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abstract
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The Implications of
the Resurrection for the Priestly Office of Jesus Christ
Luke
Tallon
University of St. Andrews
An investigation of the implications
of the resurrection for Christology ought to account for the fact that
it is the Messiah, the anointed one, who is resurrected. The anointing
points us toward Jesus Christ’s threefold office of prophet, priest, and
king. All three offices were acknowledged early on in the Church and
became formally central in Reformation era dogmatics. A review of the
current literature, however, indicates that Christ’s priesthood is
anything but a hot topic. Two difficulties encourage this distaste for,
or at least hesitancy to speak about, the priesthood of Christ: 1) the
distance of moderns from the sacrificial cult, and 2) the distance of
Christ’s priesthood from the Church. I will address both difficulties,
but my first concern will be the distance theologians create between
Christ’s priesthood and the Church, i.e., the absence of a doctrine of
Christ’s continuing priesthood. My concern in this paper, however, will
be to bridge the gap by addressing the relationship between the violence
of the cult—so alien and distasteful to modern—and the continuing
priesthood of Jesus. My starting point for this will be the three-fold
nature of Christ’s priestly atoning, interceding and blessing and the
way these distinctions allow the atoning or sacrificial aspect of the
priestly office to be “once for all” and the interceding and blessing to
be “forever”. Yet, Jesus Christ, as the resurrected one, does not cease
to the one slain and an account of his continuing priesthood must not
avoid the presence of the wounds in the resurrected body and their
relationship to his eternal intercession blessing