ATR/9hl

On the Priesthood

GREG JONES*

Episcopalians affirm the ministry of all the baptized. Our polity is also deeply inclusive of laity in our leadership structure—at parochial, diocesan, and national levels. As such, however, it is important to remember that not all Christian ministnes and lead­ ership are necessarily the same. Neither are the particular forms ofChnstian ministry to be rooted in secular notions of leadership and authority. In this article, I explore the particular leadership identity and mission of presbyters and bishops. In the early church and continuing in the Anglican tradition, we affirm that presbyters and bishops are called to a ministry of pastoral leader­ ship rooted in their pnmary identity and mission as leaders of the eucharistie community. The particular gifts and charisms of the priest and bishop are rooted in their work as gatherers of the eu­ charistie community, as proclaimers of the gospel, and as bearers of sacrament and blessing.

In the first two centuries of the church, two orders emerged with primary pastoral leadership responsibility: overseers (epis- copoi or bishops) and elders (presbutoroi or presbyters).1 While the

* Samuel Gregory ("Greg") Jones is Rector of St. Michaels Episcopal Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is the author of Beyond Da Vinci (Seabury, 2004) and "Living and Active," a Bible study resource for the Diocese of North Carolina. A member of the Gathering of Leaders and previously a missionary in Honduras, he currently serves on the Board of Trustees of The General Theological Seminary. 1 The words "priest" and "priesthood" can be misleading. The words have two sep­ arate meanings in the English language. The one meaning, stemming from the bibli­ cal words sacerdos or hieros, is that of the Hebrew temple priesthood, in which the priest is the sacrificing agent making atonement between God and humankind. In this sense, our use of the word "priest" or "priesthood" is something which uniquely be­ longs to Jesus Christ and to the whole baptized people of God as his Body. The sec­ ond meaning, stemming from the biblical word presbyter, is that of the elder of the Christian community—an office of explicit leadership authority within the commu­ nity. It happens that the Greek word presbyter becomes the origin of the English word "priest." The clerical order frequently called "priest" in the church is in fact the order of the presbyters, or leading elders, of the church. 47 48 Anglican Theological Review distinctions between overseer and elder were not totally delineated until the second century, the central fact remains that these were the ones identified to lead the whole flock as shepherds.2 This is not news, of course, but it bears repeating because the church still needs its bishops and presbyters to cherish the call of pastoral leadership for the good of the church. It bears repeating because we live in a mod­ ern Western context in which established patterns of authority and leadership have been widely contested and frequently rejected. No­ tably, within the Episcopal Church and mainline Protestantism in general, many have sought to revise the primary identity and mission of our pastors. In modern times, this identity and mission has fre­ quently subsumed much from the secular professions, ranging from social work, business management, and academia to political science, resulting often in pastors either abdicating the leadership role intrin­ sic to their primary calling, or envisioning their particular leadership calling in ways not essentially pastoral. As indicated in the memorable statement of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the father of discrete reflection on pastoral ministry in Christian tradition, pastoral leadership is the "the art of arts and sci­ ence of sciences."3 The primary identity and mission of pastors is not to be social workers, business managers, academics, or politicians. Certainly Christian ministry can and must be done in these fields, but the particular charism of bishop or presbyter is not required as such in order to perform them. Moreover, as William Stringfellow ob­ served thirty years ago, the modern project of recasting into secular

2 Pastors are shepherds. Deacons are of course leading figures in their min­ istries—but by definition the order is focused on servanthood. To be sure, all pres­ byters and bishops continue on as deacons also. Perhaps the value of the later tradition of sequential ordination is that those called to leadership as presbyters and bishops never forget that the church has raised them up to be servant leaders. As Christ himself said, "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve." As James Monroe Barnett wrote, "The character of the diaconate is servanthood, not the role of leadership expressed through presiding and its accompanying activities" (James Mon­ roe Barnett, The Diaconate: A Full and Equal Order [Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1995], 212). 3 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 2.16, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallos, in Cynl of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers II.7 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Pub­ lishers, 1994). On Gregorys pastoral theology, see Christopher A. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), chap. 5. ON THE PRIESTHOOD 49 categories the identity and mission of Christian pastors has done harm to "the nurture of the laity." Stringfellow argued with his usual force of mind that world-derived corruptions of pastoral identity and mission have in fact created a clericalism that borrows "the worst features of secrecy, prerogative, asserted expertise, vested status, and paternalism familiar to the secular professions." Stringfellow claimed that the identity and mission of "priest or pastor" can only rightly be discerned and formed from "within the church, the Body of Christ" and not the world around it—and that this must be done for the good of the peo­ ple in all orders of ministry.4 Stringfellows view makes sense. If the church is a reality shaped not by ourselves but by God, then it follows (as we have always be­ lieved) that the form of the church—its identity, mission, and internal order—has also been shaped by God. As such, the particular role and gifts for ministry of the church's pastors (bishops and presbyters) are rooted in something other than the societies in which we actually re­ side.5 Indeed, in much the same vein, Rowan Williams argues that the church "claims to be the most comprehensive human society there is—the new human race in embryo ... [and] it claims this because of its belief that it is established not by any human process grounded in and limited by events, cultures and so on, but by Gods activity."6 Williams elaborates on this idea in his examination of Michael Ram­ sey's classic book, The Christian Priest Today. The identity and mis­ sion of the church and of its pastoral leadership is not primarily a matter of what contemporary people believe is important and effec­ tive, but rather is a matter of what has been provided for the church by Christ. Williams writes, "The Church is never left to reimagine it­ self or reshape itself according to its own priorities of the moment; for it to be itself, it has received those gifts that express and determine its essential self as a place where the eternal self-giving of Christ is hap­ pening in such a way as to heal and change lives."7

4 William Stringfellow, A Keeper of the Word: Selected Wrìtings of William Stnngfellow, ed. Bill Wylie Kellerman (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 1994), 258. 5 Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Pub­ lishing, 2005), 34. 6 Williams, Why Study the Past?, 2. 7 Rowan Williams in Douglas Dales, John Habgood, Geoffrey Rowell, and Rowan Williams, Glory Descending: Michael Ramsey and His Wntings (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), 165. 50 Anglican Theological Review We live in an age deeply skeptical of received traditions, and in an American context marked by individualism, materialism, and cyni­ cism, and in an ongoing religious tradition which has over time taken on many values from the world injurious to our own identity and mis­ sion. This being the case, I believe it is valuable to reassert (1) what the church has from its earliest times experienced to be its own iden­ tity and mission; (2) what is the vital source of this identity and mis­ sion; and (3) how these concepts relate to the leadership role of our bishops and presbyters. Following the hallmark Anglican method of looking most closely at the witness of the Scriptures and first five centuries of the church, I believe we can even now in the twenty-first century use these early standards to continue to understand our identity and mission and how we are best formed to carry these out. In the Anglican tradition since Cranmer at least, we search for the Word of God in the Bible reason­ ably and by the guiding witness of the early church not because we be­ lieve the Holy Spirit spoke only then, or that the Word of God is no longer incessantly agitating us by sacred utterance incarnationally, corporately, and in other ways as well. We focus on the first five cen­ turies of the church because it is in this period that the hallmark iden­ tity and mission of the church are formed, with special awareness of the church's call to be alien to, though resident in, the world around it.8 In those early centuries of witness-making—with the mothers and fathers of the assembly of the resurrection being martyrs in all senses of the word—the church emerges as a people who believe they are im­ bued with particular means of gracious identity and gracious power for mission which are not of the world but of the living and active Word of God. It is essential to the identification and formation of ef­ fective bishops and presbyters that the church understands that this is still the case.

8 Rowan Williams writes: "We misunderstand the early Church if we suppose that these [theological debates] were fuelled by a general concern for verbal precision or by intellectual interests alone. The controversies about Christ in the fourth and fifth centuries are in their own way debates about what it is to be citizens ofthat city whose supreme court is that of the Divine Word, what it is to claim that the ultimate legiti­ macy and coherence for human life together lies in Christ and that human history converges upon him; they are also about how sacred power is conveyed through him to the body of believers" (Williams, Why Study the Past?, 40). ON THE PRIESTHOOD 51 The Identity and Mission of the Church The most basic affirmation we make in The Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer is that by baptism we die with Christ, share in his resurrection, and become full members of the Body of Christ. In our simplest self-definition, we believe that the church is the Body of Christ. Each member of the church thus shares in the life of the Tri­ une God and God s saving work for the reconciliation of all creation. We view this Body of Christ, this church, to be like its head, both human and divine. Just as Jesus of Nazareth was fully human and fully divine, the church is also called to be a historical, physical, sacramen­ tal, and living entity. As the living agency within creation of Jesus Christ the great High Priest, who alone and in himself is the one who reconciles creation with creator by his own divine power, the church shares in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, whose atoning sacrifice on the cross—and by whose mercy and according to whose will—has begun making all things just. Scripture describes the church as a spiritual household, called in its entirety to be "a holy priesthood" (1 Pet. 2:5), and our Great Com­ mission is to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19). This Christly identity and Chrisdy purpose do not belong to any sub­ set or subgroup within the church—no matter what title or office they may hold individually or corporately. No matter whether one is a bishop, priest, deacon, or layperson, all share in the identity and mis­ sion of the priesthood of all the baptized in Christ. The identity and mission of the church belong to the whole baptized people of God.9 As a spiritual house, called out by Jesus to go forth on a mission to immerse all nations in Gods own self,10 the church has been called

9 In his book My People is the Enemy, William Stringfellow writes, "At the center of the drama of the Crucifixion of Christ is God, bearing the burden of the hostility of both Israel and Rome—in fact, of all men and nations—to Himself. That hostility is dissipated and absolved by His own assumption of the estrangement between God and men. The Church, called to be the Body of Christ in this world, and the people of the Church, called to be the members of His Body in this world, share in that self­ same ministry and service in the world" (William Stringfellow, My People is the Enemy [New York: Anchor Books, 1966], 145). 10 Ekklesia—the central New Testament word for "the church"—is literally the gathering of those "called out." In Greek, apostolic identity is the identity of being "sent forth." In Greek, the word for baptism means immersion; to immerse in the name of the Triune God is to assert that all shall be included in the inner life of God, such that God will be all in all, as Paul asserts (1 Cor. 15:23-33; Eph. 1:18-23). 52 Anglican Theological Review to be an alternative cosmos to those that exist in any given time or place. The church is "the cosmos of the cosmos, because Christ has become its cosmos, he who is the primal light of the cosmos."11 As the Body of Christ, the church is destined to be distinct from and in great tension with all societies in every given historical context. Yet, while formed by Christ as an alternative cosmos called out from the world, the church exists for the sake of the whole world. For if the church is the Body of Christ, then the words of Paul remain extremely relevant to the question of pastoral leadership: "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emp­ tied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:5-8).

Imperium Though called to be an alternative cosmos, the church has never been free from corruption by worldly powers that belong in every his­ torical context. It is primarily these corruptions that have hindered the work of the church to be a holy priesthood acceptable to God. Our history teaches us that when the church becomes involved corpo- rately with Imperium,12 it holds captive and lacerates the church's vo­ cation to be the Body of the great High Priest, Jesus Christ. When the church corporately accepts the empowerments of Imperium, it under­ mines its own identity and mission as the Body of Christ.13 The classic

11 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doc­ trine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago, 111.: Uni­ versity of Chicago Press, 1971), 160. 12 Imperium means "power" in Latin, referring to the power possessed by those dominant persons whose will is enforced primarily by threat of violence, use of force, or other forms of coercion. An "imperator" in Latin is a commander. The emperor of Rome was just that, the one who commands. 13 While all individuals are themselves subject to sin and death, the central identity of the Christian is no longer as an individual but as a member of the Body of Christ. Thus, the effects of individual sin are far less important and dangerous to the identity and mission of the church than the effects of the corporate sin of the whole people of God. The Ash Wednesday liturgy is a good example of how the Episcopal Church tends to put corporate and common confession of sin ahead of the individualistic con­ fession of sin. See the near-exclusive use of the first person plural in the Ash Wednes­ day litany in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, 267-269. ON THE PRIESTHOOD 53 example of this phenomenon, and the beginning of an ongoing prob­ lem with the church, is the process beginning with the emperor Con- stantine in the fourth century, in which the church's identity and mission became fused with the identity and mission of the Roman empire.14 It cannot be overstated how much this union corrupted and subverted the church's identity and mission, apart from what­ ever other goods survived it, which attests to God's power of grace to redeem all fallen creatures. The early Anglican reformers began to examine just how deeply the marriage of church with empire subverted the priestly vocation of the whole people of God. The way in which the Bishop of Rome had assumed massively imperial powers since late antiquity was seen as an early example. The Anglican reformers argued that the papacy had seized the priestly vocation that rightly belongs to the whole baptized people of God, and had corrupted the particular calling of the church's bishops and presbyters—and laity—in so doing.15 The Anglican re­ formers explicitly upheld the Constantinian marriage of church with empire; and in many ways they sought to defend the very arrangement which was the seed for the usurpation of the priesthood of all believ­ ers by a clerical class seeking to possess the font of ultimate authority. But even so, the Anglican reformers went a long way to laying the groundwork for further reforms. Going further with such reforms, but using the same methods of scriptural reasoning in light of the early church tradition (developed by Cranmer and others), the founders of The Episcopal Church also identified the corruptions of Imperium in the church. For example, they saw that the Church of England possessed the very kind of impe­ rial establishment that undermines the church by imbuing it with powers not of the Word but of the world. The visionary genius behind the founding of The Episcopal Church, William White, first bishop of Pennsylvania, argued that the defects of the Church of England were

14 Stanley Hauerwas describes John Howard Yoder s take on the Constantinian shift: "Prior to Constantine it took exceptional conviction to be a Christian. After Con- stantine it takes exceptional courage not to be counted as a Christian. ... No longer could being a Christian be identified with church membership, since many 'Chris­ tians' in the church had not chosen to follow Christ" (Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2006], 62). 15 Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (Cambridge, Mass.: Cow­ ley Publications, 1990), 64-65. 54 Anglican Theological Review primarily in its being a "creature of the state" and an "engine of civil policy."16 He noted that much of the trouble with the Church of En- glands bishops and presbyters had to do with their identity and mis­ sion being rooted in and loyal to the British empire, at least as much as in the kingdom of God.17 In recent generations, leading voices from all orders of ministry in The Episcopal Church and in sister churches around the world have argued further that the marriage between the church and Imperium goes deeper than dalliance with governmental powers. Feminists, postcolonial Christians in Africa and elsewhere, and a wide range of contemporary Christians have argued that the church must resist union with any number of different forms of entrenched power, dom­ ination, and coercion. Obviously, even in the Scriptures and early tra­ dition we discern social ordering in the church itself marked by male domination over women. One often hears today that we live in a post-Constantínian age, or more correctly a "non-Constantinian" one.18 Frequently it is assumed that todays church has gone beyond the kind of Constantinianism we have been describing. But one must be careful in believing it. In the case of The Episcopal Church, our polity and ethos model and exalt the values of classical liberalism often as much as Scripture, tradition, and reason. Classical liberalism is that Enlightenment mindset of the founders of the United States, the exalted values of which are human rationality, sovereign individualism, and limited restraint on the exer­ cise of human will. The same John Locke whose work formed the philosophical basis for the American Revolution also informed The Episcopal Church's constitution, as outlined in William White s 1782 pamphlet The Case of The Episcopal Church in the United States Considered.19

16 William White, "The Case of the Episcopal Church in the United States Con­ sidered," The Common Sense Theology of Bishop White, ed. Sydney A. Temple, Jr. (New York: King's Crown Press, 1946), 84. 17 William White, Sacrifice, Altar, Priest in The Episcopal Magazine, vol. 1, no. 1 (January, 1820); cited in White, Common Sense Theology, 84. 18 Theologians ranging from J. Philip Wogaman in his Christian Ethics (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/fohn Knox, 1993) to Rodney Clapp in Peculiar People (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 1996) use the term "post-Constantinian" to mean non- Constantinian. 19 White, "Case," 23. ON THE PRIESTHOOD 55 Critics have long noted that whereas the monarchy no longer oc­ cupies authority in our church, another kind of secularly oriented font of authority does: the liberal Enlightenment model of American gov­ ernment, from which so much of our ecclesiastical polity borrows. Just as Newman and Pusey saw a blessing in The Episcopal Church's inde­ pendence from the British imperial structure, they also saw a curse in The Episcopal Church's beholdenness to American political ideology and practice.20 John Henry Newman said, "Americans boast that their church is not, like ours, enslaved to civil power. . . . True, not to the civil power by name and in form, but to the laity. And in a democracy, what is that but civil power in another shape."21 Michael Ramsey, the great progressive catholic of the twentieth century, wrote, "There is more than one way in which secular political influence can infect a church. ... A church can be politically affected by its link with a monarchy and an aristocracy, but it can also be politically infected by its own democratic procedures if they resemble too closely those of the secular state."22 After the Constantinian shift, the roles of priest and bishop be­ came intrinsically connected to roles of imperial government. They became imbued with tasks, authority, and rewards having little or nothing to do with the role of bishops and priests as shepherds of an assembly called out from the world in the name of the Lord. They be­ came imbued with powers that were not gracious powers. Similarly, in England, many of the clergy shared in just the same sort of non- gracious empowerments. Too, in The Episcopal Church, where there are no such entanglements with the state as such, there continue to be entanglements with secular models of leadership and identity. And again, as stated earlier, when bishops and priests are to be re- envisioned along the lines of the secular professions, they run the grave risk of drawing their identity and mission from worldly sources and not the church's own font of gracious identity and mission.

20 In his essay on the Anglo-American Church in the British Critic, October 1839, John Henry Newman wrote that The Episcopal Church was cause for rejoicing, be­ cause in it "we have the proof that the Church, of which we are, is not the mere cre­ ation of the State, but has an independent life, with a kind of her own, and fruit after her own kind." 21 John Henry Newman, cited by Michael Ramsey in The Anglican Spirit (Cam­ bridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 1991), 45. 22 Ramsey, Anglican Spirit, 46. 56 Anglican Theological Review Again, as Stringfellow observed, "The indispensable credential for ordination as priest or pastor is that the person called to such office be a confessing Christian, as distinguished from a religious inquirer or a theological debater or, for that matter, a scholastic."23 Moreover, be­ yond the call to confess Christ shared by all the baptized, Stringfellow says the primary office and ministry of pastors (bishops and pres­ byters) is

located at the interstices of the Body of Christ and of the congre­ gations that represent that Body visibly and notoriously in the world. The ministry of the priesthood is a ministry to the members of the Body in their relations to each other . . . gathered as a con­ gregation in worship, assembled for the exposition and exhibition of the Word of God.... This is the ministry that cares for and con­ serves the tradition of the church—that is, the continuity and in­ tegrity of the Christian mission ever since Pentecost. This is the ministry devoted to the health and holiness of the Body of Christ in the world.24

Power of Grace So what is the font of identity and power from which pastors are to be formed and deployed? Anglicans have always understood the Scriptures and early church to say that the power of grace has been given to the whole church, to fulfill its divine purpose. Given by the Holy Spirit, the power of grace has always belonged to the whole baptized people of God for the sake of the world, which needs the inclusion into God's reign that this power of grace enables. The power of grace is the kind of power demonstrated by Christ on the cross, the ultimate sign of the love that does not protect itself or hold back. This power of God's grace is supremely free in "letting itself be wholly rejected"; it is a "total giving-away, utterly independent of the world's conditions."25 The power of grace is a kind of power not based on Imperium or self- security; and it is this very power that God pours through the church for the sake of the world. The power of grace is the only righteous

Stringfellow, Keeper of the Word, 257. Stringfellow, Keeper of the Word, 166. Williams in Dales, et al., Glory Descending, 242. ON THE PRIESTHOOD 57 power by which any of the church's members may do effective min­ istry, and our ministries must therefore attend to those charisms that have been given by God. God gives this grace to the church to be worked through the church's rich variety of ministries. Within that variety, the leadership for the whole people of God is to be primarily exercised by the church's pastors, who are identified in the Scriptures and earliest traditions as overseers and elders (bishops and presbyters.) These leaders are identified and authorized by the whole baptized people of God in ordination.26 And as leaders within the church, which is the "body formed from believers to whom Christ gives himself fully in the Eucharist,"27 the primary ministry of bishops and presbyters as shepherds of God's people is to gather, to oversee, and to nurture the eucharistie community.28 For this ministry, the power of grace is given to pastors in these particular but related charisms: the proclamation of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, and the pronunciation of blessing.29 The pastoral identity and mission of bishops and presbyters is witnessed to in the earliest experience of the Spirit working in the church "prior to the conformity and decadence sponsored by the Constantinian Arrangement."30 And the marks and charisms of this "pastoral concern" are "teaching and proclaiming the resurrection of the dead," and "vouching for the re­ demptive vigilance of the Word of God in the world."31 In tune with each other like strings upon the lyre,32 our bishops and presbyters therefore need to be chosen by the whole people of God from among those candidates demonstrating the interest and

26 In ancient times, ordination rites for bishops and presbyters included the voice of the whole people of God in the bishops election by the people (or the opportunity to reject), and in the prayers of the people. Beginning with Thomas Cranmers ordi­ nal, at least, Anglicans have come to view ordination as the act of the whole church: the bishop presides on behalf of the whole. See Paul F. Bradshaw, The Anglican Or­ dinal (London: SPCK, 1971), 3; Richard Geoffrey Leggett, "Anglican Ordinals," The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer, ed. Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shat- tuck (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 531. 27 Dumitru Staniloae, quoted in Charles Miller, The Gift of the World: An Intro­ duction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae (London: Continuum, 2000), 101. 28 Staniloae, cited by Williams in Dales, et al., Glory Descending, 169. 29 Pelikan, Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, 160-161. 30 Stringfellow, Keeper of the Word, 286. 31 Stringellow, Keeper of the Word, 313. 32 Ignatius, as cited by Douglas Knight, The Theology of John Zizioulas: Person- hood and the Church (London: Ashgate Publishing, Ltds, 2007), 126. 58 Anglican Theological Review ability to lead in the particulars of pastoral ministry. As gatherers of the eucharistie community—fishers of people, shepherds of souls— bishops and presbyters are called to be:

• proclaimers of the gospel—not merely readers, but doers; not merely scholars, but preachers who seek to communicate the Word of God livingly and actively; • bearers of the sacraments—living symbols of Gods grace work­ ing through the sacraments they are entrusted to steward; and • agents of the church's blessing—not individualistic "shamans" who presume to affirm all that they approve of themselves, but representatives of the whole church who assert on behalf of the whole church the approval and affirmation of God in Christ.

Indeed, this critical emphasis on the centrality of eucharistie leadership in pastoral ministry is reflected in the synthesis of biblical and patristic theology which we know as the Book of Common Prayer. Therein is expressed our belief that worship is the corporate act of the whole people of God, in which human identity finds its true comple­ tion in communion with God, neighbor, and self.33 Raised up and or­ dained by the whole eucharistie community, bishops and presbyters find the identity and mission of their office precisely in this eucharis­ tie dimension of leadership. Byway of capturing the spirit of this kind of leadership, it is per­ haps helpful to recall the writings on pastoral leadership of Gregory of Nazianzus. He lived at the top of a highly urbane and civilized society noted for its wealth, high learning, and religious pluralism. The son of a landed Christian family, his father a bishop, his mother deeply pious, Gregory was extremely well-educated and found his life's joy in dedi­ cation to the church, spending nearly every year of it in service as ei­ ther layman, priest, bishop, or primate. At first interested in a life of monastic remove, Gregory was compelled to ecclesiastical leadership instead. His father (also Gregory), under pressure during those times in which the imperial leadership was promoting non-Nicene teach­ ings, had signed a non-Nicene theological statement, which stirred up a local schism in his diocese. To help him lead the fractured diocese,

33 John S. Marshall, Hooker's Theology of Common Prayer (Sewanee, Tenn.: Uni­ versity Press of the University of the South, 1956), v. ON THE PRIESTHOOD 59 and also perhaps to see his son attain a more respectable rank within Roman society, Gregory the Elder ordained his son to the presbyter- ate on Christmas Day, 362 CE.34 Gregory fled town, Jonah-like, before preaching his first sermon as a presbyter. Gregory soon returned in obedience to his father the bishop and to the church and its ordering, and very shortly thereafter put forward what would become the definitive theological treatise on pastoral the­ ology. His second oration, produced shortly after his ordination to the presbyterate, is the first comprehensive reflection on the priesthood, and is also the most influential in the entire Christian tradition.35 In that piece Gregory laments that so many pastors of his time—includ­ ing perhaps even his own father—saw "this order to be a means of livelihood, instead of a pattern of virtue." Too many bishops and pres­ byters of the urbane and diverse civilization of the late fourth century saw their office as "an absolute authority, instead of a ministry of which we must give account."36 As opposed to imperial loyalties, Gre­ gory asserts that bishops and presbyters—with the whole church—are subjects of the law of Christ before they are subject to the law of the land. The role of pastors within the body is as leaders working on be­ half of the Great Shepherd. Importantly, Gregory refers to both bishop and presbyter alike as "priest," indicating that he understood both to share in the priestly ministry of presidency in the Christian as­ sembly, to be done above all for the overall health of the Body by em­ powering and enabling the ministry of all the baptized.37 The particulars of pastoral leadership outlined above may be dis­ cerned in Gregorys second oration. In their servant leadership of proclamation, pastors are called to "feed God s flock with knowledge, not with the instruments of a foolish shepherd." In their servant lead­ ership of benediction, blessing, and absolution, pastors are called to work "according to the blessing of God, not the curse pronounced against their fallen." In their servant leadership of sacrament, pastors work so that "God will give strength and power to Gods people, 'Himself present to Himself/ " And in all these particular leadership

34 John A. McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crest- wood, N.Y.: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2001), 99. See also Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, 62. 35 Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, 237. 36 Gregory, Oration 2.8. 37 Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, 241. 60 Anglican Theological Review ministries, bishops and presbyters are working for the overall gather­ ing of the baptized, "So that in God s temple, everyone, 'both flock and shepherds together,' may say, 'Glory, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to Whom be all glory for ever and ever/ "38

Conclusion It should go without saying but I have repeated it anyway: bishops and presbyters are leaders. They are leaders in the church with a par­ ticular identity and mission rooted in the eucharistie identity and mis­ sion of the church, not the world. Properly understood, they are called to lead as the gatherers of the eucharistie assembly, which is the church, the Body of Christ. Their leadership goal is to cure souls and to lead them to God, and their particular gifts for doing so lie in the ministries of proclamation, blessing, and sacrament. These reflections might be summed up in what Rowan Williams has said on the subject of pastoral leadership: the "priests task is cen­ trally and essentially to ... tell the assembly of believers who they are in God s presence, what it is to be involved with and in the priestly act of Jesus Christ and what that means in the daily interactions of human life in terms of reconciliation, judgement, risk and gift." And echoing Michael Ramsey, Williams goes on to say that the heart of pastoral leadership is "to reflect the priesthood of Christ and to serve the priesthood of the people of God, and to be one of the means of grace whereby God enables the Church to be the Church."39

Gregory, Oration 2.117. Williams in Dales, et al., Glory Descending, 174. ^s

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