Mormons often quote Hebrews 5:4—“And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron”—to prove that Christians cannot legitimately preach the gospel, baptize new believers, or perform any leadership functions in the church unless they have been ordained by “the laying on of hands” by someone holding “the priesthood.” The following statement from the LDS doctrinal manual Gospel Principles is representative:
“The Lord has prepared an orderly way for his priesthood to be given to his sons on the earth. A worthy male member of the Church receives the priesthood ‘by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof’ (Articles of Faith 1:5). This is the same way men received the priesthood long ago, even in the days of Moses: ‘And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron’ (Hebrews 5:4). Aaron received the priesthood from Moses, his priesthood leader (see Exodus 28:1). Only those who hold the priesthood can ordain others” (Gospel Principles [2009 ed.], 69).
The attentive reader will note that although Articles of Faith 5 mentions the laying on of hands, Hebrews 5:4 says nothing about it. Mormons assume that Aaron was ordained by the laying on of hands, and conclude—based on this assumption—that such ordination is needed for the church to exist and perform such ordinances as baptism. Is this true? Let’s begin by seeing Hebrews 5:4 in its context beginning from verse 1:
“For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2 He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. 3 Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. 4 And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. 5 So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’; 6 as he says also in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek’” (Heb. 5:1-6 ESV).
When Hebrews was written, the high priest was officiating still under the old covenant, “to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” (v. 1). Although these high priestly functions were continuing to take place when Hebrews was written (almost certainly in the 60s, prior to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in ad 70), they were destined to come to an end and in fact had already become obsolete from God's perspective. This is because Christ had offered himself as the final and definitive sacrifice for sins, making the sacrifice of bulls and goats obsolete (Heb. 7:18-10:18). As Hebrews 5:4 states and as the writer repeats in Hebrews 8:3, every high priest has as his responsibility to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. Since Christ has offered the final sacrifice for sins, high priests on earth are now out of a job. So there is no reason to think that earthly high priests were supposed to continue once that already-obsolete sacrificial system had come to an end.
Hebrews 5:4 says nothing about the laying on of hands, so that ritual, which is essential according to LDS doctrine, is not even mentioned in this text. Furthermore, the Old Testament says nothing about Aaron being ordained by another man laying hands on him. This isn’t for lack of details about Aaron’s ordination (and thus is not merely an argument from silence). The fact is that the Bible goes into great detail about how Aaron became a priest. Indeed, the account of what was to be done for Aaron to become a priest goes on for three lengthy chapters (Ex. 28-30). Special holy garments had to be made for Aaron and his sons—beautiful outer garments of many colors (gold, blue, purple, and scarlet) that they would wear while performing their priestly duties. Exodus devotes a whole chapter of 43 verses to the description of these garments (Ex. 28). Various animals were to be sacrificed as part of the ordination ritual for Aaron and his sons, with blood from the sacrificial animals dabbed on the men’s ears and sprinkled on their beautiful new garments (Ex. 29:20-21). Aaron and his sons were also to be anointed with a special anointing oil (29:7; 30:23-33). There is “laying on of hands” in the ordination ritual, but it is Aaron and his sons laying hands on the sacrificial animals (Ex. 29:10, 15, 19)! So Exodus is very specific and extremely detailed about what was involved in Aaron’s ordination as priest. It simply does not include a ritual in which one man lays hands on another man as part of that detailed, specific description. Furthermore, none of the known elements of Aaron’s ordination—the colorful priestly outer garments, the sacrifices, the sprinkling of blood, or the anointing with special oil—have any place in LDS “ordinations.” So how is Aaron’s ordination in any way the model for LDS ordinations?
There is a ceremony in the Old Testament involving one man laying hands on another, but it is a one-time event and has nothing to do with priesthood. Because Moses had sinned against the Lord, the Lord told him that he would not go with the people into the Promised Land. On hearing this, Moses asked the Lord to appoint someone to lead the people of Israel after Moses’ death. The Lord chose Joshua for this role and told Moses to lay hands on him before a priest and the congregation. The act of Moses laying hands on Joshua signifies Joshua’s role as Moses’ successor and provides visual confirmation of Joshua’s new position before the entire congregation of Israel. The whole incident reads, not as an institutionalization of an ordination rite to be repeated in perpetuity, but as an exceptional occurrence in response to Moses’ request for someone to take his place in leading the people of Israel after his death:
The Lord said to Moses, “Go up into this mountain of Abarim and see the land that I have given to the people of Israel. When you have seen it, you also shall be gathered to your people, as your brother Aaron was, because you rebelled against my word in the wilderness of Zin when the congregation quarreled, failing to uphold me as holy at the waters before their eyes.” (These are the waters of Meribah of Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.)
Moses spoke to the Lord, saying, “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.”
So the Lord said to Moses, “Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him. Make him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation, and you shall commission him in their sight. You shall invest him with some of your authority, that all the congregation of the people of Israel may obey. And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire for him by the judgment of the Urim before the Lord. At his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he and all the people of Israel with him, the whole congregation.”
And Moses did as the Lord commanded him. He took Joshua and made him stand before Eleazar the priest and the whole congregation, and he laid his hands on him and commissioned him as the Lord directed through Moses. (Num. 27:12-23)
Simply by reading Exodus 28-30 and Numbers 27 we can see a number of marked contrasts between the “ordinations” of Aaron and Joshua (see table below).
|
Aaron and His
Sons (Exodus 20-23) |
Joshua
(Numbers 27:12-23) |
|
Ordained to be priests |
Ordained to succeed Moses as Israel’s leader |
|
Aaron’s sons also
ordained |
Joshua’s sons not
ordained |
|
Aaron’s position
inherited by his descendants only |
Joshua’s position neither
passed down nor inherited |
|
Special, ornate garments
required |
No special garments
required |
|
Animals sacrificed |
No animals sacrificed |
|
Hands laid on animals by
Aaron and his sons |
Hands laid on Joshua by
Moses |
|
Anointed with special oil |
No anointing with oil |
If the writer of Hebrews had wanted his readers to know what was involved in someone becoming ordained, and the laying on of hands was essential to what he wanted to communicate, why did he cite Aaron (for whom no laying on of hands is mentioned in the OT) instead of Joshua? Even if we assumed for the sake of argument that Moses laid hands on Aaron, which the text does not say, that hypothetical possibility is beside the point. The question would still remain why Hebrews cites Aaron instead of Joshua as the supposed exemplar of ordination. Again, the problem here is twofold: (1) The ritual element that Mormons associate with Aaron—the laying on of hands—is not associated with him in the Bible. (2) The ritual elements that the Bible does associate with Aaron’s ordination—special outer garments, blood sacrifices, anointing with oil—have no role in LDS ordinations.
Now let’s look more carefully at Hebrews 5:1-6. The writer
does not say that just as Aaron was called through the
laying on of hands, so people must be called today. No, that
is simply not what he says. Instead, he says that just as
God had called Aaron to be an (earthly) high priest, so God
also called his Son, Jesus Christ, to be our (heavenly) high
priest. The issue here is calling, not ordination:
“only when called by God, just as Aaron was” (Heb. 5:4).
When and how did God “call” Aaron to be high priest? Very
simply, God told Moses that Aaron was to serve in that
capacity: “Then bring near to you Aaron your brother, and
his sons with him, from among the people of Israel, to serve
me as priests—Aaron and Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu,
Eleazar and Ithamar” (Ex. 28:1). Likewise, God the Father
“called” Jesus Christ to be our heavenly high priest, which
Hebrews says is revealed in Psalm 2:7 and 110:1 (Heb.
5:5-6). In none of those OT texts is there an “ordination”
ceremony or ritual mentioned, let alone a laying on of
hands. Nor does any biblical text refer to anyone laying
hands on Jesus to make him high priest. This is simply
foreign to the point that Hebrews 5:4 is making. The point
is that Christ serves as heavenly high priest because God
the Father said that he should do so. Hebrews 5 has nothing
to do with Christian rites of ordination.
Even if it were the case that Aaron was ordained by the laying on of hands, all this would show is that an earthly high priest receives his office by the laying on of hands. If this conclusion were correct, it wouldn’t even begin to show that we need to have hands laid on us to receive the permanent presence of the Holy Spirit, or to have the authority to baptize other believers, or anything of relevance to the differences between Mormons and evangelical Christians. And since the office that Aaron passed down to his sons has been made obsolete by the final sacrificial death and heavenly high priestly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ in the new covenant (Hebrews 7-10), there is no more place for the Aaronic priesthood on the earth.
The LDS Church’s misuse of Hebrews 5:4 illustrates its propensity to use biblical proof texts to support LDS doctrine and religion while ignoring the meaning of such proof texts in their contexts in the Bible. In theory, the LDS Church counts the Bible among its “standard works” alongside the Book of Mormon and other LDS scriptures. In practice, though, when biblical teaching contradicts or conflicts with LDS teaching, the Bible is easily dismissed or disregarded. Thus, the Bible does not function for Mormons as normative or authoritative Scripture—as the word of God—but as a background source from which various isolated statements may be cited in support of the authoritative teachings of their modern prophets.