Melchizedek, King and Priest

The "High Priest of the Cosmic Religion" cannot be without ecumenical significance. By perpetually pointing to the ministry of Jesus Christ, king and priest forever, Melchizedek can inspire us in our search for the unity of the church and the community of humankind.

The new life in Christ, according to Paul, entails our stripping off the old self and clothing ourselves with the new self "which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcized and uncircumcized, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!" (Col. 3:9,10). Earlier in the letter Paul had affirmed that through Christ, God was "pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven" (1:19). The cosmic Christ celebrated in that christological hymn lies behind the royal and priestly role that was assigned to Melchizedek.

It was this understanding of Christ-centred universalism that lay behind the coming together of the churches in the World Council of Churches, which was the first institutionalized expression in modern times of ecumenical commitment among the non-Roman churches, and later in the regional councils of churches such as the Christian Conference of Asia. That understanding has widened in recent years to include, however tentatively and tenuously, the faiths of the world, and "all things whether on earth or in heaven" -- what is conveyed through the expression "the integrity of creation". Melchizedek is a pagan priest. But God's covenant with him preceded the calling of Abram and the covenant with Abraham, and later with his descendants, the people of Israel. It would appear, then, that the ecumenical affirmation that God is the God of the whole is mediated through Melchizedek. Even as he blesses Abram and the God who has chosen Abram, in his own person he radically challenges all exclusive or sectarian understandings of salvation.

Books on the modern ecumenical movement rarely fail to point out the importance of an initiative taken by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1920, recommending the formation of a league of churches, on the model of the proposed League of Nations, to achieve the "union of the different Christian churches". According to W.A. Visser 't Hooft, the first general secretary of the World Council of Churches, this Orthodox initiative was aimed at working towards "a permanent organ of fellowship and cooperation between the churches" and it was "without precedent in church history".(11) It will of course be anachronistic -- if that word can be used at all in a context that is without chronology -- and far-fetched to suggest that we must find a place for Melchizedek in the history of the ecumenical movement. But we cannot forget that his eternal priesthood, consummated in the ministry of Christ, lies behind the church's calling as a witnessing community among and for -- not against -- other witnessing communities.

NOTES

(1) The phrase comes from F.L. Horton, The Melchizedek Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1976, p. 158.