So, the implication is that, without needing any additional proof, the fact that some Biblical characters were chosen by God as a real priest over their families means that all fathers today are, by default, priests over their household.

Look at Baus’ current article on neocalvinism and you see the same logic. A corporation is part of the family, my boss has authority over me, therefore my boss is a father.

A priest prays for his people.
A father is a priest.
Therefore, a father prays for his family.

Okay, maybe this is a reasonable statement, but how about this one?

A priest offers blood sacrifices for his people.
A father is a priest.
Therefore, a father offers blood sacrifices for his family.

So, now you should see my problem with the statement. A pastor merely has to assert the second statement to conclude the third. Anything a priest does can now be explained from the pulpit as a duty of the father.

Here’s a quote from Brian Schwertley that explains my point:

After Noah offered sacrifice, God blessed him and his sons and then restated the dominion mandate (Gen. 9:1). Both Abraham and Jacob offered sacrifice as the heads of their households (Gen. 22:13; Gen. 31:54; 46:1, 5, 6). Job’s role as the covenant head of the family in worship is also evident. “Job…would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, ‘It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’ Thus Job did regularly” (Job 1:5). Not only were the heads of the households (the husband and father) responsible for family worship, Jehovah Himself dealt with families through the heads of households.
http://www.reformedonline.com/view/reformedonline/family.html

As you see, the only stated reason for family worship is the priesthood of the father, and the fact that certain pre-Mosaic fathers were appointed priests by God, having responsibility for their families. In other words:

Priests hold worship services in their consituencies,
Fathers are priests of their family,
Therefore, fathers hold family worship.

What I also think is that the prophet, priest, king analogy is vastly abused in Reformed circles. For example, calling the pastor the prophet, the elder the king and the deacon the priest in a church just doesn’t seem Biblical. Prophet, priest and king were shadowy pictures of Christ that existed primarily in the Old Testament. Just as I don’t feel required to force our church liturgy into the terms of temple worship, I don’t feel required to force every God-given vocation into the terms of prophet, priest and king.

The same can be said for the Passover and communion. It is helpful to explain communion using the terms of the Passover, but the Passover has significance that communion doesn’t, and communion has significance that the Passover doesn’t. It’s not a perfect fit

That’s why I think that we can find it helpful to use the OT pictures of prophet, priest and king to explain the responsibility of the father, I find it incorrect, and often downright heretical to say that the father IS the prophet, priest and king of the family.

Well, let me back you up one step. Do you agree that there is a sense of Christian vocation in which we are all prophets, priests, and kings in Christ?

Thus, you cannot equate these offices as offices of the family. I teach my family, I pray for my family, and I am the head of my wife and discipline my children. Those roles are similar to, but distinct from the roles of prophet, priest and king.

I don’t deny that Hebrews 5:1 is not the sum total of the priests’ role, but it is an essential part. It says EVERY. Thus a person who is not able to offer sacrifices for sins is not a priest. Again to say that anyone but Christ in the new covenant can offer sacrifice for sins is heresy. In fact, it was heresy under the old covenant, since the priest was merely a visual foreshadowing of the redemption found in Christ alone.

I don’t have an opinion either way on the mediation, but two theses claim to know the basis of Christ’s mediation. Is it that He is the God Man, or is it that He obeyed perfectly? Obviously they can both be true, but they can’t both be the sole cause. The third point I made is that Christ purchased the universe through His redemption of us at the cross, so another aspect of the mediation is that Christ owns us and thus mediates also as a slave-owner (where, of course, slavery in Christ is freedom indeed!)

The church and the state have different roles in dealing with sin, but I’m not sure that it’s holy vs. secular. In looking up the definition of secular, I think it is only the modern connotation (absence of religion) that I think inappropriate. I would say that the distinction is eternal/holy vs. temporal, which does jive with the technical definition of secular. The point that I was trying to make is that all law is moral in nature, and thus the state cannot have an areligious purpose in law. The purpose must be to bring the moral law to bear on all aspects of public life. Also, the church is only over those who are in covenant with God, while the state is over all in its land. So, a covenantal Christian who commits murder would potentially be judged eternally (excommunicated) by the church and temporally by the state. (Obviously, the church may see signs of true repentance and restore the member later)

Thanks for the interaction.

First, no Adam would not have been his daughters husband (yuck) but he would have been their king.

Second, your citation of Hebrews provides insight into the nature of priesthood but does not say everything. Of course, a federal head also is something of a mediator who represents us before God. Adam was such a mediator, such a federal head,and because of his role of defending the holiness of the Garden and teaching his family God’s covenant word and leading them in worship he was, in fact, a priest. Of course this should not be that surprising as our theology tells us that every husband/father is a prophet, priest, and king over his household.

I do not believe that Jesus Christ was the mediator of salvation before the fall. I do believe He had an active role in representing God to man and had an important role in creation. Although His mediatorial work will never come to its completion, it is my believe that it began at the fall and was officially inaugurated at His return to the Father, and will be perfected at His return.

More on the judicial laws later.

Finally. you deny the distinction between holy and secular, do you deny the distinction between church and state?

8-10. I agree that Adam was a King - he was given dominion over creation, but I think that is separate from his role as a husband. For example, if I’m the President of the United States, I have two separate authorities over my wife, one as president and one as husband. It is illogical to equate those two. If Eve had daughters in the garden, would Adam, by default, be their husband, since he was King?

Also, Hebrews 5:1 talks about the role of the priest: “For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” Without sin, there is no need for a mediator to represent us before God, which is the role of the priest. Job is also used to imply the priesthood of the father; however, Job was the priest of his family because he was a priest appointed by God, not because of his role as a father. Here’s what Moses says about the establishment of the Levitical Priesthood in the land of Israel: Deut 12:8-9 “You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes; for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which the LORD your God is giving you.”

3&21. Either Christ became mediator because He was the God man, or he became mediator because of His perfect obedience. You can have 21 and 3, but not 3 without 21. This also doesn’t seem to explain the sense that the world rebelled against God and that Christ conquered the powers of darkness to bring the world back in subjection to God the father. The Bible states that Jesus will hand the kingdom back to His father when all is brought under subjection. We didn’t need a mediator before the fall. God could communicate directly with His creation. If He needed Jesus as the mediator before the Fall, who mediates for the angels who are in His presence?

45,47. I think it is a great mistake to put the judicial laws in two categories. As the WCF states, “To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.” To artifically categorize the law itself as “general equity”, you create the opportunity (and I’ve seen it done from the pulpit) for a pastor to say a law is binding with absolutely no rationale other than saying it is “moral in nature”. All of the laws were for the nation of Israel, and they were all binding on the nation of Israel. They are only binding on us as they correctly interpret the moral law for a specific situation. For example, judicial laws demonstrate the positive aspects of the moral law - protection of life, protection of property - and the negative aspects - rebellion against parents, rebellion against authority, etc.

56,57. I deny the distinction between holy and secular. Murder carries both a moral and civil penalty. Any infraction of God’s law is punishable both by the church and the state. I think this is a false dichotomy and is why our nation struggles so much with religion vs. the state. The state thinks it can be neutral by having an entirely secular purpose, but the secular purpose itself denies the duties of the Christian in all of life. Churches that limit themselves to personal, private practice of religion for all intents and purposes deny their responsibility to be salt and light in the fallen world.

+67.5 Christian nations have no special claim to the promises of God to the cultic kingdom of Israel. (e.g. 2 Chron 7:14)