Some early Christian writers had used sacrificial language in a Eucharistic context, but without any sense of those presiding as priests in any but a metaphorical sense. The first author to apply priesthood language to Christian clergy was Clement of Rome, who probably wrote about 100 AD. He was less interested in the language of sacrifice than in the notion of each group having its proper assigned place within the order, with Christian leaders occupying a place parallel to priests in the old dispensation.

I’ve been discussing the Christian church at an early stage in its development, around 200 AD. This is definitely the “early church,” long before the Council of Nicea, and the kind of precedents we find there should presumably be relevant to later generations of Christians, including Protestants. That’s important because early Fathers from this time, such as Tertullian, show how commonly the church then talked not only about a distinct class of clergy, but even referred to them as priests. The overall result looks startlingly catholic, and indeed Catholic.

Tertullian is significant in the number of times he speaks of priests and priesthood, using the Latin term sacerdos, often as a synonym for presbyter. Modern readers naturally think of a threefold distinction of bishops, priests and deacons, and see “priest” as a standard term for a lower-ranked cleric. Such a usage would have been  surprising in the time we are discussing. For Jews and pagans alike, the term priest always connoted sacrifice, usually the killing of an animal or bird at an altar, as was commonly described in the Old Testament.

Some early Christian writers had used sacrificial language in a Eucharistic context, but without any sense of those presiding as priests in any but a metaphorical sense. The first author to apply priesthood language to Christian clergy was Clement of Rome, who probably wrote about 100 AD. He was less interested in the language of sacrifice than in the notion of each group having its proper assigned place within the order, with Christian leaders occupying a place parallel to priests in the old dispensation.

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