(Although some historians represent early Protestantism as eliminating the sacred, it is perhaps more accurate to suggest that the movement sacralized the secular.) The basic distinction between the sacramentally ordained priesthood and the universal priesthood of the laity was denied. Furthermore, the cultic aspect of priesthood was replaced by a new emphasis on the priest as one entrusted with the ministry of the word. The Protestant rejection of the hierarchical structure of the priesthood and the jurisdiction derived from it led it to argue that its ministers should be elected by the church community.—Alister McGrath,
Theology: The Basics (2nd ed.), 139
<idle musing>
"Sacralized the secular." I like that. It's a different way of looking at things.
That's the end of this book. The next few days will see an assortment of snippets from a couple of books that I've been reading, and then we'll dive into T. F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, which will take us a while.
</idle musing>
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