Monday, September 13, 2021

The "Keys" of Matthew 16:18 and 18:18 as Understood During the Reformation

  

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)