Consider two possibilities:
- A has power to do X and hands off that power to B. It is now B’s power. B exercises it not acting as agent for A, but acting on his own behalf. (The Ring is now possessed by Frodo, not by Bilbo Baggins, and only Frodo now wields its power.)
- A has power to do X and authorizes B to exercise it on his behalf. B has no power in his own right to do X except as agent of A. B can act with respect to X only in the name of A.
The question is,
which type did John 20:21-23 institute? Here is what the passage says:
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
The Catholic Church teaches that this passage instituted the second type, the “agency” variety. (In the confessional you don’t hear EGO TE ABSOLVO A PECCATIS TUIS. You hear EGO TE ABSOLVO A PECCATIS TUIS
IN NOMINE PATRIS ET FILII ET SPIRITUS SANCTI.)
There is, however, an interesting consequence of the “agency” interpretation. It is of the nature of a principal-agent relation that A’s investing B with A’s power as agent only
does not divest A of the ability to exercise the power directly as well. (Or, to use the analogy of the verse in question, after breathing out the Holy Spirit on the disciples Jesus still had more holy breath in his lungs.) The principal as well as the agent can still exercise the power.
As a result, every Protestant who tells you that he confesses his sins directly to God rather than to a priest cannot be told that his confession is ineffective because the authority to forgive sins is exclusively possessed by Catholic priests. God does not tell the confessing Protestant “Sorry, pal, you can’t come to me for forgiveness anymore; I handed off that power to the Church and its priests 2000 years ago, and I no longer have it. It’s theirs now, not mine. Convert to Catholicism and go to the confessional.”
But notice that the disciples were given both the power of forgiveness
and the power of retention. The retention power means that if a penitent is refused absolution by a priest, and later approaches God directly for a second bite at the forgiveness apple, God must turn him down! And this starts to feel very much like a complete hand off of the power of forgiveness – which is the antithesis of the agency theory of investiture.
