Fundamentally, ministers and pastors announce. They report. They do not create. God creates. God saves. He uses the ministry of the Word to accomplish his purposes and he uses the sacraments to confirm his promises, but he has no need of earthly priests nor of priestcraft.

One of the great temptations that reporters face, especially as they become famous (or notorious), is the temptation to think that they are part of the story or that they are in charge of the story. In other words, it is tempting, some might say easy, to get bored with merely gathering the facts, getting them right, and then reporting the news so that the public, politicians, and policy makers can act accordingly. This is one reason why it is so difficult to find old-school, “straight news” reporters.

Moving On from Mere Ministry?

A similar thing can happen in pastoral ministry in the confessional Protestant traditions. Their vocation is right there in the name: “Pastoral ministry.” Our English word pastor is really the Latin noun for shepherd. You might see photos or paintings of what are said to be “pastoral” settings. A pasture is where livestock graze and it is the pastor’s calling to guide, guard, and feed the livestock. The noun ministry is from another Latin noun, minister. It means servant. It is the Latin translation for deacon in the Vulgate, the Latin Bible of the Medieval church. In Reformed church polity, the Pastor is the minister of the Word, i.e., the servant of the Word, and the Deacon is the minister of the physical needs of the congregation. As late as the middle of the twentieth century, some pastors appended the letters V.D.M. to their name. “The Rev. Mr. So-and-So, V.D.M.” Those letters stood for “Verbi Dei Minister, servant of the Word of God. That’s a fine title and one that we should probably return to using.

Sometimes, however, pastors become weary of being mere servants of God’s Word and they give into the temptation to give themselves a more elevated sounding title. The Anglicans are very good at this. They have all sorts of titles for unordained and ordained offices in the church. Depending on local circumstances a pastor might also be a vicar, a rector, a canon, or a dean. One of the titles that some in the Protestant traditions sometimes take to themselves is “priest.” This happens in other traditions too but among Protestants it seems to crop up most often. Indeed, in the website linked above, it is given as one of the three basic offices of the church (the others being bishop and deacon).

The Problem with Priests

Why should not a Protestant minister call himself a priest? After all, the Oxford English Dictionary says that our English word priest is derived from the Latin word presbyter, (which itself is borrowed from the Greek noun, πρεσβύτερος). A Presbyter is a biblical office (e.g., Acts 20:17; 1 Peter 5:1; James 5:14). It is usually translated as “elder.” So, what is the problem?

The first problem is that we use the word priest to translate the Hebrew word (e.g., Lev 1:7; Cohen; ἱερεῖς in the LXX) for the official charged with the responsibility of offering sacrifices. That office was essential to the period of types and shadows (i.e., Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the Prophets). Along with the Kings and the Prophets, the Priests held a divinely instituted office that was identified with the shedding of the blood of bulls and goats. This is not arbitrary. It is literally the first thing the Book of Leviticus says: “and Aaron’s sons the priests shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar…” (ESV). To be sure, the Levitical priests performed other functions but their central and essential function, the thing they were meant to do, which the other two offices were not meant to do, was to reconcile the people to God and God to the people through the shedding of blood.

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