Inform Your 'Faith'

   Forgiveness, in my previous installment was shown to be a posture, attitude and disposition Christians are to maintain and even cultivate. Scripture clearly substantiates this as I elucidated in that entry. As Paul insists, "as Christ forgave you, so you also must do," (Col. 3:13). This "heart" of forgiveness manifests from a heart that has received forgiveness. As this excerpt from Peacemaker rightly recognizes, "A heart of forgiveness patiently/eagerly waits to give forgiveness, as displayed in Matthew 18:21-35 knowing that their sin against God is far greater than another human's sin against them, and by God's grace, the heart of forgiveness shows Christ's love, mercy, compassion, patience, grace." 

    I was aghast by a recent exchange between two men that involved this very thing. One of the men emailed the other (who wouldn't return a phone call) confessing his sin against him and repenting. The individual responded with an email saying that although he appreciated the confession he needed to mull it over and consider it. This clearly is incongruous with the posture of forgiveness established in holy writ (see last entry).

   Christ was quick to forgive the sins of the paralytic for example, (Mark 2:3-9). His retort to the scribes who vocalized their discontent in that passage espouses a veritable readiness to do so. 

     I wonder why confessing Christians are so reluctant to remit sins committed against them. Especially, when keeping in mind their sin's have been remitted through no merit of their own. Humanity had committed the most heinous of sins against a holy and righteous God and it was He that provided the "means" of forgiveness. Those within Christendom really show how ungodly they are when they are unwilling to maintain a posture of forgiveness. Even more so when they are brazenly unwilling to allow for the "means" or "measures" to do so. Paul seems to give cadence to this when saying, "scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us," (Rom. 5:7). It is an utter travesty when confessing Christians won't even forgive when Christ subjected Himself to a brutal death and in so doing provided a "means" to remit their sins when they "were still sinners." What great lengths God has gone to in Christ Jesus in order to grant forgiveness; yet many a confessing Christian will do the converse by going to great lengths in order to withhold forgiveness!

    Let me give a personal example. Once upon a time I, admittedly, sinned against a brother. This came to my attention by way of an email. Two other brothers involved helped me to acknowledge my wrongdoing. As soon as it registered with me the Lord graced me to repent and confess my sin. Did I violate some biblical injunction or command? No. Did I commit a personal or relational violation? Yes, indeed. I subsequently confessed my wrongdoing thrice to all the men communicating in this email forum as well as voluntarily rendering restitution. The person I wronged refused to forgive on the grounds that it was disingenuous even though "fruits of repentance" were brought forth by the efficacious grace of God.

  Recall the instance of Zacchaeus. Luke records that this tax collector, to be sure the chief of tax collectors, approached Christ saying, "Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation I restore fourfold," (Luke 19:1-10). Clearly, Zacchaeus is applying the Mosaic precedent of restitution to his sins. Christ immediately responds with, "Today salvation has come to this house...." Christ's retort was not conditioned by the rendering or the actual act of the offered restitution but was given immediately upon the volitional articulation of remorse and the repentance it signified. 

  Christian forgiveness is not conditioned upon meritorious acts of "penance" or restitution; although acts of penance or restitution do validate confession/repentance. Indeed, the genuineness of repentance will effervesce so to speak during restoration. And confession will express itself in unforced and uncoerced contrition. They do not validate forgiveness. In his treatment The Grace of Repentance, Sinclair Ferguson asks if "...we are forgiven on the grounds of repentance?" His reply is a resounding, "Not at all!" Ferguson understands the complexities of how forgiveness, confession and repentance interrelate while remaining distinct. 

     It is clear that forgiveness within the construct of the New Testament is not to be given only after various meritorious acts of restitution or after restoration; should that be required, (Gal. 6). This is inconsistent with scripture and tradition. To require certain actions to be performed to achieve forgiveness as though formal remission of sin (i.e. forgiveness, absolution; remission of sins) is contingent upon these acts is a schema of Roman Catholic penance as alluded to above. In this unbiblical process, the sacrament of penance or repentance works ex opere operato.  Remission of sins is accomplished vis a vis the "completed act."     

    Ludwig Ott, a distinguished Catholic theologian unabashedly states that, "supernatural life...is cured from the diseases of sins and from the weakness arising from these by Penance...," (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 338). Of course within the Roman Catholic axiom Penance proper consists of private confession, absolution, and a penance (an act of self-abasement, mortification, or devotion performed to show sorrow or repentance for sin) directed by the confessor. Inasmuch as this system emerged with good intent it morphed into meritorious works to garner forgiveness, absolution, or remission of sins. 

    Duns Scotus who greatly influenced Catholic thought during the high middle ages, himself took the position that, "necessary thought they were, none of the usual three parts of the definition of penance-contrition, confession and satisfaction-constituted its essence, since they were human actions (the Sentences)." Jean de Gerson a French scholar of the early 15th century went so far as to say the form of absolution (remission of sins, forgiveness) was, "absolute rather than conditional." 

    Martin Luther was outraged by penitential (and sacramental, as a whole) conditionalism and repudiated this schema through his work, The Babylonian Captivity. The aforementioned practice of the Sacraments (including Penance) availing because of human merit was, "By far the most wicked abuse of all," according to Luther. 

    The position that forgiveness is attained only after acts of contrition, restitution and the like is a contemporary version of Penance. It is a more sophisticated way and more simply a variation of articulating Tetzel's infamous diddy:

"As soon as the coin in the coffer rings

A soul from purgatory springs"

    Such contrived mechanical formulas are spawns of simony. They emerge from an environment of exasperated and conflated clericalism whereby ministers assume an authority to grant absolution or forgiveness on grounds of their own making. Forgiveness is taken to be a possession the minister can grant or not grant. I have heard the argument that Christ's words recorded in John endow cleric's with this authority. 

"If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained," John 20:23.

    The position taken upon these words is that the Apostles and those whom they set in office are given positional authority to determine grounds of forgiveness. This is true to an incisive extent. The grounds upon which Christ endows this authority is inextricably related to His commissioning of them, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you," (John 20). This activity is of course the proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom and repentance. They were not given unrestricted liberty to dictate grounds of reception into the kingdom and participation in the church according to their whim. This invariably results in a carte blanche execution of clerical office. Officers within the church forgive in a representational way and manner. Even the Pharisees recognized this when saying, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Christ responded sharply with, "that you may know the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins," and then proceeded to heal the paralytic. (Mark 2; Moses acknowledged this as well in Ex. 32:32). I like to make the distinction that Jesus can forgive sins while those of the clerical ranks may forgive sins. When people use forgiveness as leverage or as a possession of man they do so without biblical warrant. Man forgives in a representational way. Christ and Scripture determine grounds of forgiveness.

    As the Westminster Confession of Faith aptly states, church authority is inseparable from the Word of God, which alone binds the conscience absolutely (1.10). Scripture, and the events it records, establishes the church; therefore, Scripture stands in authority over the church. Church decisions bind only when they are biblical; to violate God’s Word for tradition’s sake is evil (Matt. 15:1–9). I was involved in an occasion wherein forgiveness was withheld on grounds that a penitent would not go to Teen Challenge. This action superseded the demands of Scripture. It was wrong.

   This form or expression of authority betrays its representational nature and assumes a sacerdotalistic nature. Sacerdotalism may be defined as "religious belief emphasizing the power of priests as essential mediators between God and mankind." Wherever this praxis is found ministerial abuse is likely to precipitate. Forgiveness is withheld until it is earned vis a vis restitution, acts of contrition, pilgrimages so forth and so on. Man can get lost in his own creativity and that is the problem. Forgiveness then becomes some grueling and arduous process of mechanistic achievement determined by the priestly caste. 

    This attitude and atmosphere is alien to the patristic practice of clericalism. It is well adjudged that this priestly posture was unknown in the apostolic church. The operation of clergy within the church functioning in a mediatorial capacity of sorts was initially introduced by Cyprian (A.D. 200-258). The locus of this burgeoning construct was found within applying the categories of the Levitical priesthood to the office of bishop/elder. 

   Ministerial tradents who treat forgiveness as a "conditional" dynamic procured by way of penitential acts inherently deny that forgiveness of  a Christian's sin is achieved by Christ's meritorious work over and against what a minister dictates. When ministers adhere to this modus operandi you will find an adherence to a variegated Penance and a variation of sacerdotalism. Subsequently, it becomes far more difficult for a confessing Christian to receive forgiveness and remain in the church.

    Ignatius understood his role as bishop in the ancient church and how to administer "the keys" a bit differently. He wrote the church of Philadelphia, "I therefore exhort you in the Lord to receive with all tenderness those that repent and return to the unity of the church, that through your kindness and forbearance they may recover." What is more, Bishop Ignatius was referring to those guilty of heresy and division! How then can man excuse making it more cumbersome to be granted forgiveness towards other Christians who have perpetrated much lesser sins; in degree? Further attestation to this can be found in the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles:

that are unacquainted with God and His providence, and are unreasonable judges, and unmerciful brutes."    

    Elsewhere, the patristics made clear that, "the church is not to make it harder for a man to be forgiven than it was for him to enter the church in the first place."

     In the next few blogs I will be giving consideration to Forgiveness, Confession, Repentance...and Penance? They are all interrelated to a great extent. This blog, in particular, I will be handling forgiveness. It is of course not an exhaustive treatment but is necessarily adumbrated.

     Sacred Scripture makes plain that Christians are to maintain a deliberate posture of forgiveness. This is true because as believers, or the "elect of God," we are recipients of forgiveness. If a person knows of and holds to the forgiveness of Christ that person will be quick to extend it just as they have received it. In fact, the Apostle Paul makes it an injunction on these very grounds. He advances that, "as the elect of God," believers are to, "forgive one another...even as Christ forgave you...," (Col. 3:12-13). He then amplifies the gravity of this disposition by saying that it is, "a must do." This is an imperative that carries the weight of obligation and necessity. This language makes a forgiving posture unequivocal.

     Commenting on this very text R.C Sproul posits, "we are God’s chosen ones — His holy people (Col. 3:12). Because He has made us holy, we can forgive even those who have sinned heinously against us. Believers have no option but to forgive others, especially other Christians (v. 13), and so there is no excuse for unforgiveness in the church."

    Christ articulates this very dynamic of reciprocating  forgiveness just after elaborating on the exercise of church discipline in Matthew 18. This parable of the "Unforgiving Servant" should be very harrowing for those who are beguiled by the sin of unforgiveness. According to the parable, the Master "forgave" a servant his debt. This very servant who was granted forgiveness perniciously refused to do the same to a "fellow servant." The Master's response to this is scathing,

     "You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?  And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses," (Matt. 18:21-35).

    The latter of course should always precipitate the former. Forgiveness is not without the precursor of confession/repentance. Christ tells the disciples, "Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times a day returns to you, saying I repent, you shall forgive him," (Luke 17:1-4). This passage makes inarguably clear that upon articulation of repentance/confession (saying I repent) forgiveness is to be extended bar none. Even to the extent that the same "offender" does so "seven times in a day."  

    Elsewhere, Peter amorphously grasps this according to Matthew 18: 21-22. He will forgive a person up to seven times, more than the three times the rabbis prescribe in his day (v. 21). That Peter’s comprehension is incomplete is revealed in the Savior’s command to forgive “seventy times seven,” (v. 22). According to some Reformed New Testament scholars Jesus really says, “seventy-seven times,” but the precise number is unimportant. As R.C Sproul rightly adjudges, "Christ is actually teaching that forgiveness must be unlimited."

    All too often man make forgiveness into an exhausting chore. In so doing, they evince that they are farther away from the New Testament corpus and the Gospel of Jesus Christ than they might like to admit.  Whenever a confessing Christian sins and subsequently repents to the person sinned against there is no alternative to extending forgiveness. To do contrariwise is to have the Father withhold forgiveness from the one unwilling to extend it, (Matt. 6:14-15, Mark 11:25-26). Conversely, this tenably suggests that the "unforgiven" of God is not one of "the elect of God" (Col.3:12-13). Matthew Henry speaks to this in two places:

"Believers, collectively as the church and individually, must always forgive penitent people. How can we possibly be Christians if we, whose unpayable debt has been erased, refuse to pardon those who have wronged us?"

    When confessing Christians exert considerable effort to not relinquish a debt incurred or withhold forgiveness on the heels of articulated repentance/confession they violate scriptural precedent and perhaps reveal their inner quality. “I can never forgive him,” is commonly found on the lips of those who have been sinned against, especially when the violation is heinous. Some of us may feel like we can never pardon a particular individual even if we never admit it. However, if we have come to faith in Christ, we have been set apart as His holy people and can, with His help, forgive others. "To say that we cannot forgive is a cop-out at best and possible evidence of a heart of stone at worst," (R.C. Sproul).

    Again Matthew Henry provides us with another salient principle for the Christian life, “God multiplies His pardons, and so should we. We should make it our constant practice to forgive injuries, and should accustom ourselves to it until it becomes habitual.”

       Forgiveness, Confession, Repentance and Penance will be explored more in the next few blogs.

Credo ut Intelligam

     

    John Calvin is remarkably one of the most noteworthy figures of the Reformation period amidst a veritable pantheon of contributors. This is especially true within the parameters of Protestantism’s emerging locus of orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

    For Calvin the quintessential bedrock for any other doctrinal formulae is the knowledge of God and ourselves (duplex cognitico). He prodigiously posits that both are inextricably interrelated as the bifurcating antecedent to “true and sound wisdom.” This is why Calvin consciously begins his Institutions elucidating those truths respectively. As Calvin says, “no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God.” Essentially, through mans natural inclination to be self aware and subjectively introspective he cannot help but to have his thoughts turned from the basest of things to the more sublime. This is resoundingly true because mankind is endowed with such a wealth of natural resources or “mighty gifts” that upon pondering such things the only conclusion to be drawn is that by possessing such gifts one realizes his poverty and thus, that his very existence is, “nothing but subsistence in the one God.”

    It is only when a knowledge of God is touched upon that man truly begins to rightly concatenate and know himself, “man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating Him to scrutinize himself.” It is only by this juxtaposition of sorts that man attains to the wellspring of knowledge. So it is that mans thoughts are directed upward through a primal and simple knowledge resonating within man, the creature. Yet only upon elevating to the “true light of wisdom”, that is true knowledge of God, can man derive a sound knowledge of itself.

    It needs to be understood Calvin is not postulating that the knowledge of God merely serves to enhance knowledge of the self, for knowledge of God is always paramount and occupies the place of primacy relative to mans chief aim while knowledge of man is to be understood as a secondary interest only as that knowledge relates to God. “The order of right teaching requires that we discuss the former first [knowledge of God], then proceed afterward to treat the latter [knowledge of man].”

    Nevertheless, there is a sense in which some residual form of composite or mundane knowledge occurs naturally within the human consciousness precipitating an amorphous yet distinctly numinous awareness of God along with a subsequently specious knowledge of the self. This is what Calvin asserts to be “an awareness of divinity” (divinitatis sensum). This innate awareness, “within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct,” is incomplete and fragmented at best leading precariously only to “irreligion” and an erroneous understanding of divinity and subsequently humanity. Despite mans ineptitude to rightly adjudge Gods natural revelation leading to a “labyrinth” of confusion reckoning man to be, “whirled and twisted about by blindly indiscriminate fortune,” God provides man with a better way. As Calvin asserts, “Scripture gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God.”

    This dynamic is much like the ruins of a once pristine and prosperous civilization. An onlooker is able to deduce and make inferences from the ruins of that previously established city or community and derive a partial knowledge of what once was. It is possible to project a rough image of the city from the variegated archaeological discoveries as well as ascertain what kind of commerce was present or even determine the societal construct to a limited extent. However, even after reflection upon and the consolidation of every known extant piece of data pertaining to that city or community one cannot assuredly know that the minutiae of data collected was arranged or interpreted accurately so as to actually know what that city essentially was. Yet if documents were unearthed that provided information about that respective site from its original inhabitants it would be possible to accurately derive a true knowledge and understanding of that particular city that now lay in ruins. Calvin views scripture much like this. Holy writ is in effect a key to the map as it unscrambles the confused conjectures and speculations resonating within mans discombobulated mind.

    The profundity of Calvin’s point of emphasis is no less true today than it was then. Far too often is the human rationale placed in a lofty position so as to be elevated above the inestimable depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God found within the sacrosanctus of Scripture.

Credo ut Intelligam