Calling Catholic Answers deceitful liars tells us a lot about your intentions and your willingness to accept the Truth.
Specifically, we’ll examine the words of Christ to Peter and the apostles: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” As CCC 553 says, Christ here communicated not only authority “to pronounce doctrinal judgments, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church,” but also “the authority to absolve sins” to the apostles.
These words are unsettling, even disturbing, to many. And understandably so. How could God give such authority to men? And yet he does. Jesus Christ, who alone has the power to open and shut heaven to men, clearly communicated this authority to the apostles and their successors. This is what the forgiveness of sins is all about: to reconcile men and women with their heavenly Father. CCC 1445 puts it succinctly:
The words bind and loose mean: whomever you exclude from your communion, will be excluded from communion with God; whomever you receive anew into your communion, God will welcome back into his. Reconciliation with the Church is inseparable from reconciliation with God.
Can you explain why the Holy Spirit did not include the word “Trinity” in the Old or New Testament?
May the Holy Spirit help you understand His Truth.
Your issues have been addressed countless times on FR - and refuted from Scripture, language and history.
I suggest you do a search here to get your answers.
Specifically, we’ll examine the words of Christ to Peter and the apostles: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” As CCC 553 says, Christ here communicated not only authority “to pronounce doctrinal judgments, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church,” but also “the authority to absolve sins” to the apostles.These words are unsettling, even disturbing, to many. And understandably so.
The first point to note is that the Apostles are all now dead, bodily. There are no longer any of the Twelve Apostles still alive, not even in the catholic religion.
The second point is a strange attribution by the catholic religion over the terms bind and loose. The quote of Jesus you offered is not the quote where Jesus specified forgiving the sins of men.
You claimed the quote conveyed 'but also “the authority to absolve sins” to the apostles'. There is such a passage, but you didn't quote it, and of course there are no longer ANY of the Twelve Apsotles yet among us to carry out these functions. Catholicism erroneously claims that Apostolic Authority regarding sins is conveyed from Peter right to the present Pope and catholic priesthood. The authority to manage the ekklesia particulars is separate from the authority to forgive sins of men. And therein is the way catholic deception is foisted upon the unwary.
Indeed, as does your defense of them, with opposition being because as a former weekly and serving RC, i am to go where the Truth leads, and thus my comment on Catholic Answers, who cannot tolerate my or other sound reproof. Bring one of their apologist to debate here and lets see his sophistry exposed by God's grace. That of Staples already has been.
Specifically, we’ll examine the words of Christ to Peter and the apostles: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” As CCC 553 says, Christ here communicated not only authority “to pronounce doctrinal judgments, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church,” but also “the authority to absolve sins” to the apostles.
These words are unsettling, even disturbing, to many. And understandably so. How could God give such authority to men? And yet he does. Jesus Christ, who alone has the power to open and shut heaven to men, clearly communicated this authority to the apostles and their successors. This is what the forgiveness of sins is all about: to reconcile men and women with their heavenly Father. CCC 1445 puts it succinctly: The words bind and loose mean: whomever you exclude from your communion, will be excluded from communion with God; whomever you receive anew into your communion, God will welcome back into his. Reconciliation with the Church is inseparable from reconciliation with God.
The problem - besides avoiding the fact that Holy Spirit nowhere describes pastors as a distinct sacerdotal class of believers distinctively titled NT "priests" - as easily manifest in the light of Scripture is that you have a Biblical statement followed by RC conclusions - and which must include what is not stated here - which are not what Scripture reveals. For the meaning of the binding and loosing statements must be interpreted in the light of the rest of Scripture, which fails to support the doctrine of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility of office, nor the idea that the people regularly came to NT priests to confess their sins - neither of WHICH ARE ANYWHERE SEEN!
That God gave binding and loosing authority to men is not unsettling, except perhaps to anarchists, for this is nothing new. Under the law fathers or husbands could bind their daughters or wives to their vows or loose them (which means a vow of Mary to perpetual virginity - which she would hardly have made before marriage - would require this), and if the respective man any ways made them void after that he hath heard them, then he would bear her iniquity. (Num. 30) But this binding/loosing authority did not require or infer ensured infallibility.
In addition, the judgements of the OT magisterium were binding or loosing, with dissent from which being a capital crime: If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose; (Deuteronomy 17:8) "And all the people shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously." (Deuteronomy 17:13) But this binding/loosing authority did not require or infer ensured infallibility.
And in the NT,this what corresponds to Mt. 18;15-18, "if thy brother shall trespass against thee..if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." (Matthew 18:15) It does not even mention settling doctrinal differences, though in principle that flows from it, while regarding personal conflicts Paul instructs the church to chose wise men from among them as judges in such matters, (1Co. 6:5) which RC laity cannot. But this binding/loosing authority did not require or infer ensured infallibility.
Nor did the verity of the judgement of the ecumenical council Jerusalem rest upon the premise of ensured magisterial infallibility (unlike that of RC doctrine: "...the mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true," Karl Keating, founder of Catholic Answers; Catholicism and Fundamentalism San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988, p. 275), but instead it rested upon Scriptural substantiation in word and in power, and with James providing the Scriptural conclusive judgment, confirmatory of Peter and Paul.
Moreover, it is revealed that healing can be synonymous with forgiveness, so that the one forgiven is healed, referring to removing God's hands of chastisement for sins, perhaps those of ignorance, in response to the intercession of others, and which do not need to be even be confessed to obtain forgiveness, as in the case of the man sick of the palsy. "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 which corresponds to James 5, in which a sick believer is to call for the NT presbuteros - not priests - 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 5:15)
Thus the closest thing to what Catholicism reads into Scripture is not even speaking of believers confessing their sins, much less regularly. And in further contrast to Catholicism, what James describes here is assured healing, while for Caths this text is used to justify her "Last Rite" sacrament, which is typically a precursor of death. >Meanwhile, in even further contrast to Catholicism, the ONLY place that exhorts confession of sins is to other believers in general:
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. Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. (James 5:16-20)
This cannot be restricted to the presbuteros, and reveals that which judicial binding or loosing is restricted to the earthly government, spiritually this power is provided for all who are of Elijah fervent holy faith. And which Mt. 18 likewise applies to:
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)
"Two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them," applies to all believers, but just as "any thing that they shall ask it shall be done for them" is contingent on being in accordance with the word of God and His will, so likewise "whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.." Autocracy is reserved to God, not man, Rome or cults.
Thus while Catholics presume to quote Mt. 18; Jn. 20 and Ja. 5 as if these refer to some new power of ensured magisterial infallibility, and of souls regularly coming to a sacerdotal priests to confess sins, this is simply not what Scripture teaches, and does not support referring to Cath clergy with the title that the Holy Spirit nowhere uses for NT pastors.
Can you explain why the Holy Spirit did not include the word “Trinity” in the Old or New Testament?
Sure, as it is a theological term referring to the nature of God, which men are free to use if what it describes is Scripturally manifest, versus presuming to use a term the Holy Spirit abundantly distinctively uses for clergy under one government but never distinctively uses for NT clergy, and which are never shown or described as having the unique sacerdotal function of the former clergy. Thus your comparison is invalid, as are your other arguments.
May the Holy Spirit help you understand His Truth.