Mark 2:1-12 - Absolution

[Grant]

So in Mark 2:1-12 Jesus publicly forgives the sins of the paralytic. Of course if is criticized by some in the crowd as making a blasphemous claim by those who did not see/believe that Jesus was the God-Man.

I am studying Mark 2 for the next couple weeks, my initial thoughts also brought me to the Church controversy related to protestants and Rome on penance and more specifically absolution.

So I am asking this more for a historical understanding.

In the R.C. church are priest announcing the forgiveness of sins on their own authority (thus also being blasphemy) or are they stating this line on the basis of the authority of Christ? I plan on studying a view commentators on this subject, but I noted a quick search in a transcript by the late R.C. Sproul:


https://www.ligonier.org/learn/sermons/mark-healing-paralytic (bolded by me for specific comment on interest):

At the heart of the controversy that erupted in the sixteenth century between the Reformers and the Roman Catholic Church was the church’s understanding of the sacrament of penance. There are many factors to that, but part of the sacrament of penance was confession and priestly absolution. The penitent church person would come into the confessional and say, “Father, I have sinned, and it’s been so long since my last confession.” He would recite his sins, and he would have to go through his act of contrition and so on.

The highlight was when the priest would use the words te absolvo, “I absolve you.” Some Protestants get really upset when they hear about that, and they say, “What right does the priest have to say, ‘I absolve you’?” Well, for centuries the church was very careful to point out that no priest has the inherent authority to forgive sins. Only God can forgive sins.

When the priest says te absolvo, he is saying in shorthand, “In the name of Jesus Christ, who does have the authority to forgive your sins, I declare you absolved by your repentance.” So, the problem with the Reformation was not with what the priest said there; it was with other aspects of the sacrament of penance, which we can treat on another day. Luther kept the confessional for this reason. He said, “People need a word of assurance that they are being forgiven.”

So would you agree with Sproul that it might be too heavy handed to criticize Rome on this specific point, or was Sproul being too light handed?

 

[MyCrows]

As far as the Lord giving the keys of the kingdom to his apostles, and by extension the ordinary officers who would come after them, he gives the responsibility of discerning the validity of one's profession of faith.

Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

John 20:21-23

When we welcome a penitent sinner into the church, we welcome them on behalf of Christ. Not that I agree that the Roman priests were correct in the manner in which they approached it, however.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

So in Mark 2:1-12 Jesus publicly forgives the sins of the paralytic. Of course if is criticized by some in the crowd as making a blasphemous claim by those who did not see/believe that Jesus was the God-Man.

I am studying Mark 2 for the next couple weeks, my initial thoughts also brought me to the Church controversy related to protestants and Rome on penance and more specifically absolution.

So I am asking this more for a historical understanding.

In the R.C. church are priest announcing the forgiveness of sins on their own authority (thus also being blasphemy) or are they stating this line on the basis of the authority of Christ? I plan on studying a view commentators on this subject, but I noted a quick search in a transcript by the late R.C. Sproul:


https://www.ligonier.org/learn/sermons/mark-healing-paralytic (bolded by me for specific comment on interest):


So would you agree with Sproul that it might be too heavy handed to criticize Rome on this specific point, or was Sproul being too light handed?

It would not surprise me to discover for a fact that the hostility or hesitancy to which you and RCS allude really is a factor of specifically American Protestant history. Particular strands of church history were brought to this continent piecemeal, and woven together; and afterward generations of that heritage assume that their peculiar attitudes have always been "the" position--if not of Protestantism generally, then surely of their strain of tradition.

An unfortunate aspect of American secular culture, which is unthinkingly absorbed into the ecclesiastical bloodstream, is its reactionary aversion to hierarchy. Hierarchy may have its downside and abuses. America's history may present the world with a paradigm case of a nation built from its constitutional foundation biased against formal, political hierarchy; and the innate equality of every voting constituent.

But American society is a human society, where hierarchy of some kind is inevitable. The apotheosis of the individual has produced in America both an enforceable, legal demand that the public affirm any and all individual desires; and also the hypocritical camouflage of what hierarchies exist, while denying and despising them is an essential cultural virtue signal.

Problems with the idea of hierarchy translate into problems with authority. Egalitarian impulses have driven the concept of personal, supreme authority (over others) right out of men's heads. Christ is some kind of king, to some American Christians, but he's not a king that seems kingly in a strict definition of that term. A typical American Christian doesn't fancy himself any sort of subject. His pastor might be a charismatic leader and persuasive speaker, but he's hardly conceived of as a governmental minister, as an authorized agent of a higher (Highest) power who has been invested with specific, delegated authority--for example, to pronounce forgiveness of sin.

Americans generally are interested in individual rights. Possession and exercise of those rights translate into a sense of justice, of being right. By not being in jail, or under some other penalty (laid by the People) depriving one of his rights, he is therefore right. If one is clearly right, why does he need an intermediary of some kind to confer that status? Imagine if one had to wait on going out Monday morning for a policeman to stop by your address to inform you whether or not you were "right" to begin working that week, or going to the store? Such "social credit" would be a constant reminder that one is not inherently possessed of (inalienable?) rights.

In terms of the kingdom of God, we are not at home there because of any right we possess, or have intrinsically, beyond what is granted unilaterally by covenant from God. Our constant recourse to confession (not the confessional booth) and reminder of pardon from God is an aspect of worship discipline that reinforces our identity as subjects of the king, as persons granted a home in a kingdom where intrinsically or inherently we do not belong and could never gain standing on our own merit. The word of authority comes through the king's herald, who in himself has zero intrinsic power to command even a hearing; but who bears all authority upon his lips from on high, and exercises such authority as will conduce to the hearing of the word of God.

Reflecting on absolution forces a man to recognize he continues in his Lord's good standing by the right and merit of someone else. A pastor is not that "someone else," and shouldn't assume that role. But there are those who assume the hierarchy of office in the church means that those installed in those offices have more rights (grace), and dispense rights/grace to lesser beings. They hope to benefit from the rescue of a 'holy man" more deserving, who has more status and expectation of good from God, by abiding in the shelter of the church. In fact, it is only the merit of Christ received by faith that brings absolution; and the pastor has nothing but what he also receives from the word he utters, the same as any other hearer.

The pastor is installed in an orderly position functionally "higher" than the average member. He is there with an assignment to fulfill: to assist the people of the kingdom hearing the vital word coming to them from heaven itself. He is the voice of authority, of that authority, not the people's authority or his own authority which are both from below, but real authority nonetheless. As Christians, we must gain clear understanding and not be ashamed of the concept of hierarchy (if we properly deplore its abuse); and affirm our status as subjects, together with the source, locus, and limits of ecclesiastical authority.

 

[Request-Deleted member 11775]

Some relevant comments if they are of any help:

"Never can a sinner obtain peace by the so-called sacrament of penance. Penance is the confession of sin to a priest and the priests pronouncement of absolution, together with the doing of good works, or the performing of acts of penance, stipulated by the priest. These, says a Roman Catholic catechism, lessen “the temporal punishment for sin and help to avoid a long stay in purgatory”. As Loraine Boettner says, “According to this view, God does not cancel out all the punishment due to the sinner when He forgives his sins. No limit is set to the works and services that can be demanded. The poor sinner is always left to the mercy of the priest.”

The sacrament of penance is an invention of Rome, not a requirement of God. May the day soon come when Roman Catholics world-wide will realise what Luther discovered in studying his New Testament: that Christ did not say, “Do penance,” but, “Repent and believe the gospel.”

Source: https://www.fpchurch.org.uk/publica...03/december-1999/article-protestant-view-155/

"Calvin goes on to controvert the Roman position which makes confession to a priest mandatory and ties up with it the priestly power of absolution. He condemns “that auricular confession, as a thing pestilent in its nature, and in many ways injurious to the Church”. In addition to emphasising the lack of biblical authority for the Roman confessional, the falsehood of priestly claims with regard to absolution, and the moral evils which the confessional has promoted, Calvin lays stress on the fact that no one can confess his sins exhaustively so as to have them thus forgiven. David did not sit down to make a catalogue of his sins, which he could not understand and which had gone over his head, for “he knew how deep was the abyss of our sins, how numerous the forms of wickedness”. The sinner is to confess his sins to God as particularly as he can and yet “seriously and sincerely reflect that a greater number of sins still remains, and that their recesses are too deep for him thoroughly to penetrate”. The biblical teaching regarding the place and value of confession must never be identified in any way with “the confessional”, which William Cunningham, in his notes on Stillingfleet on Popery, describes as “a nefarious imposture, contrived for the express purpose of gaining a knowledge of all men’s actions, and thus exercising a ruinous tyranny over their consciences and their conduct”. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9)."

Source: https://archive.fpchurch.org.uk/magazines/fpm/2006/FPM-May-2006.pdf