What we are discussing is not what other Christian denominations use to describe their clergy but the English usage for the present office of presbuteros which is an historical continuation of of the ancient office described in the Bible. This office only exists today in the Catholic and Orthodox churches and the term that they use is "priest". This is even acknowledged in the Merriam-Webster definition that you quoted (albeit including the Anglicans) when it states: "specifically : an Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, or Roman Catholic clergyman ranking below a bishop and above a deacon." That some non-Catholic churches chose to translate presbuteros as "elder" for their newly created clergy has no bearing in what the English term is for the continuing office of presbuteros that exists in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
But that is begging the question, assuming the answer you favor in the framing of the discussion. We do not assume that "priest" conveys in English the office described in the New Testament under the term presbuteros. As Daniel has twice now pointed out, you are apparently relying on simply the raw etymology to sustain your theory of semantic continuity. That is not good lexicography. Semantically, the English "priest," thought it may represent a contracted, Latinized version of what started out in Greek as presbuteros (though I have seen arguments for other possible "genetic" histories of the term), in semantic usage presbuteros is far more accurately represented by the English "elder," as an ecclesiastical office, than by "priest," which in English carries with it all the sacerdotal baggage of the Roman evolution.
While you might be able to make an argument that the Didache and perhaps Pope Clement are speaking metaphorically ...
My argument is not that in the early Eucharistic practice we are talking about metaphorical sacrifice versus real sacrifice. I do not reject the idea of metaphor. I simply wasn't using it here. Instead, I am saying the kind of sacrifice envisioned by transubstantiation was not at all in view in those early writings. Rather, the sacrifice of praise is in view. It is no less real, but the one is not a metaphor for the other. They are of two different kinds altogether. One involves a time-honored and entirely spiritual form of offering to God, not done in exchange for forgiveness, but simply to give oneself to God in love. The other involves a bizarre use of Aritstotelian categories to achieve a kind of realism for the paschal meal not contemplated in Scripture or the earliest Christian writers.
Similarly, the realism appealed to in Ignatius and the others is not the realism of transubstantiation. It is not the ontological identity of Christ and the elements. Much of that language in the early Christian writers is directed at the docetists and others that disparaged the physicality of Jesus, the aim being not to demonstrate that the bread is the very substance of Christ, but that Jesus was Himself a real, corporeal being, not a mere apparition, as some supposed, and that therefore the Eucharistic elements had that underlying reality, not in Aquinas' substance versus accidence sense, but closer to Augustine's sense, that the thing the sign pointed to, though not the sign itself, was nonetheless quite real.
For example, in the case of Justin Martyr, he specifically denies consuming human flesh and blood:
For I myself, too, when I was delighting in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Christians slandered, and saw them fearless of death, and of all other-things which are counted fearful, perceived that it was impossible that they could be living in wickedness and pleasure. For what sensual or intemperate man, or who that counts it good to feast on human flesh, could welcome death that he might be deprived of his enjoyments, and would not rather continue always the present life, and attempt to escape the observation of the rulers; and much less would he denounce himself when the consequence would be death? This also the wicked demons have now caused to be done by evil men. For having put some to death on account of the accusations falsely brought against us, they also dragged to the torture our domestics, either children or weak women, and by dreadful torments forced them to admit those fabulous actions which they themselves openly perpetrate; about which we are the less concerned, because none of these actions are really ours, and we have the unbegotten and ineffable God as witness both of our thoughts and deeds.
Available here: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0127.htm
Again, Justin Martyr cannot be discussing transubstantiation, because Radbertus (9th Century) had not yet invented it, nor Aquinas perfected it, nor Trent anathematized the rejection of it. If you reread him very carefully in the quote you gave, and set aside the artificial categories created for you by these later innovators, you will notice there is no affirmation of swapped substances, with only accidents remaining. But rather his words are compatible with his assessment above, that the accusation of eating human flesh is false. The later hyper-realism represented by transubstantiation is obviously unknown to him, or he would not have been able to make such an unqualified denial of eating human flesh, unless he were to deny the flesh of Jesus was human, which is of course absurd.
The fact that this comment rests at ease in the same mind with the other comment should suggest to us he is using some other model than transubstantiation to understand what it means for the bread and wine mixed with water to be the body and blood of Jesus. And other such models exist that would be fully compatible with both the directness of the imagery and the uncomplicated rejection of eating human flesh. One such model might be called an immersive metaphor, a way of seeing the elements as such a clear window to the underlying reality, that the mind barely notices the lens of the metaphor, but looks right through the lens to only see what the metaphor is pointing to. Yet push come to shove, and accusations of cannibalism being given, he is easily able to cast off those charges as totally untrue. That is, untrue in any corporeal sense. Because for Justin Martyr, as truly as the bread and wine are in some sense the body and blood of Jesus, it is equally true that no corporeal human flesh is consumed in the Eucharist.
You are either misunderstanding or misrepresenting the Catholic teaching on the Mass as a sacrifice. The Mass is not a further sacrifice nor is it an additive to the one-time sacrifice of Christ, it is that one-time sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross made present to us. The Catholic Church has repeated this so often for the last 500 years that it is hard to believe that a Protestant in good faith can still make the false claim that Catholics believe that we are repeating the sacrifice of Jesus Christ or making a new sacrifice.
I assure you it is not my intent to either misrepresent or misconstrue the Roman theory of the mass, and I welcome your offered refinements to my understanding. However, I reject as invalid the time travel escape hatch so commonly used to avoid the charge of repeating the sacrifice of Christ in the mass. Each time the once-for-all sacrifice is offered, it purports to have new propitiary effect, as if it's first effect was not enough. It is functioning as a new sacrifice each time it is offered. If we do something over and over again, it doesn't matter if we can imagine the source of the repeated event as frozen somewhere in eternal timelessness (a dubious theory in its own right). Repetition is about what we do within our own temporal framework, and in that framework, it is either done or it is not done, we are forgiven entirely when we believe or else forgiven incompletely, on the installment plan. And if, to make up for our lack of feeling forgiven, we make the body and blood of Jesus "present" over and over again as a true sacrifice, each time with new propitiary effect
to us, we really are repeating it
in practice, though I understand that will be denied in the formal teaching.
But we are not told by the Holy Spirit in Scripture to consider His death continuously present via time travel, nor to consider Christ a perpetual victim. We are enjoined to consider the atonement done and over, the sin debt canceled, the sacrifice that accomplished it to be remembered in the paschal meal, but not to be literally revisited time and time again. God has given us this temporal frame of reference in which we live. We cannot and should not attempt to circumvent it. We only end up fooling ourselves with our fallen imaginations if we try. In reality, this time travel theory is nothing but an inventive way to avoid a blazing obvious contradiction. Temporally speaking, Christ, in His human nature, is not on the cross right now, but in the presence of the Father, interceding for us, preparing to come again for us. In remembering his death for us, we are being told to access, by memory, the past, the time when He was here. We are not being told to access, by a miracle with no footprint in reality, an eternal present in which Christ is endlessly dying. God has the authority to set the rules on how He is worshiped. If He has told us specifically to look to the past regarding Jesus' death, that is what we
must do.
Peace,
SR
We do not assume that "priest" conveys in English the office described in the New Testament under the term presbuteros. It is not an assumption but an historical fact that the word "priest" was originally used to describe the office of presbuteros and has been in constant use as such since before the 12th century. That it also has a derivative meaning to describe any cultic sacrificial minister does not change what its original and continual meaning is.
As Daniel has twice now pointed out, you are apparently relying on simply the raw etymology to sustain your theory of semantic continuity.
Not so. I am relying on its original and continual meaning. What you and Daniel are trying to do is separate the present Catholic office of presbuteros from that mentioned in the Bible. Then you ask how do we translate this ancient term into modern English. But this ignores the fact that this office has continued to exist into the present time and that its received term in English, since at least the 12th century, is "priest." Much of that language in the early Christian writers is directed at the docetists and others …
Justin Martyr's First Apology was written to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, a pagan not Docetist.
For example, in the case of Justin Martyr, he specifically denies consuming human flesh and blood:
He was responding to the Roman charge that Christians were consuming human flesh. By this the Romans were not thinking of the Eucharistic elements becoming the body and blood of Jesus but that the Christians were sacrificing humans and eating their flesh. This misunderstanding came about because the Christians were speaking of the Eucharist as eating the actual body of Christ.
Again, Justin Martyr cannot be discussing transubstantiation, because Radbertus (9th Century) had not yet invented it, nor Aquinas perfected it, nor Trent anathematized the rejection of it.
While the term "transubstantiation" was invented in the 9th century and the Aristotelian understanding of substance and accidents came latter, the early Christians did indeed believe that the bread and wine were changed in reality into the Body and Blood of Jesus as Justin Martyr attests.
If we do something over and over again, it doesn't matter if we can imagine the source of the repeated event as frozen somewhere in eternal timelessness (a dubious theory in its own right).
The sacrifice of the Mass is not what we do but what Jesus does that is presented before us. As for a frozen eternal timelessness, eternity is rather the infinite encompassing of all time. Thus Jesus can say "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM." All time to God is an eternal present. And this he can present to us. That God can present to us events in this eternity is shown by John's visions presented in Revelations.