LUTHER'S POSITION

Up through the time of Martin Luther, the basic theology behind Church order as it had developed in the West depended upon a theological work believed to have been written by Dionysius the Areopagite in the first century of the Christian era. Since the author in the work claimed he was baptized by Saint Paul, this writing roughly held the same position in medieval theological thinking that the early second century letters of Saint Ignatius of Antioch hold today in Vatican II thinking on Church order. The work consisted of four treatises, the second of which concerned the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In this treatise a mystical explanation was given to Church order in the verticle line. In effect it tended to soften the power-over-the-sacraments base while establishing a divine order in symbolism that was spiritually fruitful. Even though it is now known that this writing is a fifth-century forgery, nevertheless at that time it presented an adequate theological base for Church order.

During the humanistic revival of the fifteenth century with its emphasis on language study which included taking a fresh look at Scripture through the medium of the original languages in which the books of the Bible were written, the neoplatonic and non-scriptural character of the pseudo-Dionysian writings began to pale. Fresh insights into any theological question were now coming from the Scriptures themselves and it was into this scene that Martin Luther came.

Luther looked on existing Church order as kind of a tyranny contrary to the freedom of the Christian which he found so often expressed in the Epistles of Saint Paul. As he saw it, this tyrannical Church order consisted of two kinds of baptized members, the ordained baptized and the simply baptized. The former group although the smaller exercised enormous control over the latter which was the much larger group. Their control of Church order created a class society within the Church that might be graphically expressed as ORDAINED-baptized and baptized whereas according to Scripture Christians are BAPTIZED with some being BAPTIZED-ordained. Thus it was Baptism that gave every Christian his unique identity and status; any addendum was simply a community function extending from one's Baptism.

As for priesthood, it is through Baptism that the Christian enters this exalted state. Should one ask how those specifically called priests in the Church differ from those called lay people, Luther's answer was that the name "priest" was unjustly transferred from the many to a few thus causing an improper distinction among Christians that Scripture itself does not make. Those who have appropriated the name ''priest" to themselves are actually called "minister," "servants" and "stewards" in Scripture. Thus there is no vertical hierarchical arrangement of divine origin in the Christian community; rather there is, a horizontal added condition of service some members of the community have. Luther explained it thus: "Although we are all equally priests, we cannot all publically minister and teach. We ought not to do so even if we could."(6)

The evil of the old hierarchical Church order which saw some in the community usurping the rights of all, could be seen in several practices the most blatant of which were the denial of the cup to the laity and the imposing of obligations on the laity without their consent. In the denial of the cup to the laity, priests are claiming a dictatorship for themselves which they do not have. Since by the teaching of Scripture they are actually servants, it should be their duty to administer the body and blood of Christ under both species to those who desire it and whenever they desire it. As to the imposing of obligations on Christians, once again this is an aberration of the hierarchical class system. Luther believed that no one－pope, bishop or anyone else－had the right to impose any special obligation on a Christian without that Christian's consent. In short, within the community of the baptised, no relationship exists among Christians where one has authority over another.(7)

Luther and his followers were accused of attempting to get rid of the existing Church order by abolishing bishops. And indeed from what has been said above such a move would easily attain its desired goal. But in the Augsburg Confession, Philip Melanchthon claims that Lutherans did not wish to abolish the traditional office of bishop which had existed for so many centuries in the Church but rather wished to abolish what we might term prelates. Bishop is a ministry term which appears many times in Scripture whereas a term like prelate which is commonly used in the Catholic Church as a substitute for bishop, is a description of rank not taken from Scripture but rather from secular practice whereby someone is designated as superior to others. In actual practice this would mean the abolition of the relationship within the Church community based on control over the sacraments. The first casualty among the sacraments within such a change was Holy Orders. This could no longer be a sacrament because if it remained so, then by divine institution it would continue to produce a special group within the Christian community of the baptised, independent of community control. Such a group of its very nature would preside in the Christian community. The alternative was the Christian community as a whole having control over the sacraments by being the instrument through which one was rightly called to sacramental ministry.

6)Cf. Luther's "The Freedom of a Christian" in John Dillenberger, MARTIN LUTHER: SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS (New York: Snchor Books, 1961).

7)Cf. Luther's "The Pagan Servitude of the Church", ibid.