IV. DURING THE
REFORMATION, AND IN THE PROTESTANT DOGMATICS.—With the Reformation, all those
ideas which are covered by the expression, “the power of the keys,” entered a
new stage of development. From the Roman Catholic Church, Luther retrained confession
and absolution, though both were unknown to the primitive Church. Confession he
considered an institution valid throughout Christendom, and the sacramental
character of absolution he never entirely abandoned. But, pervaded by the
spirit of the Reformation, these ideas assumed new forms and new
significations. To Luther, absolution is not a verdict based on the conviction
that the sinner has repented and is a state of grace, but simply a means by
which to strengthen this faith, analogous to the sermon, and, indeed, a mode of
preaching the gospel. It has no sacerdotal character whatever. It can be
refused to no one; and it can be given by every one, layman or priest, with the
only difference, that in the former case it is private, while in the latter it
may be public. Only when the sinner places himself in open opposition to God,
the Church assumes the office of a judge and excommunicates him. Thus, to
Luther, absolution has the triple character of preaching, jurisdiction, and
sacrament.
Calvin refers the
power of the keys partly to the preaching of the gospel, partly to the
maintenance of church discipline; but he entirely excludes the idea of its
being a sacrament. His views may be summed up in the following propositions:
(1) There is a double absolution, one serving the faith, the other belonging to
church discipline; (2) Absolution is by itself nothing else but the promise of
forgiveness of sin such as is contained in the Gospels; (3) Absolution is
conditional, and its conditions are penance and faith; (4) Whether or not these
conditions have been fulfilled, no human being can know, and consequently the
certainty of the binding and loosing can never depend upon the verdict of a human
court; (5) That absolution, which forms part of church discipline, has nothing
to do with secret sins,--it deals only with open scandals; but, in censuring
such acts, the Church simply follows the unerring rules of the Scriptures,
pronouncing that adulterers, thieves, murderers, and misers have no part in the
kingdom of heaven.
It was the views of
Calvin which finally conquered the Protestant world. In the Lutheran churches
the threefold signification of the power of the keys underwent a number of
violent changes. Chemnitz was the first who died that absolution is a sacrament
in the same sense of the word as baptism and the Lord’s Supper; but he found
many followers. When the fresh and vivid spirit of the Reformation gradually
lost its vigor, the private confession and absolution became empty forms, more
apt to foster a false self-sufficiency than to strengthen the faith. The Church-ban
was early taken out of the hands of the clergy, on account of the misuses they
made of it; but, in the hands of the consistories, it entirely lost its
religious character, and became an appendix to the police-institution. The
first powerful attack on the reigning state of affairs was made by the Pietists,
but it was renewed by the Rationalists. And when, in the context, the orthodox
of the old Lutheran school attempted to represent the power of the keys as a divinely
established institution, they not only failed utterly, but had to look on in
idleness while the institution was crumbling into pieces. In Protestant
theology the power of the keys has been neglected as a merely symbolical
expression, and the various ideas comprised by the expression have been treated,
in dogmatics, under the head of grace and justification; in practical theology
among the preparation to the Lord’s Supper; and in canon law, under discipline.
(“Keys,” in Philip Schaff and Samuel Macauley Jackson, eds., A Religious
Encyclopaedia: Or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical
Theology, 3 vols. [3d ed.; New York: Fung and Wagnalls Company, 1891], 2:1243)