Preparing For Divorce? Christians and American Empire

Christians in the United States are witnessing a subtle but mounting transformation in our relationship with the American empire. Some would say the changes are not so subtle.

Believers have enjoyed an enviable status throughout the history of this country, largely due to our own efforts in helping to secure certain liberties during it’s founding decades. These “unalienable Rights” were seen, not as rights created by Government, but as gifts given to mankind by the Creator. The Bill of Rights, for example, was composed in order to impel the government to secure rights which already existed.

This climate of liberty has been both a help and a hurt to the Church. As we’ve seen in countries with an intolerant or oppressive bearing toward Christianity, repression and persecution counter-intuitively tends to have the effect of producing more serious,focused, and fervent believers. Freedom, on the other hand, has created the opportunity for complacency, self-indulgence, and pride to rise within the church. That being said, human freedom and religious liberty have been more of a blessing than a curse.

American churches, organizations, and individuals have taken advantage of this freedom to plant churches, send missionaries, create hospitals, translate the Bible into thousands of languages, establish universities, raise God-fearing families, supply innovations in science and medicine, and proclaim the Gospel throughout the world. All the while, Christians largely enjoyed a comfortable position within American life. We may merely be in the world rather than of the world but being in this world hasn’t been so bad.

"Priest," the English word, comes from the Greek word for "elder". The dictionary will attest to that. "Pastor" is a completely different word, and a different concept.

Indeed it is, as "priest" "comes" from the Greek word by imputed theological function, that of formally entitling πρεσβύτερος/presbuteros as ἱερεύς/hiereus due to some functions uniquely ascribed to clergy.

As R. J. Grigaitis (O.F.S.) states while also trying to defend the use of priest - states:

"The Greek word for this office is ‘ιερευς (hiereus), which can be literally translated into Latin as sacerdos. First century Christians [such as the inspired writers] felt that their special type of hiereus (sacerdos) was so removed from the original that they gave it a new name, presbuteros (presbyter). Unfortunately, sacerdos didn't evolve into an English word, but the word priest took on its definition." http://grigaitis.net/weekly/2007/2007-04-27.html

Catholic writer Greg Dues in “Catholic Customs & Traditions, a popular guide” states,
"Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions."
"When the Eucharist came to be regarded as a sacrifice [after Rome's theology], the role of the bishop took on a priestly dimension. By the third century bishops were considered priests. Presbyters or elders sometimes substituted for the bishop at the Eucharist. By the end of the third century people all over were using the title 'priest' (hierus in Greek and sacerdos in Latin) for whoever presided at the Eucharist."

Yet it is understood that “the Latin word presbyter has no lingual or morphological relationship with the Latin word sacerdos, but only an inherited semantical relationship.” As a result of this change, “presbyter soon lost its primitive meaning of "ancient" and was applied only to the minister of worship and of the sacrifice. “(http://catholicforum.fisheaters.com/index.php?topic=744379.0;wap2z http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12406a.htm)

Likewise Raymond Brown (Sulpician Father and a prominent Biblical scholar): "So far as i know, it was only ca. 200 that the term “priest” started to be applied to the bishop and only still later was it applied to the presbyter. This observation explains why some Protestant churches which insist on using New Testament language alone refuse to call their ministers priests. When in the post-New Testament period the language of priesthood did begin to be applied to the bishops and presbyters, it brought with it a certain Old Testament background of sacrificing Levitical priesthood. The introduction of that language was logically tied in to the development of the language for the eucharist as a sacrifice. (...I think there were sacrificial aspects in the early understanding of the eucharist, but I have no indication that the eucharist was called a sacrifice before the beginning of the second century.) When the eucharist began to be thought of as a sacrifice, the person assigned to preside at the eucharist (bishop and later presbyter) would soon be called a priest, since priests were involved with sacrifice." — Raymond Brown, Q 95 Questions and Answers on the Bible, p. 125, with Imprimatur.

However, NT pastors are not engaging in making expiatory sacrifices as a separate priesthood, and thus the Holy Spirit makes the distinction which Rome ignores by never referring to NT pastors by the unique title for priest, except as part of the general priesthood of believers, who are all called to sacrifice.

In contrast to the broad use of presbuteros, hiereus and archiereus (high priest) is only used for priests (collectively over 150 times) and is never used for NT pastors, except spiritually as part of the general priesthood of all believers.as shown here

Presbuteros means “old” or older/senior, and thus it is used to refer to an “elder son,” (Lk. 15:25) or the oldest, (Jn. 8:9) or old person (Acts 2:17; 1Tim. 5:1; 1Pt. 5:5) or even older women, (1Tim. 5:2) as well as episkopos (superintendent/overseers) and priests as it denotes their position.

Unlike hiereus and presbuteros or episkopeō, the latter two titles can be used interchangeably without distinction, as one denotes the position (senior) and the other the function (overseer). Titus was to “set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders [presbuteros] in every city, as I had appointed thee: If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop [episkopos] must be blameless...” (Titus 1:5-7) Paul also "sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church," (Acts 20:17) who are said to be episkopos in v. 28. Elders are also who were ordained in Acts 14:23, and bishops along with deacons are the only two classes of clergy whom Paul addresses in writing to the church in Phil. 1:1.

Note that the argument is not that you cannot call a presbyter a priest, as you can because he does engage in priestly functions, but so do all believers (below), and the contrast is between the priesthood of all believers and formally entitling what the Holy Spirit calls presbuteros and episkopos, as constituting, along with the apostles, the pastors (poimēn=shepherds: Eph. 4:11) over the church.

Jewish elders as a body existed before the priesthood, most likely as heads of household or clans, and being an elder did not necessarily make one a Levitical priest, (Ex. 3:16,18, 18:12; 19:7; 24:1; Num. 11:6; Dt. 21:2; 22:5-7; 31:9,28; 32:7; Josh. 23:2; 2Chron. 5:4; Lam. 1:9; cf. Mt. 21:13; 26:47) or a high priest, offering both gifts and sacrifices for sins, (Heb. 5:1)

From the the web site of International Standard Version:

No Greek lexicons or other scholarly sources suggest that "presbyteros" means "priest" instead of "elder". The Greek word is equivalent to the Hebrew ZAQEN, which means "elder", and not priest. You can see the ZAQENIM described in Exodus 18:21-22 using some of the same equivalent Hebrew terms as Paul uses in the GK of 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Note that the ZAQENIM are NOT priests (i.e., from the tribe of Levi) but are rather men of distinctive maturity that qualifies them for ministerial roles among the people.

Therefore the NT equivalent of the ZAQENIM cannot be the Levitical priests. The Greek "presbyteros" (literally, the comparative of the Greek word for "old" and therefore translated as "one who is older") thus describes the character qualities of the "episkopos". The term "elder" would therefore appear to describe the character, while the term "overseer" (for that is the literal rendering of "episkopos") connotes the job description.

To sum up, far from obfuscating the meaning of "presbyteros", our rendering of "elder" most closely associates the original Greek term with its OT counterpart, the ZAQENIM. ...we would also question the fundamental assumption that you bring up in your last observation, i.e., that "the church has always had priests among its ordained clergy". We can find no documentation of that claim. (http://isvbible.com/catacombs/elders.htm)

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