THE POWER OF THE KEYS
The
ever-nearing approach of the Church of Rome wakes back into life the dormant
controversies of centuries; and it is of critical importance that where Roman
teaching seems lodged on Scripture, but is not, she should
be openly and publicly dislodged from what appears to be a Bible foundation. For if and where she is lodged on Scripture,
we agree; we fight what is pagan in
The
Old Testament Priests had no power of absolution: they sacrificed, but they
never absolved. In the primitive Church
the condemnation passed on an erring disciple, or a pardon granted him on
confession, was a work of the whole assembled church, expressed by the officer
presiding. "Our judgment," says Tertullian, "cometh with great
weight, as of men well assured that they are under the eye of God; and it is a
very grave forestalling of the judgment to come, if any shall have so offended
as to be put out of the solemn assembly." But by the fourth century bishops began to
assume this power of excommunication and absolution; and by the sixteenth
century the Council of Trent had
lodged the whole, sole power in the Priest.* The
earlier form, Donminus absolvat
te - the Lord grants thee absolution - gave way
to the priest acting judicially as possessor of the Keys, Ego absolvo te - I grant it.
[*
"To the Apostles, and to their successors in the
priesthood, the power was delivered of remitting and retaining sins."
Decrees of Trent, Session xxiii.]
The
first of our Lord's three great utterances is addressed solely to Peter, and,
couched in the future tense, is (as the Church has ever regarded it) the
fundamental passage on church discipline. Peter has the moment before been the
mouthpiece of the unborn Church, in the first great saving confession of Christ:
immediately, the Lord conjures up the Church to be; then that Church as issuing
from the grave; and between the two He erects the Church's present collective
authority to include, or exclude, from the Coming Kingdom of God. "Upon this rock I
will build [from Pentecost onward] my church;
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it - the whole Church
shall come up out of the Underworld: and "I will
give [fulfilled in 18: 18] unto thee" - not as apostle, much less as priest
or pope, but as the first and representative confessor of Christ, in whom, for
the moment, the whole Church is embodied - "the
keys [one to lock, the other to unlock] of the
kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth [in church
discipline] shall be bound in heaven [at the
judgment Seat]; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on
earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt.
16: 18). That the power was not
lodged in Apostles alone, and much less confined to Peter, is certain, because
in the typical case of excommunication, given as an example for all time, Paul
commands the Church to exclude, while absolutely
identifying himself with the act (1 Cor. 5: 4). Peter's
hands, receiving the keys, are the hands of the Church: for self-discipline is
a function that must be conterminous with the Church's entire life on earth.*
[*
"Belonging to the Church depends on forgiveness
of sins, forgiveness being the sign of entrance into the Church. And since an accepted member may again become
unworthy of membership, the power of the keys has importance to those already
received, including remission of sin or absolution on the oneside,
or retention of sin as well as Church discipline on the other" (Dorner).]
The
second passage, in which our Lord makes the actual grant of what he had
promised, extends it, explicitly, to the entire Church: word for word,
precisely that which was granted to Peter - the keys - are placed in the hands
of the whole body of disciples. For the
Lord had just told them when to exclude a sinning brother: so now He grants the
Divine warrant for doing it, and His own promised endorsement of the exclusion.
"Verily I
say unto you" - for this is one of the truths depending solely on
the word of Christ - "what things soever YE" - the Church, just
named, and which, for obstinacy in sin, has just put a brother back among the
Gentiles and the publicans - "shall bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven" the binding coming first, as excommunication
precedes restoration; "and what things soever"
- what rather than whom: for it is not so much a person that is
bound or loosed, but a sin that is bound or loosed upon
a person: therefore it
is not the admission or the exclusion of the unsaved, whose persons
are involved, - "ye shall loose on earth,
shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt. 18:
18). Here all precedence or
exclusiveness of Peter, or even of all the Apostles combined, disappears; and
the power of excluding from the Church on earth, with its ratification by
exclusion from the future Kingdom,* is
vested in each, and all, of the Community of Believers. So the dominant
Protestant interpretation - namely, that it is merely the Gospel declaration
of pardon and threatening of hell - is obviously
untenable: and our Lord puts 'binding' first,
for it is only those already in the Church over whom we have (1 Cor. 5: 12) any
jurisdiction; we bind in discipline that we may yet loose in love. "An irrevocable,
irredeemable ban is far from being spoken of here: in its highest exercise of
power the Church looses again precisely that which it has
bound; it bound only that it may be able again to loose when this may be
possible" (Olshausen).
"These
keys," as Augustine
says, "not one man, but the entire Church,
receives."
[*
It is most remarkable that it is from the Kingdom of
the Heavens - our Lords coming Reign over the earth - that the Church,
if acting on Scripture commands, locks out; they are the keys of the Kingdom:
so Paul, having given the catalogue of sins excluding from the Church (1 Cor. 5: 11), repeats the same list (but with additions)
as a catalogue of the sins which exclude from the Kingdom (1 Cor. 6: 9, 10.]
The
third passage, equally comprehensive, gives the deep underlying safeguard that
hedges power so awful; and our Lord again lodges the power, not in a Peter who
dies, or in Apostles who lapse, but in that Divine Society which never dies,
and which will never lapse. In the upper
room, filled with the gathered disciples, including the women (Luke 24: 9-11, 33), Jesus "breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy
Ghost: whose soever sins ye retain" - ye hold fast, so that they
may not pass away from him to whom they attach -"they
are retained " (John 20: 23). The use of the perfect in these two words, forgiven
and retained, expresses the absolute efficacy of the
power; no interval separates the act from the issue
(Westcott). He who has a church sentence against him, and
knows in his heart that it is a sentence both Scriptural and according to fact, can already be assured exactly of what his sentence
will be at the Lord's judgment bar. So
also in the loosing: as Paul said to the
[*
"He absolved him (1
Cor. 2: 10) because
the congregation absolved him; not as a plenipotentiary supernaturally gifted
to convey a mysterious benefit, but as himself an organ and representative of
the Church. The power of absolution,
therefore, belonged to the church, and to the Apostle through the Church. It was a power belonging to all Christians; to
the Apostle, because he was a Christian, not because he was an Apostle"
(F. W. Robertson)
**
It is tragic that the Christian group which, of all groups, stresses most
strongly that the Church is in ruins. Is the group which most aptly exercises the
full powers, and far beyond, of a Church totally unimpaired.
***
"While it is not said, - None are forgiven but those whom you forgive - so , on the other hand, it is
not merely the general statement of forgiveness as applicable to certain
descriptions of persons; but it has a particular application to particular
individuals. And so great is the
authority and efficacy that is made over to disciples hereby that it is not
called power to forgive, but forgiveness" (Govett).]
The
power of the Keys placed in our hands is a power from which we cannot free
ourselves, and which we can refuse only through cowardice and sin. The sainted Robert Murray Mc Cheyne says:- "When I first entered upon
the work of the ministry, I was exceedingly ignorant of the vast importance of
church discipline. I thought that my
great, and almost only, work was to pray and preach. I saw souls to be so precious, and time so
short, that I devoted all my time and care and strength to labour in word and
doctrine. When cases of discipline were
brought before me and the elders, I regarded them with something like
abhorrence. It was a duty I shrank from;
and I may truly say it nearly drove me from the work of the ministry
altogether. But it pleased God who
teaches His servants in another way than man teaches, to bless some of the
cases of discipline with manifest and undeniable blessing; and from that hour a
new light broke in upon my mind, and I saw that if preaching be an ordinance of
Christ, so is church discipline. I now
feel very deeply persuaded that both are of God: both are Christ's gift, and
neither is to be resigned without sin."
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