On the topic of Origen’s Commentary on Matthew, book 12, a recent Catholic apologetics volume noted the following:
Wherefore he has the keys of the
kingdom of heaven, opening to those who have been loosed on earth that they
may be also loosed in heaven, and free; and shutting to those who by his just
judgment have been bound on earth that they also may be bound in heaven, and
condemned. But when those who maintain the function of the episcopate make
use of this word as Peter, and having received the keys of the kingdom of
heaven from the Savior, teaching that things bound by them, that is to say,
condemned, are also bound in heaven, and that those which have obtained
remission by them are also loosed in heaven, we must say that they speak
wholesomely if they have the way of life on account of which it was said
to that Peter, You are Peter (Matthew 16:18); and if they are such that
upon them the church is built by Christ, and to them with good reason this
could be referred; and the gates of Hades ought to prevail against him when he
wishes to bind and loose.
Here, Origen is entirely consonant
with the Scripture: St. Peter bound and loosed when he functioned in concern
with his profession of faith in Matthew 16:17, but (like the Antioch incident
or denial of Jesus) when he sins or lacks virtue, this is a way of life
inharmonious with Matthew 16:18 and we must infer that St. Peter and the
Apostles do not bind and loose others by these actions. To secure this reading,
Origen continues:
But if he is tightly “bound with
the cords of his sins” (Proverbs 5:22), to no purpose does he bind and loose.
And perhaps you can say that in the heavens which are in the wise man—that, is
the virtues—the bad man is bound; and again, in these, the virtuous man is
loosed and has received an indemnity for the sins which he committed before his
virtue. But, as the man, who has not the cords of sins nor iniquities compared
to a long rope or to the strap of the yoke of a heifer (Isaiah 5:18) not even
God could bind, in like manner, no Peter, whoever he may be, and if any one who
is not a Peter, and does not possess the things here spoken of, imagines as a
Peter that he will so bind on earth that the things bound are bound in heaven,
and will so loose on earth that the things loosed are loosed in heaven, he is
puffed up, not understanding the meaning of the Scriptures, and being puffed
up, has fallen into the ruin of the devil (1 Timothy 3:10).
This is exactly St. Paul’s point:
St. Peter sinned, by example, and he lost his binding and loosing powers in the
community (he was excommunicated by St. Paul) when he was sinning by disobeying
the doctrine that St. Peter still professed from the Council of Jerusalem. St.
Peter technically still professed: “You are Christ the Son of God,” but as
Origen notes, his way of life or vice meant that he temporarily lost his
binding and loosing role in a particular instance until he changed. This idea
of a pope temporarily losing his binding and loosing power in the midst of sinfully
trying to apply this power has been around from the New Testament until the Decretum
or collection of canons by Gratian in AD 1145. The major issue for the Church,
often provoking schisms, is: How do we apply this rule to pope lo Rome when he
sins or errs in his administration though he have supreme jurisdiction? Some
particularities of the issue have been effectively tabled by the Church
councils and hierarchy since the Council of Basel )AD 1435), where the papalist
who first articulated in technical terms “papal infallibility” (Juan de Torquemada,
OP) defended in the Acts of the Council the principal of a “papal correction”
so that a vicious or unlawfully acting pope ought to receive a correction by
the Church or his brother bishops gathered in council to help correct his
behavior. (Christiaan Kappes and William Albrecht, The Complete Guide to the
Papacy in the Bible [Biblical Dogmatics 3; Patristic Pillars Press, 2022], 270-71)
Honestly: how could a faithful Roman Catholic know if a pope has
lost his ability to bind and loose? Imagine if Francis committed heresy and was
stripped of his ability to bind and loose, but in an act of defiance, bound
people, using the criteria from Vatican 1, to, say, the Fifth Marian Dogma.
According to Pastor Aeternus, “such definitions of the Roman Pontiff of
themselves, but not from the consensus of the Church, are unalterable” (DS
3074). It is pretty nonsensical an approach to take if one puts on their “Catholic”
hat.
