Catholic Word of the Day: ROSMINIANISM, 04-16-14

If Scripture actually taught, in plain and unequivocal language, that a ministerial priestly class was necessary for the administration of the Eucharist...

Well, but it surely does not say the opposite either, so wouldn't this be the case where we involve history, patristic writings and the decisions by the Church? Perhaps you would equivocate, but to me it is rather clear from the Scripture also: Christ said at the Last Supper

This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me (Luke 22:19

Do what? Say a blessing, break the bread, fill the chalice and give to others. Who are at the table? The same people who in a few months will be filled with the Holy Ghost and form the Church, the future presbyters. Should the administration of this sacrament be limited to people appointed by Christ? Sounds like it. Christ is not giving the command publicly; at another time He said: "As the Father hath sent me, I also send you" (John 20:21) and also "he that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth me; and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me" (John 13:20). There is a clear sense in the scripture that Christ sends His Church as Himself. This logically cannot include the laity. And indeed, St. Paul understood Him: "be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ". (1 Cor 4:16); he was one of not too many "fathers" to the flock (verse 15).

In James 5:14 we read "Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord"; that anointing then cannot be done just by anyone if the advice is to go find a priest. In 1 Timothy 5:17ff we see that priests should have a special legal status; that would not be possible if they were not "a ministerial priestly class". In Titus 1:5 we learn that priests are to be "ordained" in "every city". Why ordain someone if any volunteer would do?

The etymology of πρεσβυτερους strongly suggests “elder” is the more illuminating translation.

Actually, "leader" would be most correct etymologically, as "pres" indicates "in front". But the issue is not even the tendentious Protestant translation "elder" just to run away from established meaning of "priest". From the scripture we see that these presbyters, however you put it in English as a word, were functioning as priests: were necessary for certain acts, were sent by Christ through ordination, had a separate status.

he word κυβερνησεις (“governments/administrations”) does appear in the list

But that is administrative duty; it is not central to the priesthood. Priests are sent to do confect the Eucharist and give absolution of sin. The rest that they do indeed does not have to be exclusive.

n the New Testament church there is a complete lack of individuals acting as sacramental go-betweens, no stated reliance on priests performing the miracle of transubstantiation, no demonstration of penance as modernly practiced

There is, as I pointed out, ample scriptural indication that the priests had separate status and separate duties; the status of one being "sent" is precisely that of a "go-between"; and I don't need to remind you that Christ sent plenty of messengers -- to His contemporaries and to us -- thus establishing the model of the Church as the bringer of the Kingdom. There is no scene where the Eucharist or the absolution is actually done by a priest. But we have a scene of the messy Holy Communion at 1 Cor. 11 where Paul suggests the need for order. That means that the happy meals that the Early Church practiced were replaced by communion administered centrally even when the Apostle was still alive. Surely the very nature of the commandment to forgive or retain sins (John 20:23) assumes authority in those sent, but not everyone. There is no question that the Early Church evolved from the Upper Room to the Church converting thousands very rapidly; we see that it developed hierarchical structures as almost the first order of business by ordaining deacons (Acts 6:2ff). So the absence of a detailed account of the Eucharist or confession done by priests is the result of the historical focus of the New Testament rather than the intention of the inspired writers to disallow ministerial priesthood.

Well, but it surely does not say the opposite either, so wouldn't this be the case where we involve history, patristic writings and the decisions by the Church? Perhaps you would equivocate, but to me it is rather clear from the Scripture also: Christ said at the Last Supper

First, if such a teaching were omitted, it would be like leaving out of Moses the law of the sacrifice. Such a glaring omission would seem to assault either the character or wisdom of God, and as such is intolerable to contemplate. Imagine the central revelation of the New Covenant leaving out the one thing needed to actually secure the New Covenant promise of eternal life.

This would be like the attorney showing up for the closing on your house without having done the title work, and he tells you to go ahead with the closing anyway because, after all, nothing says the title isn't clear, and besides we can look into it later using secondary sources. What would you think of the professionalism of that attorney? Would you take his advice and go through with the closing? I wouldn't.

Second, it rather does say the opposite, the entire book of Hebrews as a case in point. There could hardly be anything clearer in Scripture but that according to the author of Hebrews the sacerdotalism of the Old Covenant system had been set aside by the unified and complete work of Christ.

Third, it is not I who equivocate. The verb of being, “is” “am” etc. can stand in many different relations between two objects. That’s just a fact of the language, and we all have to deal with it. You may find comfort in shutting out all natural language possibilities in exchange for your special pleading. That doesn't work for me. It's irrational to shut the door prematurely to legitimate translational possibilities, and neither you nor anyone else I have seen has offered evidence that excludes the possibility of metaphor, and indeed the evidence so far considered weighs heavily in favor of it in each of the relevant passages.

BTW, my other tome on John 6 is getting seriously bookish. I may have to settle for giving you the short version, just to get it done. Briefly then, there is an aspect of linguistic science called metaphor identification, and it gives us an objective measure of whether we are looking at metaphoric language. The basic idea, oversimplified here for popular consumption (that was a metaphor, BTW), is that you link two terms (source and target) from distinct semantic domains for the purpose of explaining the target in terms of attributes of the source. You know you are in metaphoric space when these two domains do not normally interact at the concrete level, but do share descriptive properties that can be used to explain the one in terms of the other.

For example, Romeo says of Juliet, “Shall I compare thee to a summer day.” The target, the thing to be explained, is Juliet. The source, the object with explanatory power, is a summer day. They are obviously not connectable concretely. A woman and a summer day are two distinct domains. But they are easily connectible if we borrow attributes of the summer day, beauty, warmth, etc., and assign them to Juliet. This is called cross-domain-mapping, and it demonstrates that we are looking at a metaphor.

this is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me (Luke 22:19

It is important to remember that this ceremony was already rich with metaphor. The leader would say "This is the bread of our alffliction," in remembrance of the slavery of Israel in Egypt. Obviously, the matzo was not literally the affliction of slavery. It was a remembrance of it. A symbol. A metaphor. Indeed, it is very likely Jesus was handling the middle of three matzos, because that middle matzo has stripes upon it, and is broken, just as Christ bore our stripes for us, and was broken for us:

http://www.askmoses.com/en/article/584,2080030/Why-do-we-break-the-middle-Matzah.html

To argue from that very familiar metaphorical context to a hyper-literal yet invisible miracle of swapped substances would be to rip the text completely off it's natural language moorings and inject it with an artificial, anachronistic reading that would be incomprehensible to every reader of the period familiar with the Seder celebration. To do this would require an extraordinary justification from elsewhere in the text, and neither John 6 nor Paul's rebuke to the Corinthians provides such a justification.

Returning then to John 6, we begin by noting the several major lexical units. We have the literal bread that fed the 5000. It was miraculous, but in a strictly physical sense. Then we have the discussion of the heavenly manna, which was also miraculous. but also strictly physical. Then the manna is compared a new kind of bread that gives eternal life.

BTW, all this so far is in the context of Jesus demonstrating His identity as the Messiah, the prophet foretold by Moses. The manna was supposedly Moses’ proof of his office, and the Jews wanted to know if Jesus could match what Moses did (though as Jesus reminds them, it wasn’t Moses who did it, but God).

Then Jesus tells them about this bread that like the manna comes down from heaven, but unlike the manna gives eternal life. So we have clear compare and contrast operations here between two different forms of bread, meaning we are still in full metaphor mode.

Then Jesus explains it is He who is the bread of life, also come down from Heaven like the manna (referring no doubt to His incarnation, a one-time event), and that the bread is His flesh, which He will give for the life of the world (no doubt this is a reference to His crucifixion, a one-time event). So we find at the end of the metaphor rainbow we do not have bread after all, but the person of Jesus, who is the target, and both forms of bread have been used as the source, because just as bread sustained the 5000, just as the manna sustained Israel in the wilderness, so also Jesus can nourish and give life, can so satisfy a person they will cease to have hunger and thirst. But these too are metaphors, because concrete bread does not have that capacity. So there is a cross-domain mapping, and therefore still the operation of a metaphor.

So it becomes clearer as we go that Jesus is the target, the thing being explained by all the metaphors. The notion of consuming His flesh and blood then can be seen as the most dramatic of cross domain mappings, and it may have had a dual purpose. On the one hand, those who were getting the metaphor, like Peter, would be able to connect the dots between the two domains. His belief enabled him to see it in spiritual terms.

But the interesting thing about these big domain jumps is that if the listener doesn’t buy in to the analogy, they literally (pun intended) cannot grasp what the analogy is trying to tell them about the target. They get stuck on the concrete meaning and cannot advance to the analogical meaning. So the unbelievers, those who couldn’t connect with the idea of belief in Jesus as the source of eternal life, were unable to get past the metaphor. Somehow his flesh was food that would eliminate hunger and thirst. Well who wouldn't want that? But how to do it is the problem, from their carnal point of view.

This is where the cannibalism aspect becomes very interesting. At one point I thought their reaction to this “hard saying” was their rejection of cannibalism. But now I am beginning to think differently. It seems possible they were so acculturated to reject cannibalism that it never even occurred to them that Jesus was saying this literally. If they had truly thought this, they would have had a field day bringing in the Pharisees and charging Jesus with cannibalism.

But this never happened, no doubt because Jewish culture already had a tradition of understanding bread as teaching, and even the idea of eating someone as a metaphor for ingesting their teachings etc. So probably they went down that route, not the cannibalism route. But they were then even more frustrated, because it was a puzzle they couldn’t solve. They didn’t believe in Jesus. They were never going to get the connection between consuming him and believing in him, even though he wove those two themes together in the passage like a master craftsman, and gave them every opportunity to grasp it. But their hearts were not ready to hear it.

Thus we have Jesus explaining to his disciples, after the public crowd had finally left in frustration, that the spirit gives life, the flesh helps not at all, and that everything He just taught must be understood in a spiritual frame of reference. This accords with Paul’s teaching:

1Co 2:13-14 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Do what? Say a blessing, break the bread, fill the chalice and give to others. Who are at the table? The same people who in a few months will be filled with the Holy Ghost and form the Church, the future presbyters.

All believers receive the Holy Spirit:

Eph 1:13-14 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

Should the administration of this sacrament be limited to people appointed by Christ? Sounds like it.

Sounds like it? Based on what? The model of the Lord’s Supper, the Passover meal, was administered by any head of an Israelite family. I do not disagree there is prudence in having it administered by the elders of the local congregations. What Jesus is saying that night to a group of blue collar Israelites has nothing to do with appointment to a special status of “ritual performers first class:”

1Co 11:24-25 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

Rather, as can be seen here, it is to imbue the Passover meal, which was already an integral part of their lives together as Jewish families, and already a remembrance of God's great mercy and power to redeem, with the sweet memory of their Savior loving them unto death.

There is a clear sense in the scripture that Christ sends His Church as Himself. This logically cannot include the laity.

Why not? Do the “laity” not have the Spirit of Christ? Who can even BE a Christian without Christ’s Spirit?

Rom 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

So no, your proposition of a lower tier of believers unrepresentative of Christ does not stand, based on the most rudimentary understanding of what it means to be Christian. Furthermore, your proposition also fails because you have not demonstrated the existence of an operational sacerdotal priesthood, and with no priesthood there can be no laity:

Psa 95:7 For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,

So we are all His sheep, if we are the people of God, and He is our One Shepherd:

John 10:16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

And indeed, St. Paul understood Him: "be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ". (1 Cor 4:16); he was one of not too many "fathers" to the flock (verse 15). n James 5:14 we read "Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord"; that anointing then cannot be done just by anyone if the advice is to go find a priest.

Πρεσβυτερους (“presbuteros”) is not “priest.” Again, you are anachronistically dragging into the text a term which is not there, except by English etymology. It is perfectly reasonable to bring in the elders for prayer for the sick and anointing with oil (see αλειψαντες, which appears in contemporaneous medical contexts as “rubbing,” not ceremonial “anointing,” and so may represent a combined approach of prayer and medicinal olive oil use. In any event, James doubtless considered the intent of the oil so obvious it required no detailed explanation.) Also note the plural, which makes sense in the case of the local congregation’s elders, not so much in your scenario of “go find a priest.”

In 1 Timothy 5:17ff we see that priests should have a special legal status; that would not be possible if they were not "a ministerial priestly class".

The passage in question does not mention a legal status per se:

1Tim 5:17-18 Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.

Further, we note that those deemed worthy of this double honor are in particular those who devote themselves to the ministry of the word and doctrine, not miraculous rites administration. There is a pragmatic reason for this. Ministry of the word can be very time consuming, and it is probable they were not easily able to hold normal employment and be effective in teaching the congregation. So Paul is saying these hard working "oxen" of the church should be able to sustain their ministry from the gifts of the church. This is an entirely Protestant approach, and requires nothing remotely like a sacerdotal class of sacrifice-offering priests. It’s not about the rituals. It’s always about the word:

Matthew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

In Titus 1:5 we learn that priests are to be "ordained" in "every city". Why ordain someone if any volunteer would do?

Ordain elders, not priests. And who is to say the ordained didn’t volunteer? Protestants have no objection to ordination. We do it all the time. Yet we do not have priests. The two concepts are easily differentiated. Kings were ordained to be kings. The elect are ordained to salvation. Ordination is a setting aside for service and devotion to the work of God. This is a universal concept in Christian thought, and is not unique to priesthood.

Whereas priesthood per se invokes the image of mediators who present the sacrificial body to the Lord in His temple for the forgiveness of sins, but whose ministry was only a foreshadowing of Christ our High Priest. And now that the reality has come, the shadow is obsolete. But public setting aside of missionaries, pastors, elders and deacons for special service to the Body of Christ most certainly and reasonably continues.

Actually, "leader" would be most correct etymologically, as "pres" indicates "in front".

Did you read the Liddell and Scott lexical material? If you take the time to trace out the links you will see the Greek literary context is overwhelmingly favorable to the use of “elders” for “presbuteros.” Now I will concede you one point. I ran across one paper which suggests that in the pre-Greek development of the root presbus, the notion of coming first does appear.

However, as I indicated in my previous post, etymology alone is seldom the best guide to contemporaneous semantic value. Recall the example of “Goodbye.” Its root etymology is a divine blessing, “God bless you,” but only in the most tangential way does that have anything to do with its contemporary usage of "I'm leaving now." That usage is set by proper lexical analysis, which would include a wide spectrum of usage samples from literature contemporaneous with the text in question, as demonstrated by the Liddell and Scott entry.

But here, we have variant usage even within Scripture which indicates “presbuteros” is very effectively translated “elder.” This actually works even when no leadership role is in view at all:

1Tim 5:1 πρεσβυτερω μη επιπληξης αλλα παρακαλει ως πατερα νεωτερους ως αδελφους 1Tim 5:2 πρεσβυτερας ως μητερας νεωτερας ως αδελφας εν παση αγνεια

Which translates as follows…

1Tim 5:1 Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren; 1Tim 5:2 The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.

Those two passages are clearly comparing age to mode of treatment, with no obvious relationship to issues of leadership. Timothy is a young man, and though he is appointed to the ministry of the word as one advanced beyond his years, yet he is told here to give deference and great respect to those who are his elders by age, for indeed they did come “before” him, chronologically, and so have earned that extra measure of respect that we owe our own mother or father.

But the issue is not even the tendentious Protestant translation "elder" just to run away from established meaning of "priest".

So good translation entails good word choice in the target language, which means one must avoid naïve errors such as anachronistically assigning a highly evolved and specialized word like “priest” to a more generic and versatile term like “presbuteros.” The “seniors” described by that word have seniority in the church because of their advanced wisdom and other spiritual gifts, recognized in ordination, but not because they dole out saving grace through allegedly miraculous rites not even established by the text. This is not rocket science.

From the scripture we see that these presbyters, however you put it in English as a word, were functioning as priests: were necessary for certain acts, were sent by Christ through ordination, had a separate status.

No, unless you have them offering a sacrifice on behalf of the people, or otherwise demonstrating their unique sacerdotal powers, any of their other functions are well within the context of servant leadership, and indistinguishable from Protestant notions of church oversight, including the ministration of the word, ordination, recognition of special contribution, etc. If the divinely inspired writers had wanted us to see these treasures of the church as priests, the word “hieros” was readily available. But it was never so applied. God makes no mistakes, so the omission must have been intentional.

Regarding the gifts of administration/governance/etc., you said:

But that is administrative duty; it is not central to the priesthood. Priests are sent to do confect the Eucharist and give absolution of sin. The rest that they do indeed does not have to be exclusive.

I agree that administrative duty is not central to sacerdotal priesthood, but I posit via Occam’s Razor that the simple reason those other, uniquely sacerdotal duties are missing from this list is they are truly not a part of the New Testament church order, thus requiring no gifting or appointing from the Holy Spirit. They are not there because they do not belong in the New Testament church, whereas gifts of administration and governance do belong.

There is, as I pointed out, ample scriptural indication that the priests had separate status and separate duties.

Sorry, but you have not established that the elders/overseers/shepherds are priests of a sacerdotal quality.

the status of one being "sent" is precisely that of a "go-between"

Not in the sacerdotal sense, i.e., a vital, ongoing dependency on a priestly class for the administration of the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice. Moses was between God and the people of Israel, in the model of intercession, and yet was never accounted as a priest officiating the service of sacrifice. That belonged to Aaron and the Levites, by special appointment. Whereas the apostles (“sent ones”) give no evidence of serving in that role, as the offerors of any sacrifice on behalf of a lay subclass. As stated in my previous post, that work was finished on the cross. Other jobs are still open. Not that one.

There is no scene where the Eucharist or the absolution is actually done by a priest.

Which is very odd if the failure to partake of the transubstantiated meal will result in eternal damnation.

But we have a scene of the messy Holy Communion at 1 Cor. 11 where Paul suggests the need for order.

Yes we do, and it is a scene recalled for instruction in humility and reverence in Protestant churches everywhere, and has been for centuries.

That means that the happy meals that the Early Church practiced were replaced by communion administered centrally even when the Apostle was still alive

No such inference follows. Paul was giving the church at Corinth corrective instruction. The well-off members were being forgetful of their humble estate as equal members of the Body of Christ. Paul reminds them of the meaning of the meal, and therefore the humility of mind that should accompany the same. There is nothing to learn here about sacerdotal organization. It is not replacement that’s happening here; it’s reflection.

Surely the very nature of the commandment to forgive or retain sins (John 20:23) assumes authority in those sent, but not everyone.

If that’s the case, then demonstrate where in the New Testament a subclass of believers is prohibited from exercising this power that follows from being a follower of Christ.

There is no question that the Early Church evolved from the Upper Room to the Church converting thousands very rapidly

Indeed, Christ Himself predicted it would grow dramatically and thereby attract “the birds of the air:”

Mat 13:31-32 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches."

Scholars differ on these “birds of the air,” some think they are angels, others that they are Christians, etc. But Christ has just taught the parable of the sower and the seed of the Gospel, in which birds are seen as destroyers of that seed. So if one sees the birds as mere opportunists, taking shelter in the church to make their own nest, but alien to the life of the church (bird and mustard tree are different categories), and a destroyer of the Gospel message, one can see how Christ here may be predicting the rise of opportunists in the Church who would use it for their own purposes and in the process be hostile to the essential truths of the Gospel.

All of which is to say that developments in the life of the church after the apostolic period must remain subject to review under the word of God, to see whether any such evolutions are in accord with the faith once delivered to the saints.

we see that it developed hierarchical structures as almost the first order of business by ordaining deacons

Except that deacons as an office don’t fit the “hierarchical” model per se. Remember a subtle but important truth here. We are not in disagreement that the churches have structure and authority. But deacons conform more to the reverse hierarchy model (see tqm). They were originally instituted to assist in the ministries of service to the physical needs of the body of Christ. This represents a difference in gifting, not a pecking order. Hierarchy by definition as a graph or tree structure represents a ranking process, and this is alien to Christ’s stated design for the Church:

Mar 9:34 -35 But they kept silent, for on the road they had disputed among themselves who would be the greatest. And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.

So the absence of a detailed account of the Eucharist or confession done by priests is the result of the historical focus of the New Testament rather than the intention of the inspired writers to disallow ministerial priesthood.

Pure speculation. And rather entertaining in a certain respect. You have elsewhere complained of Protestants using elaborate explanations to escape what you consider obvious meanings, yet here you effectively admit the Protestant position, that Scripture obviously does NOT describe these uniquely Roman doctrines, while at the same time offering, in effect, that the Holy Spirit left out detailed support for these critical rites because of, what? “Historical focus?”

Or is it rather that the only way Rome can maintain these alien intrusions upon the pristine order of the early church is by importing them from some nebulous body of hypothetical, undocumented oral tradition, then hold that weak-kneed “tradition” up as the magic lens through which to view the indisputable, written of God? Joseph Smith and his urim and thummim come to mind.

Peace,

SR

if such a teaching were omitted, it would be like leaving out of Moses the law of the sacrifice

Catholic Christian faith is not faith by the book. This is the fundamental error of Protestantism: to assume that the New Testament is an instruction book. Christ, however, taught clearly that He builds and leaves us the Church that will "bind and loose" and fill in the details. It is not at all surprising to us that some things: the rubrics of the Mass, the veneration of saints, the proper roles of the priest, other clergy and the laity were formed in the councils of the Church and not by the Evangelists and the Apostles in written documents of the Early Church.

it rather does say the opposite, the entire book of Hebrews as a case in point.

It is not. The book of Hebrews contrasts the Jewish priests (ιερεις) with the arch-priesthood (αρχιερευς) of Christ. It says nothing about the Mass where a Catholic priest (πρεσβυτερος) applies the one Sacrifice of the Cross to the congregants. The idea of the Hebrews somehow negating Catholic Priesthood instead of the Hebrew priesthood is a result of not understanding the nature of the Holy Mass, even though it is given plainly in the Last Supper.

You know you are in metaphoric space when these two domains do not normally interact at the concrete level

We have discussed that idea before. This epistemology works in text that do not purport to describe things miraculous in their nature. For example, people do not normally remain virgin after motherhood, they do not normally die and rise back to life. Your epistemology applies to Shakespeare but not to the New Testament. Otherwise, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection to you also become metaphors. That is the faith on a non-believer.

Further, even looking at the New Testament like we would look at any other text, we still see that those who understood Jesus in John 6 literally are allowed to leave without correction, Jesus is very insistent on the Eucharist will be His literal body, uses plain and somber language at the Last Supper not consistent with metaphorical teaching, and St. Paul in 1 Cor. 11 again connects Jesus' body on the Cross with the Eucharist and condemns those who don't "discern the body". So we have the putative metaphor extended through different books and different audiences, not once the literal reading instead of the metaphorical one being offered. I would agree that had the "this bread is my body" been used like "I am the door" is used: fleetingly, among other metaphors, without connecting it to any ritual involving doors, -- then the mere use of the verb "is" would not be enough to compel literal reading. But the text of several books taken together denies your reading.

this ceremony was already rich with metaphor

Yes it is. The Jewish seder is indeed purely metaphorical. But I do not argue for the Seder being literal. I also do not argue that Jesus is literally a lamb. Jesus used the context of the Seder in order to say the first Mass, because He was marking the end of the Hebrew religion and the beginning of the Christian religion, where there are no more animal sacrifices and repeated Seder meals, but one sacrifice of the Cross, the sacrifice of His literal body. (This is where it is useful to re-read Hebrews, especially noting how we are different from the followers of Moses who do not rest with God on their Sabbath: "we are made partakers of Christ", Heb. 3:14).

we do not have bread after all, but the person of Jesus

Right. This is where the metaphor of the manna and the bread of life ends, and the literal and surprising teaching begins: "my flesh is food indeed". From then on, there is no explanation of the metaphor but rather insistence on the direct and literal eating that raises the spirit.

[Peter's] belief enabled him to see it in spiritual terms.

Here, I think you forget that no one is denying that the Eucharist is a spiritual meal that feeds the spirit by the sacrifice of Christ. If all you mean to say is "the Eucharist is a spiritual event" then we all are in agreement, it is.

If they had truly thought this, they would have had a field day bringing in the Pharisees and charging Jesus with cannibalism

I am sure they did, but since there was no act of cannibalism, but a mere suggestion of something that sounded to them like it, that would occur in the future, that charge could not be made legally, while the blasphemy charge was made and stuck. It also could be that they, like you say, simply went away confused because they did not have the faith already established, that was ready to take even a "hard teaching".

All believers receive the Holy Spirit

That actually says that they are "sealed", not that it indwells in them. However, that is not the point; the point is that those present at the Last Supper were the apostles who all were to becomes priests; it is to them and not to every believer Jesus speaks and commands "do this". And likewise the authorization to forgive sins effectively (causing absolution in the eye of God) is done in a limited way.

imbue the Passover meal, which was already an integral part of their lives together as Jewish families, and already a remembrance of God's great mercy and power to redeem, with the sweet memory of their Savior

Again, no one is disputing that the Eucharist is causing in us a remembrance; of course it does. What it is, however, is also a meeting with Jesus Whole. However, your point about Passover being a common to all Jewish men ritual neglects that, first, the Corinthians were hardly all Jews, Corinth being where it is; and second, Christian men are indeed priests and kings of their households (1 Peter 2:9). May be I did not make it clear: at the Last Supper Jesus told the Apostles to "do it", but the "it" consists of one man (Jesus at the Last Supper, or in the future, an Apostle, and after that, one sent by an apostle, as in Titus 1:5) giving the Eucharist to many people. So the model of the Last Supper is not the model of Seder as family meal, but rather a Catholic Mass: a meeting with Jesus of many believers.

your proposition of a lower tier of believers unrepresentative of Christ does not stand

All believers are to imitate Christ and therefore be Christ to others. But the separate class of the clergy is a fact of the New Testament, -- I provided the quotes. To which we now turn.

It is perfectly reasonable to bring in the elders for prayer for the sick and anointing with oil

You rephrase "bring the priest and anoint" "bring someone old and massage with oil". The fact remains that both oil and ability to rub it is not lacking in most households, and St. James is not likely to give hygiene advice in the middle of his letter. He, in fact, continues "and the prayer of faith shall save the sick man: and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him". This is consistent with the Catholic Last Rites which do just that; not consistent with medicinal use of oil.

the ministry of the word and doctrine, not miraculous rites administration [...] There is a pragmatic reason for this

So you agree that these presbyters had a special status ("legal" only inside the Church, of course) and even explain why. Obviously, saying the Eucharistic prayer and feed the Eucharist is not the most taxing work of a priest either, especially in a generally hostile and unconverted 1 C. environment. You are correct that the same logic works for the Protestant ministers; the point remains that those discharging the spiritual duties, whatever they are, receive privileges and therefore become a "sacerdotal class".

elders, not priests

Let's not get childish over it. I quote Douay; for the purposes of this discussion I am happy with "presbyters".

Protestants have no objection to ordination.

So you agree that the minister of the Church, of course, willingly, should receive his status as "presbyter" from an authority external to him. That is, again, consistent with Catholic priesthood, and of course, may be modeled by non-Catholics also. I am not telling you what rituals to have, or how to call your ministers, or what these rituals really mean. I am however, pointing out that a sacerdotal class indeed is in evidence in the Early Church.

Whereas priesthood per se invokes the image of mediators who present the sacrificial body to the Lord in His temple for the forgiveness of sins, but whose ministry was only a foreshadowing of Christ our High Priest. And now that the reality has come, the shadow is obsolete.

This confuses the Hebrew priesthood with Catholic priesthood. Our priests do not "foreshadow", they show the death and resurrection of Christ and lead us in prayer.

the Greek literary context is overwhelmingly favorable to the use of “elders” for “presbuteros.”

You mean pre-Christian Greek? Of course; the word "presbyteros" pre-existed Christianity and of course its use as "Christian priest" is repurposing of the word for the new reality. Yes, "presbes" is the etymology for "presbyteros" and that means "one walking in front". I do not have a source for that ready, but it appears that you have it.

Those two passages are clearly comparing age to mode of treatment, with no obvious relationship to issues of leadership

Or it establishes the Catholic habit of calling priests "Father" regardless of age. Obviously, young Timothy, who will be ordaining priests (1 Timothy 5:22) will be at times doing it to men older than him, so it would be incorrect to see in this passage merely respect for the old age.

At the same time I would agree that some contexts indeed translate "elder" just as good as "priest", and in fact Douay uses both translations depending on context. "Presbyteros" is, remember, a repurposed word in the New Testament and its historical pre-Christian usage did not have to completely cede to the Catholic emerging usage.

good translation entails good word choice in the target language, which means one must avoid naïve errors such as anachronistically assigning a highly evolved and specialized word like “priest” to a more generic and versatile term like “presbuteros.”

Still, "presbyteros" points to a direct link to Catholic priests, while "elder" removes the link, which is, of course, tendentious. A reader of the Bible should know that the Early Church was in many ways not like the modern Catholic Church, because, for example, it was persecuted, in hiding often, and had the converts chiefly among the poor. It is possible that the early priests came already married (see the female form for "presbytera" in one of your examples). So I don't think translating "priest" would be any more anachronistic than retaining "king" for rulers that were not at all like Louis XIV, or retaining "soldier" for men who did not wear an M16 and fatigues. The substance of "priest" has not changed since 1c. to this day: sacramental ministry, teaching the doctrine, and leading in prayer.

unless you have them offering a sacrifice on behalf of the people, or otherwise demonstrating their unique sacerdotal powers, any of their other functions are well within the context of servant leadership, and indistinguishable from Protestant notions of church oversight

Many are indistinguishable; others aren't. Protestant ministers, for example, do not visit the dying, hear confessions and give absolution assuring the faithful that "if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him" (James 5:15).

uniquely sacerdotal duties are missing from this list

They are not missing; there are "prophets, doctors [teachers] and miracles" on the list; these match the faculties unique to priests.

but you have not established that the elders/overseers/shepherds are priests of a sacerdotal quality.

I have. I responded to your objections above.

Not in the sacerdotal sense, i.e., a vital, ongoing dependency on a priestly class for the administration of the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice

I don't know what other "vital dependency on a priestly class" you need to see. "Bring in the priests of the church ... and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him" (James 5:14-15) sounds like quite a dependency to me.

The vital dependency on receiving the gift of faith is directly demonstrable by the way: "how shall they preach unless they be sent" (Roman 10:15). Observe: not volunteer to preach but are sent to preach.

that work was finished on the cross

A priest does not die for our sins on the cross. He does, however, apply the sacrifice of the Cross to the faithful, because Christ told him: "do this for the commemoration of me".

Which is very odd if the failure to partake of the transubstantiated meal will result in eternal damnation.

But we have references to the Eucharist, albeit by different terms, plenty in the New Testament. We just don't know how it was administered other than sometimes, it was not done right. That is consistent with the purpose of the Church to find appropriate forms for worship in general. It is not the role of the Holy Scripture to dictate the canons of the Church.

it is a scene recalled for instruction in humility and reverence in Protestant churches everywhere

I know that something similar is done in Protestant churches and it is reverently done. But your ministers don't even claim that the bread is Jesus's body on the Cross, so you fail to "discern the body" as 1 Cor. 11:29 asks you to do.

where in the New Testament a subclass of believers is prohibited from exercising this power that follows from being a follower of Christ.

In James 5, already cited, believers are told to "bring in the priests of the church" on order to receive absolution of sin and be risen up by the Lord.

developments in the life of the church after the apostolic period must remain subject to review under the word of God

Of course. This is why Protestantism is an error in the development of Christendom, and needs to be discarded as based on counterscriptural theologies.

Hierarchy by definition as a graph or tree structure represents a ranking process, and this is alien to Christ’s stated design for the Church

Deacons assist the minister of the Church. Bishop ordains a priest (or, if you will, a minister). These are indeed functional roles in serving Christ, not ranks.

You have elsewhere complained of Protestants using elaborate explanations to escape what you consider obvious meanings, yet here you effectively admit the Protestant position, that Scripture obviously does NOT describe these uniquely Roman doctrines

This is not a contradiction. The scripture does contain some things and not other things. When something is contained in the scripture, we are left to explain it to others and to ourselves but we may not discard it and instead do something else that we like better. The Eucharist being a literal meal which brings in the Person of Christ is such thing contained. We can struggle with the meaning, -- we all do, for it is a miracle, -- but we may not discard it as a slip of a tongue or a metaphor.

The role of the Church as the arbiter and lawgiver of the Christians is also contained in the scripture. The Church binds and looses. So we allow the Church to be an authority in matters outside the scripture, including authority to explain the scripture.

The manner of the administration of the Eucharist is largely unexplained in the scripture, other than that it shows the death of the Lord and should lead the faithful to "discern the body" and is not an opportunity to fill the stomachs. So that is for the Church to decide on some pastoral basis, which it has done and will be doing till Kingdom comes.

The precise roles of priests, bishops, popes, etc. is not spelled out in the scripture, even though we have passages that point out something about these roles. So again, the Church has determined the rules.

All that is completely logical and accords with the Holy Scripture.

My apologies for a necessarily short response. Too much else going on. Besides, in many areas, we are entering the "rinse and repeat" phase, where progress is being impeded by pretty complete disconnects. I don't mind going after those kinds of things, but A) I need time, and B) I'd like to get past some of the more basic disconnects, if possible, before proceeding to the finer points. I'm an old guy, and I can't spend unlimited amounts of time just going in circles. So just a couple of things on this pass:

SR: the Greek literary context is overwhelmingly favorable to the use of “elders” for “presbuteros.”

AA: You mean pre-Christian Greek? Of course; the word "presbyteros" pre-existed Christianity and of course its use as "Christian priest" is repurposing of the word for the new reality. Yes, "presbes" is the etymology for "presbyteros" and that means "one walking in front". I do not have a source for that ready, but it appears that you have it.

No, I mean pre-Greek Sanskrit. For a brief intro to the idea of Sanskrit as a primitive root to the Indo-European family of languages, see here:

http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/IE_Main4_Sanskrit.html

The upshot is this, as I understand it so far. By the time presbus was entering common usage in Greek, it had already shifted in the direction of emphasizing age, without excluding leadership, possibly as a byproduct of age. In which case, there was absolutely no need to "repurpose" the word. It was already perfectly adaptable as a category to any number of instantiations, including church governance. Identifying these individuals as "priests" in the sense which "hieros" conveys remains anachronistic in the extreme.

SR: Those two passages are clearly comparing age to mode of treatment, with no obvious relationship to issues of leadership

AA: Or it establishes the Catholic habit of calling priests "Father" regardless of age.

Not unless there are females priests in Timothy's congregation:

1Ti 5:2 The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.

Same exact word, except for gender, in exact parallel to the previous statement concerning older men. No serious exegete could contemplate that this describes priests, and translating it as such in this passage should be viewed, at a minimum, as recklessly misleading.

And so a disconnect is born, because at this point the only way I can see to move forward is for you to check your exegesis with an established Catholic expert in Greek, perhaps a university don with a professional reputation to protect. I am confident if you found a person of competence they would confirm to you my rendering.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Peace,

SR

The reference I was going by is probably "the oldest sense of π. is 'going in front, taking precedence'" that appears in Liddell-Scott at the bottom for πρέσβυ^ς. I agree, that is not enough to demand replacing "elder" with "leader". In the same paragraph there is a Sanskrit reference. My Etymology gives Sanskrit "*per" for it.

I mentioned 1 Timothy 5:2 with female "πρεσβυτερας ως μητερας" in my previous post; I think that it indicates a priest's wife, as married priests were probably a majority in the Early Church. Combined with 1 Timothy 3:11, it is reasonable to see in both female figures of authority either connected to the priest by marriage, or by some other family tie. I also agree that in some places translating "elder" is appropriate due to the old meaning of "elder" being superimposed on the new phenomenon of Catholic priesthood.

In which case, there was absolutely no need to "repurpose" the word. It was already perfectly adaptable as a category to any number of instantiations, including church governance.

We are talking of the same thing. I said "repurpose", you say "adapt". Of course, the idea of a presbyter being anything other than a church administrator is foreign to you (despite James 5:14-15); but the point remains that a generic "elder/leader/respected one" began to attach to priests of the Church and took on this new meaning.

The disconnect that exists between Catholicism and Protestantism is not in fine points of linguistics, but in the fundamental approach to the role of the Church and the Bible. It will exist so long as Protestants read the Bible in order to confirm their theological prejudices (for example, certain verses from St. Paul that, taken out of context, suggest justification by faith alone) but not in order to find out what the Apostles really taught (for example, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist), and not in order to examine the Biblical evidence, for example, of priests in the Early Church. It is my conviction that anyone who reads the New Testament without prejudice, for what it says, will start in himself a process of conversion that will bring him, if not to the Catholic Church in the strict sense, then to the Orthodox or some other authentic Christian Church of historical pedigree.

It is in that spirit that I encourage your continuing reflection on the Eucharist and Christian priesthood as they appear in the New Testament.