Firstly, biblical exegesis is not one of Wills’ strong points. He is a great literary critic but when it comes to Scripture for some strange reason becomes something of a fundamentalist. But this works for and against him:

Firstly, in regard to the text from the letter to the Hebrews, he is right in assessing it as not only inadequate but groundless for justifying a theology of sacrificial priesthood. In fact, in the early Church, up until well into the second century, Christians had only one body of Scripture, the books of the Hebrew Canon. Early preaching and teaching delved into these to find added meaning and support for what for them was the oral tradition about Jesus and the heart of the Gospel message. There was as yet no Canon of Christian Scripture apart for the random circulation of Paul’s letters and copies of what are now the Gospels – and there were many more than the four we have now. Apart from Mt, Mk, Lk and Jn, most of these others were the products of Docetism and its daughter, Gnosticism.

Secondly, Wills should have employed his literary critical skills in a more focused way and asked some questions about why the early Church and even the present Church used/ uses these OT references to justify the priesthood. In effect, he is flogging a pantomime horse. Any decent exegete, sacramental theologian or church historian would have educated him in the answer.

The Christians of the late second and third generations were asking questions about the origins of rituals etc, specifically Baptism and Eucharist. Embedded in the tradition of the Eucharist was the Memory that Jesus had given himself over for humanity in his death and that this was interpreted as a sacrifice. The preachers and teachers delved into the Hebrew Scriptures to find types or pre-figures of Christ’s sacrifice. What they came up with was a string of proof texts and references which appeared to them to foreshadow the sacrifice of Christ. A number of them seemed to be appropriate: the suffering servant of Isaiah, the scape goat, the Passover lamb and the ‘sacrifice’ of Melchizedek.

The problem for early Christian catechesis was that the sacrifice of Christ was different from those of the Hebrew Tradition. Jesus was both the one who offered and the one offered. Integral to the celebration of the Eucharist from post-Pentecost times was this memory. There was no concept of a sacrificial priesthood other than that of Jesus. Indeed, the 1976 Pontifical Biblical Commission’s report on the biblical traditions about women, including the question of women's

 ordination, found that there were no such things as ordination or priesthood in the Christian community until well into the second century!

Until the primitive notions and praxis of ordained sacrificial priesthood began to take root, it was the community gathered together in the house churches who observed the Memorial of the Lord. This took place during a celebratory meal, the Agape. Normally, it would have been the host(ess) who initiated the actual commemoration. As you would remember, Paul had to deal with irregularities in the celebration of the Agape in Corinth (1 Cor 11: 17-34) and had to command limits to it. However, it continued in various Churches but was monitored by the episkopos, the community overseer, organiser, manager (Bishop). Ignatius refers to the episkopos maintaining good order at the Agape authorizing who should lead it. See # 8 in the embedded letter to the Smyrnaeans below.

The full text of Ignatius of Antioch (around 109 CE) to the Christian community in Smyrna, especially #s 7-8. This is a very good one which can be used as a reflection/ conversation starter in its own right. It is in from the immediate post-Gospel era of Christian history.

[Note: John N Collins, Orm Rush and Neil Ormerod are locals who have written extensively on the development of the priestly ministry. Basically what happened was the gradual process whereby the episkopoi appropriated the ministerial charism of the presbyteroi – not ‘priests’ but ‘elders’ and made them dependent. These ‘elders’ were regarded in the early Church as the successors of the Apostles, not the episkopoi – bishops. So, as the notion of a Christian ordained sacrificial priesthood developed, it was the managerial class, the episkopoi – bishops, who took exclusive ownership of this ministry and presided over who should share in it. Circumstances such as the rapid increase in Christian population and the need for many gathering points led the episkopoi to ‘ordain’ – authorise - the ‘elders’ presbyteroi as co-sacrificial priests. Because women had by then been well and truly written out of the narrative, they were not considered or included in the ministry of priesthood. Even female deacons it seems morphed into the controllable ranks of the pious widows! But that’s another story and well documented in particular by some of our fine Australian women scripture scholars and theologians.]