Church and State as Seen in the Formation of ChristendomAllies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Religion
Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom
Allies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Church and state; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Religion and state
denied that these are injunctions issued to those to whom he was
speaking. And the tacit appropriation of the Jewish names and offices to
the Christian order, with the injunction of present obedience, all based
upon the direct institution of "the Master," is every way to be noted.
But he proceeds to say that, if the Mosaic services are accurately
performed according to a divine rule, much more should the Christian be.
"Not in every place, brethren, are the continual daily sacrifices
offered, or the free-will offerings, or the sin-offerings, and the
trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem alone. And even there the offering
is not made in every place, but before the sanctuary in the court of the
altar, and this too through the high priest and the aforesaid officiants,
after that the victim to be offered has been inspected for blemishes.
They then who do anything contrary to the seemly ordinance of His will
receive death as the penalty. You see, brethren, in proportion as greater
knowledge has been vouchsafed to us, so much the more are we exposed to
danger."
How, it may be asked, comes it that he mentions the worship at Jerusalem
as going on when the city and temple had been destroyed twenty-five years
before?
I would suggest that St. Clement is considering the whole order of the
Aaronic priesthood and worship as a divine appointment. In this point of
view, it is apart from time, that is, he mentions it ideally as a divine
institution. Moreover, he clearly considers it as carried on in the
Christian ministry, as having found in that ministry its complete
fulfilment. In this aspect it was of no importance that the worship at
Jerusalem, to which he referred, had ceased by a divine judgment to be
any longer in existence. It had fulfilled its work; the blood of bulls
and goats, which typified the most Precious Blood, was offered no more;
but instead the sacrifice to which it had pointed. He quotes it for what
had not passed, the divine institution of a certain order in it. If, for
the violation of this order, death was inflicted, how much more should
those who transgressed the Christian institution, as having been
vouchsafed greater knowledge, be exposed to danger. Moreover, was not the
fact of Jesus being the Christ a basis in St. Clement's mind for the
belief that the Mosaic worship was carried on, with the requisite change,
in the Christian? How deeply lay in his mind the feeling that the
Christian Church was a continuation of the Jewish—the child coming forth
from the embryo of the Jewish womb—is apparent through the whole letter.
The third point, then, which we note is, that the ordinances of Christ,
in all that concerns the priesthood and the rites of His Church, were to
be observed according to the rule which "the Master" Himself had given
even more accurately than the Mosaic ritual, though that also was of
divine institution, had been observed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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