Confession and John 20

[zachattack05]

In a different thread on this board someone said:
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Christ would disagree with you regarding the priest and confession. Christ specifically tells the apostles in John20 whose ever sins you forgive they are forgiven whose ever you retain they are retained. This is right after He says recieve the Holy Spirit.*

I have a question about this. It seems that Christ gave the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and he gave the power to bind and loose to the Apostles. How do we know that the priests, deacons, popes etc…have that same power? Even if Peter “handed over” the position to the next generation, how do we know he was allowed to do that or that it was valid?

 

[RyanL_s_Wife]

zachattack05:

In a different thread on this board someone said:
*
Christ would disagree with you regarding the priest and confession. Christ specifically tells the apostles in John20 whose ever sins you forgive they are forgiven whose ever you retain they are retained. This is right after He says recieve the Holy Spirit.*

I have a question about this. It seems that Christ gave the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and he gave the power to bind and loose to the Apostles. How do we know that the priests, deacons, popes etc…have that same power? Even if Peter “handed over” the position to the next generation, how do we know he was allowed to do that or that it was valid?

Oh, good question… I would like to hear responses to this as well.

 

[Aaron_I]

Acts 1:15-26. That would be a good reference verse. It is when they choose Judas’ successor. I’d say a key line is “may another take his office.” Also, realize that the Bible explicitly states that people receive the Holy Spirit when the apostles lay hands on them. If the Bible is inspired, this must be true. Because we trace our priests back to the apostles, they retain the powers of the apostles.

 

[Mickey]

The Commission

Christ told the apostles to follow his example: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (John 20:21). Just as the apostles were to carry Christ’s message to the whole world, so they were to carry his forgiveness: “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” (Matt. 18:18).

This power was understood as coming from God: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18). Indeed, confirms Paul, “So we are ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor. 5:20).

Some say that any power given to the apostles died with them. Not so. Some powers must have, such as the ability to write Scripture. But the powers necessary to maintain the Church as a living, spiritual society had to be passed down from generation to generation. If they ceased, the Church would cease, except as a quaint abstraction. Christ ordered the apostles to, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” It would take much time. And he promised them assistance: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:19–20).

If the disciples believed that Christ instituted the power to sacramentally forgive sins in his stead, we would expect the apostles’ successors—the bishops—and Christians of later years to act as though such power was legitimately and habitually exercised. If, on the other hand, the sacramental forgiveness of sins was what Fundamentalists term it, an “invention,” and if it was something foisted upon the young Church by ecclesiastical or political leaders, we’d expect to find records of protest. In fact, in early Christian writings we find no sign of protests concerning sacramental forgiveness of sins. Quite the contrary. We find confessing to a priest was accepted as part of the original deposit of faith handed down from the apostles.

Catholic Answers

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[Church_Militant]

To me it’s really pretty simple. This was said to the apostles and does it make any sense at all in the context that it ended with them or that (knowing the nature of mankind) that it would no longer be needed by His church? I just can’t see that in the context of this passage an the others that are addressed to the apostles.

Note this passage here in particular:
Acts Of Apostles 1:20 For it is written in the book of Psalms: Let their habitation become desolate, and let there be none to dwell therein. And his bishopric let another take. There’s the knowlege and scriptural basis for succession in a nutshell.

I hope these insights of mine (such as they are) are of some help.
Pax tecum,

 

[MariaG]

For me, the words that strike me the most are “and He breathed upon them”

To my knowledge there is only one other place in which God breathed on Man, in Genesis when He breathed the breath of life into man’s nostrils and gave him a soul.

It strikes me as significant that in the first instance, God is giving man a soul, and in the second, He is implementing a Sacrament to restore man’s soul.

We don’t have to have Scripture tell us about each person’s soul after this to know that each man has one. In the same way, we can know that we don’t have to read about the specific power to forgive being passed on to know that it has been.

God Bless,
Maria

 

[Orionthehunter]

MariaG:

For me, the words that strike me the most are “and He breathed upon them”

To my knowledge there is only one other place in which God breathed on Man, in Genesis when He breathed the breath of life into man’s nostrils and gave him a soul.

It strikes me as significant that in the first instance, God is giving man a soul, and in the second, He is implementing a Sacrament to restore man’s soul.

We don’t have to have Scripture tell us about each person’s soul after this to know that each man has one. In the same way, we can know that we don’t have to read about the specific power to forgive being passed on to know that it has been.

God Bless,
Maria

While it isn’t breathed on them but blew on them , at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit “came And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.” Which is another institution of a Sacrament (Confirmation).

 

[MariaG]

Orionthehunter:

While it isn’t breathed on them but blew on them .

Nah! Breathed is my Evangelical, KJV ONLY roots showing. I read that verse so many times in that version, I can’t make myself say it any other way:nerd:

God Bless,
Maria

 

[NotWorthy]

Orionthehunter:

at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit “came And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.” Which is another institution of a Sacrament (Confirmation).

I’m sorry, but all Sacraments are Christ centered. The anointing of the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ Baptism is the initiating of the institution of Confirmation.

Notworthy