Transcription
Only God can forgive sins. Catholics agree with that completely. In fact, the Catholic Church has always taught that only God forgives sins.
So, then why do Catholics confess their sins to a priest? Because the real question was never, "Can God forgive sins?" The real question is, "Did Christ choose to forgive sins through his church?" And that changes everything.
Because after his resurrection, Jesus does something shocking. He breathes on the apostles and says, "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained." He didn't say, "Tell people they're forgiven." He didn't say, "Remind them God loves them." But, forgive or retain.
And for 1,500 years, Christians across East and West understood this as a real authority given by Christ to his ministers. So, why did so many Christians later reject confession? Was the early church entirely wrong about this? Or, did the Reformation fundamentally redefine what forgiveness, authority, and the church itself actually are?
Today, we're going deep. We're going deep into the biblical foundations of confession, the history of the sacrament, why the early church practiced the sacrament, what Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans actually believe about confession, and the real theological reason confession became one of the most controversial teachings in Christianity.
Because this debate is ultimately about one question. Did Christ establish a church that merely preaches forgiveness? Or, did he establish a church through which he can actually administer forgiveness?
Welcome to Lexio. I'm your host, Shawn Hiller, and today we are deeply discussing the sacrament of confession. As a Catholic, I believe it's a sacrament, but many Protestants do not. And we're to discuss why that is, what the sacrament is, and what should we define it as. Let's get into it.
If you want to read more or learn more about the difficulties of going from Protestantism to Catholicism, I highly recommend a book that my wife has written, *To Whom Shall I Go?* She documents her journey from Protestantism to Catholicism, all the struggles with marriage that we had in between. We had quite a few. And she documents how our Lord pulled her toward what she considers the church. It's worth checking out. You can get it on Amazon. I'll put the link in the description below. If you've read it already, leave us a review. We appreciate it, guys. Thanks.
So, let's get into what the Bible actually says about the sacrament of confession. The Catholic Church, first off, teaches that confession is not merely a religious custom or a psychological exercise. The Catechism says in 1421, "The Lord Jesus Christ, physician of our souls and bodies, who forgave the sins of the paralytic and restored him to bodily health, has willed that his church continue and continue in the power of the Holy Spirit his work of healing and salvation even among her own members." It is Christ's continuing ministry of forgiveness through his church.
The biblical basis begins with the authority Christ gave the apostles. He speaks to them in multiple places in scripture, and here are a few. In Matthew chapter 16, verse 19, "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Matthew chapter 18, verse 18, "Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." He said that two chapters later, almost, that he was annoyed to have to say it again. "Truly, I'm telling you this."
Saint Paul talks about it a ton. He talks about it in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 18 through 19. He says, "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation." Often times, the sacrament of confession is called the sacrament of reconciliation. "That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting us to his message of reconciliation."
And the key text to all of this really is in John chapter 20, verses 22 and 23, which says, "And when he had said this, he breathed on them." He being Jesus. And said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld." Jesus breathes on the apostles and he says, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven. Whose sins you retain shall be retained."
This is critical because this is more than preaching forgiveness generally. The church has always understood this as a real authority to forgive or retain sins. And think about the logic here. How can the apostles decide whether to forgive or retain sins unless the sins are actually confessed to them?
The Catechism of the Council of Trent says this of priests. It says, "Invested then as they are by our Lord with power to remit and retain sins, priests are evidently appointed judges of the matter on which they are to pronounce. And since, according to the wise remark of the Council of Trent, we cannot form an accurate judgment on any matter or award to crime a just proportion of punishment without having previously examined and made ourselves well acquainted with the case. It follows that the penitent is obliged to make known to the priest through the medium of confession each and every sin." He's saying that as a judge, we must know the case. We must know everything surrounding the case, and that is what confession is for. This fits perfectly, absolutely perfectly, with scripture, with the Bible.
Thinking about the book of Hebrews. Hebrews presents Christ as the great high priest whose sacrifice is once and for all. Hebrews chapter 4, Hebrews chapter 10. Catholics don't believe that priests replace Christ. Instead, Christ applies the fruits of his sacrifice through sacramental instruments. The Catechism explains that priests and sacraments are instruments through which Christ forgives sins and gives justification. That is from the Catechism, paragraph 987, which reads exactly, "In the forgiveness of sins, both priests and sacraments are instruments which our Lord Jesus Christ, the only author and liberal giver of salvation, wills to use in order to efface our sins and give us the grace of justification." God is still the one forgiving, but he chooses to forgive sacramentally through his church.
Now, this is where most Protestants object. They'll say, "Why confess to a priest if I can go directly to God?" But Catholics absolutely agree that we should repent directly to God. The question is not whether God can forgive directly. The question is, what means did Christ establish for reconciliation after grave sin? And historically, the earliest Christians did not behave like confession was optional advice. They treated reconciliation with terrifying seriousness.
The earliest church practiced an extremely severe penitential system. In the Catechism, paragraph 1447, it says, "During the first centuries, the reconciliation of Christians who had committed particularly grave sins after their baptism, was tied to a very rigorous discipline, according to which penitents had to do public penance for their sins, often for years, before receiving reconciliation. To this order of penitents, which concerned only certain grave sins, one was only rarely admitted, and certain regions only once in a lifetime were you readmitted to the church." Some were admitted to reconciliation once.
But this is important. Public penance is not the same thing as denying private confession. From the beginning, there existed both public confession and private sacramental confession to a priest alone, called auricular confession. Auricular confession simply means confessing orally into the ear of the priest. And the church, from the Council of Trent, states that secret sacramental confession from the beginning has been and even now is the usage of the church.
So, we need to differentiate some terms here. You have public penance or public confession, which was the primary practice in the early church. Should someone commit a very grave sin, they would publicly go to the priest or go to the bishop and confess their sins with everyone else listening, people around, and they would do a very public penance as a result of that. And sometimes that's where it comes into play, they can only be reconciled with the church once in their life or very few times. That is very different than a general confession or a communal confession to where all the people are making a generalized confessional statement and maybe they're being absolved by the priest. What I just described, that communal confession, does not absolve you of mortal sins in the ordinary sense. There can be some extraordinary circumstances to where it can act in that, only in very particular circumstances. But in the general sense, in the ordinary sense, you're going to church on Sunday, that's something different.
And then we go on and we have private confession, which is individual, individual confession to a priest. That's what's primarily practiced now. And within private confession, you have this auricular confession, and that is oral confession to a priest.
So, what changed historically? It was not whether confession was sacramental. What changed was the discipline surrounding it. And if you deny doctrinal development, then you also deny scripture. Just read Acts chapter 15. It's a clear example of the church, through a council, further defining how Christians should live. For more information on this, you can click on this video here where we talk about Acts chapter 15 and how this clearly represents what the Catholic Church teaches.
So, how does the doctrine of confession actually develop? Well, in the first centuries, public penance was dominant for grave sins, mortal sins. But over time, especially through Irish monastic influence in the 7th century, the church developed the regular private form of confession that we have today. In the Catechism, paragraph 1447, it says, "The Irish missionaries introduced repeated private confession between penitent and priest, allowing more frequent reconciliation and integration of grave and venial sins into one sacramental practice." This occurred so that people could use the sacrament of confession more. And if they committed a grave sin, they would have more open access to it, as opposed to this one-time retrieving into the church for your entire life.
But by the medieval period, private confession became the standard in the West. St. Thomas Aquinas explains why confession belongs to priests specifically. He argued that since sacramental grace flows from Christ through his ministers, and because priests administer Christ's body in the Eucharist, they are also the fitting ministers of penance. Aquinas says plainly in the *Summa Theologiae*, "Confession should be made to none but a priest." He also explains why Christ instituted ministers at all in his *Summa contra Gentiles*. Because after Christ withdrew his bodily presence, he gave the apostles power to forgive sins and intended this ministry to continue until the end of the world.
And then came the Reformation. And this is where everything changed. Here is the part that the modern Christian really doesn't get. The reformers did not simply wake up one day and decide confession was unnecessary. The rejection of confession came from deep theological principles, especially *sola fide*, *sola scriptura*, and the rejection of priestly mediation.
So, let's just start with the original reformer himself, Mr. Martin Luther. And the Lutheran Church generally kept confession and absolution as practices, but they stopped treating confession as a sacrament in the full use of the word. Why? Well, Luther believed justification comes by faith alone. Thomas Joseph White is the Rector Magnificus of the Angelicum in Rome and he summarizes Luther's views like this. He says, "The inner act of faith justifies while the outward right does not, but allows the inner act to express itself." That changes everything, and that did change everything. Because if faith alone justifies, then priestly absolution cannot be an instrument actually causing reconciliation. It becomes declarative, merely announcing forgiveness already received inwardly. White explains further that Luther categorically denies the need for a minister's juridical authority to absolve sins validly.
The Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes the consequences of this perfectly. It says, "The Lutheran tenant of justification by faith alone would make all absolution merely declarative and reduce the pardon granted by Christ to the merest announcement of the gospel." This is the key divide. Catholicism says Christ gave the church real authority to forgive sins sacramentally. Lutheranism says forgiveness comes directly through faith, and absolution simply reassures the believer. That's a radically different theology, and only one stands the test of that scripture that we read earlier from John chapter 20 and some of the other verses.
Anglicanism becomes even more complicated because Anglicanism is internally divided. You have high church and Anglo-Catholic Anglicans that often preserve confession to some extent very strongly, even ascribing to a seven sacrament system, but they use different terminology to describe it. But even in the Book of Common Prayer, the 39 Articles, it says of the other sacraments that are not Baptism or the Lord's Supper. According to the 39 Articles, Baptism and Lord's Supper are the only sacraments. There's two. I'm reading this directly from the 39 Articles itself in section 25. It says, "There are two sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the gospel, that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Those five commonly called sacraments, that is to say, Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction, are not to be counted for sacraments of the gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the apostles, partly are states of life allowed in the scriptures, but yet have not like nature of sacraments with Baptism and the Lord's Supper. For that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God."
The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that confession in Anglicanism became largely optional, general, liturgical, or primarily for troubled consciences. And Anglican absolution formulas were often interpreted as declarations rather than sacramental acts. This means repentance becomes primarily internal and direct to God. Again, the central issue is priestly mediation. A famous Anglo-Catholic summary of confession is, "All may, some should, none must." Meaning that anyone may go to confession, some people spiritually should go to confession, but it is not universally obligatory under pain of sin the way Catholicism teaches for mortal sin. That phrase captures the key differences here.
Did Christ establish ordained ministers with sacramental authority, or merely preachers proclaiming forgiveness? That is the dividing line. And this is where the conversation gets really uncomfortable because confession forces Christians to answer a larger question. What is the church? Is the church a visible sacramental authority established by Christ? It actually has power to bind and loose sins? It actually has apostolic ministry? Real sacramental mediation? Or is the church primarily just a community proclaiming the gospel where forgiveness happens directly between the believer and God?
The reformers chose the second option. Catholicism and Orthodoxy chose the first. And notice, the Orthodox churches never abandoned sacramental confession. The Orthodox still maintain confession after baptism, priestly absolution, and sacramental reconciliation. Their style is often more therapeutic and less juridical than the Latin West, but they still maintain sacramental confession. That matters historically. Because both East and West preserved confession sacramentally long before the Reformation ever came about.
And honestly, modern people hate confession for the same reason fallen humanity has always hated confession. Humility. Confession forces you to verbalize your sin. You can't hide from the sins you've committed. You have to stop rationalizing your sin. You have to stop self-justifying why you committed the sin. You kneel before Christ through his minister, and you say, "I did this." That is terrifying. But it's also liberating. Because Christianity is not merely self-help. It is reconciliation. The church teaches confession heals spiritual wounds, disordered caused by sin, and communion broken with God, and broken with his church. It heals the the wounds that we've caused to our fellow brother and sister within the church.
So now we return to the original question. When Jesus said, "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them," what did he mean? Did he establish a real sacramental ministry with authority to bind and loose sins continuing through ordained ministers, or did he merely authorize preaching? Because the earliest Christians, the church fathers, the medieval church, the Catholic church, the Orthodox churches, the rejection of confession did not arise until 1,500 years. And when it did arise, it arose alongside things like *sola fide*, *sola scriptura*, and a of sacramental mediation. That is the historical reality.
And honestly, this debate is not just theological, it's personal because every human being carries guilt. Every human being falls, and every human being needs reconciliation. The question is whether Christ left us merely with internal reassurance or with an actual sacrament of healing. That is the question.
If you enjoyed this video, like, subscribe, and comment below. Do you believe Christ gave the apostles real authority to forgive sins? Or if you're a Protestant, what do you think of John chapter 20? What do you think it actually means? Let me know in the comments below, but until next time, I'll see you on Lex Leo.