The Priesthood of Christ, Part 1: Christ as Priest and Victim, and How His Sacrifice Takes Away Sin (Articles 1-3)

Orientation #

He opens with an aside about material he gave Father, then says “we’re up to the priesthood era of Christ” — i.e. the question on the priesthood of Christ follows what they had just been doing (prev. lecture: q. 21, on Christ’s prayer). He reads and glosses articles 1–3, and reads out the list of six things asked in the question. The next class continues with articles 4–6 of the same question.

The class, in order #

1. Opening aside: the contrariety of knowledge and love (“truth is primarily in the mind”) #

A talk he once gave at TAC, on a distinction from Aristotle “in the sixth book” [ed.: Ethics VI, inferred; he says “of Wisdom”].

• Truth is primarily in the mind, the good primarily in things. Hence the first act of the mind is to grasp something, contained in your mind; whereas your heart is in the thing you love (“my heart’s not in it”).
• Consequence for the theological virtues: faith is in reason, charity in the will; so Thomas says by faith divine things are in us, by charity we are in divine things.
• Applied to the beatific vision: since it is in reason itself, God will be very much in us, even as that by which we understand as well as what we understand; by charity we shall be in God.
• He thinks this finally explains “that whole controversy” in the spiritual life about will and intellect, love and knowledge: it is good to have both God in you and to be in God.

2. John 6 and the spiritual senses of the loaves and fishes (“two hundred denarii”) #

Reading Thomas on John 6 (multiplication of the loaves).

• Philip’s two hundred denarii: spiritually, the insufficiency of philosophical knowledge. Why two hundred? A hundred signifies perfection; two hundred, knowledge by experience and by contemplation. Even that would not buy food for the crowd.
• Andrew’s boy with five loaves and two fish: the Old Testament — five loaves, the five books of Moses (the law); two fish, the prophets and the Psalms, the way Christ sometimes divides Scripture.
• But Augustine takes the two fish as the kingship and the priesthood of Christ. He does not know why Augustine brings that in, and puts it as a question he leaves open: why are priesthood and kingship sometimes named alone (as in Psalm 109, with no mention of the prophetic or teaching role), as though somehow complete, while other times you must have king, priest and prophet?

3. The six things asked, and an aside on “another Christ” (“about this thing, six things are asked”) #

The division of the question: (1) whether it belongs to Christ to be a priest; (2) about the host/victim of this priest — whether Christ is both priest and victim; (3) about the effect of this priesthood; (4) whether the effect pertains to himself or only to others; (5) the eternity of his priesthood; (6) whether he must be called a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. The last two both come from Psalm 109, “You are a priest forever, according to…”.

• Aside: his son Marcus as a little boy thought Monsignor Mangaluzzo was Christ — “there is some truth to that, he’s another Christ,” though not exactly the thing here.

4. Article 1: the three objections and the sed contra (“a priest is something less than an angel”) #

1. Zachary 3: “God showed to me a great priest standing before the angel of the Lord” — so a priest is less than an angel; but Christ was made greater than the angels (Hebrews), having inherited a name differently from them, being Son of God in a way they are not. So being a priest does not belong to him. He calls this an “interesting argument.”
2. The Old Testament things were figures of Christ (Colossians: “shadows of future things; the body, however, is Christ”). But Christ did not draw his flesh from the priests of the old law — Hebrews 7: it is manifest that our Lord arose from Judah, a tribe about which Moses said nothing of priesthood (the priests were Levites). He is in the wrong tribe.
3. In the old law priest and lawgiver are not the same: God told Moses the lawgiver to apply Aaron his brother to occupy the priesthood. But Christ is giver of the new law (Jeremiah 31, “I will give my laws in their hearts”). So he is a lawgiver, not a priest.

• Sed contra: Hebrews 4, “we have a high priest who penetrates the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.” A student supplies the etymology of pontifex: bridge builder.

5. Article 1 body: the priest as mediator both ways (“the proper office of the priest is to be a mediator”) #

The proper office of a priest is to be mediator between God and the people, in two directions:

1. He passes divine things on to the people — Isidore’s etymology, sacerdos as sacra dans, giving divine things; Malachi 2, “they require the law from your mouth,” i.e. the priest’s.
2. He offers the prayers of the people to God and to some extent satisfies God for their sins — Hebrews 5, every priest is taken from among men and constituted for men in the things of God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.

• Both belong most of all to Christ: through him gifts are given to men (2 Peter 1, “very great and precious promises, that we might be made partakers of the divine nature” — he notes this as a definition of grace), and he reconciled the human race to God (Colossians, in him it pleased all fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things). Therefore to be a priest belongs most of all to Christ. “That’s pretty convincing, I think.”
• Aside attached to the priest’s satisfying for sins: the Curé of Ars, who having first been more rigorous, lightened penances; asked how he could do this, he said he bore part of the penance himself. “Great man.”

6. Article 1, replies: angel, tribe, and the union of lawgiver, priest and king (“has the name of an angel”) #

• To 1: hierarchical power belongs to the angels inasmuch as they are middle between God and men (Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy); so the priest too, as middle, gets the name of angel — Malachi 2, “the angel of the Lord of hosts” (the lips of the priests shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth). Christ was greater than the angels not only in his divine nature but in his humanity, as having fullness of grace and glory, so he had hierarchical or priestly power more excellently than they; hence the angels themselves ministered to his priesthood (Matthew 4). But according to his being able to suffer in his body he was lessened a little from the angels (Hebrews, quoting Psalm 8), and in this he was conformed to men on the way and constituted in the priesthood.
• Student exchanges here: (i) he doubts an angel could offer the Mass; (ii) the story from Francis de Sales — a newly ordained priest who had seen his guardian angel since youth and was accustomed to have the angel go before him, but ever since ordination the angel insists the priest go first; (iii) a student cites a Syriac hymn in which the priesthood says “Exalt me, Lord,” and the Lord answers that neither Michael nor Gabriel nor his hosts are higher than the state given it, because through it forgiveness of sins comes and people are raised to heaven — the student notes this is about the office, whereas Thomas here is speaking of the priest’s manhood. His answer: the priest is called an angel because he is between God and man — an angel is between by nature, in the natures; a man who is priest is between God and man by office; and it also points out that the priest should be like an angel.
• To 2: Damascene (third book) — “if in all things it were like, it would be the same and not an exemplar.” The old priesthood was a figure of Christ’s and therefore something less; so Christ did not wish to be born of the stock of the figurative priest, to show that the priesthood is not altogether the same but differs as the true from the figurative.
• To 3: other men have certain graces in a partial way, but Christ as head of the Church has the perfection of all graces; so in others one is lawgiver, another priest, another king, but all run together in Christ as in the fountain of all graces — Isaiah 33, “the Lord our judge, our lawgiver, our king, he comes and saves us.”

7. Article 2: priest and victim at once — the objections (“it belongs to the priest to kill”) #

On hostia: he notes the English “host” for communion is in a sense the victim, though we do not think of the word as victim. A student mentions someone who took “Lord God of hosts” in that sense rather than as army — “it doesn’t have as terrifying an image.”

1. It belongs to the priest to kill the victim; Christ did not kill himself.
2. Christ’s priesthood is more like the God-instituted Jewish priesthood than the Gentile priesthood by which demons were worshipped; but in the old law man was never offered in sacrifice, which is what is most reprehended in Gentile sacrifice — Psalm 105, they shed the innocent blood of their sons and daughters, sacrificed to the idols of Canaan (he mentions the Aztecs). So Christ the man should not be the victim.
3. Every victim is by being offered sanctified to God; but Christ’s humanity was sanctified and joined to God from the very beginning; so it cannot suitably be said that Christ as man was the victim.

• Sed contra: Ephesians 5:2, Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as an offering and victim to God in the odor of sweetness.

8. Article 2 body: the three reasons man needs sacrifice (“man needs sacrifice in account to three things”) #

He first puts it as a question to the class before reading: what are the three?

• Augustine, City of God X: every visible sacrifice is a sacramentum, a sacred sign of an invisible sacrifice — “a very important thing that Augustine [says] that we lose sight of.” The invisible sacrifice is man’s offering his own spirit to God (Psalm 50, “a sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit” — the psalm Teresa of Avila was fond of). So anything shown to God so that man’s spirit may be borne into God can be called sacrifice.
• The three: (1) for the remission of sin, by which we are turned away from God — Hebrews 5, the priest offers gifts and sacrifices for sins; (2) that man be preserved in the state of grace, always adhering to God, in whom his peace and salvation consist — hence the hostia pacifica, the peace offering, for the salvation of those offering it (Leviticus 3); the old English word and the Douay Bible say “pacifiques.” “That’s a very subtle thing that they have this distinction” among sacrifices. (3) That man’s spirit be perfectly and fully united to God, which will most of all be in glory — hence the holocaust, the whole thing burnt up (Leviticus), entirely given to God.
• He stresses the order: he himself notes that if you asked why one prays, sins would not be one’s first thought, yet with sacrifice Thomas begins there. And if the Mass is the re-enactment of the death on the cross, what comes to mind first is that he died for our sins — which shows the order Thomas has enumerated. Communion, as a result of the sacrifice, is what conserves you in the life of grace and leads to final union.
• Student exchanges: someone asks about the animal for sin driven out — the scapegoat; he notes Thomas does not mention it here. A student notes communion too is received for forgiveness of sins as well as for eternal life, and cites a hymn: “since I’ve eaten your sacred flesh, don’t let the fire consume me, but raise up my body on the last day” — the medicine of immortality.
• Aside on Protestants: they misunderstand devotion to the Blessed Mother and the saints because they think what we give the saints is what they give God; they are right in a way, except that they do not give God sacrifice, which is what is owed him, so they are the ones missing the real deal.
• These three come through Christ’s humanity: sins deleted (Romans 4, he was handed over on account of our sins); grace of salvation received (Hebrews 5:9, made the cause of eternal salvation for all obeying him); perfection of glory obtained (Hebrews 10, confidence through his blood in the entry among the saints, i.e. celestial glory).
• Conclusion: Christ as man was not only priest but the perfect victim, at once a victim for sin, a victim for peace, and a holocaust — in that same order.

9. Digression: the three reasons and the Our Father, and the Psalms in reverse order (“in the reverse order”) #

He asks whether the class sees a connection with the Our Father; a student answers: the three correspond but in reverse order — forgive us our trespasses and lead us not into temptation against sin; thy will be done, give us this day our daily bread for being preserved in good; hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come for glory. Another student adds that the last petitions correspond oppositely: forgive us / lead us not into temptation as preserving from sin, deliver us from evil as the opposite of permanent union, i.e. permanent separation.

• He would explain the reverse order differently, and appeals to the Psalms. Thomas at the beginning of his commentary on the Psalms reports various divisions and, following the rule of two or three, adopts Augustine’s, with the correct numbering: Psalm 50 asks forgiveness of sins, Psalm 100 is of good deeds, and the last fifty (symbolized by the last psalm) are resting in God and praising. Why reverse? Because Thomas, where Scripture sometimes says “do good and avoid evil” and sometimes “turn from your sins and approach God,” says neither order is the incorrect one: one is the order of intention, the other the order of carrying out (execution). Since the Psalms are a prolonged carrying out of what is in the Our Father, that order makes sense.
• These also correspond to the three orders of charity or stages of the spiritual life: first fighting one’s sins, second progressing in the virtues, third resting in God in anticipation of the final goal.

10. Article 2, replies, and the missing third reply (“the killing of the man Christ can be compared to a twofold will”) #

• To 1: Christ did not kill himself but voluntarily exposed himself to death — Isaiah 53, “he was offered because he willed so” — and so is said to have offered himself. Attached example: as with the saints who offer their own life in place of another’s; when they asked the man who stepped into line who he was, he did not give his name but said, “A priest.”
• To 2: the killing of the man Christ is compared to a twofold will. (a) To the will of those killing him: in this way it had not the notion of a host, and the killers are not said to have offered a victim to God but to have gravely sinned; a likeness of this sin is in the impious sacrifices of the Gentiles offering men to idols. (b) To the will of the one undergoing it, who voluntarily offered himself to the passion: from this side it has the notion of a victim, and in this it does not come together with the Gentile sacrifices. Aside: the assassins of Julius Caesar in the play, “let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods” — a bit of offering up to the gods for the safety of Rome.
• The third objection is not answered. A student finds in his text a footnote: the reply to the third is wanting in the original manuscripts but may be gathered from the above; some editions (his text says the Piana edition) add a reply. He asks “who added it?” and reads it: the sanctity of Christ’s humanity from the beginning of the incarnation does not prevent that human nature itself, when offered in the passion, was sanctified in a new way — it acquired an actual sanctification as victim, from the old charity and the grace of the union which sanctified him absolutely.

11. Article 3: does his priesthood expiate sins? — objections (“it belongs to God alone to delete sins”) #

He notes that a whole article is devoted to the expiation of sins rather than to the second and third reasons why sacrifice was needed — which agrees with the emphasis and order already given.

1. Isaiah 43, “It is I who wipe out your iniquities on account of myself”: only God deletes sins — the text often cited when the objection is raised, who is Christ to forgive sins. But Christ is not priest as God; God is not a priest. So as man he cannot do it. A student says “that confuses me”; he replies, “These are just our first thoughts, though, not our last thoughts.”
2. Hebrews 10: the victims of the Old Testament could not make perfect, otherwise they would cease to be offered, in that the worshippers, once purified, would have no conscience of sin; but in them there was a commemoration of sins that cannot be wiped out through the years. Likewise under Christ’s priesthood there is commemoration of sins, dimitte nobis debita nostra, and sacrifice is continually offered in the church, “give us our daily bread.” So sins are not expiated. He glosses the force of it: they keep on offering, so perhaps it is not getting rid of sins.
3. In the old law, for sin, what was immolated was the he-goat (for the sin of a prince), the she-goat (capra) for the sin of one of the people, or the calf for the sin of the priest. But Christ is compared to none of these, only to the Lamb — Jeremiah 11, “I, as a mild lamb, am carried to the victim of death”; “Behold the Lamb of God.” So his priesthood was not expiativum of sins. Asides: “vittles” as the proper pronunciation of victuals; Leo XIII on what the scholastics contributed to the understanding of Scripture from their commentaries and theological works — “I can go to the scriptural scholars here and see if they know these things… Good luck.”

• Sed contra: Hebrews — the blood of Christ, who through the Holy Spirit offered himself immaculate to God, cleanses our consciences from dead works, to serve the living God; dead works are sins; so his priesthood has power of cleansing sins.
• Aside on the Anima Christi [ed.: he says “the otherotete vote”; the prayer of which one drop of blood suffices for all the sins of the world]: it has seven quatrains; seven is a symbol of perfection (a student adds, of wisdom); seven quatrains is twenty-eight, the second perfect number — as Summa Contra Gentiles I, chapter 28 is about the perfection of God. By chance? “Perhaps. But I think… this is the way his mind worked.”

12. Article 3 body and replies: guilt and punishment, and the lamb (“two things are required”) #

Body: for the complete cleansing of sins two things are required, answering to the two things in sin: the stain (macula) of guilt, which makes it a fault, and the obligation of being punished.

1. The stain of guilt is taken away by grace, by which the sinner’s heart is converted to God — Romans 3, you are justified freely through his grace, through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God proposed as a propitiation through faith in his blood.
2. The debt of punishment is wholly taken away by man’s satisfying God — and Christ fully satisfies for us, inasmuch as he took on our sicknesses and carried our sorrows. Both are effected by Christ’s priesthood; hence it had the full vim, the full power, of expiating sins. He notes Paul on bearing one another’s burdens as a sharing in what Christ does.

• To 1: although Christ was not a priest as he is God (hence the earlier text, the priest is taken from among men and constituted mediator between men and God), but as he is man, one and the same was both priest and God — the Synod of Ephesus: if anyone says that our high priest and apostle came to be not from God the Word but as it were another apart from him, a man from a woman, let him be anathema. (Aside: Christ is called apostle because he is sent by the Father — “I don’t find him often called apostle.”) Therefore, inasmuch as his human nature operated in the power of his divinity, that sacrifice was most efficacious for deleting sins. Augustine, De Trinitate IV: four things are considered in every sacrifice — to whom it is offered (God), by whom (Christ as priest), what is offered (Christ as hostia), and for whom — and the one true mediator, reconciling us to God through the sacrifice of peace, remained one with the one to whom he offered, made one in himself those for whom he offered, and was himself at once the offerer and what was offered. He adds: those for whom he offered are part of his body, the mystical body, so in some sense all four are the same.
• Student question: how then can a priest forgive sins, since he seems even further removed from being God than Christ’s humanity? His answer: after the resurrection Christ breathes upon them — “Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained” — significant that it is joined to breathing the Holy Spirit into them; otherwise you cannot defend that God is the one who forgives. A student cites the new formula of absolution (God the Father of mercies, who reconciled the world and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins); he comments that this appropriates it to the Holy Spirit because of the role of God’s love in forgiveness — “charity covers a multitude of sins,” and not every kind of love.
• Digression from “not every kind of love”: not LUV (a phrase of Father Owen Benham) — on the current defence of homosexual marriage, “I don’t have any right to say how people can love.” A student: if Socrates showed people they did not know what they thought they knew, some now try to convince people that what they do know — that this is repugnant to nature — they do not know; and they do it not by reason but by “sloganeering,” “you’ve got to be inclusive.” Someone recalls a bishop’s saying, “I have a right to be wrong,” and he exercises it.
• To 2: sins are not remembered in the new law from any inefficacy of Christ’s priesthood, as though sins were not sufficiently expiated through him as they were not through the old sacrifices; they are remembered as regards those who do not wish to be partakers of the sacrifice (the unfaithful, for whose sins we pray that they may be converted), and those who after partaking deviate from it by sinning. And the sacrifice daily offered in the church is not other than the sacrifice Christ offered, but its commemoration — Augustine, City of God X: the priest himself, Christ offering, is the offering, of which thing the sacrament daily wishes to be the sacrifice of the church.
• To 3: Origen on John — although diverse animals were offered in the law, the daily sacrifice offered both morning and evening was the lamb (Numbers 28); so it is signified that the offering of the Lamb, that is of Christ, was a sacrifice that was the consummation of all the others. Hence John 1, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.” He points out the difference of strategy: the tribe objection was answered by unlikeness (a different priesthood from the old), but this one by the lamb’s being the principal, chief sacrifice, morning and evening — like lauds and vespers among the hours. Comparison: as the Eucharist is the consummation of all the other sacraments — hence bride and groom receive communion after they get hitched.
• Aside on Origen: he is amazed how Thomas quotes Origen often with approval and elsewhere is very severe, even calling some of his mistakes shameful — he did not simply dismiss him for bad mistakes.
• Closing aside: the chicken company whose advertisements have cows telling people to eat something else. Then a break.

His words #

• “the priesthood era of Christ” — his phrase for the question they now begin [ed.: on the priesthood of Christ].
• “contrariety of knowledge and love” — truth primarily in the mind, the good primarily in things; so by faith divine things are in us, by charity we are in divine things.
• sacerdos as sacra dans — Isidore’s etymology: “giving divine things.”
• “bridge builder” — a student’s etymology of pontifex (high priest).
• “host” / “victim” (hostia) — he notes English uses “host” for communion, which is the victim, though we do not think of the word as victim.
• hostia pacifica, “peace offering,” Douay “pacifiques” — the sacrifice for being preserved in grace.
• “holocaust” — “as it were the whole burnt up,” entirely given to God; for perfect union in glory.
• macula — the stain of guilt, “as opposed to immaculate.”
• expiativum — he remarks on the translator’s transliterating rather than translating it.
• vim — “the full power” of expiating sins.
• “order of intention” vs. “order of carrying this out” (execution) — his explanation of why the Psalms run in reverse order to the Our Father.
• “sloganeering” — a student’s word, which he takes up, for persuasion without reason.
• “not LUV” — Father Owen Benham’s phrase, against the appeal to “love” in defending homosexual marriage.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 22, a. 1 (whether it belongs to Christ to be a priest) — objections, sed contra, body, replies.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 22, a. 2 (whether Christ is at once priest and victim) — objections, sed contra, body, replies 1–2, with the disputed added reply to 3.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 22, a. 3 (whether the effect of his priesthood is the expiation of sins) — objections, sed contra, body, replies.
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on John 6 (the loaves and fishes) — reported.
• Scripture quoted within the articles: Zachary 3; Hebrews 4, 5, 7, 10; Colossians; Jeremiah 31 and 11; Malachi 2; 2 Peter 1; Matthew 4; Psalm 8; Isaiah 33, 43, 53; Ephesians 5:2; Psalm 50; Psalm 105; Leviticus 3; Romans 3, 4; Numbers 28; John 1; Psalm 109.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Ethics VI (inferred; he says “sixth book of Wisdom”) — truth in the mind, good in things.
• Augustine, City of God X; De Trinitate IV.
• Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy.
• Damascene, third book.
• Origen, on John.
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on the Psalms, prologue; Summa Contra Gentiles I, c. 28.
• Synod of Ephesus (anathema quoted).
• The Anima Christi (inferred), seven quatrains.
• Life of the Curé of Ars; Francis de Sales and the newly ordained priest; a Syriac hymn on the priesthood; Leo XIII on the scholastics.

His questions #

• Why do Augustine and Psalm 109 name only the priesthood and kingship of Christ, and not the prophetic or teaching role — can those two be seen as somehow complete? Left open (“I don’t know why Augustine brings that in”).
• Does it belong to Christ to be a priest, given that a priest is less than an angel and comes from the tribe of Levi, and given that Christ is lawgiver? Yes: the priest’s office is mediation both ways, which belongs most of all to Christ, who has hierarchical power beyond the angels and in whom lawgiver, priest and king run together.
• Why was Christ not born of the priestly stock? So as to show, per Damascene, that his priesthood is not the same but differs as the true from the figurative.
• Was Christ at the same time priest and victim, when he did not kill himself and the old law never offered man? Yes: he voluntarily exposed himself, and considered on the side of his own will the killing has the notion of victim; as man he was the perfect victim — for sin, for peace, and holocaust.
• “What are those three things?” — for what three reasons does man need sacrifice? Remission of sin; preservation in the state of grace (peace); perfect union with God in glory.
• Do you see a connection between these three things and the Our Father? Yes — they correspond in reverse order; and he explains the reversal by the order of intention versus the order of execution.
• Is the effect of Christ’s priesthood the expiation of sins, when only God deletes sins? Yes: expiation needs removal of the stain by grace and of the debt by satisfaction, both given through Christ, whose human nature operated in the power of his divinity.
• How can a priest forgive sins, being further from God than Christ’s humanity? Because Christ joined the power to breathing the Holy Spirit into them: “whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.”
• Why is Christ compared to the lamb and not to the goat or the calf offered for sin? Because the lamb was the daily morning and evening sacrifice, so the Lamb’s offering signifies the consummation of all the others.