Many Protestants use Isaiah 43:25 as an argument against confession to a priest. In that verse, the Lord declares: “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” Since God forgives sins, they claim, a priest cannot. Hebrews 3:1 and 7:22–27 also tell us that Jesus is the “high priest of our confession” and that there are not “many priests,” but one—Jesus Christ.
If Jesus is the “one mediator between God and men” (1 Tim. 2:5), how can Catholics reasonably claim that priests act in the role of mediator in the sacrament of confession?
Out with the Old?
Leviticus 19:20–22 tells us:
If a man lies carnally with a woman . . . they shall not be put to death. . . . But he shall bring a guilt offering for himself to the Lord . . . And the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the Lord for his sin which he has committed; and the sin which he has committed shall be forgiven him.
In this case a priest, as God’s instrument of forgiveness, did not take away from the fact that it was God who forgave the sin. God was the first cause of the forgiveness; the priest was the secondary cause. Thus, God being the forgiver of sins does not preclude the possibility of there being a ministerial priesthood, established by God, to communicate his forgiveness.
Many Protestants will concede the point of priests acting as mediators of forgiveness in the Old Testament but claim that in the New Testament, Jesus is our only priest. In a parallel between the Old and New Testaments, Christ did something similar to the God of the Old Testament. That is, he established a priesthood to mediate his forgiveness.
In with the New!
Just as God empowered his priests to be instruments of forgiveness in the Old Testament, Christ delegated authority to his New Testament ministers to act as mediators of reconciliation as well. Jesus made this clear in John 20:21–23:
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And 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; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Christ sent the apostles and their successors to proclaim the gospel with his own authority (Matt. 28:18–20), to govern the Church in his stead (Luke 22:29–30), and to sanctify it through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist (John 6:54; 1 Cor. 11:24–29) and confession.
Jesus emphasizes this essential part of the priestly ministry of the apostles—to forgive men’s sins in the person of Christ—in the Gospel of John: “Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:23). Auricular confession is implicit: After first hearing sins confessed, the apostles would judge whether a penitent should be absolved.
To Forgive or to Proclaim?
Many Fundamentalists claim that John 20:23 is really Christ repeating “the great commission” of Matthew 28:19 and Luke 24:47 in a different way. One Protestant apologist writes:
It is apparent that the commission to evangelize is tightly woven into the commission to proclaim forgiveness of sin through faith in Jesus Christ. (Robert M. Zins, Romanism: The Relentless Roman Catholic Assault on the Gospel of Jesus Christ!, White Horse Publications, 100)
The only problem with the Protestant interpretation of the text is the text itself. More than a proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, it communicates from Jesus to the apostles the power to forgive sin themselves.
Many Protestants question why confession to a priest is not mentioned in the rest of the New Testament. The answer is that, just as Christ gave us the proper form for baptism only once (Matt. 28:19)—and all Christians accept this teaching—so, too, he gave us confession only once.
There are, though, other texts that deal with confession and the forgiveness of sins through the New Covenant minister:
2 Corinthians 2:10: “And to whom you have pardoned anything, I also. For, what I have pardoned, if I have pardoned anything, for your sakes have I done it in the person of Christ” (Douay-Rheims).
Modern Bible translations, such as the Revised Standard Version, translate and interpret this verse very differently: “What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ.”
Paul, it is argued, simply forgave someone in the way any layperson can forgive someone for wrongs committed against him. The Greek word prosopon can be translated as “presence” or, as Catholics do, as “person,” giving this verse very different meanings.
The King James Version (clearly not a Catholic text) also translates prosopon as “person.” The early Christians too—who spoke and wrote in Koine Greek—used prosopon to refer to the “person” of Jesus Christ at the councils of Ephesus (A.D. 431) and Chalcedon (A.D. 451).
But even if one grants the translation “in the presence of Christ,” the fact remains that Paul forgave the sins of others. He did not, in fact, forgive an offense against himself, as all Christians can and must do. He said he forgave “for your sakes,” indicating that the sins did not involve him personally.
Three chapters later, Paul tells us: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18). This is more than “the message of reconciliation” Paul mentions in verse 19 but rather the ministry of reconciliation that was Christ’s. Christ did more than preach a message of forgiveness; he forgave.
James 5:14-16: “Is any one among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.”
Some will point out that verse 16 says to confess our sins “to one another” and to pray “for one another.” Is James just encouraging us to confess our sins to a close friend so we can help one another to overcome our faults? The context seems to disagree. James tells us to go to the elders for healing and forgiveness, apparently pointing to the elder as the one to whom we confess our sins. In addition, Ephesians 5:21 uses the same phrase—”Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ”—in a context that limits the meaning of “one another” specifically to its own antecedent, a man and wife, in the same way James’s verse does. The context of James 5 bears out that the confession “to one another” refers to the relationship between “anyone” and specifically an “elder” or “priest” (Greek: presbuteros).
Full and Active Participatio
A major obstacle to confession for many Protestants is that it presupposes a priesthood. Jesus is referred to in Scripture as “the apostle and high priest of our confession” (Heb. 3:1). The former priests were many in number, as Hebrews 7:23 says, but now we have one priest—Jesus Christ. Is there one priest or are there many?
First Peter 2:5–9 give us some insight.
And like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. . . . But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.
Peter plainly teaches all believers to be members of a holy priesthood. Jesus is not the one and only priest in the New Testament in a strict sense. Priest-believers do not take away from Christ’s unique priesthood; as members of his body, they establish it on earth.
The Catholic and biblical notion of participatio makes these problematic texts relatively easy to understand. Jesus Christ is the “one mediator between God and men” as 1 Timothy 2:5 says. Yet Christians are also called to be mediators in Christ. When we intercede for one another or share the gospel with someone, we act as mediators of God’s love and grace through the gift of participatio (1 Tim. 2:1–7; 1 Tim. 4:16; Rom. 10:9–14). All Christians can say with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
Priests among Priests
But if all Christians are priests, why do Catholics claim a ministerial priesthood distinct from the universal priesthood? Because God himself called out a special priesthood to minister to his people. This concept is literally as old as Moses.
When Peter taught us about the universal priesthood of all believers, he specifically referred to Exodus 19:6, in which God alluded to ancient Israel as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” In fact, Peter reminds us that there was a universal priesthood among the Old Testament people of God. But this did not preclude the existence of a ministerial priesthood within it (see Ex. 28; Num. 3:1–12).
In the same way, we have a universal priesthood in the New Testament, but we also have an ordained clergy with priestly authority given to them by Christ. In Matthew 16:19 and 18:18, Christ tells Peter and the apostles: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Christ communicated not only the authority “to pronounce doctrinal judgments and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church” but also “the authority to absolve sins” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 553).
These words are unsettling and disturbing to many, and understandably so. Yet God, who alone has the power to open and shut heaven to men, did give this authority to men. Jesus Christ clearly communicated this authority to the apostles and their successors.
The words bind and loose mean: whomever you exclude from your communion will be excluded from communion with God; whomever you receive anew into your communion God will welcome back into his. Reconciliation with the Church is inseparable from reconciliation with God. (CCC 1445)
This is what the forgiveness of sins is all about: reconciling men and women with their heavenly Father.