Pf02: We are all born as priests & Pfaffe; Pope: “supreme Pfaffen”; Luther's strong statement

      This continues from Part Pf01 (Table of Contents in Part Pf01) in a series presenting C. F. W. Walther's 1874 Der Lutheraner essay on "Who are the Pfaffen?", the good and the bad. — In this segment, we can begin to see the change in the meaning of the word "Pfaffe", even in Luther's own usage of that term. "Pfaffe" originally meant "spiritual fathers" in a good way. From Der Lutheraner, vol. 30 (1874), p. 49: 

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Who are the Pfaffen?

[by C. F. W. Walther; Part 2]

In the course of time, however, the word, without thinking of its original meaning, came to be taken simply as synonymous with priest [Priester]. Without wanting to insult the Pope and the bishops in the least, in the fourteenth century Jeroschin, in the Chronicle of Prussia translated by him, called the Pope [Pabst] the “supreme Pfaffen,” and the author of the Swabian Mirror from the thirteenth century called the prince-bishops the “Pfaffen prince.” Indeed, still in 1521 the well-known zealous papist Jerome Emser declared: “Luther did not start his Reformation because of the Tetzel's indulgences, but to exterminate the Pfaffen”. (* See: Löscher's Unschuldige Nachrichten of 1720. p. 206) Emser of course understood by the “Pfaffen” nothing else than the priests [Priester], whom he regarded as especially holy. 

Even Luther took the word “Pfaffen” for a long time in the good meaning of spiritual priests. For example, in the year 1533 he writes:

“The Holy Spirit in the New Testament diligently prevented the name Sacerdos, priest or Pfaffe, [Priester oder Pfaffe] from being given to any apostle or to various other [ministerial] offices, but it is solely the name of the baptized or of Christians as a hereditary name with which one is born through Baptism. For none of us is born as Apostle, preacher, teacher, pastor [Pfarrherr] through baptism, but we are all born simply as priests and Pfaffe. Afterward, some are taken from the ranks of such born priests and called or elected to these offices which they are to discharge on behalf of all of us.” **)

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**) See Luther's Works XIX, 1536. [StL 19:1260; AE 38:188 - “The Private Mass and the Consecration of the Priests.” [This quote used also by Pieper, C.D. 3:456-457; Dogmatik: 3:521]

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Luther practically used “priest” and “Pfaffen” as synonyms in 1533. — Walther's quote from Luther is a foundational passage of Luther's teaching from Scripture on this all important topic. I doubt that the members of the LC-MS para-church organization "Gottesdienst", who consider themselves as "especially holy", will repeat Luther's strong statement that diminishes much of their rhetoric. Let it be said that Luther, Walther, and Pieper all stressed that the ministers are not to lord it over the laypeople, the original priests, but be their helpers. — In the next Part Pf03…