A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Lutherans and lay presidency

The case for it. LutherPunk and Fr. Chris comment.

I think there are good reasons to have only ordained persons presiding at the Lord’s Supper. However, in extreme cases I don’t see any insuperable theological objection to a lay person doing it. There’s a remark of Luther (perhaps apocryphal) that in emergencies “even” a woman or child could administer the sacrament. The idea that anyone could, in principle, administer sacraments would seem to follow in a fairly straightforward way from the priesthood of all believers. Naturally, what counts as an extreme case is a matter of debate.

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6 responses to “Lutherans and lay presidency”

  1. Christopher

    Lee,

    I don’t think it’s about insurmountable theological claims, what we Episcopalians might call core doctrine, its about discipline and good order.

    We shouldn’t argue from the extreme case to the normative case, but rather vice versa. That is in fact what Luther does in my opinion. He argues from the normative and applies what is done normatively to the extreme case.

    What constitutes an extreme case? Good question. I would say that it is when a community is without bishop or priest and one is not available to serve them in the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

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  2. Steve

    So what, in the Lutheran world, does “ordination” mean? Why is anyone “ordained”?

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  3. Lee

    Christopher,

    I agree with you that good order, not theology is the appropriate consideration here. And that hard cases make bad law, as it were.

    Steve,

    I can’t speak for all Lutherans, but one account that I find persuasive is that there must be a “public office” set aside for the proclamation of God’s saving deed in Christ. The Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde puts it this way:

    To be called and ordained to the public office is to be called through the church to give public voice to the Word of God. ;It is not the office holder as such who transcends the congregation by elevation to a higher order, but the Word of God. The only ultimate defense against anticlericalism is the proper preaching of this Word so that the gospel is heard. To be called and ordained is to take up this public office. The ordained pastor is not a guru or a shrink or a perpetual optimist or nice person, but a public proclaimer. The ordinand, therefore, is to be properly examined and ordered to do the task. One is not called to this public office to peddle private opinions, but to serve, proclaim, care for the public witness and theology of the church in a particular time and place, to have the guts (or the Spirit, in theological terms), to say it and do it. To that end the church through the holders of this office lay on hands, prays, and invokes the Spirit on those called so to do.

    I think this avoids both the view that the minister must have a kind of elevated ontological status, and the view that an ordained ministry is unnecessary or strictly a matter of orderliness.

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  4. Steve

    Thaks very much for that – saved for future reference.

    I find ecumenical discussions about “the ministry” are often bedevilled by completely different understandings of different kinds of ministries, where the underlying presuppositions are not really examined, so that is helpful.

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  5. Christopher

    Lee, how about this from my own musing on this matter last week.

    I think a Lutheran understanding is a relational, rather than functional or ontological understanding:

    I need to clarify something. There is debate about ontological change OR not. On the one hand, pastors are not merely functional, suggesting that anyone can step in and take on pastoral responsibilities. On the other hand, “ontological change” has tended to suggest some kind of magic hands connotation as holdover from some unfortunate developments from the Medieval period. In a Benedictine mode, rather, we might speak in terms of relationality. We needn’t speak in terms of “ontological change”. Or rather, in Christian tradition properly speaking, being and relation are one. But we cannot know someone else or ourselves in their or our being; we can know a change in relationship. So, rather, we can speak of a change in relationship within the Body, which is a change in one’s being and person as well expressed in this change in relationship. One who is called and set aside as a pastor is in a changed relation to the congregation. There is indeed a change as so many note after their ordination. He or she is now set aside to proclaim the Gospel in Word and Sacrament and pastor the congregation.

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  6. Lee

    Christopher, I like that – I think it kind of gets as the same thing Forde was getting at, that the minister is set aside for a special role. In a sense, may it be said that the individual “disappears” into to the role (which is a relation)? Not to diminish the individual gifts that pastors bring to their ministries of course!

    Of course, I should say that I haven’t really thought a lot about this, so my opinion is probably worth even less here than usual! 🙂

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