When Was The First Epistle Of Clement Written?

I hold in my hands a book whose publication I have been waiting for in anxious anticipation for some time now. That book is Clement and the Early Church of Rome: On the Dating of Clement’s First Epistle to the Corinthians by Msgr. Thomas J. Herron. Msgr. Herron, who worked in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, originally wrote this book as his doctoral dissertation at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome back in 1988. This book is truly groundbreaking as Herron persuasively argues for a pre-70 A.D. dating of First Clement. One of the key arguments is the polemic against the Jerusalem Temple, which Clement speaks against as though it were still standing. Had the Temple already been destroyed (which it would have been based on the traditional 96 A.D. dating), that would have furthered Clement’s argument for the superiority of Christianity over and against Judaism. Yet, Clement never even alludes to the destruction of the Temple. Herron’s thesis has many theological and ecclesiastical implications, most notably: the early existence of a normative presbyterate (priesthood) and Roman primacy. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Apostolic Fathers or Church History in general.  

Same-Sex "Marriage" And Proposition 8

With the activist judge Walker’s overruling of Prop. 8 in California, the debate over the definition of “marriage” once again rages on. Yet, the same reason that women cannot be priests is the reason why same sex couples cannot be married. St. Paul touches on this in Ephesians 5 when he discusses the roles of a husband and wife in relation to each other. He concludes by quoting Genesis 2:24:

"For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."  

He then adds:

“This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

So how does what St. Paul says here in Ephesians 5 exclude women from the priesthood and same sex couples from marriage? Because St. Paul informs us that the mystery of marriage refers to Christ and the Church. This means that the imagery of Christ in relation to the Church is not modeled on the human institution of marriage, but vice versa! From all eternity it was in the will of God that Christ, the Bridegroom, should be united to His Bride, the Church. From all eternity there was intended a complementarity of the masculine with the feminine. This eternal nuptial between Christ and His Bride is what marriage is modeled upon. Therefore, any talk of marriage being between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is nonsense. There is no complementarity between two of the same sex, so no matter what one wishes to call it, it will never be a marriage.

But how does Ephesians 5 exclude women from the priesthood? Precisely because a priest acts in persona Christi, in the person of Christ. Christ as a person on earth was/is a man. And as Christ is married to His Bride, the Church, so too, a man who is ordained as a priest has the Church for His Bride (consequently, this is also an argument for the celibate priesthood, since Christ was not a polygamist, neither should a priest be by having two wives; earthly and heavenly). Now if a woman were to be a priest, there would be two feminine elements instead of the complementarity of masculine and feminine. As explained above, this cannot happen.

Christ, The New Priest

I have started to read Albert Vanhoye’s book Old Testament Priests and the New Priest: According to the New Testament and I was struck by this finding at the end of the first chapter:

“The narrative writings of the New Testament never show the Jewish high priests in the exercise of their cultic functions. What is given emphasis is their authority rather than their priesthood; they are ‘important personages’ i.e. ‘high’ more than they are ‘priests.’ It was not possible, however, to separate the two aspects entirely, for the high priests were recognized as being the religious leaders of the people of God. It followed from this that the Christians were in an extremely embarrassing situation. The Gospel narratives, which say little about Jewish priests and much about the high priests, result inevitably in giving the priesthood an unfavorable image. And yet it could not be denied that the priesthood constituted one of the fundamental institutions of the Old Testament. How could the Christian Church claim to be faithful to the totality of biblical revelation and to possess in Christ its definitive fulfillment, if it found itself in a negative relationship with regard to this fundamental institution of the people of God?”

Vanhoye closes his first chapter without answering his question. I haven’t read further, so I don’t know if he does later in the book, but I wanted to point out the importance of his assertion in this paragraph and what its implications are. He shows that the Jewish high priests are not shown exercising their cultic functions. Rather, they are portrayed more as political figures. I think the reason for this is, and hopefully Vanhoye will make this connection later in the book, the Evangelists are implicitly stating what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews makes explicit; namely that the Old Testament Priesthood has been fulfilled in Christ. When Christ appears, the high priests are no longer portrayed as cultic leaders because THE High Priest has arrived. The cult of the Old Testament people of God, the Qahal, is fulfilled and carried on in the person of Christ. The Levitical priesthood was a concessionary priesthood instituted after the sin of the golden calf. Prior to the golden calf, the priesthood was passed on from father to firstborn son. Now that God’s Firstborn Son has arrived, the priesthood can return back to its original dimension of being about spiritual fatherhood. The spiritual fatherhood aspect of the priesthood is important for understanding the Church’s teaching on why only men can be priests.

For more on Christ’s priesthood, see the paper I wrote for my Biblical Foundations class in Grad school. I’m going to have to revisit this paper and include Vanhoye’s insight here.