The Church of the Holy Spirit

Notes

Notes 277 Author’s Foreword 1. Dionysius the Areopagite, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 2.2.7. 2. P. Batiffol, L’Eglise naissante et le catholicisme (Paris, 1922), x. Chapter 1. The Royal Priesthood 1. The Russian translation views oikodomeisthe as an imperative, but it seems more correct to view it as an indicative: “you are built into a spiritual house,where you are a holy priesthood.” 2. The critical text: basileian hiereis. 3. The critical text: “has made them a kingdom and priests, and they shall reign on earth.” Concerning the second part of the phrase, it would be more proper to take into account one more variant, basileuousin: “and they reign on earth.” Cf. E. G. Selwyn, The First Epistle of Peter (London, 1949), 159. 4. G.Dix,“The Ministry in the Early Church,” in The Apostolic Ministry, ed.K.E.Kirk (London, 1946), 285. [Translator’s note: Throughout this work I have consistently used two different English words to translate two different terms in the original. I have used “laic” to translate Fr. Afanasiev’s laik in Russian—in Greek, laikos—and I have used “lay person/ people” to translate his Russian mir’anin, Gr. biotikos. It would become confusing if only “lay person” were used to translate both terms, since their connotations are very different. It seems that in the author’s text they are actually opposed to each other. As I understand Fr. Afanasiev’s terminology, he uses mir’anin in the ordinary sense of a “non-cleric,” as it is widely used in practice today. That is not the case with laik. Strictly speaking, there is no such word in Russian, at least there was not until Afanasiev. It seems that he coined the word on the basis of the Greek to create an analogy to the term “cleric.” He uses this term so as to connote the “sacred rank” which “laic” is—the “laic” is not a non-cleric in a modern sense of “lay person,” i.e., one not initiated into a sacred order. The very next chapter speaks about the setting apart of the laics. The secular connotations of the adjective “lay” as “non-expert,” “not initiated” into some area of knowledge, a “non-specialist,” are especially misleading here. Precisely, the laic is an initiated person. Through baptism he or she is initiated into a sacred clerical order, the royal priesthood of God in Christ. When speaking about laics, Fr. Afanasiev deliberately makes it sound as if he is speaking about a clerical rank, an ecclesiastical office. I think that by deliberately introducing a term laik he intended to “fence off,” terminologically, a common connotation of the word mir’anin, that is, “lay person.” 5. The translation of basileion hierateuma offers certain difficulties. See on that subject E. G. Selwyn, First Epistle of Peters’ 165 ff. The difficulty concerns only the term basileion, but not the term hierateuma. (See G.Kittel,Theologischens Woerterbuch zum N. T., 3:249–251, the article by G. Schunk.) Whether we translate the expression basileion hierateuma as “a kingdom of priests” or as “royal priesthood” or, finally, as “a priesthood proper to a king,” the meaning of the expression does not change: the kingship and the priesthood belong “in Christ” to the Church and through the Church—to each of her members. This is particularly clear if we compare this expression in the Epistle of Peter with the corresponding expressions in the book of Revelation. If we assume that the Seer of Mysteries [St.John the Theologian] was developing the ideas of the First Epistle of Peter,then for him the basileion hierateuma of Peter meant that “kingship and priesthood” which belong to the Church and are realized at the eucharistic assembly. See Bishop Cassian (Bezobrazov), Christ and the First Generation of Christians [in Russian] (Paris, 1950), 295. 6. See W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London, 1948), 177ff. 7. The teaching concerning the Messiah from the tribe of Levi was known in ecclesiastical circles. Hippolytus of Rome accepted it (see L. Maries, “Le Messie issu de Levi chez Hippolyte de Rome,” Religieuses Sciences Revue 39 (1951): 381–396), as well as Ambrose of Milan, Hilary of Poitiers, et al. It was known to the contemporary of Hippolytus, Julius Africanus, who, while himself not accepting it, viewed it as an attempt at harmonization of genealogies in Matthew and Luke. Cf. A. J. B. Higgins, “Priest and Messiah,” Vetus Testamentum , 3 (1953): 321–357. 8. Cf...