Holiness and Ministry: A Biblical Theology of Ordination

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The World Council of Churches has called for renewed theological reflection on the biblical roots of ordination to strengthen the vocational identity of the ordained and to provide a framework for ecumenical dialogue. This book is a response to that call. It is grounded in the assumption that the vocation of ordination requires an understanding of holiness and how it functions in human religious experience. The goal is to construct a biblical theology of ordination that is embedded in broad reflection on the nature of holiness. Dozeman's study of holiness and ministry interweaves three methodologies. The first, from the History of Religions, describes two theories of holiness in the study of religion, as a dynamic force and as a ritual resource. Both play a central role in biblical literature and establish the paradigm of ordination to Word and Sacrament in Christian tradition. Second, the study of the formation of the Mosaic Office illustrates how the two views of holiness model ordination to the prophetic word and to the priestly ritual. Third, Canonical Criticism provides the lens to explore the ongoing influence of the Mosaic Office in the New Testament literature.

Holiness and Ministry will assist candidates for ordination to discern their call experience and establish professional identity within individual traditions of Christianity, while also providing a resource for ecumenical dialogue on the nature and purpose of Christian ordination.

Holiness and Ministry: A Biblical Theology of Ordination Review

Dozeman's attempt to construct a theology of ordination is informed by critical, theological, and anthropological insights, but Dozeman's dichotomization of holiness as a "dynamic force" vs. holiness as "sacred space" is overdone, and his rigid separation between Moses's priestly and prophetic callings certainly seems strained.

Rudolf Otto describes the separate quality of holiness with his language of the numinous--a personal and dynamic power (25). Whereas Otto focuses on religious experience, Jacob Milgrom focuses on religious rituals and the importance of "sacred space" (28). Dozeman's stark contrast between these different conceptions of holiness are overplayed. Both Otto and Milgrom understand holiness as a dynamic power that is somehow imparted to the human (whether directly or indirectly, whether infused or transferred). Although prima facie Milgrom seems to hold quite a different view since in his scheme holiness does not invade people directly but only exclusive locations, he still believes the power of holiness is "transferred" to people outside the sanctuary and indeed lays claim on "all creation" (28-29). Thus even on Milgrom's view people can still receive the dynamic power of holiness outside the sanctuary (even if it is "indirect" and flows from a sanctuary-source). To see person-invading holiness and space-invading holiness as necessarily contradictory is counter-intuitive to this reader, for even on Milgrom's view the chief reason why God would be "invading" any "space" would be for the people in that space (if there is some other reason Dozeman has not told us). Although one works through the book in the hope that it will become more evident what the practical differences between these two conceptions of holiness are, and why they are supposedly irreconcilably at odds, the tension only grows.

Dozeman then draws a link between holiness as a dynamism with the ministry of the word (which he builds a case for in Moses's "prophetic call"), and holiness as sacred space with the ministry of sacraments (which he builds a case for in Moses's "priestly" call). He then sets these two sharply against one another, calling them "competing traditions." For example, he caricaturizes Moses's priestly call as "the absence of introspection" in order to make it seem opposite to Moses's "introspection" in the prophetic call where he resists Yahweh's call based on his inadequacies (55). However, elsewhere he admits that in his priestly call, God is asking him to "speak" and he objects in the same fashion as before during his prophetic call (54). Thus the same style of divined dialogue Dozeman characterizes as "introspection" in one text, he characterizes as "the absence of introspection" in another, in order to conform the biblical narratives to his preconceived idea of "competing traditions" within the text (54-55). If this is how we do biblical theology, this critic sees no reason why Moses's experience of the burning bush could not be seen as a narrative authentication for ritual purity, since Moses is forced to take his shoes off in light of a spatial notion of holiness (he is standing on holy ground), or why Moses's verbal proclamations to Pharaoh ("go and tell Pharaoh..." Ex 6:10) attended by miracles (are they best described as "rituals"?) cannot be considered a model for a prophetic office.

Dozeman's intentions are also unclear, for at first he wants to claim that "the priestly call to ordination assumes Moses's earlier encounter with holiness" and also "builds on the charismatic experience of the numinous, rather than replacing it" (51-52). Later, however, once he is waxing eloquent to build his case for "competing traditions," he appears to change his mind and claims "the priestly call to ordination replaces the self-critical evaluation of the religious experience of the numinous" (54). Does the priestly model assume and build on the prophetic one or replace it?

Although Dozeman oscillates between the prophetic and priestly, comparing the two competing traditions, his presentation of the priestly literature in chapter five gives the reader the strong impression that the author is portraying the priestly tradition as a superior model for ordination compared to the prophetic. In almost every contrast, the priestly difference is presented as something advantageous over against the prophetic. The priestly model overcomes the "problem" of history and experience found in the prophetic literature by making God more directly accessible in sacred space--people can have their own direct experience with God rather than having the prophet recount to them God's mighty deeds of history through the spoken word (83). The priestly emphasis is no longer on "experience and memory" but ritual practices (83). Dozeman understands the priestly model to thereby make God "continually present" through the sacraments as compared to the prophetic model's problem of history and experience (84).

To give credit where credit is due, Dozeman has indeed presented an array of thought provoking ideas with respect to ordination in his treatment: the need for a call experience to ordination, the role of mediation and hierarchy amongst the people of God, the dynamic power of holiness, the importance of sacred space, the danger of being killed by God, etc. One cannot help but laud his attempt to construct a theology of ordination not just from the Bible in general but the texts he suspects were originated precisely to provide a framework for such theology (although he does not believe that scripture alone is sufficient for this task, but must inevitably be informed by Tradition). Furthermore, one can see that Dozeman designed this book to be simultaneously practical and ecumenical. Given that Dozeman's reflections have originated in the academic setting as he developed coursework as a team effort with other students, the most revealing comments of the whole book were found on page 57-58:

____"The competing experiences of the call to ordination are common in students at my seminary. ... Often, my students state that the authentic experience of holiness was the initial charismatic encounter of the numinous [holiness as a dynamic force] and that the ritual power of holiness acquired through professional training is of secondary value--sometimes even viewed as a hurdle to be overcome so that they can enter the ministry. The model of ordination that arises from the Mosaic office indicates that nothing could be further from the truth."

This helps make sense of much of Dozeman's book, with its artificial (or at least problematic) separation of "priestly" and "prophetic" in his chosen texts and his subtle favoring of "the priestly" schema (see above). Although I always try to give credit where credit is due, ultimately I found Dozeman's biblical theology unsatisfying because of the way he rigidly separates Moses's priestly and prophetic callings, then fills these artificially reconstructed categories with preconceived ideas about human experience (which ideas he then also reads back into the texts of Torah).

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