For the next two weeks, we are going to look at two Anglican terms that have often confused—and sometimes unsettled—people: “priest” and “Father.” Why do many Anglicans use these words for their clergy, and what do they actually mean? As with many old church words, I think you’ll find that the answer is both simpler and more interesting than we might expect.

Priest: A Word Carrying a Lot of History

Some words can be like old houses. That is, they start out one way, but over time, people build additions, knock down walls, and use rooms in ways the first builders never imagined. Think of how many garages have become spare bedrooms or offices.

Growing up, my bedroom was in a finished attic. A friend had a similar house, but his attic was unfinished. The only things living up there were mice and spiders. They were the same basic rooms, but very different uses. By the time we inherit an old house, it can be difficult to tell what belonged to the original structure and what was added later.

The word “priest” is like an old house that has gone through some renovations.

For some Christians, the word immediately conjures up an Old Testament altar, animal sacrifices, and a robed man standing between the people and God. Others think of Roman Catholic clergy and the Mass. Protestants have often worried that their view of the Mass turns the Eucharist into another sacrifice of Jesus. However, Roman Catholic teaching insists that Christ’s one sacrifice is made present, not repeated. Still others hear priest and imagine something completely different; maybe a druid priest.

Then there is what the New Testament says about priests. Hebrews tells us that Jesus is our “great high priest” who offered Himself “once for all” (Hebrews 4.14; 10.10). If Jesus is the one High Priest and His sacrifice is complete, does that mean there are no other priests? Well, hold on. Jump over to 1 Peter 2.9, and Peter calls the whole Church “a royal priesthood.”

I think you are starting to see the problem. This word carries a lot of history. Scripture uses priestly language in several ways, and Christians have disagreed over which meanings belong in the Church.

A short summary is that an Anglican priest is an episcopally ordained presbyter (meaning elder): an elder commissioned to minister the Word and Sacraments and care for Christ’s people.

Here is where we are going. First, we will look at the Biblical roots of the word. Then we will ask what the Reformers kept, what they rejected, and what later Anglicans recovered. Finally, we will see whether Anglicans have a workable definition of a priest. Spoiler alert: I think we do, although it may be less tidy than we would like.

Jesus Is the One Great High Priest

Let’s begin our discussion around the greatest priest ever—Jesus. The letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus is our “Great High Priest.” It also tells us that His priesthood differs from the Old Testament role.

God gave the Old Testament priesthood, but it was temporary. They stood day after day offering animal sacrifices that pointed forward to God’s final remedy for sin. You see, unlike Jesus, they could never themselves make the worshiper perfect or finally take away sins (Hebrews 7.23–24; 10.1–4, 11).

Jesus is different. He is the eternal High Priest, and He did not offer an animal in our place. He offered Himself once for all, opened the way into God’s presence, and sat down because His work was complete. Nothing can be added to it, repeated, or improved (Hebrews 10.11–14).

Because of Jesus, Christians do not need another mediator to gain access to God. We can approach the throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4.16). Paul says it plainly: “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2.5).

So let’s set a boundary at the beginning. Any definition that turns an Anglican priest into another mediator or gives him another sacrifice for sin has already gone wrong. A priest serves under the High Priest. He announces and administers the benefits of a sacrifice he did not make and cannot repeat.

The Renovation And Renovation of The Word

If you have ever attended my Nuts and Bolts of Liturgy class, you may remember me saying that the word priest is simply a shortened form of presbyter—again, the New Testament word meaning “elder.” Historically, that is basically right. However, it did not happen because someone got tired of saying all three syllables.

The English priest developed from the Old English preost, which came through Latin from the Greek presbyteros. Presbyteros means elder or older man. It is the same word behind presbyter and Presbyterian. Over centuries, pronunciation changed, and presbyter eventually became priest.

Let me lay out the morphology (transformation) of the word for you:

It all started with Greek presbyteros (“elder,” “senior”) → Latin presbyter → Vulgar Latin prester → Old English prēost → Middle English prest → modern English priest

The New Testament tells us that Paul and Barnabas appointed elders (presbyterous) in every church (Acts 14.23). Paul told Titus to appoint elders in every town (Titus 1.5). Peter called himself a fellow elder and told the elders to shepherd God’s flock (1 Peter 5.1–2). These presbyters were recognized leaders charged with teaching, oversight, and pastoral care.

Here is where the old house gets complicated. The New Testament normally uses another Greek word, hiereus, for Jewish and pagan priests. Hebrews uses that word for Jesus. Peter uses priestly language for the whole Church. But the New Testament does not ordinarily call the local Christian elder a hiereus. He is a presbyteros.

To make things confusing, English eventually used priest for both ideas: the Christian presbyter and the sacrificial priest represented by hiereus or the Latin sacerdos. One English word inherited two jobs. By the Middle Ages, the two meanings had grown closely together because the Christian priest celebrated the Eucharist. I know! Thank you, English!

So, yes, priest comes from presbyter. But the history only tells us where a word began. It does not erase everything the word came to mean.

What Cranmer Kept and What He Rejected

When it came time for the English Reformation, Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformers knew the word carried baggage. However, they did not demolish the house. That is an interesting choice. Instead, they cleared away what they believed did not belong.

Cranmer’s Prayer Book and Ordinal kept the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons. Anglicanism did not become Presbyterian, and it did not treat every Christian as interchangeable in the public ministry of the Church. A priest was still ordained by a bishop for a particular office.

At the same time, Cranmer rejected the idea that the priest’s defining work was to offer Christ again as a sacrifice for the living and the dead. Article 31 of the Thirty-nine Articles insists that Christ’s one offering is the complete redemption and satisfaction for sin. The priest does not return Jesus to the cross.

What, then, is he ordained to do? Cranmer’s Ordinal calls priests “messengers, watchmen, and stewards” of the Lord. They preach God’s Word, minister the Sacraments, teach, warn, seek the lost, care for Christ’s family, pray, bless, and declare God’s forgiveness according to the gospel.

What is interesting is what the Ordinal does not tell us. The Ordinal does not stop to explain every invisible thing that may happen in ordination. It gives a public charge. It tells the Church what this man is set apart to do and whose work he serves.

Jewel, Hooker, and Andrewes

The Anglicans who followed Cranmer did not all speak with the same opinion. That should surprise absolutely no one who has spent time around Anglicans. Let’s look at a few.

John Jewel defended the Church’s orders of deacons, priests, and bishops while insisting that Christ completed redemption through the one sacrifice of the cross. He could defend priesthood without turning priests into men who repeated Calvary every time he celebrated the Eucharist.

Richard Hooker defended ordained ministry against Puritans who thought the Church of England had kept too much from Rome. For Hooker, Word and Sacrament ministry was not a job a congregation invented because somebody needed to preach on Sunday. It was an ordered ministry received by the Church. The priest exercised real authority, but it remained Christ’s authority entrusted through an office.

Lancelot Andrewes used richer sacramental and sacrificial language than Cranmer or Jewel usually did. He spoke of the Eucharist as a memorial and representation of Christ’s sacrifice and as a means by which we receive its benefits. Yet Andrewes still insisted that, properly speaking, there is one sacrifice: Christ’s death, offered once. The Eucharist does not make Jesus die again.

These men arranged some of the furniture differently, but they stayed in the same house. Christ’s sacrifice is complete, and the Church still has an ordained ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons.

What the Tractarians Recovered

By the early nineteenth century, many began to view the Church of England and its clergy in a diminished way. Many treated the Church of England chiefly as part of the national establishment, and its clergy as respectable moral teachers. Beginning in 1833, the Oxford Movement pushed back. It argued that the Church was a ministry received from Christ through the historic Church, and not simply a religious department of the state.

Beginning in 1833, the Oxford Movement pushed back. It argued that the Church was more than an arm of the government, and that its clergy were more than moral teachers.

The Tractarians emphasized that the Church is a visible spiritual society, not merely a voluntary association. They recovered the value of apostolic succession, episcopal ordination, sacramental grace, and the priest’s commission from Christ through the Church. A priest was not simply a religious employee hired to give sermons.

Their recovery of sacramental and priestly language also reopened old Anglican disagreements about how that language should be understood. For example, later Anglo-Catholics moved in a more explicitly sacerdotal direction. However, in other ways, we owe them thanks for recovering a high view of Communion, confession, spiritual direction, ministry among the poor, and a strong sense of life within worship.

The revival enriched Anglicanism as it also widened an old disagreement. Anglicans agree more clearly about what priests are ordained to do than about every theological explanation of what ordination makes them.

So What Is an Anglican Priest?

I began this research wondering whether the most honest answer would be that Anglicans do not have a good working definition of a priest. I now think that is only half right.

We do have a workable definition, even if the formularies do not hand us one nice neat sentence. Simply put, an Anglican priest is an elder, lawfully called by the Church and ordained by a bishop, to serve under Christ as a faithful dispenser of God’s Word and Sacraments. He is authorized to preach and teach Scripture, administer Baptism and Holy Communion, declare Christ’s forgiveness and God’s blessing, lead the congregation in prayer and worship, and shepherd the people entrusted to his care.

And just so you aren’t tempted to think I made that up out of thin air, much of it is really simply a summary of what Article XXIII and the Ordinal say a priest is called and ordained to do.

Article XXIII and the Ordinal explain why priest means more than preacher, pastor, or chaplain. A priest preaches, but preaching is not his whole office. He pastors, but pastoral care does not exhaust his calling. He celebrates the Sacraments, but he is not merely a ceremonial technician. He is an elder under a bishop, a steward in Christ’s household, and a servant accountable for the care of souls.

The priest does not do everything while everyone else watches. Deacons, lay leaders, and the whole baptized Church share in Christ’s ministry. The priest has received the ordinary public charge to gather and oversee that ministry in a congregation under his bishop.

What Anglicans do not possess is one universally agreed explanation of the priest’s metaphysical essence. Now, that is a loaded phrase. What I mean is that it doesn’t answer questions like:

  • Does ordination confer an indelible character?
  • Exactly how does the priest represent Christ and the Church at the Eucharist?
  • In what sense may Eucharistic worship be called a sacrifice?

We know more clearly what a priest is ordained to do than we agree about everything ordination makes him. That may be untidy, but it is not the same as having no definition.

A Priest Who Points Away from Himself

To wrap up (and be extra clear), an Anglican priest is not another high priest, another mediator, or another savior. He does not offer another sacrifice for sin. He serves the one High Priest and points people toward the one finished sacrifice.

The word priest comes from presbyter, and an Anglican priest truly is an ordained elder. From early on, presbyters had a sacramental ministry: they were set apart to lead the Church’s worship and to administer the Sacraments. The difficulty comes when “offering sacrifice” is thrown into the definition. That is a step too far for Anglicans. Christ alone offered the one sufficient sacrifice for sins; the priest administers its benefits, but never repeats it.

Jesus Christ is our one great High Priest, and His sacrifice is complete. Because that is true, the Church may have priests who serve beneath Him: elders who preach His Word, tend His flock, administer His Sacraments, and point people to His finished work.