Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 23:1 (Spring 2019)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

SBJT 23:1 (Spring 2019) p. 157

Book Reviews

Jesus the Priest. By Nicholas Perrin. London: SPCK, 2018. 384 pp. $44.31, paper.

Jesus Christ is a high priest, after the order of Melchizedek. Hebrews makes this clear; no one disputes it. What is disputed is whether the Gospels present Jesus as a priest. Because the title “priest” is never assigned to Jesus by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, many who admit the priestly actions of Jesus (e.g., forgiving sins and offering prayer) refuse to pronounce him a priest in the Gospels.

Most recently, Andrew Malone in his helpful study God’s Mediators: A Biblical Theology of the Priesthood argues we should derive all priestly identifications from Hebrews (and Revelation 1), not the Gospels (pp. 103–07). “Though some proposed parallels are enticing, they are difficult to confirm with any confidence and leave the minimalist position more convincing” (103). Malone’s “minimalist position” stands against others who make a case for seeing Christ as a priest in the Gospels.

To date, Crispin Fletcher-Louis has been the most forceful for observing Christ’s priesthood in the Gospels. However, with the publication of Jesus the Priest, Nicholas Perrin has made an important contribution to the study of Christ’s priesthood in the Gospels. In what follows, I will briefly summary the content of his argument and offer a few observations on his work and cautions for the reader.

In chapter 1, Perrin begins with the Lord’s Prayer and the meaning of “Our Father.” Following the work of Jeremias, against Bousset, he argues Abba is not a newly-minted term in the New Testament. It is the eschatological title of address which all sons may offer, after they have gone through the Exodus (36–38). Thus, Perrin follows the history of “Father” through the Old Testament and the Second Temple period. He argues Jesus’ use of “Father” is not novel, but typical of the sons of God (e.g., Adam, Israel, Solomon, etc.), all of whom have a priestly status in God’s kingdom.

From this definition, he makes the case for the Lord’s Prayer as “a consistently eschatological prayer” for the sons of God (38). Then, one-by-one he shows the priestly background to the seven petitions (38–51). For

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instance, the first petition (“hallowed be your name”) finds its anchor point in Ezekiel 36:23 (“I will sanctify my great name”), a passage that presents a “reinvigorated” priesthood “in the eschaton” (40–42). By uniting sonship and priesthood—a theme that will continue throughout his book—P...