclusive rights of administering the sacraments, which were reduced from seven to two, baptism and holy communion (the Lord’s Supper). The Westminster Confession, after limiting the sacraments to these two, adds: "neither of which may be dispensed by any, but by a minister of the Word lawfully ordained" (XXVII: 4). The word "priest" once again became synonymous with "ordained minister."

In what ways, then, have New Testament believers become priests? In what ways are we priests in a new and different sense from Old Testament believers? What did Peter have in mind when he announced this fulfillment of prophecy? The doctrine has to mean more than a merely negative claim that Protestant laymen no longer have to regard as sacraments five of Rome’s seven rites. In what active, official ways are all of us priests? For four hundred years, this doctrine has been only a negative argument used by Protestants to challenge the monopolistic claims of Rome. It is not that Protestant churches acknowledge that laymen are priests in any positive, official sense, but only that laymen are freed from five-sevenths of the sacramental claims of a rival priesthood. The two remaining sacraments must be administered by an ordained, exclusive clerical order. Therefore, the priesthood of all believers is still interpreted by Protestant churches as meaning the priesthood of few believers, ecclesiastically speaking, and in traditional Christian theology, ecclesiastical authority is what really counts.

The Protestant doctrine of the priesthood has remained dualistic. The offices of the Protestant visible churches have been equated with the office of Old Testament priest, and, subsequently, the sacramental offices have been reduced to one, that of minister. On the other hand, the priesthood of all believers has still retained some life as a formal theological concept, though carefully and systematically emptied of content. The priesthood that is now universalized has been limited to the role of family religious leadership. This "universal priest" has authority in his household, but this authority does not extend into the visible church in a formal sense. The "universal priest" is not ordained in any formal church ceremony, nor is he called in any special way into official ecclesiastical service to the flock. In fact, the universal priesthood is the flock, to be led by the pastors, and occasionally sheared by the unscrupulous. The Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is summarized thusly: "There are priests, and then there are priests." This is in stark contrast to the Roman Catholic position, "There are priests, and then there are priests."

Priests in the Old Testament possessed extensive sovereignty. They served as medical officers who had the power of quarantine (Lev. 14). They served as direct oracles of God (Num. 27:21). They served as judges and civil servants. They offered sacrifices. They were bearers of authority.

The modern Protestant doctrine of the priesthood, meaning church officers, now limits the authority of the priests to strictly ecclesiastical authority. Deacons operate charitable services, elders make judgments in disputes among church members, and ministers (possibly assisted by elders) perform the two sacraments. Rare is the pastor who anoints the sick with oil (James 5:14-15). The role of the priest has been drastically reduced institutionally. Ministers preach, administer a pair of sacraments, make decisions with the ruling elders, and cooperate with deacons. They have many unofficial church tasks, such as weddings, funerals, visiting the sick, raising money, and so forth, but these tasks are not defined as being part of the office of priest as such. To make such a claim would be to risk reviving the old Roman Catholic sacerdotalism. The modern priest is therefore marked by these special features:

1. Ordination of some kind

2. The exclusive right to administer two sacraments

3. The right to execute ecclesiastical discipline

Some Protestant churches also include preaching in the list of exclusively priestly functions. Presbyterians and Episcopalians are fussy in this regard, though some exceptions are allowed some of the time. To gain access to the pulpit on a regular basis, you must be ordained. Since the Calvinist tradition has emphasized the marks of the true church as being the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments (and sometimes including the exercise of church discipline), the minister has tended to become the exclusive true priest, since he alone is ordained to perform all of these tasks.

What is the meaning, then, of the priesthood of all believers? Historically, the meaning within the orthodox, conservative Protestant churches has been this: a fine weapon to use on Roman Catholics, an illegitimate weapon in the hands of sects—sects being defined as those who use the weapon against others besides Roman Catholics—and a pleasant, painless doctrine which is seldom mentioned any more. Theologically, the priesthood of all believers ought to be understood to mean that every believer serves as a mediator of God's covenantal authority in the tasks associated with the subduing of the earth. The New Covenant of Jesus Christ announces God’s victory, in time and on earth, over Satan’s rival claims. If we are priests, then each person should bear the signs of such authority. The Protestant rule should be: "The universalization of all priestly functions, unless specifically limited to one group by explicit biblical testimony."

There is no question that the Bible limits access to the offices of elder and deacon. The bishop (episcopase) must be male, the husband of one wife, sober, patient, and a man who rules well in his own household (I Tim. 3:1-5). Likewise, deacons must be grave, honest, not greedy, husbands of one wife, and good rulers over their children (I Tim. 3:8-12). If we are to believe what we read, at least two unconventional conclusions seem obvious. First, bishops (elders) and deacons must be married men, or at least widowers. Probably a man unlawfully deserted or divorced by his wife would still be eligible. Second, it should be pointed out that bigamists are not eligible, indicating that in the past, churches have been unwise in allowing missionaries to ordain tribal chieftans as church leaders when they were married to several wives. (Forcing them to unload all but one wife was even worse, since the older wives would be forced to go, turning them into social pariahs or even prostitutes.)

If the second conclusion is correct, then we should ask ourselves another question. Is a polygamist forever barred from full church membership? If a pagan from a polygamistic culture is converted, and if he cannot lawfully be compelled to divorce his wives within the framework of the prevailing culture, on what basis can he be excluded from full membership? The early church seems to have faced this problem squarely. Such a man was not permitted to assume the offices of elder or deacon. The New Testament does not exclude the polygamist from membership, however. The coming of Christian culture is not a radically discontinuous event. It must first shape the pagan culture during the period of transition. Christianity is socially conservative, despite the fact that it is radical to the core with respect to the secular foundations of social and political order. Orthodox Christianity acknowledges that Christians have sufficient time, over many generations, to subdue the earth to the glory of God. Christians count the costs of cultural transition, or should, protecting the integrity of the church (no polygamists as officers) while simultaneously refusing to create social chaos (forcing all but one wife out of their home). Even in our own culture, we have no way of coping with the problem of the woman who marries a married man, having been deceived by him. She is given no legal rights with respect to his estate. She is counted as a non-wife. The injured party is penalized and is forced out of a home which she had relied on. There is something wrong here—something which contemporary Christian social and legal theorists have been content to ignore.

There is another argument which must be considered. Some theologians have concluded that since Paul was a bachelor, the strict interpretation of his language regarding "the husband of one wife" must be abandoned, that is, if a man is married, he must be married to only one wife. There are two errors in this approach. First, it assumes that Paul was a bachelor. The Bible nowhere tells us this. He was unmarried, but as to whether he was a bachelor or a widower, the Bible is silent. The one passage that is used to prove that Paul was a bachelor, I Corinthians 7:7-8, proves no such thing. It proves only that he was single. He was addressing both single people and widows or widowers: "For I would that all men were even as I myself. ... I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I." To argue from silence that Paul was in fact a bachelor, and then to conclude that it is lawful to ordain bachelors, since Paul was ordained, is not valid exegesis or logic. The second error in this approach is to conclude that Paul’s miraculous conversion and ordination by Christ (Gal. 1:1), even if he was a bachelors a valid argument to be used against the specific injunctions of this specially ordained apostle. Why should we set aside his stated rules for ordination just because God ordained him in a unique way? God may have set aside this general rule in order to achieve a specific purpose, just as He allowed both Rahab and Ruth to become part of the covenant line of Christ (Matt. 1:5), despite the fact that Moabites and other Canaanitic peoples were supposed to be screened for ten generations before they could become full citizens of Israel (Deut. 23:3). Paul’s apostleship was already unique, whether he was a bachelor or not. When we ordain men to the offices of the church through conventional means, we are not to conduct the ordination in direct opposition to the requirements set forth by God’s Word. We are not to enact our own miracles or special rules when God’s standards are stated clearly. There is nothing unclear about the requirement concerning a man’s having to be the husband of one wife before he can seek or accept the office of deacon or elder.

It is very interesting to observe that both deacons and elders have to prove themselves first as husbands and fathers, or at least as husbands, before they are to be ordained. They must have already exercised godly, competent authority. The family is therefore the primary training ground for church officers—not seminaries, and not even fully accredited, four-year colleges. It has been the long-standing practice of Reformed churches to substitute proficiency at taking formal academic examinations in place of demonstrated competence in heading a household. The footnote has therefore replaced the family as the preferred screening device for ordination to the teaching eldership, which supposedly must be distinguished from the ruling eldership. (The Presbyterian version of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers has always been: "There are priests, and then there are priests, but most important there are priests.") If a man wants to be a minister, he had better have his footnotes in order, whether or not he has his family in order, or a family at all.

Some readers may think that I am exaggerating. Not at all. Consider the official denominational standards of the church which regards itself, with good evidence, as the most thoroughly Calvinistic Presbyterian church in America, and probably the world.

Because it is highly reproachful to religion and dangerous to the church to trust the holy ministry to weak and ignorant men, the presbytery shall admit a candidate to licensure only if he has received a bachelor of arts degree, or its academic equivalent, from an accredited college or university. He must also have completed at least two years of study in a theological seminary.¹

The overcoming of ignorance and weakness is clearly understood to be a direct function of training in some institution of higher education which is accredited, meaning approved by the apostate, godless, rebellious intellectuals who are warring against orthodoxy. An unaccredited Christian college is insufficient; better to be a graduate of a state-financed, officially neutral, apostate university. The implications of this kind of standard cannot be overemphasized. It indicates that the ministers, as distinguished from ruling elders, will have been compromised with secularism, to one extent or other, in their educational backgrounds, and it also indicates that they will be tempted to set themselves apart from ruling elders on the basis of prior performance of certain academic exercises. After all, as the same book states, "The office of the minister is the first in the church for dignity or usefulness."²

1. The Standards of Government Discipline and Worship of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia: Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1965), p. 19.

2. Ibid., p. 83.

Significantly, these same standards do not mention any requirement for godly rule in a household, either for the ruling elder or for the so-called teaching elder. Furthermore, nothing explicit is stated in these standards concerning the absolute requirement that churches remove from high office any man who subsequently loses control over his household. No definition of godly household rule is offered. What is specifically mentioned is the requirement of formal academic training for the so-called teaching elder. (The requirements were softened somewhat in the post-1968 version of the church’s standards: candidates now need only a year and a half of seminary.)

The Bible requires that all elders (bishops) be able to teach (I Tim. 3:2). The Bible sets forth one set of standards for ordination (I Tim. 3:1-7; Tit. 1:5-9). The official tasks of the elders are always identical (I Pet. 5:1-11). What is the basis for distinguishing teaching elders from ruling elders? Romans 12:6-8 lists these gifts: prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, ruling, mercifulness. Surely these are not separate offices. The other great passage in Scripture which deals with the division of labor within the church, I Corinthians 12, also cannot be used successfully to establish multiple elderships: "And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues" (I Cor. 12:28). Yet attempts are made to single out "governments" or "governings" as the basis of pluralized elderships. What, we might ask, became of teachers as a separate office? Answer: it was a separate office which has been swallowed up, somehow, by teaching elders.

The attempt is made to separate "elders who rule well" from "they who labor in the word and doctrine."³ However, as any Presbyterian, Baptist, or other elder can tell you, the "double honour" of American Protestantism is not connected with a salary. The laborers, in this case, are clearly not worthy of their rewards, if by rewards we have in mind (as Paul did) cash, checks, or money orders, which are the modern equivalent of corn (grain). Naturally, the "especially" crowd does receive its financial reward. Somehow, the magical word "especially" converts "double honour" into cold cash. Ministers get paid.

What we have seen in the hierarchical denominations, as well as in a significant number of the congregationally ordered churches, is the continuing elevation of formal academic performance over the requirement that church officers be competent heads of families. The family, which is the training ground of all service and authority, is forgotten. Protestant sacerdotalism has imitated Rome. The self-policing ecclesiastical hierarchies screen candidates in terms of essentially bureaucratic performance standards. Robert's Rules of Order is preeminent. The academic degree is supreme. And we find, much to our surprise, that church hierarchies are less like families and more like university faculties or low-level branches of the bureaucratized civil government. Institutionally, the salt has lost its savor. We find the same pettiness, arrogance, and incompetence in making decisions in church assemblies that we find in university life or civil government.

Ordination is a valid concept. It is intimately linked to family authority. When it is separated from the training ground of family life, ordination becomes bureaucratic. So it is with Roman Catholicism, which long ago reversed Paul’s dictum and required all priests to be the husbands of no wife. So it has been in modern Protestantism, liberal and conservative. The family has been deemphasized, and the result, universally, has been the bureaucratization of the churches.

When churches begin to depose ordained men who have not ruled their families well, there will be hope. When churches separate one elder’s tasks, from another only in terms of each elder’s specific talents and the local church’s needs, there will be hope. When all elders are paid in terms of their value to the church, there will be hope. Until then, the best we can do is hope for hope—or, as the case may be, hope against hope. Bureaucrats are almost impossible to dislodge, as is the bureaucratic mentality.

The priesthood in the Old Testament had an almost exclusive monopoly of administering the sacraments. (The exception was the father’s role in the family ceremonies during Passover.) Only the high priest could enter the holy of holies, and then only once a year (Lev. 16). But with the death of Christ, the final high priest, the veil of the temple was rent (Matt. 27:51). The holy of holies no longer was separated from the rest of the temple. The kingdom of priests was established.

Who has the authority to perform the sacraments in New Testament times? If we are all priests, does each Christian have the right to administer the sacraments? If not, why not? Is the mark of the priest, meaning the priest, his exclusive monopoly of administering the sacraments? In other words, is the administration of the sacraments the exclusive right of ordained church officers?

The answer of virtually all Christian churches is yes, the church officers have the exclusive right of administering the sacraments, at least in the normal course of events. Protestants limit the sacraments to baptism and the Lord’s Supper (holy communion), and these are the exclusive right of ordained men, or in the case of liberal or Pentecostal denominations, ordained men and women.

Before considering the accuracy of this Protestant position with respect to the administration of the sacraments, let us examine the nature of the sacraments.

Baptism, argue Christians generally, is the New Testament equivalent of the Hebrew rite of circumcision. It is now administered to both males and females. Baptist groups, who are immersionists, focus on the death and resurrection of Christ and the symbolic link of immersion to this theme. They also baptize only those who have made a profession of faith, arguing that a person’s birth into the family of God comes at the time of conversion, and therefore baptism at birth should remain parallel to circumcision in a spiritual sense, not a physical sense. They do not baptize infants because infants have not yet been born into the spiritual family of God. Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Episcopalian churches sprinkle or pour, rather than immerse, focusing on the cleansing symbolism of sprinkling, the cleansing from sin (Ezek. 36:25). They believe that infants should be baptized, paralleling the rite of circumcision more closely.

Meredith G. Kline’s monumental but brief study, By Oath Consigned (1968), departs from both positions. He argues that baptism is indeed the Christian replacement of circumcision, but he finds a unique meaning to circumcision that has been ignored by Christian scholars for hundreds of years. Circumcision was the mark of the covenant; specifically, a law covenant. This covenant placed a person under the rule of a sovereign God, in the same way that treaties between kings and vassals were made by rulers in the ancient Near East.⁴ Circumcision meant that a person was being placed under the two-edged sword of the law covenant: unto blessing for obedience, or unto destruction for disobedience. Circumcision, as a sign of the law covenant, served as a seal of the promise to the elect or as a seal of doom to the cursed. The same rite performed both functions.⁵

Baptism is a testimony to the covenant of redemption in exactly the same way. Its form is that of water. This, argues Kline, refers back to the water ordeals of the Old Testament (and ancient Near East in general) such as Noah’s flood, the crossing of the Red Sea and the Jordan, Jonah’s three days in the sea, and other symbolic oath signs.⁶ Thus, he concludes, immersion is probably the preferable form of baptism for adults, not because it symbolizes the death and resurrection of Christ, but because it is like the water ordeals that were symbolic tokens of covenant curses and covenant deliverances.⁷ On the other hand, Kline also believes in infant baptism, since it has the same meaning as circumcision. It does not affirm the automatic inclusion of the baptized child into the covenant; it only affirms his placement under the covenant’s two-edged promises. Kline is, therefore, a Presbyterian immersionist, though he thinks that infants may be sprinkled.

4. Meredith G. Kline, By Oath Consigned (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), ch. 1. The essays were first published in the mid-1960’s in the Westminster Theological Journal.

5. Ibid., ch. 3.

6. Ibid., ch. 4. See, for example, Isaiah 54:9-10.

7. Ibid., p. 83.

Those of us who have been convinced by Kline’s research and arguments have a different view of the sacrament of baptism from the views held by traditional churches. The essence of the rite of baptism is therefore covenanted authority. The one who baptizes another places that person under the terms of the new covenant. Of course, every man is always under the rule of God’s law, but the ceremony of baptism is the way in which the confessing Christian affirms the covenant, either for himself or for his children. He places himself and his children under law. The baptizing person affirms that he, too, is under God’s authority. Baptism, therefore, is not the mark of salvation as such; it is the mark of godly subordination and authority. As in the passages of Deuteronomy 8 and 28, adherence to the law brings blessings, and disobedience brings judgment. The Christian announces that he has faith that Jesus Christ fulfilled the terms of the covenant, suffered its curses in place of the Christian, and subsequently brought him to salvation. Christ’s obedience to the law covenant is the foundation—the only possible foundation—of the covenant of absolute and unconditional promise. The covenant of law is fulfilled in Christ; the covenant of promise therefore has its legal foundation; the covenant of redemption is delivered to God’s elect.

The issue was not conversion. The issue was covenantal authority. The men of the city had accepted the symbol of covenantal authority. They were subordinate to their prince, and he had placed them under the terms of the covenant, whether to blessing or destruction. By destroying the city’s males, the sons of Jacob had executed unlawful judgment, for the men of the city had publicly offered a sacrifice for the sin of Shechem when they submitted to the rite of circumcision. There had been no new crime committed by the ruler or his people that warranted judgment by Jacob’s sons. Jacob understood this.

Baptism, since it is an extension of circumcision, should extend to all those under the permanent or covenantal authority of a baptized converted man. An unconverted wife should be baptized when her husband is baptized. Why? Because she is now under the administration of God’s law. She vowed to love, honor, and obey him; now that he is under the rule of Christ’s law, she is, too. So are the children. If we had permanent servants, or long-term contracts for our servants, they would also be baptized (Gen. 17:10-13). The criterion is not personal affirmation of faith in the atoning work of Christ. The criterion is the position of subordination to a ruler who has placed himself under God’s law and the ministers of God’s judgment. This is why Abraham circumcised his servants (Gen. 17:27).

Philip was a lawfully appointed deacon. Indeed, he and Stephen were among the very first deacons ever ordained to the office (Acts 6:1-6). He was not an elder. On what basis, then, do modern churches not accept as valid the baptisms performed independently by a deacon? How is it that the Westminster Confession of Faith states that both sacraments must be dispensed only "by a minister of the Word lawfully ordained" (XXVII:4)? The answer should be clear: Protestant sacerdotalism. The plain teaching of Scripture is insufficient to overcome the entrenched tradition of sacerdotalism. Ironically, both the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church are less sacerdotal, with respect to the validity of baptisms performed by laymen, than most of the Protestant churches. They both acknowledge that while it is improper for laymen, women, or heretics to baptize people, once performed, neither church requires rebaptism. The Lutherans hold the same view. The Reformed churches are silent in their creeds concerning this possibility. Ministers alone may baptize.

In contrast to the New Testament, consider the words of Y. Feenstra, in the conservative and Calvinistic Encyclopedia of Christianity, on the topic, "Baptism (Reformed View)": "The place of administering baptism should be in the midst of the congregation, in public worship. The church as an organization was entrusted by Christ with its two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and it is un-Biblical for individuals to usurp the prerogatives that belong to the church alone."⁸ In the next paragraph, he writes, "As to the time of administration, we can only say that it is to be sought for as soon as possible." But "as soon as possible" must be interpreted in terms of "in the midst of the congregation, in public worship." Baptism of schismatics and heretics is lawful, he says, unless those baptizing are not Trinitarians. However, such baptism must be "administered in a circle of Christian believers, at the hands of a Christian minister qualified to perform the baptismal act. . . ."⁹ Baptism by heretical ministers is tolerable; baptism by laymen is not. This is sacerdotalism.

8. The Encyclopedia of Christianity, ed. Edwin H. Palmer (Wilmington, Del.: National Foundation for Christian Education, 1964,), vol. I, p. 536.

9. Ibid., p. 537.

On the other side of the traditional controversy stands Baptist apologist Paul K. Jewett. He is not concerned about the speed of baptism, but he is also not concerned about the ordination of the baptizer:

Inasmuch as our Lord did not prescribe it, Baptists have never contended for a precise rubric of administration with reference to external circumstances. It is immaterial whether the candidate be baptized immediately upon conversion or after a period of instruction; whether baptism take place in a river or in a baptistry made for this purpose; whether it be administered on some festival day, as Easter or Pentecost, or on any day; and whether the administrator be duly ordained or a layman.¹⁰

10. Ibid., I, p. 518.

Nevertheless, his next sentence tells us what is important: "Of course all worship is to be decent and in order, and therefore baptism may not be privately administered at the whim of any individual, but only in the presence of the assembled church and by someone duly appointed thereunto." Busy Ethiopian eunuchs need not apply.

Both Feenstra and Jewett can agree on two points: the assembled church in a worship ceremony is the only proper place of baptism, and the baptism must be administered by someone approved by the church. Feenstra, following the traditional Reformed view, wants only ministers to baptize people; Jewett is willing to allow laymen to do it, if they are church-approved, that is, in some way ordained. But the institutional church, assembled in official worship, is the heart and soul of Protestant baptism. This is also the heart and soul of Protestant sacerdotalism.

For the Philippian jailer, the prime consideration was his own profession of faith. This was also true of the Ethiopian eunuch. A deacon could administer the rite, or an apostle. It could be done in a river, in a house, or perhaps even in a jail. Baptism could be by immersion and (it would seem) by some mode utilizing less water. What was central, administratively, was speed, not congregational worship.

Modern churches do not take the circumcision-baptism analogy so seriously that they require infant baptism on the eighth day after birth, as was required for Old Testament circumcision. Some churches, of course, do not baptize infants at all, but no one forces an adult to wait for any specified length of time. But they all require some waiting. The worship service of the church is seen as more important than the rapidity of baptism.

Let us face squarely the explicit testimony of the Book: the presence of the congregation was not required—not for John’s baptism, not for the baptisms performed by Christ, not by apostolic baptism. Second, let us face the testimony of Acts 8: deacons may perform lawful baptisms. Third, let us face the testimony of every known baptism in the New Testament: no lengthy screening by elders was practiced. A man was entitled to baptism, at the minimum, immediately after making a profession of faith, if he was in the presence of any church officer. The evidence is overwhelming.

Let us return to our original question. What is the meaning, institutionally, of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers? The priests of the Old Testament performed the sacrifices and the rituals. In our era, and in fact from the days of the early church, formally ordained people have laid claim to an exclusive monopoly to the administration of the sacraments, however defined. What ecclesiastical manifestation of the universalization of the priesthood can we find?

Once it is admitted that New Testament precedents are binding, or if not binding in every case, then at the very least are lawful exceptions to present tradition, then the theologian of the covenant is faced with a most difficult problem. If the diaconate is not properly an office relating to primary church authority—the hierarchical ecclesiastical institution of discipline under God and in terms of His biblical law structure—then the case for the monopoly of baptism in the hands of church officers must be altered drastically. (Abandoned, preferably.)

What, then, is my preliminary conclusion? Simply this: he or she who is capable of preaching the gospel to an unbeliever is capable of baptizing that person. If the baptized person is the head of a household, everyone under his or her lawful, covenantal authority should also be baptized. If speed of baptism is primary, as the New Testament evidence certainly indicates, then the person who has brought the message of salvation to the person now professing faith should encourage the other to be baptized. Why? Because the person has just affirmed the sovereignty of God in salvation, and he thereby immediately places himself under the covenant of redemption. If he delays his baptism, he is saying symbolically that he can operate outside the terms of the covenant for as long as the ecclesiastical authorities delay in baptizing him. He is testifying, ritually, that he is in a temporary zone of immunity. There is no such zone of covenantal immunity. The early church taught, in some instances, and in some periods, that the remission of sins provided by baptism could be voided by subsequent sins. Sinners therefore waited until they were dying before asking for the rite of baptism. While not so theologically confused as men were in those days, modern Protestants partake of an analogous error. The error is formal, pertaining to the symbolic meaning of the ritual of baptism, and not substantial—based on a false doctrine of salvation—but it is nonetheless an error. The delay of baptism ritually affirms a temporary suspension of the covenant’s authority over the person. It does this for the sake of a theology which is essentially sacerdotal in nature, a theology which in this instance places the doctrine of the institutional church and its officers above the doctrine of the covenant of redemption.

Notice what I am not saying. I am not saying that the church, through officers of the church, should not baptize people. I am not saying that it is always wrong to have the congregation present. I am not saying that women should be allowed to speak, and therefore to baptize, within the worship service of the church, since Paul specifically prohibits women from speaking in the churches (I Cor. 14:34-35). What I am saying is that under normal circumstances, the speed of baptism is more important than the consideration of who baptizes or where. If the confessor is hesitant to be baptized until he or she receives further instruction, then it is all right to wait until someone can offer such instruction. But if the confessor acknowledges Christ’s position as the Son of God, and acknowledges his reliance upon Christ’s substitutionary atonement on the cross, then the person is ready for baptism.

To impress the new convert with the authority of the church, it might be valid to call an elder or minister on the telephone and have him come to the new convert’s home for further witness, instruction, and baptism, In an antinomian culture such as ours, the presence of an ordained minister of discipline might be helpful. But it must not be made a requirement, since the testimony of Philip’s baptism of the eunuch stands in opposition to the concept of the monopoly of baptism in the hands of an elder-minister. What is convenient in any place or time must not be made a universal, formal rule.

What we must get through our heads is that baptism is not universally a mark of justification. It is always a mark of sanctification. Sanctification means that a person is set apart in a special way under God’s authority. Paul tells us that the unregenerate husband or wife is sanctified by the presence of the believing partner in the marriage (I Cor. 7:14). This does not mean that the partner is saved by marriage rather than by grace through faith; it means that the partner is treated in a special way by God, for he or she becomes the beneficiary of living with someone who is formally under God’s covenant of salvation, and therefore who is reforming his or her life in terms of God’s law. We baptize children because of the position of a believing parent. This is why we should encourage unbelieving wives and children to be baptized, for they are now operating under the authority of a man who is governed by the terms of God’s covenant. They are now sanctified by being subordinate to God’s law.

Baptism should not be understood as a sacrament which symbolizes or authorizes full membership into the church. Children do not vote in church assemblies. In some churches, women who are not widowed may not vote. (Numbers 30:9 indicates a similar distinction between widows and divorced women on the one hand, and married women and unmarried women on the other. A widow’s vow is immediately put into operation; a married woman under a husband’s authority cannot be held to the performance of her vow if her husband rejects it on the day that he hears of it. The same is true of the unmarried woman: her father can nullify the vow.) Baptism is simply a symbol of God’s two-edged covenant, the acknowledging of God’s lawful sovereignty over the individual and all those in covenantal subordination to him or her, in the case of the widow.

The concept of democratic voting in a church is a Protestant doctrine of the independents and the Presbyterians. Where laymen vote for officers, an immediate problem appears. How are the less qualified, less educated, less sanctified (in the sense of progressive sanctification) members able to decide between two candidates for office? Will not the "lowest common denominator" principle operate in a church democracy, just as it has operated in political democracy? To mitigate this very real problem, churches have screened candidates for membership. They have required some sort of training before believers are accepted into the church. Only after the completion of such training is the rite of baptism administered. Churches have delayed the rite of baptism for the sake of preserving the integrity of the church, since all baptized people, or at least baptized males, who join the church can vote. Baptism has been linked directly to full voting membership, at least with respect to new converts.

People transferring membership from other churches are not required to be rebaptized, but they normally are interrogated and instructed, if necessary, in the doctrines of the local church before they are allowed to become full voting members. What we should conclude, then, is that there is no automatic relationship between baptism and full church membership, in the sense of voting membership. The screening should indeed take place before full voting membership is granted; what is wrong today is that churches spend time in screening candidates prior to baptizing them. Churches do not seem to comprehend that the same principle applies to the newly baptized convert which applies to the person seeking a transfer of membership: baptism precedes full voting membership; it does not automatically confer such membership. In fact, some churches may feel under pressure to hurry the screening process in order to get the professing convert baptized. The screening process is thereby downgraded, and the "lowest common denominator" principle takes over. The screening process should probably be tightened, but the delay in baptism should be drastically shortened. They are two separate operations, governed by different principles. Screening protects the theological integrity of the church. Baptism symbolizes the covenantal subordination to God and God’s covenant by the believer. A believer has a right to baptism; he does not have a right to vote in church elections.

The person who is baptized in his own household thereby acknowledges that he is now under God’s authority. By having others in his household baptized, he declares that they, being under his authority, are also under God’s authority. He simultaneously affirms that he is under God’s authority and a person required to exercise godly dominion in terms of that authority. Jesus was under authority and therefore the bearer of authority—the testimony of the Roman centurion which so impressed Jesus (Luke 7:2-9). All men are to exercise dominion (Gen. 1:27-28; 9:1-7), but those who acknowledge this responsibility under God are true saints. This is a central fact (probably the central fact) of the meaning of the priesthood of all believers.

A priest exercises authority as a sovereign. So does the head of a household, including a widow or divorced woman. If baptism took place today in the households of new converts, the priestly role of the family leader would be symbolized far more effectively. Baptism within the confines of a church worship service does not convey this important meaning nearly so effectively. Church baptisms are not invalid. Unmarried persons living in pagan households or living alone should be baptized in church. People converted in a church meeting may wish to be baptized immediately, or that evening, in the place of their conversions. Nevertheless, the testimony of the Acts is that household baptism is lawful, and in our era, when the family is under fire, and men have abdicated their family responsibilities as heads of households, there would seem to be valid reasons for returning to the precedent of the Acts. Other members of a household might be more likely to understand the nature of the spiritual change which has put them in a newly sanctified (though not justified) position as family members. They are now subordinate to God through the family priest, who will henceforth mediate God’s authority, though not salvation. To the extent that Protestant sacerdotalism distorts and clouds this new relationship, it has compromised the integrity, responsibility, and authority of the family. By restricting the location in which baptism is supposedly lawful— an official church worship service—Protestant sacerdotalism has compromised the very institution which is to serve as the training ground of elders and deacons. Baptism is a meaningful symbol, and it has not been accidental historically that its administration has been centralized and that the tradition of household baptism has been suppressed. The doctrine of the priesthood of few believers had to be manifested through its own symbolic rituals if it was ever to gain widespread acceptance among laymen— the lawful priests whose authority was steadily being transferred to a far narrower group.

It is significant that Kline refuses to go this far in the extension of the covenant principle. He argues in the final chapter of By Oath Consigned that the New Testament does not provide a clear-cut directive with respect to the baptism of servants—children, yes, but not servants. The reason for this hesitancy is Kline’s belief that the Old Testament kingdom law structure has no validity in New Testament times. This position has been ably refuted by Greg Bahnsen in the appendix devoted to Kline in Bahnsen’s book, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (1977). Kline distinguishes the cultural authority which has focus in the covenant family (and, apparently, only in the family) from the "cultic authority focus in the assembled, worshipping congregation with its special officers." The kingdom-cultural focus of the Old Testament kingdom is no longer in existence, Kline argues, since it was a temporary phenomenon. Kline’s amillennialism is clearly visible in his explanation of the meaning of the Old Testament kingdom, for that kingdom merely pointed to the final consummation, something which the New Testament structure of biblical authority does not do, for some reason or other.

Why the symbol of final judgment "of men in the totality of their being as cultural creatures" should have been abolished by the New Covenant, Kline does not explain here. He just states that it was. There is an implicit dispensationalism in Kline’s position—a radical cultural discontinuity between the law-order of the Old Testament and the law-order of the New. There is also an implicit social antinomianism in his view of culture, for the civil government is not required to enforce Old Testament civil law, and the officers of the church do not possess such authority. Only Christ possesses such authority to judge, and in our age, this power is not manifested in any earthly institution, despite the fact that the authority of Christ over all the creation was announced clearly only in this age (Matt. 28:18). Christ’s royal authority is simply a limiting concept until the final judgment, meaning a theory which has no institutional, earthly manifestation. As Kline writes near the end of his book: "In this age of the church, royal theocratic authority with its prerogative of imposing physical-cultural sanctions resides solely in Christ, the heavenly King. The judicial authority of the permanent special officers whom Christ has appointed to serve his church on earth is purely spiritual-cultic. Cultural sanctions have no place, therefore, in the functioning of the central and dominant cultic authority focus of the New Covenant community, and it would violate the spirit of the church’s distinctive mission in the present age if such sanctions were to be introduced in connection with the auxiliary family (-household) focus of authority."

It is understandable why Kline, as an amillennialist and a social antinomian, should be hesitant to permit the baptism of unregenerate wives and servants on the basis of the authority conferred by God to the confessing head of the household. The family priest is really not a priest in the ecclesiastical sense, and Kline, like all Protestant sacerdotalists, sees the priesthood only within the famework of the sacramental, monopolistic, cultic institution we call the visible church. In short, there is no meaningful kingdom of priests, so we are still bogged down in the doctrine of the priesthood of few believers. Kline has removed the kingdom in its broad, authoritative, and judicial sense, relegating it to a mere symbol, one which passed into history with Christ’s advent, or at least with His resurrection. The only focus worth talking about is the so-called "cultic authority focus in the assembled, worshipping congregation with its special officers." The realm of external legal sanctions is turned over to Satan and his host— sanctions in no way connected with the explicit requirements of Old Testament biblical law. The new focus is the church, meaning the institutional church. Thus, it should hardly come as a surprise that Kline’s amillennialism and his social antinomianism have led him to a truncated concept of the covenantal law-order, and an equally truncated view of all other authority structures apart from the institutional church. That he refuses to extend the circumcision-baptism rite to the entire household, as it was in the Old Testament (Gen. 17) is fully in line with his opposition to the reign of Old Testament law in New Testament times. There is no kingdom of priests simply because there is no kingdom, institutionally speaking. Therefore, laymen cannot be priests, institutionally speaking.

In conclusion, baptism is the mark of covenantal subordination. It testifies to God’s lawful authority over us and to our acceptance of this cosmic reality. Baptism is the ritual oath symbol of New Testament vassals who affirm their subordination to a sovereign Lord. Therefore, my tentative though strongly felt opinion is this: the messenger who brings the announcement of our Lord’s sovereign authority and sovereign grace has a right to baptize the new convert. The position of the messenger as a lawful priest indicates this. Second, the principle of a man’s right to a speedy baptism indicates this. Third, the symbolism of a delayed baptism—a temporary period of covenant suspension—testifies to this. If this conclusion is absolutely and unquestionably incorrect—which the creeds and traditional practices of most Protestant churches necessarily declare—then it must be shown which principle or principles override those favoring the right of speedy baptism by the person who has brought the message of salvation. Who is the priest?

For reasons of cultural heritage, or geographical circumstances, or a sense of propriety, a particular church in a particular period of time may recommend one or another time and place of baptism, though its goal should be speedy baptisms in households as a general rule. It takes time to alter deeply felt and long-honored church traditions. Nevertheless, to insist that "ministers of the Word"—defined narrowly as teaching elders or their equivalent—are alone permitted to baptize, is to go beyond Scripture. A reform of the creeds is mandatory. At the absolute minimum, deacons must be allowed to baptize without prior consultation with elders.

Protestants recognize this as the other of the two New Testament sacraments. Like the sacrament of baptism, this one is shared by all believers who are under the authority of God’s covenant of redemption. It is open to all of the faithful. It is an ordinance which testifies to the continuing faith in Christ by His people.

Protestants deny that participation in any sacrament automatically confers the blessings of salvation on anyone. Protestants therefore deny baptismal regeneration and regeneration through communion. The sacraments are aids in bringing the message of faith to the attention of both saved and lost, but faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Rom. 10:17). It is the written and spoken word which is the means of communicating faith, not the sacraments. Sacramental symbols illustrate truths that have been revealed to us through the word of God. They have an important purpose, or series of purposes, but the word is primary.

Protestants have usually sought to link holy communion with the Hebrew rite of the Passover. The New Testament refers to "Christ our Passover" (I Cor. 5:7). The first instance of holy communion occurred during the Passover week in Jerusalem, on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread (Matt. 26:17-30). Jesus gathered the disciples into the upper room and broke bread with them. Chapters 13-17 of John record His instruction to them during this first communion service. It is not unwarranted to equate communion with the Passover, paralleling the equation of baptism and circumcision. But the equation is not, in either case, like a mathematical equation. The two halves are not equal. They are linked over time and across the two testaments, but there are differences.

The Passover was the central ritual of the Hebrews. It was an intensely familistic ritual. Each family was to select a lamb, on the tenth day of the first month of the year, separating it from the midst of other sheep and goats (Ex. 12:3-5). On the fourteenth day of the first month, the lamb was killed, in the evening hours. It was then roasted and eaten throughout the night, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (12:6-9). "And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD’S Passover" (12:11). No leavened bread could be eaten for the next seven days (12:19). The father’s role in this ceremony was central:

And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever. And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the LORD will give to you, according as he hath promised, that ye shall keep this service. And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD’S Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses (12:24-27).

The Passover in Jesus’ day did not involve standing all night, as it had on the first Passover night. Jesus sat down with His disciples (Luke 22:14). But He shared His knowledge of the coming events with them, as a father might have shared with his children the story and meaning of the Passover. He broke bread with them—presumably unleavened bread—and shared wine from the cup. Then He exhorted them, "this do in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19b). He then explained His message of victory to them: "And I appoint unto you a kingdom as my Father hath appointed unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22:29-30). Here was the announcement of a kingdom of priests who will execute judgment. They were meeting together as friends, not in their own homes, indicating that henceforth a man’s true family is with his friends in the faith. This does not mean, however, that the household communion service is now revoked.

Because this was an official meeting of the church, all things were to be done decently and in order (I Cor. 14:40). Drunken communicants were a contradiction in terms. So were solitary eaters. They were to eat their meal together. If they were hungry before coming to the Lord’s table, they were to eat beforehand. There was to be unity in the fellowship of communion, not division, whether theological division or division in the speed and time in which the meal was to be eaten. It was still a ritual meal, although it was more than a wafer and a thimbleful of wine, more than a thumb-size bit of "enriched" white bread. Modern Christianity has reduced the meal to a symbol of a meal. In contrast, the Corinthians had forgotten the symbol of Christ’s death and were treating it as if it were nothing more than just another meal. Neither group comes close to either the Passover or the last supper.

Those who refused to respect the sensibilities of other brethren, especially the poor, but also the feelings of those who resented drunkenness, were drinking and eating unworthily. They were not taking seriously the sacramental character of worship and fellowship. They had forgotten that they were in church, reenacting a basic historical event in the history of the church. The church of Jesus Christ is referred to by Paul as the Lord’s body, and it should come as no surprise that the great chapter dealing with the diversity of gifts within the unity of the body of Christ is I Corinthians 12, beginning a few lines after the words, "not discerning the Lord’s body." What Paul meant should be clear, but apparently it is not clear to many Christians. The discernment of the body refers to each participant’s awareness of the unity of the church in fellowship during the celebration of the communion meal. There were divisions in the church, so Paul criticized them (11:18-19). They were not meeting and eating together, as one people in fellowship, so Paul criticized them (11:20-22). In short, Paul perceived the existence of schism in the church, and he devoted the second half of this chapter and all of I Corinthians 12 to a consideration of the need for church unity. There was a great need for healing within the body of Christ, His church.

Those who ate and drank in a disorderly fashion were converting the Lord’s Supper into something else. Their actions symbolized their commitment to a divisive interpretation of the symbol of communion. They were testifying to the disunity of Christ’s kingdom—the kingdom promised by Christ at His last supper. They had converted a symbol of spiritual unity and victory into a symbol of disunity. This was the setting of Paul’s warning against eating and drinking unworthily. They had not discerned the Lord’s body, meaning the church’s presence, in the divided communion feasts of Corinth. This was not mere negligence; it was inevitably a symbolic act, for which damnation was and is a suitable punishment.

Later theologians have misinterpreted the phrase, "not discerning the Lord’s body," by focusing attention on the bread which was and is eaten in the communion service. They have argued that the concern of Paul was over the lack of theological understanding within the church, specifically in their inability to understand that the bread which they ate stood for Christ’s body, which He sacrificed on the cross. But the verse does not make this mistake: "For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body." Had he said "not discerning the Lord’s body and blood," then we could conclude that Paul’s concern related to their lack of understanding of the meaning of the elements of the supper. But their lack of understanding was much deeper than that; they had failed to understand the meaning of the sacrament’s role within the church, the body of Christ, of which they were the members. They showed no respect for other members. (The word "members" is applied to parts of the body in the next chapter, and the dual meaning in English— members of a group and members such as fingers—conveys Paul’s message quite well.)

This misinterpretation of Paul’s phrase, "not discerning the body," has led to a horrendous error on the part of Reformed theologians. They have limited the attendance at the Lord’s Supper to adults and young adults. They have feared that young children might fail to understand the symbolism of the elements of the supper. They have feared that children who eat these elements in ignorance of their symbolic meaning thereby eat and drink damnation unto themselves. But Paul was concerned about the Corinthians’ failure to recognize church order. It takes little training to teach a child that church is a special place, that he must behave in an orderly way. Children are alert to special ceremonies, and they can hardly keep from asking what this or that is all about. Modern Protestants have closed the communion table to children because they are afraid that the children will not understand the implications of the elements, and therefore that they will "not discern the Lord’s body." The ghastly irony here is that it is the theologians, not the children, who have misunderstood the words of Paul. Paul’s concern was with the church, not the elements.

The Passover was aimed at the children of the household. It was designed to elicit questions from the children, and the father of the house was to use this opportunity to explain the meaning of the ceremonies. The Passover was a means of training children. Its symbols could be passed on to the children more readily because the children participated in the ceremonies. Once again, we see that the family is the training ground for the faithful. The father in the Old Testament directed the sacrament of the Passover, sharing this responsibility with the high priest, who entered the holy of holies during this special annual festival. In his household, he was indeed a priest, at least for one week each year.

What about the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper? The modern churches limit the sacramental character of the feast to operations performed by the elders, or by the minister of the word. If the minister of the word does not direct the eating and drinking of the elements, there is therefore no Lord’s Supper, no holy communion. The practice of the modem church has, in theology as well as in practice, removed totally the strong element of family participation and family authority found in the Passover. Incredible as it seems, the modern churches have removed the element of priesthood possessed by the father in the Old Testament. Despite the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, the traditional concept of the Lord’s Supper has thwarted the exercise of the priestly function by fathers within their households. Modern Christianity has taken away from the father of the house the sacrament which he lawfully administered prior to Christ. The universalization of the priesthood has come to mean the abolition of the lawful administration of a sacrament by laymen which the Passover had not only permitted but insisted on. In this sense, modern churches have, in theology and in fact, adopted a new doctrine in direct contradiction to Peter’s announcement: "The priesthood of fewer believers." Fewer believers, proportionately, perform a sacramental function today than in the Old Testament. Modern Christianity has removed the sacramental privileges from the family in order to strengthen vastly the position of the minister or so-called teaching elder. It has centralized ecclesiastical power and prestige, all in the name of the priesthood of all believers. George Orwell had a good name for this kind of theology. He called it "doublespeak."

Consider the anti-parallels between the sacrament of the Passover and today’s sacrament of holy communion. In the Old Testament, the sacrament was intensely familistic. In our day, the sacrament has been emptied of all family responsibilities. It is true that the disciples met with Jesus and not their families, but He had called them into apostolic service, away from their families temporarily. The practice of household worship and the breaking of bread immediately returned in the days prior to Pentecost. The sacrament was restored to families, and increased from once a year (in the case of the Passover) to possibly several times each week, as converts visited each other’s homes and broke bread in fellowship. The church authorities of the next century began to centralize the sacrament of holy communion, and this process has been continued until the present. The church family has sought to replace the household’s sacrament.

Another anti-parallel is the element of child training. The Passover was designed to rear up godly, informed children who understood the meaning of the ceremonies. In today’s setting, children are excluded from the communion service. Again, it represents nothing less than a frontal attack on the family by the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. Out of concern for children’s souls, and out of a misinterpretation of Paul’s words, the leaders have kept the sacrament from children, who in pre-Christian times would have been full participants.

The Passover involved every family, as well as the labors of the ecclesiastical priests. The communion service makes the individual almost wholly passive, and the minister and his helpers wholly active. In some cases, there are no helpers; the minister serves the communion by himself. It is significant that the church has removed the signs of decentralized authority, the institutional buffers between central power and individual action. The minister offers the sacrament, actually creates the sacramental character of the "feast" (a thimbleful of wine or grape juice and a thumb-size bit of bread), and the "universal priests" sit quietly, each one alone in his chair or pew, waiting solemnly to receive the elements. This thin, pale reflection of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in the upper room or in the joyful households of the early church is offered in the name of refined theology—the best that the theologians could come up with.

An exceedingly ingenious argument has been used by theologians and church historians to call attention away from the record of the Acts. They have, for well over a thousand years, distinguished the Lord’s Supper from something called the agape feast of the New Testament. That is, whenever the breaking of bread in households is mentioned in the Acts, the scholars find nothing except a special feast of the "primitive church" which has long since died out. It was merely transitional, the true rite being the Lord’s Supper, that is, the denuded communion practice of whichever church the scholar belongs to. In short, that which is biblical is relegated to the historically transitional, a local practice of the Jerusalem church; that which is approved by church tradition in any particular denomination is called the Lord’s Supper. A typical example of this approach is found in the Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (1873), edited by McClintock and Strong, under the topic, "Lord’s Supper":

The Agape, as belonging to a transient phase of the Christian life, and varying in its effects with changes in national character or forms of civilization, passes through many stages; becomes more and more a merely local custom, is found to be productive of evil rather than of good, is discouraged by bishops and forbidden by councils, and finally dies out. Traces of it linger in some of the traditional practices of the Western Church.¹¹

We now come to that passage which, perhaps more than any other passage in the Bible, sends shivers of foreboding down the spines of sacerdotal authorities: "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20). Here was the basis of the early church’s so-called agape feasts, meaning the original form of holy communion. This doctrine of Christ’s presence is intimately related to the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. It affirms that when members of the priesthood get together, God is with them in a direct way, just as He was with the priests of the Old Testament. Members of the early church could celebrate the Lord’s Supper, breaking bread in fellowship, from house to house, precisely because Christ was present with them.

There is absolutely no evidence in the Scriptures that a church officer was present at every such meeting. In fact, it would be surprising if there had been enough church officers to accompany every feast, since 3,000 converts were added to the assembly on one day alone, a fact revealed to us in the verse immediately preceding the first reference in Acts to the breaking of bread (Acts. 2:40). (One thing is certain: with that rate of growth, the early church was not able to wait around for ministers of the Word to graduate from an accredited university and attend at least three semesters of seminary.) What the message of the Acts seems to be is that the Lord’s Supper was universally celebrated on a decentralized basis, with families visiting families and sharing the meal together. And why not? Christ had promised to be among such groups, and He had not said that an ordained elder had to be present with the group in order to obtain His special presence. Church officers may have been present on many occasions, and they may have then led the ceremonies, but there is no evidence indicating that they were present at every communion service, and there is no evidence that Christ required them to act as officially appointed leaders at every feast.

There is no doubt that sects have abused the doctrine of the special presence of Christ, but this does not deny its validity. Christ honors His word, even in the midst of schismatic assemblies. We must face the fact that there is very little New Testament evidence describing the Lord’s Supper as practiced by the early church, especially with respect to what went on in those assemblies. Therefore, to limit the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper exclusively and universally to rites directed by a "minister of the Word" is to go far beyond the evidence of Scripture. Once again, we find that the institutional church has monopolized the use and administration of a sacrament on the basis of theological inference—inference based entirely on a doctrine of a priesthood which is sacerdotal and highly centralized. The universalization of the priesthood is denied, for the mark of a priesthood, namely, the lawful administration of the sacraments, has been prohibited. Once again, we see the operation of a different doctrine, the priesthood of few believers. In the case of the Lord’s Supper, virtually the whole of the Passover tradition had to be abandoned in order to achieve this ecclesiastical concentration of authority. The head of the Hebrew household prior to Christ was permitted to administer a sacrament at least once each year. Two centuries after Christ, the institutional church’s authorities were already involved in an effort (one might better say "conspiracy") to abolish even that minimal precedent of the priesthood of all believers.

If Christ is in the midst of two or three Christians when they get together for prayer or celebration, what is unique about the church’s weekly worship service? First of all, the worship service is under the care of specially screened elders. These men are supposed to have been screened and tested in terms of a rigorous set of criteria. They serve as heads of the local congregation. They preach, direct the sacraments, and discipline the congregation. The household Old Testament ritual of the Passover meal was not intended to replace the sacrifice of the high priest in the temple. The high priest’s actions served as the ritual foundation of the household sacrifice. Similarly, the legitimacy of household communion performed by heads of households is not intended to be a substitute for the authorized and required public assembling of the whole congregation (Heb. 10:25). The regular and formal worship service of the church is primary; the household feasts are supplementary celebrations. God established regular offices in the church which provide authority (elders) and charity (deacons), indicating the permanent nature of His institutional church. But the permanence of one ecclesiastical institution over time and geography should not be understood as denying the legitimacy of family sovereignty which has sacramental functions within the protecting framework of church discipline and order. The Protestant heritage of multiple authorities—the denial of any final authority on earth, except for the Bible—should be upheld. Sacerdotal tendencies must be removed from Protestantism, and the monopolization of the doctrine of Christ’s presence by the institutional church and its corporate worship services is unquestionably an outgrowth of sacerdotalism. We need plural institutions and a unified eldership, not a plural eldership and a single visible institution in which Christ is allowed to manifest His presence.

Notice what I am not saying. I am not saying that officers in the church should never administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. I am not saying that the Lord’s Supper should not be a basic part of a church’s worship services. Indeed, New Testament evidence indicates that the Lord’s Supper ought to be at least a weekly affair, as Calvin strenuously maintained, and which is presently maintained by the Church of Christ.¹² I am not saying that women should lead in the church worship services. What I am saying is that ecclesiastical authorities have not been given an exclusive right to administer the sacraments. Furthermore, the sacrament is lawful for laymen to administer and enjoy in the absence of a church officer and on any day of the week that seems convenient to them. They are to practice self-examination, just as Paul required (I Cor. 11:28). Self-examination does not require the presence of a church officer. Naturally, the feast should be orderly. Drunkenness is prohibited. But to break bread ritually at the end of a regular meal, or at a special gathering of friends who are members of God’s family, is not an infringement on the lawful authority of the institutional church. If these meetings become lawless, or if unbelievers are deliberately allowed to come to the feasts, then church discipline is proper and required, but the universalization of the priesthood involves the universalization of personal responsibility, and a church officer does not need to be present to police each and every gathering at which two or three saints are gathered together. Christ will be there, and this is surely sufficient.

12. John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. IV, ch. XVII, sec. 44: "Thus we ought always to provide that no meeting of the Church is held without the word, prayer, the dispensation of the Supper, and alms."

The centralized church, like the centralized civil government, operates on the premise that an officer must be present at important gatherings in order to direct or monitor each decision. Church officers too often operate as if the purpose of church discipline were not fundamentally negative, suppressing that which is unlawful when it becomes a public matter, but leaving men free to work out their own salvations with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12b). Lower assemblies of the church constantly look for guidance from some higher board rather than acting forcefully in good conscience and awaiting any decision which might come on appeal. The result, in church and state, is rather like the story of the two men who were assigned to the task of swatting a fly, with one man using the swatter and the other man giving him directions. The fly finally died of old age. The fly is very much like the problems that are sent up and down the Presbyterian chains of command, with each level asserting the right of the church to intervene, and with nobody ready to take full responsibility for a final, irrevocable decision. They demand authority and then flee responsibility.

Sacraments must be administered by priests. What we must decide is this: Who is the priest? Second, under which conditions does he have lawful authority to perform his duties? Finally, must every instance of every sacramental observance be performed within the confines of the official worship service of an institutional, visible church?

Biblically, there is far less warrant for the ecclesiastical monopoly over the Lord’s Supper than there is for a monopoly over baptism. Baptism is a rite based on the acceptance of God’s lawful authority over a person’s life. An authority structure of some kind is implied by the very nature of the sacrament. But the Lord’s Supper, as described by the New Testament, is a time of fellowship, rejoicing, prayer, thanksgiving, and real food. It is a celebration. It is linked to households as much as it is linked to church assemblies. The structure of ecclesiastical authority is further in the background than it is in the rite of baptism.

The Lord’s Supper is a time to eat. There must be life in the sacrament, some sense of full participation, some sense of active involvement. God has given us this rite for positive reasons: thankfulness, celebration, fellowship, and remembrance of His liberating sacrifice on the cross. Modern Christians tend to forget that there is another reason why we need a meaningful, enthusiastic Lord’s Supper. It is the lurking threat of occultism and demonism close behind or beneath the thin veneer of Western culture. Christians forget that the rules of the Lord’s Supper set forth by Paul were preceded by Paul’s warning against the idolatrous celebration of demonic sacraments. "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils" (I Cor. 10:21). In the previous verse, Paul announced: ".. . I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils." The tradition of rationalism within Calvinistic circles has blinded men to the fact that devils exist, that they have perverse communion festivals, and that man can be as close to them in such services as they are close to Christ in His. In fact, Paul never specifically affirms the special presence of Christ at a communion festival; he does affirm the presence of demons at theirs. The reason why Old Testament law prohibited the drinking of blood was theological, not simply aesthetic (Lev. 7:26-27). Blood drinking, cannibalism, and drunkenness are familiar features of various occult celebrations. Men need a holy alternative. Christians need an emotionally satisfying sacramental celebration, not an austere, rigorously symbolic act devoid of personal interaction and fellowship. We need something simultaneously sacrificial and enjoyable, like the "holy wastefulness" of the tithe of celebration (Deut. 14:22-27).

The problem, symbolically speaking, with the modern communion service is that it is doubly symbolic. The Passover symbolized God’s deliverance of His people through the shedding of innocent blood, namely, the blood of an unblemished lamb. The Passover looked forward to the final shedding of blood by Christ on the cross, but the Hebrews could see this only dimly. They were to look backward at a real event, their deliverance out of Egypt, and forward to the shedding of innocent blood. Because of their place in the history of redemption, they were required to look backward primarily, to the exodus. They had clearer information about the past than about the future. Similarly, Christians are to look backward, to Christ’s work on the cross. Christians are also to look forward, to the day in which we shall eat and drink with Christ in His kingdom, executing judgment (Luke 22:30). Yet it is obvious that the forward-looking kingdom aspect of the original communion service has no part in any modern Protestant denomination’s official ritual of communion (so far as I am aware). Christians look backward as much as the Hebrews did during Passover. We look back, however, to two events: the original supper in the upper room and to the cross. The early Christians had a real meal, where real bread was broken and real wine was consumed (which was why some men were drunk in the Corinthian church—they were not drinking grape juice). The early Christians therefore had a meal like the one Christ and the apostles shared. The meal was to be a symbolic reminder of Christ’s offer of His body and blood on Calvary. But the modern church does not have a real meal. The modern communion service is a symbolic meal which points to a real meal which points to the crucifixion. Modem sacerdotalism has refined the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper so that its message must pass through an extra layer of symbolism—the symbol of a meal—to impart is message. Having obscured the original forcefulness of the communion symbol, the modern churchmen then exclude children from the symbolic celebration (which is a time of silence, solitude, and solemnity—a peculiar symbol of original celebration) because children may not "discern the body," meaning they may not understand the symbolism of the elements. The bits of bread are rightly called elements, for they are tiny symbolic scraps representing what once was a real meal.

The great loser in the modern version of the Lord’s Supper is the child. The child has no part to play. Compared to the youthful Hebrew of pre-Christian times, he is cut off from the sacrament. We do not give our children the opportunity to celebrate even the pale ritual we have filtered through layers of ecclesiastical tradition. We have neglected the training of our children through ritual participation.

Regarding the sacraments in general, we ought to conclude that we are still laboring in the shadow of Roman Catholicism. Protestant sacerdotalism has continued the traditions of centralization, monopolization, and the priesthood of few believers. Protestants have officially affirmed the priesthood of all believers, yet the church authorities deny the right of laymen to administer the sacraments—the mark of the priesthood. If we are to overthrow the dead hand of sacerdotalism, we need to expand the role of laymen in the administration of the sacraments and expand the role of the sacraments outside of the narrowly ecclesiastical church worship service. We must heed the warning of the nineteenth-century social philosopher, Lamenais: Centralization breeds appoplexy at the center and anemia at the extremities.

A priest exercises godly, lawful discipline within his sphere of authority. He serves as God’s representative. A priest who cannot exercise discipline is not a priest. He disciplines (subdues) his portion of the earth to the glory of God.

There is no question that within the confines of the institutional church the elders have the monopoly of imposing sanctions for disobedience to God’s law. This is the foundation of the church’s ability to cleanse itself from the unrighteous (I Cor. 5). There is a screening process involved in the selection of church elders, namely, prior experience in ruling a family.

Before a man is a priest of the congregation, he must be a priest of his own family. The centrality of the family in church life could not be made any plainer. Bachelors should not be ordained. They have not proven themselves within the priestly confines of the office of family leader. The celibacy requirement imposed by the Roman Catholic Church was imposed for purposes of ecclesiastical centralization. It created a sense of ultimate loyalty and dependence upon the church’s ecclesiastical hierarchy. A priest in the Roman Catholic Church is not permitted to have rival institutional claims on his loyalty and energy. The institution of the family helps to remind men of their multiple loyalties in life. A man learns the limits of the possible when he rules over a family. The constraints imposed by reality keep church authorities in their proper place. This sense of reality is not the same as writing term papers.

The fact that every saint is a priest should not blind us to the fact that there are distinctions of authority and honor within the priesthood. Church officers have special authority. Paul affirms this principle (I Tim. 5:17-18). No priest has lawful authority in every area of life. No human institution possesses ultimate and total sovereignty. All authority is limited by biblical law. This is why the church contains as many priests as it has adult members. When a person can vote in a church meeting, or give advice, or teach a class, or take responsibility for making decisions, he has become a priest. Nevertheless, there are higher and lower priests, greater and lesser priests, within the confines of a single institution. A lesser priest in one institution (the church) may be a supreme priest in another institution (the military).

A man may take orders from one person in a particular institution and subsequently give orders to the other person when both are operating in a different institution. This is one good reason why mutual deference and respect should be basic to any higher priest. No one is in high authority in every human institution. A pastor is a priest, not because he is a pastor, but because he is a Christian.

The priesthood, like the sacraments, exists beyond the confines of the ecclesiastical offices. The Christian is a priest in principle at all times. He is a priest vested with priestly authority and responsibility only within the confines of a few human institutions. We are a kingdom of priests. A kingdom is wide, and Christ’s kingdom is growth-oriented. Its ultimate goal is total domination, under Christ: "For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (I Cor. 15:25-26). To limit the royal priesthood to the institutional church is to deny the universality of the kingdom of God, equating it instead with the institutional church. This, too, is a theological heritage of Roman Catholicism. The church is equated with the kingdom; the kingdom is then restricted to the spiritual, or else it is understood as the universal external reign of the institutional church; and either conclusion leads to error. The church shrivels under pietism or becomes tyrannical under ecclesiocracy. In any case, the priesthood is narrowly defined and centralized with a vengeance. The idea that a man can be a priest in other spheres of life is ignored. The priesthood is equated with ecclesiastical officeholders.

Romans 13 affirms that God ordains the higher powers. This does not mean that men must always obey the officials of the civil government. If the passage meant this, then Peter could not have uttered his challenge to the state: we must serve God rather than men (Acts 5:29). But there are lawfully ordained higher powers. A plurality of authorities exists, and men are required to obey them. "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same" (Rom. 13:3). Paul’s language concerning the ruler could not be clearer: "For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil" (13:4). When the saint finds himself in the role of law enforcer, he is a saint-priest. He is ordained. He executes judgment. He administers discipline. He is fulfilling his tasks as a member of a royal priesthood. Lawful authority, when coupled with personal conversion to Christ, results in a Christian priestly office. The office is not always ecclesiastical, but it is nonetheless priestly. This is why Paul refers to the ruler as a minister of God. All authority is from God; therefore, all officeholders or bearers of authority, in any institution or setting, are ministers. They possess limited sovereignty.

Not every office may have developed special sacraments, although many of them seem to have ritual observances that serve as the equivalent of ecclesiastical sacraments. They have marks of authority, a chain of command, and methods of discipline. But a Christian is doubly a priest, for he always exercises authority somewhere as he subdues his portion of the earth (Gen. 1:28), yet he also has the right to administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper under some conditions. The word of God therefore makes itself felt in every institution, in every chain of command, as the kingdom expands over time.

What we must guard against is the assertion of absolute monopoly by any person or group of persons within any human institution. No person, no institution, and no lawful authority can ever claim total and final sovereignty. This is why it is necessary to reaffirm the doctrine of the royal priesthood in our own era. The quest for absolute sovereignty is basic to the institutions of secular humanism. To the extent that false doctrines of Protestant sacerdotalism complement these centralizing trends, the church is compromised. E. L. Hebden Taylor, an ordained Anglican priest and sociologist, has put it very well:

Within temporal reality we find a diversity of offices. In order to see the integral unity of these diverse offices it is necessary to turn to the biblical revelation of Jesus Christ as the Supreme Office-bearer in the creation whom we are told is God’s Prophet, Priest, and King. All the diversity of offices on earth find their concentration in the office of Christ as Covenant Head of the creation. As such Christ is the full and complete Office bearer, and He is therefore the origin and source of all power exercised on earth. Our Lord has delegated only partial sovereignties to men. In him alone all these earthly sovereignties are united in an undivided service of God that involves nothing less than the preservation and redemption of the whole of human life.¹³

13. E. L. Hebden Taylor, Reformation or Revolution (Nutley, N. J.: The Craig Press, 1970), p. 413.

Taylor’s observations on the implications of Protestant sacerdotalism are well founded and to the point. The worst implication is the negative position of the layman within churches that have adopted centralized sacerdotal tendencies.

In the New Testament Church the "elders" never assumed the authoritative status vis-a-vis the laity which they have come to acquire in the Western world. In the New Testament we look in vain for the Western distinction between the ecclesia docens and the ecclesia docta; between the clergy, whose privilege it is to teach and instruct, and the laity, whose duty it is meekly to attend; the lay theologian was as common in the New Testament Church as he is rare in the Western world. It was not thought necessary in the New Testament to wear a clerical collar in order to speak with authority of the things of God. For modern Western Christianity, on the other hand—both Catholic and Protestant—the very words "layman" and "laity" have been severed from their biblical roots and have acquired a purely negative meaning. The layman is no longer one who through the mysteries of baptism and confirmation has become a member of a priestly body, the laos or people of God. He is considered only in terms of what he is not and cannot do. He is an outsider, a non expert, in short, one who is not a parson or a minister. . .. Excluded from any active part in the worship services of the church, deprived of his extra-liturgical apostolate, the layman is left to his own private devotions. As a result there has been developing over the centuries a rank spiritual individualism leading to religious subjectivism and sentimentalism. Piety, in the modern sense, has become an inadequate substitute for a ministry involving every member of Christ’s Body and embracing every legitimate field of human activity. Something has surely gone wrong. The Son of God did not take our human nature upon himself in order that we might be turned some into parsons and presbyters while others are turn[ed] into parishioners and laymen. The apostolic vision of a re-created universe has faded, giving place to a dualistic world, half sacred, half secular. There is no real cure for all this without a recovery of the true sense of the worship services of the church as a corporate action of the whole Body of Christ in any one locality.¹⁴

14. Ibid., pp. 417-18.124

There can be little doubt that Taylor’s conclusion is correct: "Today’s Protestant minister, as to his place and function in the church, differs in actual practice very little from his Catholic counterpart." Protestant sacerdotalism has compromised the concept of the universal priesthood, just as Protestant scholasticism compromised the concept of sola scriptura—the absolute supremacy of the Bible. Roman Catholic traditions were borrowed heavily by Protestant church officers, and secularism now threatens both with institutional paralysis. The Counter-Reformation of the Roman Catholic Church was more successful, ecclesiastically, than either Roman Catholics or Protestants realized at the time. Most Protestants still have not understood what has happened.

This essay is a preliminary study of the nature of the New Testament priesthood. It is intended to be a starting point, not a final set of conclusions. There are numerous immediate questions that should be dealt with by churches and Christian scholars. Yet we can rest assured that such a project will be resisted by the established institutional authorities. Some of the traditions of sacerdotalism are over 1,500 years old. It will no doubt take the coming of the realized kingdom to eliminate some of these traditions. Nevertheless, we need to consider these following issues, laboring toward days of institutional reform.

If the mark of the priest is ecclesiastical ordination, in what way are the universal priests of New Testament times ordained? Is there a church ritual which should be added? Why is there no reference to an ordination ceremony for laymen in the New Testament? Or was there one which we do not recognize? If it is baptism, then we face an immediate problem. Should not the baptized (ordained) person gain access to full church membership?. If so, then the church would have to screen candidates prior to baptism. But the New Testament does not authorize lengthy screening. If it is the granting of voting membership, an extrabiblical requirement made necessary because of modern practices of church democracy, then a baptized but non-voting church member cannot be a priest. Nevertheless, Peter says that all believers are part of the royal priesthood. Or does he? Is he referring strictly to full church members? Or, finally, is conversion itself the mark of a true priest, the only ordination necessary? This is "ordination by God" comparable to that experienced by Paul on the road to Damascus?

It may be possible that ecclesiastical ordination is not required for lawful priesthood. If so, then the previous questions are unnecessary. My own opinion is that a man can be a priest without visible ordination by another man, and therefore ordination is a function of two events: conversion and lawful access to any position of authority. There can be special ordination ceremonies for church officers, but saints are nonetheless priests without such ordination.

What should the mode of baptism be? In churches, adults should probably be immersed, if Kline is correct concerning baptism as a sign of the Old Testament water ordeal-oath. For infants, pouring seems more appropriate. In the home, however, immersion is inconvenient unless the family owns a swimming pool with water in it. Most families are not so blessed. The family shower would be a reasonable compromise, symbolizing the Noachian rains, but somehow the shower does not seem dignified. Showers are reserved in America for fully dressed coaches of victorious athletic teams at the end of a championship season. Pouring would probably be preferable, since it involves sufficient water to make it somewhat of an ordeal, or at least a unique experience. No single mode should be universally required.

If laymen are not legitimate baptizers, the church must come up with a reason for their exclusion. What could that reason be? It cannot be that church elders alone have the authority to discipline members, and hence the exclusive right to baptize, because Philip, a deacon, baptized. It cannot be that church officers preside over the worship service, because the New Testament authorizes baptism outside the assembly of worship. Indeed, it was rare in the New Testament to have baptisms specifically confined to a worship service—or explicitly stated to be such. Is ecclesiastical ordination the criterion? If so, there is no explicit evidence to this effect in the New Testament. Is it the preservation of order (I Cor. 12:40)? But baptism need not be administered in a worship service, and Paul was writing about the disruptions of the Corinthians’ worship services. To preserve church order outside the worship service, an elder need not be present on every occasion; he needs only to have God’s authority behind him as a warning. If mere tradition is the reason, then the church must define rigorously what is meant by the phrase "kingdom of priests," as well as specify just what active role laymen-priests have in the official, biblically sanctioned structure of the New Testament church. The church must therefore define the negative (what laymen-priests are not biblically entitled to do) and the positive (what they are biblically enjoined to do), both inside the institutional church and outside.

In the case of the Lord’s Supper, what should the role of the family be? It is quite true that the family of believers is the primary family. Christ told us that genetic families would be split over the confrontation between believing and unbelieving members of these families (Matt. 10:34-37). Nevertheless, the link between the symbolism of the Passover and the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper should be enough to convince us that some elements of family worship should be preserved in the New Testament rite. If we have become a kingdom of priests, it would seem preposterous to eliminate the one element of sacramentalism possessed by laymen in the Old Testament, namely, the administration of the Passover rite within the family. There should be some role for fathers in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. How could it be arranged? In the case of a household celebration, it is easier to perceive. A special after-dinner feast of bread and wine could be shared within the family, or between the family and the visitors. Fathers or household heads of the host family could give the warning to eat and drink in remembrance of Christ. In the church service, it is more difficult to contemplate. The children should not ask the fathers questions here, as they did in the Old Testament, unless it could be done quietly and in good order. But it might be possible for families to sit together at a common table or series of tables set up specifically for the Lord’s Supper. The father might break the bread and pour the wine at his family’s table, or in that section of the common table devoted to his family. The minister could break loaves, passing them to the fathers, who would in turn break them further. The same would hold true for the wine.

We can list the following clear-cut conclusions with respect to church officers:

1. There is no valid formal distinction between elders.

a. There may be differences of gifts among elders.

b. Functional differences must not be written into church law.

c. Requirements for ordination are identical.

2. All elders are entitled to remuneration in terms of services rendered.

3. Deacons do not administer church discipline.

4. All officers must be or have been competent heads of families.

a. Bachelors must not be ordained.

b. Bigamists must not be ordained.

5. Ordained officers are not mediators of salvation.

6. Women must not be ordained.

We can list the following clear-cut conclusions with respect to baptism:

1. Baptism is a mark of covenantal subordination.

a. Baptism does not regenerate men.

b. Baptism is a two-edged sword: blessing or destruction.

c. Infants of a believer must be baptized.

2. Baptism may be performed by deacons.

3. The authority to administer baptism is not based on the authority to enforce church discipline.

4. Baptism may be administered in households.

a. The presence of the congregation is not mandatory.

b. Immersion could not be an absolutely universal requirement.

5. Every believer has the right to an immediate baptism.

We can list the following clear-cut conclusions concerning the Lord’s Supper:

1. The Lord’s Supper is symbolic of Christ’s death on the cross.

2. The Lord’s Supper is a meal.

3. The Lord’s Supper may lawfully take place in households.

4. The Lord’s Supper involves the participation of children.

5. The Lord’s Supper looks forward to victory and judgment by believers.

6. The Lord’s Supper is open to all baptized church members in good standing.

We can list the following tentative conclusions concerning baptism:

1. Laymen, including women, may sometimes lawfully administer baptism.

2. The unsaved wives and children of believers may be baptized.

3. Immersion is symbolically preferable for adults who are baptized in churches.

4. Baptism does not confer full church membership.

a. A period of screening is valid.

b. The right to vote in church elections comes after screening.

5. Delaying baptism symbolizes a temporary period of covenant suspension.

We can list the following tentative conclusions concerning the Lord’s Supper:

1. Heads of households may lawfully administer the Lord’s Supper.

2. The Lord’s Supper need not be an official ecclesiastical function.

3. Real wine should be served, rather than grape juice.

4. Bread should be broken as part of the ceremony.

5. The Lord’s Supper is a celebration.

a. Participants should not be silent.

b. Participants should not be solemn.

6. The family should be integrated into the church’s communion service.

7. The Lord’s Supper is not sacramentally different from the agape feast.

The rise of Protestant sacerdotalism has paralleled the decline of family sovereignty within the church. The centralization of authority and prestige by the so-called teaching eldership has been at the expense of earlier assignments to officers, such as teacher and evangelist; teaching elders have absorbed these earlier separate functions, not ruling elders. Every movement toward institutional centralization, beyond that set forth in the Scriptures, leads to individualism and fragmentation within the laity. Laymen feel cut off from responsibility within the church and tend to focus their concerns on activities outside the church—activities often unconnected to the concept of a universal kingdom and a universal priesthood of believers.

The family is the authorized training ground of all church officers. The rise of Protestant sacerdotalism was made possible, to a great extent, by the substitution of formal and specifically extrabiblical academic requirements for office. These academic qualifications necessarily limited access to the eldership, making necessary a new, unbiblical division within the eldership, the creation of the office of teaching elder. A bureaucratic elitism was and is the inevitable result—an elitism based not on successful performance in a real-life institution, the family, but successful performance in a narrow world of formal scholarship. Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians-Anglicans have been most guilty of this deviation from biblical standards, along with New England’s Congregationalists, but the independent churches—Baptists, Methodists, Friends, Campbellites, etc.— have now adopted the same error, though to a lesser extent.

A disastrous consequence of this Protestant sacerdotalism has been the elevation of the university, and later on the seminary, to a place of uncontested authority. From a historical point of view, we have to say that the university is, in practice, an anti-Christian institution. Its standards of performance are geared to autonomous rationalism. These standards, historically and without exception, have dragged every known Christian university into a compromising secularism within two centuries, and usually within a few decades. Because the university and the seminary are independent of the church, yet attendance at them a requirement of ordination, they have become enemies of the church’s independence under God. Protestant scholasticism was a product of the university, and Protestant sacerdotalism is the end result. The lure of Greek speculation, Kantian speculation, or Marxist speculation proved too great for tenured faculties to resist. A rival institution, with different standards and radically different goals, became the training ground of ministers. The result has been the destruction of orthodoxy in every large hierarchical denomination except the Missouri Synod Lutherans, since they alone in this century threw the liberals (invariably referred to in the press as "moderates") out of their main seminary and into the cold, cruel world of non-tenured, non-subsidized teaching in the midst of a Ph.D. glut. Protestant orthodoxy committed suicide, in principle, on the day that it abandoned the family and substituted the university as the training ground of church officers.

Find yourself a Christian college. Find a college which adheres exclusively to any historic creed. Find a college which enforces discipline on every faculty member in terms of the creed. Find a college which systematically fires anyone who teaches the content of his discipline in terms of secular standards. Find a college where the administration knows the difference. Find a college which refuses to take a nickel of federal or state financing, so as to maintain its independence. Find a college where the board of trustees enforces anything, ever, in terms of any intellectual principle whatsoever. Find a college without faculty tenure. Find a college out of debt. Such a college does not exist in the twentieth century. (You notice that I did not even mention accreditation. I am not a utopian.)

The whole structure of ecclesiastical authority must be revamped if the churches are to be saved from the continuing curse of Protestant sacerdotalism. They must be restructured from top to bottom. They must return to New Testament standards and scrap the trappings of medieval Roman Catholicism. They must reintegrate the family into the life of the church. They must clean house on the seminaries that supply their ministers, if necessary, and at the very least, see to it that the ministry is equally open to anyone who meets the standards of I Timothy 3. The seminary was a jerry-built academic institution which was created to counteract the secularism of the American colleges and universities that had departed, universally, from the faith, and that was 150 years ago. The churches have not yet learned the lesson of sola scriptura. They have preferred to take the accredited short-cut of scriptura cum academia. That short-cut has led into the ditch.

You will know that a serious reform has been made when the old ministerial apprentice system is revived, and the seminary is recognized for what it has always been in fact, namely a graduate school of academic theological speculation. We need such institutions, but not to train ministers. You will know that progress has been achieved when the churches stop ordaining bachelors and start revoking the ordinations of those who refuse to marry. You will know that the millennium has arrived when churches systematically remove from office any elder or deacon whose wife or children cannot be restrained by him in their disorderly, long-term rebellion. The likelihood of this is so remote that postmillennialists should consider its probability only after several days of fasting and prayer. It is enough to make an amillennialist out of anyone.

I offer this as a possible sign of the end of the millennium and the imminent return of Christ: when orthodox seminaries stop the practice of raising the salary levels of faculty members who complete Ph.D.s in atheistic universities (or any university, for that matter). As the great literary critic Edmund Wilson once put it, we missed our opportunity during World War I when we failed to abolish the Ph.D. as a German atrocity.

Then there is that final possible Christian academic reform: orthodox seminaries will cease the revamping of their curriculums and hiring policies in response to the demands of the seminary accrediting agencies, which are universally run by apostates, higher critics, Barthians, and atheists. This reform will be made, I am quite certain, only after the return of Christ, the resurrection, and the Day of Judgment. After that date, most of the officials in the accrediting agencies will be safely in hell. And you can rest assured that every seminary president will send a frantic letter to all donors in order to explain to them the reason why the seminary’s accreditation has not yet been renewed by the regional accrediting board, and to assure them that this in no way reflects unfavorably on the overall academic program of the seminary.

The Journal of Christian Reconstruction
Symposium on the Family
Volume 4, Number 2 (Winter 1977-78)

Chalcedon
P.O. Box 158
Vallecito, California 95251
U.S.A.