A 02 - What is a Layman
Ryder PLHC: 02 What is a Layman? WHAT IS A LAYMAN?
Although we are all priests, it is not seemly in any one to thrust himself forward of his own accord and exercise this office: just because all have the same power, no individual may bring himself forward to discharge this office without the consent and choice of the Church.
Ordination signifies nothing else than as if the bishop instead of, or impersonation of, the whole Church should take out of the multitude one of those who have all equal power and command him to administer the same powers to others. That for this there should be selected particular persons, namely, those who are aptly qualified, is in no contradiction to the principle of faith and the universal priesthood, for precisely where some thing belongs to all together, not every one who considers himself taught of God is at liberty to take upon himself this office. No one is at liberty to thrust himself forward and take upon himself what belongs to all.
LUTHER, quoted by Dr. Dorner, History of Protestant Theology, vol. i. p. 172. And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the hand maids in those days will I pour out My Spirit. Joel 2:28-29.
LORD MACAULAY, in his Essay on the History of Von Ranke, describes an enthusiast fervid with zeal for God, who would be glad to be admitted among the humblest ministers of the Church of England. He has no quarrel with the Church or its government. But when he offers to assist, he is rejected. There is no room for such a man within its pale. If he is resolved to be a preacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. A congregation is formed. In a few weeks the Church has lost a hundred families, not one of which entertained the least scruple about her articles, liturgies, or her government.
Far different is the policy of Rome. The enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, the Roman Catholic Church makes a champion. She covers him with a gown and hood of coarse stuff, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her nothing. To devout women she assigns spiritual functions and dignities. In our country, if a noble lady is moved by more than ordinary zeal for the propagation of religion, though she may disapprove of not one doctrine or ceremony of the Established Church, she will end by giving her name to a new schism. At Rome the Countess of Huntingdon would have a place in the Calendar as St. Selina, and Mrs. Fry would be Foundress and First Superior of the Blessed Order of the Sisters of the Gaols.
Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford: he is certain to become the founder of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome: he is certain to become the first general of a new society devoted to the interests and honour of the Church. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of Establishment and all the strength of Dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has the energy of the voluntary system below.
These caustic words have in them the ring of truth. But I look on the matter from a widely different standpoint. I hold that such lay and special ministrations should be effectively recognised, not in consequence of a " profound policy," as Lord Macaulay describes it, but as being agencies of that selfsame Spirit who gives to every man severally as He willeth as charismatic gifts as in the earliest days of the Church, as functions of the Body which is Christ, as inalienable privileges in the priesthood of all Christians. In my first lecture I showed that Christianity exists in the world as a law of love and truth. In the present lecture I desire to give (before proceeding to further proof) a general view of the title and content of the Doctrine of the Laity. As to the title of Priesthood as given to the main body of God’s people, the earliest mention of it occurs in Exodus 19:5, on the eve of the promulgation of the Ten Commandments. Jehovah is stated to have commanded Moses to announce to the assembled Israelites:
"Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me from among all peoples: for all the earth is Mine: and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation." The title "kingdom of priests" is here given to Israel, but St. Peter applies the term to all Christians, as being the ideal Israel of God: "Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. But ye are... a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession" (1 Peter 2:5; 1 Peter 2:9). The author of the Apocalypse also applies these words to all Christians. "He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father" (Revelation 1:6). "Over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ" (Revelation 20:6). On this passage St. Augustine says, that This is not at all said solely concerning bishops and presbyters, who are now appropriately called priests in the Church." So much has been said to show that the title is one used in Scripture. But it is no mere title.
It is my object in these lectures to prove that the title represents a reality which is in accordance with the continuous teaching of the Scriptures, the earliest Christian writers, and primitive Liturgies.
Attention has been drawn by Bishop Lightfoot to the view that the Priestly Tribe held their peculiar relation to God only as representatives of the whole nation. Thus as delegates of the people they offered sacrifice, and made atonement. To signalise the escape from Egypt and the deliverance of the first-born, the eldest son of each family became the property of God. In Numbers 3:40 the statement is made that God commanded that for the first-born of each family a special tribe should be substituted, and, as the number of the first-born slightly exceeded the number of persons in the tribe, that the excess of persons should be redeemed by offerings of money. The view presented in the Book of Numbers is that the whole community was regarded as a kingdom of priests a holy nation. The account distinctly states that the sons of Levi were set apart, not in consequence of any inherent sanctity, but by an act of delegation on the part of the people. "The children of Israel shall lay their hands upon the Levites: and Aaron shall offer the Levites before the Lord for a wave offering, on the behalf of the children of Israel, that they may be to do the service of the Lord." The nation thus deputed to a single tribe the priestly functions which properly be longed to it as a whole. It has been objected that this section is part of what is known as the Priests Code and represents the thoughts of later times.
Baudissin says that in Numbers 8:5 a ceremony for the installation of the Levites is described. This ceremony, he says, was not literally performed, but simply gives expression to a theory. Now, it will be found to be an important admission if we can show that the theory of the Chroniclers of Israel was the doctrine of the priesthood of all God’s people.
Baudissin says: "As everywhere in the history of religion, there may be recognised also in the beginning of Hebrew history a period when no special priestly class existed. It is an artificially constructed basis upon which the view presented in the Priestly Writing of the Pentateuch rests, according to which neither sanctuary nor sacrificial rites had any existence before the divine revelation given to Moses. Even in the narratives of the Jehovistic book relating to the preMosaic period there are scarcely to be discovered any reminiscences of the then conditions of the cultus, but these narratives will scarcely be wrong in representing the relations which still persisted at a later period as when they describe the head of the family in the patriarchal house as exercising the priestly function of offering sacrifices."
It is a fact that sacrificing was not the exclusive privilege of a priestly caste. Gideon of the tribe of Manasseh, Manoah of the tribe of Dan, offered sacrifice. Under Saul the Israelites poured out the blood of captured animals, without any priestly interposition. A relic of the ancient priestly prerogative was preserved down to the very latest times of the Jewish cultus, in the slaughtering of the Paschal lamb by the father of the house.
Dr. Driver says, in contrasting the Jehovistic writing with the Priests Code, that in Judges and Samuel sacrifice is repeatedly offered in places not consecrated by the ark, and that laymen are repeatedly represented as officiating in both cases, without any hint of disapproval on the part of the narrator, and without any sense, even on the part of such men as Samuel and David, that any irregularity was being committed. The legislation of the Jehovistic writer is in harmony with and sanctions the practice of the Judges and early Kings as to the place of sacrifice and the persons who offer it. A priestly class is presupposed by the oldest book of the laws, the so-called Book of the Covenant (Exodus 22:6), and yet in an enactment later prefixed to it the general right to sacrifice is assumed in the demand made of Israel as a whole (Exodus 20:24): "An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in every place where I record My name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee." These words, says Dr. Driver, were addressed to lay Israelites. The underlying theory of the general priesthood of God’s people was in accordance with the facts. The view that the people delegated their duties to the sons of Aaron was the theory accepted by later writers. A light is thus thrown on the views of St. Peter and of St. John, of the author of the Apocalypse, and of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, as we retrace the histories with which they were acquainted. We best understand the thoughts of the New Testament writers by studying the literature in which their expressions were formulated.
Thus, even in accordance with any critical view as to the fact of the delegation by the people to the tribe, we gain insight as to the theory by examining the context of these quotations and observing the ideas indissolubly intertwined with them. The idea, therefore, in these Christian writers is the restitution of this immediate and direct relation to God? which was partly suspended, but not abolished, by the appointment of a sacerdotal tribe. The Levitical priesthood, like the Mosaic law, had served its temporary purpose. The stage of childhood had passed. The Church of God had arrived at mature age. The whole Covenant People had resumed their sacerdotal functions. The privileges of the Covenant were no longer confined to the limits of a single nation. Every member of the human family was potentially a member of the Church and as such a priest of God. In our survey of the development of this doctrine the next important moment is the announcement that Israel was the Kingdom of God.
Samuel, the seer, reminded the people of the divine reign of God. In his pathetic address as he resigned the office of judge he protested: "And ye say, Nay, but we will have a king to reign over us. Whereas God was your king." He seems to deprecate any intermediary between the subjects and their sovereign. This divine reign, happily named by Josephus a theocracy, had a spiritual as well as a political aspect. It is closely connected with the later development, which assumed such overwhelming importance in the teaching of the parables of Jesus, and of the Sermon on the Mount, as to the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of God is a reign rather than a realm. It is a state of things in which the will of God reigns supreme. It is an order of things which, from being inward and spiritual, tends to become outward and social, until at length it shall take possession of the entire domain of human life, and appear as a distinct epoch in history. Since this glorious state as yet exists only in a perfect manner in a higher sphere, it is called the Kingdom of Heaven. When in St. Luke we read that "yours is the kingdom of God," this denotes partial present possession and a right to future perfect possession. It is offered to all members of the Christian community. There is no distinction of class among those of whom it is said, "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Our Lord leaves it indefinite whether the term refers to the Christian society, as an institution, or whether it exists by an inward qualification. Perhaps intentionally he wished that the outward, social aspect should be elevated by the spiritual and inward aspect, and that the inward and spiritual should be realised in the outward and social form.
"The kingdom of God is at hand," was the message of John the Baptist. "The kingdom of God is among you" or "within you," is the message of Christ. "He made us a kingdom and priests," is the message of the Apocalypse. When Christians are described as reigning, it means they enter into the principles and take their share in advancing the divine reign. Thus the ideal Israel is at once a kingdom and a priesthood, as expressing at once the union of purpose and communion of soul with the Infinite.
Another important moment in the development of this idea is the rise of the prophets. The prophetic order, as opposed to the priesthood, cherished a confident expectation of the establishment on earth of the Kingdom of God. They sounded a trumpet-call to a more intense realisation of personal responsibility. They turned men’s attention from ritual to heart obedience. The divinely touched prophets were in the eyes of Israel laymen. They, being called of God, warned men of being kept at a distance from God.
1. Micah (6:6) called men’s minds to a purer ideal: "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?... Shall I give... the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? " (Micah 6:7-8).
2. Isaiah emphasised the danger of reliance on ceremony, ritual, and sacrifice. "Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto Me.... Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." In Isaiah 8:5 a marked stage is seen in the ministry of Isaiah as he withdraws from political Israel. He waits upon God. Here is the germ of the church idea proper. Dr. Robertson Smith says: "The formation of this little community was a new thing in religion. Till then no one dreamed of a fellowship of faith, disassociated from all material forms maintained without the exercise of ritual service, bound together by faith in the Divine Word alone. It was the birth of a new era, for it was the birth of the conception of the Church, the first step in the emancipation of spiritual religion from the forms of political life a step not less significant because its con sequences were not seen till centuries had passed away."
Isaiah revealed the great truth: "All thy children shall be taught of God."
Habakkuk (2:14) foretold that "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."
Jeremiah (31:34) spoke of a day when "they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord." An inspired writer of later date, probably about A.D. 68, could say of our Lord Himself: "If He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, seeing there are those who offer the gifts according to the law" (Hebrews 8:4).
Thus from Aaron to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, the provisional and temporary institution of the Jewish priesthood is noticed as continuing, but a more spiritual worship and an outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh was an ideal which never faded from the minds of the prophets, as is most clearly expressed by Joel (2:28): "It shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out My Spirit."
It is most significant that it is St. Peter the apparent recipient of the Great Commission, " On this rock will I build My church " it is St. Peter who is the first to recognise the priesthood of all Christians at the moment of Pentecost: "This is that which hath been spoken by the prophet Joel;... I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh." It is he also who in his Epistle says: "Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices."
Again, it is St. John who records the Great Commission after the Resurrection, "Whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them " who says of all Christians," As for you, the anointing ye received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any teach you." When Christ came the great ideal was realised. Though not of the tribe of Aaron, he became the One Great High Priest of Christianity. Dealing with God as a Son, he encouraged men to address the Father as sons. The Jewish priesthood in its exclusiveness had been superseded by a wider priesthood which God had in view from the first. Of this general priesthood the share possessed by the main body, who are not members of the ministerial priesthood, is what I now desire to define. The first use of the word "layman" occurs in the following passage of St. Clement of Rome, where he is speaking of the arrangements under the Mosaic law: " For unto the high priest his proper services have been assigned: and to the priests their proper office is appointed: and upon the Levites their proper ministrations are laid. The layman is bound by the layman’s ordinances." [St. Clemens Romanus, xl. 5:6 laikoj anqrwpoj toij laikoiij prostagmasin dedetai] The word "layman" points us back to laoj, the special title of the chosen people of God, as distinguished from the nations around. laoj is used 1,500 times in the Septuagint as the connotation of God’s people. It is contrasted with the "goyim," eqnh, "gentes." Therefore to speak of the laity is to speak of the community of the chosen and privileged people, the ideal Israel of God.
It is an inspired word, and recalls the early history of God’s call and choice. The word "laity" is a nobler word than people imagine. It is a word of most positive spiritual privilege. It implies the possession of the glory of covenanted access to God and intimacy with God. It is apt to be thought of as a merely negative term, used to de scribe one who is not a clergyman, not a lawyer, not a medical man, not an expert in some science or art. This may be the modern use of the word. But for ancient Israel it was to be one of the people, which God had made His own. It was predicted as of the very nature of the New Covenant, that in it the gift of the Holy Spirit should be given to all flesh, to the elect people of God as a whole. In a sense never realised by the Jews, Christians were to be collectively a royal priesthood and individually kings and priests. They were not to depend simply on a few official teachers of truth, but all were to know God, from the least to the greatest.
"Certainly," says Canon Liddon, " if Christian laymen would only believe with all their hearts that they are priests, we would get rid of some of the difficulties which vex the Church. For it would be seen that in the Christian Church there is only a difference of the degree in which spiritual powers are conferred, that it is not a difference in kind.
"The Christian layman was thus, in early days, in his inmost life, penetrated through and through with the sacerdotal idea, spiritualised and transfigured as it was by the Gospel. If the temple of the layman’s soul can again be the scene of spiritual worship, he will no longer fear lest the ministerial order should confiscate individual liberty. The one priesthood will be found to be the natural extension and correlative of the other." The layman’s admission to his privilege is by St. Paul affirmed to be Baptism. St. Jerome says: "Sacerdotium laici id est baptisma." In later times the rite of Confirmation was considered to be the beginning, as marking the time when the Holy Spirit was definitely conveyed. But still this principle of the priesthood of all Christians was maintained as a doctrine of the Church in interpretation of the unction which in early times accompanied the rite of Confirmation, with laying on of hands. That was considered as each man’s and each woman’s ordination to a personal share in the kingship and priesthood of Christ. The holy oil, say the mediaeval writers, is stamped on the fore head to remind each Christian child that he must wear the diadem of kingship and the dignity of priesthood. Which things are an allegory. The priesthood of the laity consists in the privilege of personal nearness to God, in the right to plead for oneself and others with confident intercession, to stand for God before a heathen world, the right to offer self devotion to God; above all, the free access, without any intermediary, into the very presence of God! The doctrine of the priesthood of all Christians is of the greatest importance in the spiritual and moral growth of each individual believer. It emphasises his free access to the presence of God for himself and for others. It implies that his whole life should be an offering well-pleasing to God. It leads to the practice of the realisation of the presence of God in reverent communion of the soul with Him. But it has a wider aspect. It raises the view of the position of others in God’s sight. It has been instrumental in the emancipation of the degraded and oppressed, in the removal of artificial barriers between class and class, and in the diffusion of a philanthropy untrammelled by the fetters of party and race.
Consciously or unconsciously the idea of a universal priesthood of the religious equality of all men (which, though not untaught before, was first embodied in the Church of Christ) has worked, and is working, untold blessings in political institutions and social life.
It has been forgotten, ignored, and obscured; but throughout the history of the Church it has been struggling for expression. Yet its results are but a small indication of what it shall be when the primitive ideal shall be restored and it shall be allowed to have free course in the lives of men and nations.
There is an ingrained tendency in human nature for men to allow others to do their devotions for them. Such neglect has led to the lowering of the spiritual life of the main body and to the loss of the primitive ideal. There has been a cleavage between those called to minister and the main portion, which possesses no lower status, no lesser dignity than to be members of the body of Christ on earth.
Tertullian protested against such a difference of standards. "We greatly err," he said, "if we think that what is not allowed to priests is allowed to laymen. Are not we laymen priests? Is it not written, He hath made us priests to God and His Father? "
“The true greatness," said Bishop Westcott, "of the Day of Pentecost lies in the power which stirred human souls with a sense of the divine fellowship. That power is still unexhausted. The wind fell: the flames died away: the voices ceased: but a life was quickened a Church was sent forth conquering and to conquer. The gift of Pentecost was a common gift. It was the endowment of a body representative of all believers. In this form the gift of the Spirit was not for the apostles alone, or for any one class, but for all who had embraced the message of the Resurrection. It is our inheritance as Christians, and we need to remember that it is the inheritance of all, to be administered by all.
"If hitherto laymen have done little in the active service of the faith, it is because little has been required of them. We have not pressed upon them boldly enough the duty of prophetic ministry. We have not charged them to stir up the grace that is in them. The clergyman cannot trace on every side the Gospel’s rich harmonies with its many strains of life.
"We cannot fulfil our sense of office, we cannot gain our end, till every Church man and Churchwoman is a church worker. Our National Church has not striven to inspire each of her children with the enthusiasm of service. She has not pressed home the fact that in spiritual things, as in temporal, we are in danger from what is called the slow suicide of idleness.
"She has wronged the brotherhood, and wronged the world. But God has promised to pour forth His Spirit on all flesh, and your young men shall see visions, visions which shall bring back a lost glory to the earth. And your old men shall dream dreams dreams which are the foreshadowings of that better order of things which God hath prepared for us."