I was not suggesting that Petrine authority was based on the power of binding or loosing, only correcting a mistake by Elsie who was trying to make a point from a misreading of the text. This highlights the deficiency of private interpretation.
Given, as you have shown, that the power of binding and loosing was not unique to Peter, it is something that is proper to the Church. Where is the power today?
You anticipated me by your reference to Isaiah 22. Here the grant of keys represents the bestowing of the office of Master of the Palace. Likewise when our Lord promises to give the keys of the kingdom of heaven (and here it is only to Peter) he is likewise bestowing an office like that of the Master of the Palace. The Roman term for this office is vicar. Hence Peter, by our Lord's instillation, is his vicar, i.e. the Vicar of Christ.
So here, when Peter has a perfect chance to grant forgiveness on his own initiative, instead he does two things, neither of them a grant of forgiveness.
You forget that the power is to forgive sins (which is explicitly mentioned in John 20:23) or to retain them. Absolution must be accompanied by repentance, contrition and a firm resolution to sin no more. Addressing Simon, Peter states, "Your heart is not upright before God. Repent of this wickedness of yours." Simon is not yet ready of forgiveness. Hence, Peter not offering absolution proves nothing.
What has the church LOOSED lately?
2Peter 1:16-21 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
The above passage has been often wrenched out of its natural meaning to say what it does not say. Humans are epistemologically trapped. They must begin all perception with "private interpretation" of any data coming to them from outside themselves. It's how God made us. We have no choice. It is no more logical that God should prohibit "private interpretation" of this kind, than that He should prohibit us to use our own eyes to see the world He has created around us. That world is objectively real, even if our eyes are faulty. But we must still view it through our own eyes. So this is an impossible "interpretation."
But there is an easy and more natural meaning to Peter's words, one that violates neither the sense nor the grammar of the text. For review, here's the Greek:
2Peter 1:20 τουτο πρωτον γινωσκοντες οτι πασα προφητεια γραφης ιδιας επιλυσεως ου γινεται
Note the bolded verb above, "ginetai." This is not the verb of simply being, as "estin" is. This verb speaks of "coming into being." Peter is not prohibiting individuals from thinking for themselves in trying to understand what God has said. He is saying the prophet is not explaining or disclosing (επιλυσεως) any private ideas of his own, but is disclosing what originated with the Holy Spirit of God. Hence it is not private to the prophet. These words do not originate in the prophet's will, but God's, and that is why they are 100% reliable, "more sure" than even being eyewitnesses to the transfiguration of Christ. Unlike the typical "no private interpretation" diatribe, this approach actually integrates the sense of the passage, and makes all the parts work together toward the same goal.
Where is the power [of binding and loosing] today?/i>
A fair question, but I submit to you that the better question, at least initially, is where in the New Testament record of the early church was that power used? Consider the anomaly of John 20:21-23:
John 20:21-23 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.
This occurred after the resurrection but before Pentecost. We know the Holy Spirit came in power on the apostles and the church at large on Pentecost. So what is this intermediate receiving of the Holy Spirit in connection with the Apostles being sent? We know that the thing they are being sent to do is to proclaim the Gospel, and it is the Gospel which establishes the terms of God’s forgiveness. But again, that was not preached in power until later at Pentecost. Yet to declare the Gospel at all with any useful effect cannot be done without some measure of aid from God’s Spirit. So the receiving of the Spirit seems to continue the impetus of the Gospel commission they are receiving here.
But where is the binding and loosing, the forgiving or retaining? Is there no example of it, or is it sitting right under our noses in the NT record if only we looked in the right place and right way to see it? As I pointed out before with Simon the sorcerer, not only does Peter not grant absolution to Simon who is apparently not yet ready for such forgiveness, but Peter specifically directs him to go to God for forgiveness, apparently assuming he might have some future inclination to seek forgiveness. Peter does NOT say, when you’re ready for absolution, my son, get back to me or one of the other apostles and we’ll work out this forgiveness thing. It doesn’t happen. He tells Simon to go to God for forgiveness.
Peter DOES however cast Simon out on the street as it were, excluding him from the fellowship for revealing his true state of lostness. In this he is exerting church discipline. This is not presuming a power to forgive as God does, but it does assume authority to set temporal boundaries for the well-being of the church. Remember also what happened to Annanias and Saphira, not that they were ultimately lost to eternal damnation. The text says no such thing.
But they were judged for their lie to the Holy Spirit, a frightful but essentially temporal judgment, and done for what reason? The well-being of the Body of Christ, the believers. And why should they be kept so strictly in line? Because the well-being of the church was essential to the propagation of the Gospel message. And what does the Gospel message do? It sets the terms of forgiveness. Accept those terms, and your sins are forgiven. Reject those terms, and your sins are retained.
So what we see developing here is really a multifaceted meaning to the power to bind or loose, to forgive or retain. We see it applied to defining the church in terms of temporal membership, as with Simon the sorcerer, or in terms of church discipline of wayward believers, such Paul’s involvement in restoring the man at Corinth who had been involved in extraordinary sexual sin:
2Cor 2:10 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;
…with “person of Christ” better rendered as “presence of Christ.”
We also see it in terms of setting doctrinal boundaries according to apostolic teaching, as in the statement of the Jerusalem council (of which James appears to have been the principal architect, not Peter). It is even possible to see it in terms of the unfolding of the various apostolic ministries, such as Peter’s specialized ministry to the Jews and Paul’s specialized ministry to the Gentiles, both of which “loosed” their respective groups to the forgiveness found in the Gospel.
What we do not have even one example of is the exercise of sacerdotal absolution. No individual is ever granted forgiveness by any Apostle. In contrast, in one of the few parables of Jesus dealing directly with the dynamics of personal forgiveness, we have this:
Luk 18:10-14 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Now how can that Publican go down to his house justified, if all he did was ask God directly to be merciful to him? No priest needed. If Jesus had wanted to convey the importance of priestly intervention in the process of forgiveness, this was the moment to do it, and it didn’t happen.
But now we see the curtain in the temple is torn in two, and God the Covenanter has by His sacrifice taken away that which separated Him from His people, and opened up the Holy of Holys, so that we may now say with the writer of Hebrews:
Heb 4:14-16 Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Peace,
SR