Posted on 12/13/2015 3:12:46 PM PST by NYer
As long as you define "early" as meaning the NT. And not only did regular confession of any sins distinctively to a priest develop, but so did the distinctive class of "priests."
Catholic writer Greg Dues in "Catholic Customs & Traditions, a popular guide," states, "Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions." "When the Eucharist came to be regarded as a sacrifice [after Rome's theology], the role of the bishop took on a priestly dimension. By the third century bishops were considered priests. Presbyters or elders sometimes substituted for the bishop at the Eucharist. By the end of the third century people all over were using the title 'priest' (hierus in Greek and sacerdos in Latin) for whoever presided at the Eucharist." (http://books.google.com/books?id=ajZ_aR-VXn8C&source=gbs_navlinks_s) And R. J. Grigaitis (O.F.S.) (while yet trying to defend the use of priest), reveals, "The Greek word for this office is ‘?e?e?? (hiereus), which can be literally translated into Latin as sacerdos. First century Christians [such as the inspired writers] felt that their special type of hiereus (sacerdos) was so removed from the original that they gave it a new name, presbuteros (presbyter). Unfortunately, sacerdos didn't evolve into an English word, but the word priest [from old English "preost"] took on its definition." (http://grigaitis.net/weekly/2007/2007-04-27.html)
In response to a query on this issue, the web site of International Standard Version (not my preferred translation) states, No Greek lexicons or other scholarly sources suggest that "presbyteros" means "priest" instead of "elder". The Greek word is equivalent to the Hebrew ZAQEN, which means "elder", and not priest. You can see the ZAQENIM described in Exodus 18:21-22 using some of the same equivalent Hebrew terms as Paul uses in the GK of 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Note that the ZAQENIM are NOT priests (i.e., from the tribe of Levi) but are rather men of distinctive maturity that qualifies them for ministerial roles among the people. Therefore the NT equivalent of the ZAQENIM cannot be the Levitical priests. The Greek "presbyteros" (literally, the comparative of the Greek word for "old" and therefore translated as "one who is older") thus describes the character qualities of the "episkopos". The term "elder" would therefore appear to describe the character, while the term "overseer" (for that is the literal rendering of "episkopos") connotes the job description. To sum up, far from obfuscating the meaning of "presbyteros", our rendering of "elder" most closely associates the original Greek term with its OT counterpart, the ZAQENIM. ...we would also question the fundamental assumption that you bring up in your last observation, i.e., that "the church has always had priests among its ordained clergy". We can find no documentation of that claim. ( http://isvbible.com/catacombs/elders.htm)
Nyer is posting info saying 70 ad. Maybe y’all should compare notes m
Compare what the didache says with the Word. You’ll see the difference as I’ve already posted.
“The passive voice indicates that someone has already done the forgiving or retaining. “
I believe I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the following:
Indeed, the commentator is correct here, no one denies the grammar he points out. The question really still is “who does the forgiving and retaining”?
With all due respect to the commentator you cite, he engages in “begging the question” when he later asserts: “That person must be God since He alone has the authority to do that (Matt. 9:2-3, Mark 2:7; Luke 5:21)”
In other words, he engages in eisegesis here. The careful reader will note that in the passages in question, every time, it is the scribes and Pharasees who claim “only” God has the power to forgive sins. Everyone, including Catholics, knows and claims that it is *ultimately* and *through* God that all sins are forgiven. So those passages are not violated in spirit.
However to insist that the spirit of Scripture states that *only* God can forgive sin is,quite frankly, to take the side of the same scribes and Pharasees who doubted Jesus. It’s eisegetical.
So you know where I'm coming from: It is my belief that the binding loosing refers to the Gospel and the means for salvation. I believe scripture supports this because we see two specific scenes where Peter is opening the Gospel to the Jews (Pentecost) and gentiles (the House of Cornelius). When Peter opened the means of Salvation, that Grace was opened in Heaven and the rejecting of that Grace was then bound from those who reject that Grace.
The catholic church has taken liberties to stretch this to mean their priesthood can forgive sins. ONLY GOD CAN FORGIVE SINS, and to presume a priest can do so and God must conform to this catholiciism presumption is, well, blasphemous.
I’m sure it will be explained away as doctrine vs. practice. But what cannot be denied is that the way confession is practiced today was NOT how they did it from the start.
Let’s not forget that all these writings were copied and recopied hundreds if not thousands of times and they were definitely not writing in English. How their words were interpreted and translated changed as well.
I think I’m going to have to agree with you. With these writings being copied and recopied and words changed, how can we ever hope to know what was originally written in the Old and New Testaments. what we have today may be completely opposite of what was originally written. Yes, you can’t trust those old hand copiers.
And consider that sacred oral tradition is only what Rome says it is, and unlike Scripture, which is verifiable due to the nature of the medium, oral tradition exists in an amorphous form, and the tradition-based EOs significantly disagree on some things as to what is valid O.T.
And unlike Scripture, consider some of the plainly unScriptural things which esteemed fathers held to.
Parody understood, but the issue so much reliance with the writings of so-called church "fathers" is not so much that of a question of reliability, though I believe we have far far more mss evidence for Scripture, while only a relatively small portion available for examination out of what all ECFs are estimated to have written;
But the real issue is that these uninspired writings simply do not warrant the weight Caths place upon them to provide what Scripture does not, and often is contrary to, while CFs can disagree with each other, and Rome, as well as Scripture.
Faced with the absolute absence of even one prayer to anyone else in Heaven but the Lord, despite the Holy Spirit recording approx. 200 prayers in Scripture, and the lack of any created being being able to hear and respond to prayers address to them, Caths turn to the writings of certain "fathers" who adopted this late unScriptural tradition.
But even more unwarranted is the veracity attributed to the Roman magisterium which decrees which of the many traditions of CFs warrant being doctrine, and can declare belief in such as binding even almost two millennium after it allegedly was believed.
And despite the lack of early evidence for it, but which is justified under the premise that the church can "remember" was history does not evidence, and her own scholarship was heavily opposed to.
Like cults, having autocratic declared herself (conditionaly) infallible, then history, Scripture and tradition only consist and mean what she says they do.
Nice try. There are thousands of manuscripts in fragments, scrolls and codices of the Bible texts in the original languages as well as the writings of leaders where nearly all of the books of the Bible are quoted so that it could be recompiled from them even if we had no manuscripts.
We continue to have the more sure word of prophecy because the Holy Spirit is the author.
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