The Priestly and the Prophetic

If I recall correctly, James Jordan presents King->Priest->Prophet as a sequence of less->more

glorious. Given that women participated in the prophetic ministry (e.g. Anna the Prophetess, Joel
2:28), what is your argument that they would be excluded from the less glorious priestly ministry?
What do you think the significant difference between priest and prophet are in this case?

Good question. This is a useful opportunity to develop the theology and logic of this triple
distinction- so please bear with me!

A short answer would be that it is the Old Testament itself which attests to women prophets (it is
Huldah the prophetess who identifies the authenticity of the Book of Deuteronomy) and yet the Old
Testament retains an all-male priesthood as well as a normatively male royalty. In both cases the
priestly and royal orders in society operate according to regularities and specific principles of
succession. The prophet, however, only comes in virtue of a direct call from God. You don’t become
a prophet by being the son of a prophet. You can’t be a prophet simply because you are from a
specific tribe. God fills you with the Holy Spirit and acts with and through you to carry out His divine
will. One of the reasons for this is that priestly and royal orders are part of the regular structure of a
civilization that perpetuate its continuity. Those specifically called as prophets, though exist to
disrupt that continuity, to speak into the world, shattering and remaking it. Thus the call is directly
from God rather than by succession- since succession in its very nature perpetuates a preexisting
order. Both priests and kings are spoken of as manifesting the Lord’s marriage to Israel. The
bridegroom is called to feed and teach the bride, guarding her from those who would violate her.
This is why Adam’s relation to Eve structures St. Paul’s argument for the male episcopate and
priesthood in 1 Timothy 2.

This male-female, bridegroom-bride dynamic is part of the structural integrity of the society and is
its regular form. The occupants of an office which is defined by its relationship as bridegroom to the
Church-Bride must, as a matter of necessity, be male- only men can be husbands.

But let’s dig into this a bit more and take a look at the underlying structure of this threefold
development and social structure.

The order is more specifically priest-king-prophet. Nevertheless, keep in mind that this order of
development is related to the actual biblical priestly and prophetic ministries without being identified
with it of necessity. When one refers to priestly ministry in the context of an order of development,
one refers to the period wherein a person or nation is a spiritual child, simply hearing the words of
God directly and following them to the precise letter. In the order of anointing, therefore, the oil first
falls upon the ear.

The royal order is one of wisdom, where one does not have direct and immediate answers, but
must meditate upon the words of God and make creative applications. Having become wise, a
person takes action to manage one’s kingdom. This action is very concrete. A king will enforce his
will through the magistrate with the right to use the sword. Construction of a city will be
implemented with one’s hands. Thus, the oil second falls upon the hand.

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 The prophetic order is glorification. It is where one, having been filled with the Spirit, is deified and,
like God, changes the world by uttering one’s voice. Jesus in His prophetic ministry shatters the old
covenant order by His preaching. Samuel’s prophetic ministry smashes the old order and
transforms Israel into a kingdom, something new. Moses exercises his prophetic ministry by
speaking to Pharaoh and then proclaiming the words of God to Israel.

The Lord Jesus, speaking of the prophetic aspect of man (to be a prophet is to be indwelt by the
Spirit), says that the one born of the Spirit “blows where he wishes” so that others cannot go and
find him. Jesus in the Gospel of John is the model prophet born of the Spirit, and the Jews
repeatedly try to grab and stone Him- but He disappears and slips away. The man born blind can’t
find Him. And Ezekiel, having been born of the Spirit, flies around. The prophetic aspect thus
involves travel, moving from place to place, as did Elijah, Elisha, and Jonah during their prophetic
ministries as the prophetic period of Israel’s history was kicked off. The Spirit goes and dwells with
the exiles, so that the Jews are from then on called the “four winds of heaven” witnessing to the
Gentiles. The oil of anointing therefore falls third upon the foot, for travel.

Notice that this symbolism is manifested in the priestly anointing. Because these are periods in
history but also distinct aspects of the human person. A priest in Israel is principally a priest but also
has prophetic and royal aspects. He must teach the word of God and he renders judgments to be
enforced by the civil magistrate. The priestly, royal, and prophetic categories are also
Trinitarian. Priestly corresponds to the Father, as priesthood signifies obedience as a young son.
Royal corresponds to the Son, through whom God rules the world and who is incarnate as ruler of
the nations and heir of David. Prophetic corresponds to the Holy Spirit, who energizes in the world
to creatively shatter and remake it. I argue that this corresponds on a real level with St. Maximus’
threefold order of salvation, which are purification, illumination, divinization.

As a spiritual child one is prepared for glory in being first cleaned up and purified. Then one is
illumined as we habituate a life of grace and learn wisdom thereby. Finally, one is deified or glorified
as one enters directly into the glory and presence of God so that one’s whole person is utterly
transfigured. Importantly, each successive stage includes the former stages. In being illumined
one is also being purified at a higher level. And in being deified one is being purified and illumined
at exalted levels. As the three divine persons of the Holy Trinity mutually indwell one another, so
also these three stages of transfiguration include and entail one another.

So also for any society. The movement from a confederation of tribes or city-states with a common
culture (the priestly period) towards an integrated kingdom perfects the priestly aspect of the society
and brings it to a new level. In David’s kingdom the priests are not abolished, but glorified- they are
given musical instruments with which to praise God and manifest the unity of the kingdom through
song, which is what we are told in 2 Chronicles 5. And in the prophetic age the royal aspect is
placed in a new context as it is, in a sense, expanded to incorporate the whole people. It is in the
period after the return from Babylon that the nation Israel is called for the first time “Jews”- all
returned exiles (this includes, by the way, the northern tribes- Anna is from the tribe of Asher) are
called “Judah-ites” which is what Jew means. Cyrus speaks of the returning exiles in 2 Chronicles
36 in terms taken from the covenant with David. All Israelites now participate in a manner in the
royal tribe.

So in the Church, how does this function? What are these three “orders”? The priestly order is the
apostolically ordained episcopate and priesthood. This operates according to the regular principle
of apostolic succession. Jesus Christ wishes to remake and reintegrate the entirety of the human

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 race, integrating all nations, in their beautiful distinctness, into the one Church which glorified her
Heavenly Father in many languages. It is not a remnant. The Church is not supposed to be a
remnant. It began with the remnant of Israel and God sometimes whittles His people down to a
remnant. But the Church’s destiny is to embrace all nations, the entirety of creation. The remnant is
the seed for that embrace. The Lord does this in the unfolding of historical time, and His purpose is
realized according to the increasing manifestation of eschatological glory in historical time, through
the realization of the eschatological Church in the historical Church. This Church is meant to be the
source and root of the life of the civilization. And in view of its historical placedness, the order of the
Church Catholic has a regular structure and succession by which it is perpetuated in continuity
through time.

When those perpetual structures are not in place, society shatters as it falls apart every generation.
It used to be that all people were part of specific families which could be traced through time and
had ongoing identities. Hence your actions were properly viewed in light of the honor of one’s family
through time. You wished to leave an inheritance for your sons and daughters. This is
a stabilizing force. Today, by contrast, it is every man for himself. Divorce shatters even the nuclear
family, and the person understands himself only in reference to himself- not to his family history or
destiny, not in relation to the bonds of obligation with which he was born. Only the truest of true
believers can pretend that we are not seeing the debilitating impact of this long corrosion today. So
the church has a regular structure perpetuated through apostolic succession. The same is true for
the kings, according to the traditional model rather than the ideological dogma of democracy we
have been force-fed today.

Each person is an integral part of a web of relations. These relations unfold through both space and
time. I discussed the temporal aspect of this above, and the royal family, perpetuated by birth and
sonship, must be understood in the spatial aspect of this web. Traditionally, the nuclear family is not
separated from its role in the social structure more broadly. Each nuclear family is a node whose
head is the father-husband. It is linked in close bonds with a cluster of families with whom it is
related- and the family is also linked with other persons and families who are its clients. The patron-
client bond links persons together in bonds of mutual benefit and obligation. The “nobility” or
“aristocracy”, in view of their wealth and power, have therefore a greater responsibility and are
linked to the well-being of the whole civilization in their patronizing of those who are less wealthy.

The royal family is the immediate patron of the aristocracy. But don’t take this as the king being
obligated to solely seek the good of the aristocracy. Rather, the patron, in virtue of being the source,
in large part, of his client’s well being, has the responsibility to wisely set conditions on his
continued patronage. If a man loans you money and each time you cast it away with no wisdom
and no care for the debt you owe, the flow of lending will stop, and you may well be required to
work off your debt. This is a good thing and it cultivates virtue. Such a structure, when properly
operating, will develop the unwise client in wisdom through incentivizing wisdom and developing it
through labor where it is lacked. And likewise, the patron is integrally linked to the health of the
whole society and to its culture, thereby avoiding the natural tendency of isolated aristocrats
towards conflict with the rest of society.

The king is the head of state which means that he manages not just the government (a means by
which the headship of the king is concretely manifested in action) but is the ontological head of the
nation. He is a living symbol of its distinctive character, culture, and identity. He is the integrative
principle giving the whole organism its form and shape. And in diplomatic relations, he is
summoned to cultivate constructive relations with other national families, and particularly those
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 which are part of the local cluster of nations (i.e. the nations of Europe form, at a certain level, a
pan-European character and cluster of civilizations). In his relations with the aristocracy, he orients
them towards a common purpose in the development of the national good. In that wealth naturally
carries with it an increase of political power, that his power is independent of private wealth is a
check on the excessive power of the aristocracy, thus placing it in its right context and orienting it to
the common good.

Thus, the particularity and continuity of offices in a political system serve to perpetuate its structure
and preserve its stability and organic development.

In both the priestly and royal aspects of any society, then, they are structured in order to create
continuity over time and interrelations in space. This is why there is an absolutely male priesthood
and a normatively male political office. The family is the most basic unit of structure and continuity,
creating certain relations among persons which are predictable and orderly. Hence these two
aspects of any civilization are marked out by their male holders in office- this is not of course to say
that females are irrelevant to their quality, no more than the bride is irrelevant to the family! On the
contrary, the queen of the kingdom plays an absolutely crucial role in the nature of the royal family,
occupying a distinct role in the court. And where there are married priests, their wives are
called presbytera. In a certain fashion, they share in their husband’s priestly ministry.

The priestly comes first because it is the structure endowed by God from which civilization flows.
The period of the judges is defined by the preeminence of the priesthood, as they are the one truly
“national” institution, there being no central political structure. The liturgical life of Israel, with three
festivals per year to which men and women from all cross the land would gather at the tabernacle,
forges links, bonds and a common identity among the twelve tribes. Crucially, there are certain
developments in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel which retard the organic realization of national
identity, thereby wounding the capacity of Israel to properly be transfigured into a kingdom- hence
the rupture between Israel and Judah. Moreover, the church is the root of civilization as its web of
relations, canonically speaking, must be free. By the will of God, the state is not permitted to impose
its policy on the churches. As such, in God’s purpose to create a single, gloriously united-in-
diversity human family, the foundation of that family must be churches networked together
and freely in communion.

The freely willed communion, with every act of humility that practically requires, binds peoples
together. Examine how the schism between East and West has very concretely led to political strife.
The Serbs and the Croats are one people- except that the two are bitter rivals, the Serbs being
Orthodox and the Croats Roman Catholic. That is why the priestly order comes first but continues
in perpetuity when the kingdom comes.

The prophetic order, however, is distinct. In the age to come when the creation is fully realized in all
of its potency, we will remain who we are in terms of our family relations and our liturgical ministry.
Bishops will be resurrected bishops. Deacons will be resurrected deacons. After I am raised from
the dead, I remain irrevocably the son of my two parents. These aspects are perpetuated
eternally. But there is no permanent prophetic order in the age to come, where the whole
Church, being perfectly glorified, is filled with the Spirit and constituted as exalted prophets.

In view of the eschatological nature of the historical Church, the Holy Spirit indwells all baptized
Christians. We are all, therefore, prophets of a sense. Joel 2, in prophesying the Day of Pentecost,
echoes Numbers 11-12 where Moses spoke of dreaming dreams and seeing visions- and in this
context Moses prayed that “all the Lord’s people be prophets.” In my view, as the Church develops
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 and matures into the fullness of the stature of Christ, the exercise of the prophetic gifts entrusted to
the Church by the Holy Spirit will become more common. In this process, the Church becomes
more eschatological as the prophetic gift is held by all.

So, how does this manifest in the historical and contemporary Church as we have seen it?

Let us consider the two aspects of the Holy Spirit’s magisterial role, as I discussed the other day in
my post about tradition under the new covenant. The Holy Spirit exercises His authority in the
Church both its 1) hierarchical and 2) charismatic aspects. The bishops have, especially when
speaking in Local and Ecumenical Councils, a teaching authority from Christ, exercised through the
Holy Spirit. The specific conditions for the exercise of this authority are a matter for further doctrinal
development, as we see that in the Seventh Ecumenical Council the Council Fathers were not fully
clear as to what constituted a Council as definitive and authoritative. As elegant as the Roman
Catholic theory of papal ratification might appear, it does not have the clear witness of history on its
side- the Council Fathers appealed to the necessary presence and consent of the patriarchal
churches as well as that of the chief Church, the blessed Pope of the Apostolic See, called to
“preside in love.” As in the Trinity, there is unity realized in diversity. Primacy in conciliarity. The two
are not opposites requiring a middle way, but necessary for each other’s realization.

The way this works out must be discussed in more detail at another time, though I would refer
readers to look up my discussion of the teaching of St. Vincent of Lerins on the discernment of the
Catholic and Apostolic tradition.

We see the Lord Jesus Christ instituting this authority, promising the gift of the Spirit of Truth who
will gather His disciples into one and lead them into all Truth- Christ being the Hypostatic Truth- and
then conferring the Spirit of Truth on the Apostles in John 20. This is the gift of apostolic priesthood,
Pentecost coming after the Lord ascends. Hence the Apostles and their successors exercise
magisterial authority through the Holy Spirit, fulfilling the priestly character of the Church.

But there is another manifestation of the Spirit’s authority in its charismatic aspect. This is
why Maximus the Confessor, a mere monk, is an authoritative and definitive witness to the catholic
faith of the Church. More broadly, this authority encompasses the Fathers as a whole. Concretely,
we see the Church’s charismatic aspect in the phenomenon of God-bearing elders and eldresses,
possessing the prayer of the heart and the gift of clairvoyance, teaching their disciples with a
teaching that comes from God directly. When these people (whether they are apostolically ordained
or not) are gifted in theology as a rational discipline, the Holy Spirit accentuates and glorifies these
gifts to produce the Church Fathers who are authoritative witnesses to the theology of the Church.
The prophetic and charismatic gifts given to the Church are exercised by men and women as one.

The prophetic ministry in the Church is essential to the Church’s living being, its being
preserved from “fossilization”, the perpetuation of dead formalities without participating in
God’s work of bringing it from “glory to glory” and unfolding through history.

For while it is possible to be a Bishop with no faith, passing along the formal succession to
modernist fools, the joining of the Apostolic ministry of the priesthood to a Church vivified by the
Spirit who manifests the Divine Will according to the divine initiative and move, those tendencies be
shattered in the operation of God’s will through His deified saints. This is the role that St. Maximus
fundamentally played. In a time when the formal hierarchy of the Church, being the
perpetuation of the Church in history, failed almost entirely to profess and proclaim that

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 faith intrinsic and essential to her character, it was Maximus, operative in the life of the Holy
Spirit, who continued to shout (so much that his tongue was cut out!) and shatter what
would otherwise have been a stable descent into heresy.

And that, to summarize what was discussed above, is why the prophetic ministry belongs to women
as much as it does to men. The maleness of the priestly and royal offices belongs to the character
of these offices as a structuring principle perpetuating the integrity of social organisms through time.
The prophetic ministry exists in view of God’s will to constantly make all things new, to pres history
in new and unexpected directions, and, insofar as it is necessary, to shatter existing orders. As it
has no intrinsic relation to perpetuating an order but to developing and glorifying it according to the
sometimes unexpected will of God, its character has no intrinsic relation to maleness or
femaleness, whose distinctness exists in relation to these orders- important in themselves but given
life when joined to the vivifying activity of the Holy Spirit.

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