Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 23:1 (Spring 2019)
Article: A Baptist View Of The Royal Priesthood Of All Believers
Author: Jonathan Leeman

SBJT 23:1 (Spring 2019) p. 113

A Baptist View Of The Royal Priesthood Of All Believers

Jonathan Leeman

Jonathan Leeman is the editorial director for 9Marks in Washington, DC and an adjunct professor of theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Reformed Theological Seminary. He earned his PhD in theology at the University of Wales. Dr. Leeman is the author of multiple books on the church, including Don’t Fire Your Church Members: The Case for Congregationalism (B&H, 2016) and Political Church: Local Assemblies as Embassies of Christ’s Rule (IVP, 2016). He serves as an elder at Cheverly Baptist Church and is married to Shannon, with whom he shares four daughters.

What is the Baptist view of the priesthood of all believers, and what is the practical significance of that view? These are the questions the editors of this Journal asked for me to address in this article.

In one sense, there is no Baptist view of the priesthood of all believers, only Baptist views. Malcolm Yarnell helpfully divides past Baptist voices into two major strands—the “formative” and the “fragmentary.”1 Seventeenth-century Baptist pastor John Smyth provides a paragon of the formative, while turn-of-the-19^th-century seminary president Edgar Young (E. Y.) Mullins offers the fragmentary. Early Baptists like Smyth, together with their confessions, pointed to Christ’s offices of prophet, priest, and king, which then translate through the new covenant into the saints’ three-fold work of proclamation, worship, and government.2 Smyth argued that the priestly work of the saints consists in offering spiritual sacrifices through prayer, praise, and obedience. Their kingly work involved them in admonition, examination, excommunication, and absolution.3 Moving into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, pastors like Daniel Turner, Andrew Fuller, and Isaac Backus continued this tradition, placing the priestly duties of every member inside the ecclesial structures of local churches, led by church officers and joined to Baptist associations.4

SBJT 23:1 (Spring 2019) p. 114

Meanwhile, members of the fragmentary strand, which includes names like Roger Williams, John Leland, and Francis Wayland, spent more time emphasizing the free will, the conscience, and the individual’s unmediated access to God.5 They tended to be one or two clicks more suspicious of ecclesiastical authority and church part...