Collins, Keenan Jones: Sharing the Priesthood of Christ

Augustine also expressed the ﬁnal communion of life through Christ’s priestly mediation in terms of praise: ‘there we shall praise; we shall all be one, in him [Christ] who is One, oriented towards the One [the Father]; for then, though many, we shall not be scattered (ibi laudabimus, omnes unus in uno ad unum erimus; quia deinceps multi dispersi non erimus)’ (Enarrationes in Psalmos, 147. 28). Addressing the triune God, Augustine also wrote: ‘and without ceasing we shall say one thing, praising You [the Trinity] in unison, even ourselves being also made one in You [the Trinity] (et sine ﬁne dicemus unum laudantes te in unum, et in te facti etiam nos unum)’ (De Trinitate, 15. 28. 51).

THESIS 11

At all stages (in his incarnation, ministry, death, and risen glory) the priesthood of Christ is essentially Trinitarian. This thesis draws together what the previous thesis has stated under (2) and (3). No New Testament writer goes beyond Luke in his vision of the Trinitarian face of the whole story of Jesus: from his conception through the power of the Holy Spirit through to his sending (with the Father) of the Holy Spirit at the ﬁrst Pentecost. The Spiritbearer becomes the Spirit-giver (Luke). The Letter to the Hebrews, the New Testament witness to the priesthood of Christ, is also thoroughly ‘Trinitarian’—not least by its biblical quotations. It treats the Scriptures not as the written word of God but as the spoken word of the tripersonal God. Where St Paul introduces quotations from the Scriptures with such rubrics as ‘it is written’ (e.g. Rom. 9: 13, 33; 11: 8), ‘the Scripture says’ (e.g. Gal. 4: 30), and ‘Moses says’ or ‘David says’ (e.g. Rom. 10: 19; 11: 9), Hebrews puts biblical texts into the mouth of either God (the Father) (e.g. Heb. 1: 5) or of the Son (e.g. 2: 12) or of the Holy Spirit (e.g. 3: 7–11). It is rare that anyone else is allowed to speak the words of Scripture, as Moses does in Hebrews 9: 19–20. Hebrews draws on the biblical texts for a Trinitarian doctrine—one might say, drama— in which the Father speaks to the Son and to us in the Son, the Son addresses the Father, and the Holy Spirit bears witness to us. Thus Hebrews expounds Christ’s priesthood within a kind of Trinitarian drama. Berulle, Condren, and Olier understood Christ’s priestly self-offering to the Father to have begun with the incarnation, even before he was born into the world. Their vision of the various ‘states’ in Christ’s priestly history included the Father from the outset. This portrayal of Christ’s priestly existence became clearly Trinitarian when the Holy Spirit entered their vision of the consummation of Christ’s sacriﬁce brought by his resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven.

THESIS 12

While the priesthood of Christ is unique, it is also participated in, albeit differently, by all the baptized and by ordained ministers. This ﬁnal thesis serves to introduce what will be presented and developed fully in the ﬁnal chapter. We might press on and add further theses about Christ’s priesthood, responding, for instance, to the question: was he, as priestvictim, the substitute and/or representative of sinful human beings? Or are substitution and representation unsatisfactory, ‘extrinsic’ terms? Would it be better to use the language of ‘communion’, ‘incorporation’, and ‘solidarity’? Such language ﬁnds support in the way Hebrews insists on Christ’s priestly solidarity with those to whom he was sent (e.g. Heb. 2: 17–18; 3: 1; 4: 15). But these and other questions can be dealt with more satisfactorily in the coming chapter.