Is the Catholic concept of absolution biblical?

The principal passages of scripture adduced by Romanists on this subject, are — "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed." .... "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." (James 5:16; John 20:23) The first of these passages evidently refers to the mutual confession of faults on the part of Christians; and the second to church discipline, but neither certainly to the secret confession of sins into the ear of a priest, with the view of receiving absolution. The duty, or privilege, of confession must be admitted by all, Protestants as well as Catholics; but the question is, to whom ought we to confess? To a priest, or to God? Numerous passages might be quoted, from both the Old and New Testaments, to prove that confession of sin is to be made to God. Take one from each. "And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me." .... "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (Joshua 7:19; 1 John 1:8-9)

But the form of confession prescribed by the Romish church to be used by every penitent at the confessional will best show us its real character. He must kneel down at the side of his confessor, and make the sign of the cross, saying, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, "I confess to Almighty God, to the blessed Mary, ever virgin, to blessed Michael the archangel, to blessed John Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter, and Paul, to all the saints, and to you, my ghostly father, that I have sinned exceedingly, in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." At this point of the ceremony the penitent specifies his several sins in their details, without evasion or equivocation; the most indelicate or the most diabolical are poured into the ear of the priest, whatever he may be. We know what many of them have been. When the priest has satisfied himself with details, the penitent goes on — "Therefore I beseech the blessed Mary, ever virgin, the blessed Michael the archangel, blessed John Baptist, the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, and you, my ghostly father, to pray to our Lord God for me. I am heartily sorry, purpose amendment for the future, and most humbly ask pardon of God, and penance and absolution of you, my ghostly father."*

And in the New Testament, speaking of Christians, we read, “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.) Is “He” God, or the priests? John wrote these words that we sin not. “And if any man sin.” Here we come to the very point. If a Christian should fall into sin, those who defend the confessional would say, he must confess to the priest, and in this way receive absolution. The scripture says, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins,” &c. Could you tell us of any two things more opposed than scripture and the confessional? In this paper we do not propose to speak a word about its abuse, but to show that in principle it is utterly opposed to the truth of God, and has not surely a single text to rest upon. We might refer to every word that came from the lips of Christ in proof. Take the parable of the prodigal. Would it not entirely falsify the true character of God, who had given His Son to die for the lost one, to say that before the Father could receive the lost son, he must first confess to the priest, and pay for his sins? “When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” Do you think such a Father needs a priest to soften His heart towards the returning sinner?

Thus if we take scripture, we do not find in this great commission of Christ, a word about confessing to a priest: but remission of sins through preaching the glad tidings.

The sacrifice rightly offered up, the sinner could turn away from the altar, and retrace his steps to his tent. But how did he return? With his heart full of hopes of forgiveness, or buoyed up with the consciousness that he had done all he could to make amends? Would that satisfy the conscience? His conscience told him he had offended against God; nothing short, then, of God's assurance of forgiveness could satisfy him, and meet the requirements of the case. But that the offerer had, yet mark how he got it; not from man, not even from the priest, but from God Himself. He could leave the altar with the words, "It shall be forgiven him," sounding in his ears, and awakening a response of thanksgiving from his heart; for they were the words of Jehovah Himself on behalf of His poor sinful creature. The priest could not make more sure what Jehovah had promised; all that he could do was to reiterate the words as God's revelation, "It shall be forgiven him." Thus the sinner was brought to the word of God, and thereon was to rest as on a rock which nothing could shake. He had not to wait till the morrow to know it, for it depended on the offering up of the sacrifice; yet these gracious words were not forthcoming till the blood had been rightly dealt with, and the fat of the inwards, with the two kidneys, had been burnt on the altar for a sweet savour. Had it been otherwise, it might have been assumed that forgiveness was based on something connected with the offerer. But the words were recorded, only after all had been spoken of, that was to be done, that the sinner might learn his forgiveness was based on atonement by blood, and on that only. As soon as all had been done according to the law, those words could be taken by the sinner as Jehovah's declaration to the burdened heart. He who formed the heart knew what it wanted, and would meet that want as soon as He righteously could.

This is always God's way; and never do we read of man being authorised to absolve another from his sins as before God. When it is a question of acceptance before God, or restoration of soul, He speaks by His word to the sinner, and bestows forgiveness as from Himself. A fellow creature might tell him of it, and minister to his need, but could not bestow forgiveness or absolve him from his sins. As priests we can intercede for one another (1 John 5:16; James 5:16), that the hand of God in government may be removed from the offender. The assembly in any one place, or those (if only two or three, Matt. 18:19-20), acting as becomes the assembly, can forgive the sin which has called for discipline, and receive the sinner back to the table (2 Cor. 2:10); but the question between the soul and God He reserves to Himself — "Who can forgive sins but God only?" stands good still. Thus the Lord appeared to Peter after He rose from the dead, but alone; afterwards He publicly commissioned him to feed His sheep. This distinction between discipline on earth and the soul's restoration to communion with God not being observed, much confusion has in consequence arisen, and men have arrogated to themselves, and assumed the power of transmitting to others, an authority which no priest under the Mosaic economy ever exercised, nor the apostles in the New Testament ever claimed. There is the outward dealing with an individual in the exercise or remission of discipline, and there is the inward dealing of God with the heart. This last must always come first, if the assembly are to act in accordance with God's mind; and what they do is to be ratified in heaven. God deals with the heart, and imparts the sense of forgiveness consequent on confession of the sin; the assembly deals in discipline, consequent on the failure of the individual to judge himself (Matt. 18); and the remission of discipline, if rightly done, only takes place when preceded by restoration of the soul to communion with God. In the sin-offering we have the latter brought out — God's assurance to the sinner of forgiveness. In the cleansing of the leper we have an instance of the former; the reception, again, to the enjoyment of all rights on earth of the redeemed people, when the individual has been cleansed from that which defiled. This has the character of discipline remitted — the former of sins forgiven.

Many consequences and effects may follow, but this, I think, is what forgiveness is; the consequence is, it is according to the measure and sphere in which that authority moves, and applies to the judgment from which the offender is released. God may chasten governmentally for our good, or even in testimony as in David's case, and Numbers 14:20, yet, as between Him and the guilty, forgive, and not impute the sin - no longer hold him guilty. I may forgive a wrong doer, but it is measured by the value and import of my forgiveness. The church may bind sin on a guilty Christian, in the exercise of discipline, or forgive, in restoring or releasing from the discipline, and God will sanction it, but it does not go beyond its own sphere, and competency, and it acts in that which God sanctions. God - if it be rightly done - will bind what the Church has done, but the Church does not forgive sins in the sense of eternal forgiveness for salvation - it is not its sphere. It is its sphere to deal with them here, and God will set His seal upon its actings; so could the Apostle forgive, as we read in 2 Corinthians; so, through the prayer of faith where sickness was a chastisement from God, so that His dealing with sin stood in the way of recovery, compare Job 36. God puts His sanction on the forgiveness which the Church grants in its sphere, but the Church cannot pretend to grant the forgiveness which belongs to God, in His sphere of authority. God sanctions my forgiveness of my enemy, that is another thing from my having a title to forgive, divinely, the guilt of sin against God. The administration of the Church is different, and God has committed an administration to it, but God's sanction of its action in that, is a different thing from its assumption of His sphere of eternal mercy as to guilt. That, what Peter bound on earth might be bound in heaven, is a different thing from his having all that heaven itself could - had - put into his hand; the king may sanction all a viceroy may do in his own proper sphere, that is not saying the viceroy can do all that the king can do, as such.

You quote St. Chrysostom. But he wrote urgently against confession to a priest, as we have already seen. I do not deny that Christ gave power to His church to forgive sins in the sense I have explained it. I believe it to be a glorious truth, that whosoever is rightly in the church is enjoying the absolute, full, unlimited, forgiveness of all his sins. But we are talking of auricular confession to a priest, and of satisfaction and penance substituted for real full contrition, in order to have it.

With regard to the statement "whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them", there is no suggestion of persons confessing their sins to and receiving absolution from the apostles?

This is administrative, and not the forgiveness that only God Himself can give us. I do not think it refers to the eternal forgiveness of our sins before God. We must remember that there was a special administration in the hands of the apostles, none could be converted without listening to and believing their testimony.

The next scene (verses 19-23) is the disciples gathered together. It is not a message individually, but they are assembled on the same first day at evening, and Jesus stands, spite of closed doors, in the midst of them, and showed them His hands and His side. "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." It is a picture of the assembly that was about to be formed at Pentecost — and this is the assembly's function. They have authority from God to retain or to remit sins — not at all as a question of eternal forgiveness, but administratively or in discipline. For instance, when a soul is received from the world, what is this but remitting sins? The Church again, by restoring a soul put outside, puts its seal, as it were, to the truth of what God has done, acts upon it, and thus remits the sin. On the other hand, supposing a person is refused fellowship, or is put away after being received, there is the retaining of sins. There is no real difficulty, if men did not pervert Scripture into a means of self-exaltation, or cast away truth, on the other side, revolting from the frightful misuse known in popery. But Protestants have failed to keep up consciously the possession of so great a privilege, founded on the presence of the Holy Ghost.

The Lord enable His own to be thorough in removing difficulties and hearty in welcoming souls where there is no question of ungodliness in faith or ways. I do not say where the doctrine of justification by faith is held. Many a wickedness and a worldliness may be allowed where that great doctrine is confessed. But these words of our Lord Jesus Christ are a standing rule for the disciples, and we are responsible for acting on them. If we are met together in His name let there be a plain, unswerving expression of our place and privilege. Our action, our collective action, should be as firm for the truth as our individual walk — that we have and supremely value Christ — that to those confessing Christ we are to remit sins, and, whenever there is anything inconsistent with Christ, we are no less to retain sins. We disown the pretension of doing either as between God and man: the Church never claimed such a right; the apostles never aspired to such a prerogative. But our Lord Jesus clearly here called the disciples to discharge the retention as well as the remission of sins, and this, as we have seen, was verified in the Christian assembly which exercised both, not as a question for eternity between God and the soul, but administratively and now on earth as a duty to Christ in receiving the true or in rejecting the false, of putting away in prescribed cases or in restoring when repentance is plain.

Now in a sense no doubt this is true. Eternal forgiveness belongs only to God. And in one very real sense all sins are against Him, and against Him only, as David said by the Spirit (Ps. 51:4); and who but He can forgive them? And here I would wish to say a word about the Christian doctrine of the forgiveness of sins. This is set forth in the epistle to the Hebrews, in the entire putting away from God's memory of all the believer's sins. Whether past, present, or future is not the question; all are gone. "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." (Heb. 10:17.) The judicial ground of this is the sacrifice of the cross, where all were expiated. The Jew knew forgiveness in a sense. The sin he had committed was forgiven when the appointed victim was brought and offered. Not that the blood of bulls and goats could ever take away sin; but it was the picture of one whose conscience was cleansed up to a certain date, not purged for ever. Now Christians are apt to get a thought of forgiveness like this, and to run in their minds to the blood for fresh cleansing from fresh sins. The truth is, that the cross has already answered for that fresh sin. The moral character of the sin is aggravated by the fact that it is done against the Holy One, who has died that it might not be imputed. Now although sins are never imputed to the believer, yet sin interrupts communion with the Father, and the one who sins has to be restored in his soul. How is this done? Not by faith in the blood, but by his confession, as far as he is concerned. The confession is the fruit of Christ's advocacy on high, and the action of the Word on the conscience of the sinner. But the moral ground on which such a person is restored to communion is his repentance and confession, on which his sin is forgiven. "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.)

But besides divine forgiveness, Scripture distinctly recognizes, a forgiveness which is vested in the hands of men while Christ is away in heaven. A Scripture which plainly shows this is John 20:23: "Whose soever, sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." All mast. admit, therefore, that there was once a company on earth who, having received the Holy Spirit, were empowered by the Lord Jesus to forgive or retain sins. But it is said, "That was apostolic." Let us admit it for the moment, the fact remains that it was men who acted thus. No doubt they acted for God, but still men remitted sins. But if we look at the chapter we see that there is no ground for saying it was apostolic. It says the disciples were assembled, not apostles. And that disciples in these last chapters of John does not mean exclusively apostles John 21:2 shows; for there Nathaniel is said to be one of the disciples, and we know he was not an apostle.

The only Scriptures I know for saying that the forgiveness of sins was apostolic are Matt. 16 and 2 Cor. 2. In the first we find the Lord giving to Peter authority to bind and loose on earth, and stating that it would be ratified in heaven. But this authority is not given to the apostles as such, but to Peter in particular. Then in 2 Cor. 2 we find Paul saying that he has forgiven on behalf of the assembly at Corinth. It appears that he had anticipated the action of the Church towards the wicked person whom, in the first epistle, he had directed the assembly to put out. But this apostolic forgiveness was not independent of the assembly (" for your sakes forgive I it "), nor did it render Church forgiveness needless; for he says of this person, "Ye ought to forgive him." (v. 7.) We do not, I think, know of any other apostles binding or loosing sins.