So do you reject John, Chapter 20?
Yes or no.
[21] He said therefore to them again: Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. [22] When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. [23] Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.
Pax,
ET
Do you reject the entire book of Hebrews?
(BTW, serious readers are laughing at both of us, I’m sure. I can take it if you can)
Peace,
SR
And perhaps God does give a degree of ability to forgive sins to believers. ALL believers.
Suppose SR wronged me by, say, lying to me.
If he comes to me and confesses it and I forgive him, then maybe God looks at it as forgiven, as if it never happened and then HE doesn’t have to deal with it, nor does God even consider it to have happened.
OTOH, if I refuse to forgive SR, then he still has the option of Going to God for forgiveness, which he will get regardless of me being wrong in not forgiving him.
God is big on forgiveness, you know.
He really WANTS to save us and not so quickly condemn us as the Catholic church teaches.
As with many other things in the gospels, we must examine the Scriptures of the NT church (Acts onward, which are interpretive of the gospels) in order to understand this.
In so doing what we never see is what Catholicism teaches, that of any instructions for (or example of) believers to come to Catholic priests (which distinctive claimants to that sacerdotal title themselves do not exist but here presbuteros applies) and confess there sins. The only place such is found is the exhortation for believers to confess their sins to one another, and to prayer for one another that they may be healed, in James 5:16-20,
And to which is provided that spiritual power of binding and loosing, if they be of the fervent Elijah-type faith as him, who bound the heavens from rain for 3,5 years and loosed them again.
Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. (James 5:16-18) And by converting one then they instrumentally "shall hide a multitude of sins." (Ja. 5:19,20)
And the power of binding and loosing is provided corporately also in Matthew 18:
Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:18-20)
Likewise we see the power of binding and loosing in healing, such as the daughter of Abraham who Satan had bound eighteen years, being loosed from this bond by the Lord (Luke 13:16) And which deliverance can also be seen in regards to Divine chastisement, as will be shorty discussed., But such power is not restricted to clergy, as see power of deliverance available to believers in general, as seen above, and exercised by a "certain disciple," a "devout man "(and prophet) Ananias in Acts 9:17-18; cf. 22:12-16
Individually Acts 8:5-7 we also see the deacon Phillip (the apostles were at Jerusalem) delivering souls from demons, and Peter in the declarative sense telling Simon "I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity," (Acts 8:23) and for himself to pray forgiveness. (Acts 8:18-25)
In James 5:14,15 we have the text which Catholics misappropriate in order to support their premise that believers need to normally to regularly come to Catholic priests (and no other) in order to obtain forgiveness:
Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. (James 5:14-15)
However, besides the elders (presbuteros) nowhere being called "priests" (“hiereus” or “archiereus" which collectively is over 280)” distinctive from all other believers (which is the only use of priests in the NT church: 1Pt. 2:5,9; Re 1:6; 5:10; 20:6).) nor distinctive from episkopos - thus this text does not speak of Catholic priests - nowhere is it said that the infirm man was to confess his sins, and instead God has mercy on such man due to the intercession of holy men, which leadership supremely are to be.
And which corresponds to the Lord healing the palsied man in Mark 2:1-12, in which his friends brought the man to Christ who forgave the man and thus healed him (the one being equated to the other as cause and effect: "Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?" (Mark 2:9)
And in both cases there is no confession, for the cause of the chastisement is likely sins one is ignorant of, and the forgiveness is the removal of God's hand of judgment upon him.
But Ja. 2 does not say that the elders will forgive his sins, but that they will be forgiven, as it is God who does the forgiving in response to Godly intercession, and which James 5 proceeds to broadly apply to believers confessing sins to each other in general ("one to another," cf. "two or three are gathered together in my Name"). There is no restriction to this ministry of deliverance and healing to only being the pastorate though it principally applies to them as holy men in deed as well as in heart (in which i come short).
Moreover, while Caths invoke James 5 in support of their sacrament of Last Rites," that is typically a precursor of death, while in Scripture it is one of healing.
Then we have the formal judicial power of binding and loosing in Mt. 18:
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18:15-18)
This is not novel in Scripture, but is correspondent to the OT, which which cases which could not be resolved at the lower level would be brought to the "Supreme Court" so to speak, dissent from which was a capital crime. (Dt. 18:7-13)
However, this authority neither required nor inferred that such possessed ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility as per Rome, which is a novel and unScriptural presumption.
And unlike in our secular judicial system today, t the sentence of capital punishment was executed by the people in general, (The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put the evil away from among you: (Deu 17:7) as was the case in Lv. 20:2; Dt. 13:9,10, which meant they concurred with the judgment (although in lesser sentences the punishment was executed before the judge, who must witness what he commanded: Dt. 25:1-3)
Matthew 18:15-18 corresponds to the judgment of the incestuous man 1Co. 5, in which the apostle Paul, together with the congregation when gathered together, bound a man in sin over to the devil for chastisement,
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. (1 Corinthians 5:4-5)
This apparently having its desired effect of repentance, the apostle exhorts the people to forgive him, for the offense was against the church, and if they forgave anything then so also would Paul' in the person of Christ (in His name).
To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; (2 Corinthians 2:10)
For while Scripture clearly states to true believers that "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9) yet being forgiven of sins against others requires repentance and which can mean restitution or forgiveness by those we have wronged. Yet since there is no more offering for sins, and thus no more separate class of sacerdotal priests, so those NT believers who are forgiven are nowhere shown coming to NT priests for absolution, though forgiveness of sins that truly wrongly hurt others require repentance and trying to making things right, if possible.
Both Peter and Paul also personally judged seriously deviant congregants, by spiritual means versus the sword of men, convicting Ananias and Sapphira (to whom much was given) of a capital offense and thus declaring their immediate death in Divine judgment, (Acts 5:1-10) and Paul in delivering Hymenaeus and Alexander unto Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. (1 Timothy 1:20) And thus pastor Paul (whose burden and care for the churches is more pope-like evident than holy Peter's) warned of coming with a rod of judgment:
But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. (1 Corinthians 4:19-20)
Which apostolic purity, passion and power the church today is a mere shadow of (esp. Rome), myself including.
Therefore we see that the power of binding and loosing and forgiving sins was not that believers having to regularly come to pastors (much less Catholic priests) in order to confess sins, but that they ought to confess faults to each other in general and pray for deliverance, with the power and binding and loosing being able to be exercised by holy souls (on earth), and with God heeding the intercession of such, principally by holy leadership of faith, for chastised souls, even if they may be ignorant of why. And that this power also pertains to formal magisterial judgments, together with the congregation corporately binding and or loosing, in discipline and forgiveness, while in certain cases individual binding and or loosing can take place, with principally this being by leadership, esp. in judgment of the church, besides other souls of Elijah-type fervent holy faith procuring deliverance.
Another case of binding and loosing is in the case of voluntary vows with a union, such as a women who made such while under her father's house or married, in which case her headship can bind or loose her from it, the former if he holds his peace at her from day to day concerning it (which presupposes she shares it with him, and thus Mary would have needed Joseph's consent to the vow of celibacy Catholics impose on her, despite the Holy Spirit not manifestly doing so). However, since the church is married to Christ, then He has already disallowed unScriptural vows as being bound in Heaven.
And in all cases the power of binding and loosing is not autocratic, but as with "whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son," (John 14:13) so also "That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 18:19) means that such must indeed be "in the name of Jesus Christ," being according to His word (and will) in each case, which the very Catholic distinctives themselves are manifestly not.