Priesthood of the Christian people and ministerial priesthood

This article by Father Cyrille Argenti offers a systematic theological study of the relationship between the priesthood of the Christian people and the ministerial priesthood in the Orthodox tradition. Proceeding through lexical, scriptural, and patristic analysis, the author traces back from the unique priesthood of Christ, as expounded in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to its concrete ecclesial modalities. He shows that the Church as a whole participates in the priesthood of Christ according to a threefold prophetic, sacrificial, and royal dimension, before examining the progressive differentiation of ministries from the Old Testament to the pastoral epistles. The principal contribution of the study lies in the demonstration that baptismal priesthood and ordained priesthood are not opposed but constitute a functional diversity of sacramental charisms within a single ecclesial Body, thereby transcending the one-sided systematizations of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.