If you ask a devout Christian, “Why do you believe in Jesus?”, the short answer is usually something like, “Because he is my Savior”; or “Because he saved us from sin”; or “He is the Son of God”; or “He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Whichever the answer, it usually boils down to the reason we receive salvation: We are sinners. We are an inherently good creation, but we carry the wound of Original Sin.
The New Testament shares the story of how humankind has been given the gift of salvation, should believers choose to accept it. Once believers choose to receive this precious gift, they experience a conversion, a metanoia, which means to break free from sin and then strive to live in peace, justice, righteousness, and love. Jesus pours out example after example, teaching after teaching, to emphasize why a morally obedient, Spirt-filled life is necessary to keeping with God’s Grace. Think of the Sermon on the Mount, for example, as the guidepost for living a restored life through the eternal covenant — our salvation from sin — that Jesus fulfilled in his sacrifice (Tkacik SLU 2023).
Because believers must keep in mind that salvation is a gift, and which must be handled with great care, the New Testament speaks of how to keep in right order with God. Baptism, one of the sacraments Jesus instituted (Matthew 28:19), begins this right ordering by freeing believers from Original Sin and restoring their spiritual life through the gift that Jesus purchased for all at the Cross. Then, believers learn the importance of forgiveness: why salvation is a process of remaining reconciled with God, with one another, and with the entire Church community (Power 545).
In order to live in peace and love, in communion with other believers, and with the call to forgive one another and keep sinful natures in check, the New Testaments gives several guidelines to forgiveness, including who is empowered to forgive sins in Jesus’ name. Having given Peter the authority to build his Church (Matthew 16:18-19), Jesus also grants the Apostles the authority to forgive sins (John 20:20-23), while he continues to reinforce the need to live a repentant life and be a forgiving community (Tkacik SLU 2023).
Within the Church that the Apostles had first formed, its community gathered up all authority that the Apostles had received and then successively carried it forward to the ordained clergy and the Church community at large. In fact, community was so essential to the early Church, the New Testament provides many examples of how Christians are to promote forgiveness and reconciliation. It even breaks down several means to reconcile sins: through helping others from going astray in sin (James 5:20), mirroring God’s love with one another and asking for forgiveness (1 John 4:18; Matthew 6:12-15), praying for the sick and confessing sins to one another (James 5:15-16), and confessing sins to those who can forgive sins in Jesus’ name and spiritually guide the faithful into a rightfully ordered life (1 John:8-10; John 20:22-23; Tkacik Module 5 Slide 13).
And though Scripture appears to concentrate more on public confession and how to deal with excommunicated believers or immoral practices within the community (1 Timothy 1:19-20; 1 Corinthians 5:1-13; Tkacik SLU 2023), weaving all Scripture together shows a bigger picture context of what it means to confess sins privately versus publicly, and why the ordained clergy are an integral part of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18).
With public confession and community-coordinated reconciliation — now known as Canonical Expression — being a staple in the first four centuries of Church history, the process usually involved a sinner asking for forgiveness from the community, followed by the community performing a laying on of hands and saying specific prayers. The sinner was then not to partake in the Eucharist and had to complete a period of penance, while also separated from the community during gathering and wearing special attire to remind the community of the penance period. One glaring catch was the penance could last for weeks or even years, before the bishop would give a final absolution, typically on Holy Thursday during Lent Tkacik SLU 2023; Power 548).
However, as the Church as the grew more rapidly in the second and third centuries — all while experiencing a 180 degree change from being a persecuted faith under Roman rule, to a legalized religion that almost surreally now having the Roman Empire’s support under Constantine — questions and issues surrounding the reconciliation process also took on a life of their own. Considering the penance period for sinners was often lengthy– and above all, the absolution was a one-time, no second chances type of event — many believers used a loophole of waiting until near death to finish their penance and arrange for absolution (Tkacik SLU 2023).
As such, and as monastic movements sprung up and grew with strong force from the fourth century onward, monks became spiritual guides to each other, including hearing one another’s confessions, meditating on Scriptural readings regarding God’ forgiveness, and then immediately giving absolution. Now known as the Tariff Expression, the immediate absolution given at monasteries eventually influenced the entire Church, particularly pioneered by Celtic monasteries in the sixth century (Tkacik SLU 2023; Power 550).
Over the next several centuries, and up into the Scholastic Age and the High Middle Ages, confession as more of a private act, and with immediate absolution, continued to take shape. And while public confession and penance were still an option during these periods, including that sins could be confessed to deacons or even lay people (though bishops and priests were still involved with absolution), private confession became the more common path to penance and absolution (Tkacik SLU 2023). Eventually, and as Power explains by drawing on Lanfrance of Canterbury’s commentary on private confession, the sacrament of reconciliation into its own repeatable process: contrition, confession, absolution, and penance. This sequence was made official at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 (Power 551, 552).
Because the sacrament of reconciliation grew increasingly as more of an individual, private process — for which Lanfrance of Canterbury likened to Jesus’s empowered relationship with the Father (Power 551) — priests were the vehicles for delivering sacraments in persona Christi. The Scholastics, in particular, developed a more detailed definition of the priest’s role in offering sacraments: When a priest received holy orders, the Holy Spirits gifts him with the ontological means to carry out the sacraments in persona Christi; and as it pertains to reconciliation, that a perfect contrition occurs before absolution. Moreover, because priests were already deemed as having a privileged authority — especially the means to “exercise the power of the keys” (Power 552) — when compared to the laity, confessing sins to a priest, followed by immediate absolution, has ever since been the most common form of reconciliation. (Tkacik SLU 2023; Power 552).
Given the major shift from Canonical Expression to Tariff expression in the first several centuries of Church history, followed by an increased focus on the priests’ and bishops’ ontological means of giving absolution, what about the community aspect that had fallen largely by the wayside? Vatican II, as part of its efforts to assess and promote the Church’s place in the modern world, identified a serious lack in factoring the “social nature of sin, as well as the corporate and communal celebration of the sacrament” (Tkacik SLU 2023).
When looking back at the history of Judeo-Christian belief, beginning with the Old Testament, sin and reconciliation was more of a corporate matter among believers. The Israelites / Jews, for example, were commanded to adhere to the Mosaic covenant and keep the entire community accountable along the way. As Tkacik points out, the whole community often paid the penitential price for one person’s sin (Module 5 Slide 32). Even into the early Church, forgiveness of sins and reconciliation were more of a community matter than an individual one. Which means the Church also represented social justice and welfare. Paul’s reference to believers as one body of Christ makes this point even clearer (Tkacik SLU 2023; 1 Corinthians 12-14).
After all, does sin live in a vacuum? Even if a person commits a sin without anyone else ever being aware of said sin, doesn’t a sinful nature still influence relationships with others, and therefore how people in society treat each other in general? Therefore, because sin is not exclusive to any one person, and it often causes a chain reaction of other sins through society, it ultimately harms the self, God, and others — meaning reconciliation is just as much a community effort as it is individual (Tkacick Module 5 Slide 32). Power refers to Romans 5:12-19 to sum it up this way: “The sin of one cannot be seen except in relation to the sin of all and to the solidarity of sin, which can be overcome only in the solidarity of Christ of a renewed humanity” (555).
That said, the Vatican II documents, Sacrosanctum Concilium and Lumen Gentium, as well as the post-Vatican II Rite of Penance published in 1974, expanded out the options for the sacrament of reconciliation, which now feature three forms: individually, for multiple penitents, and general confession and absolution. The update to this rite keeps the same four components: contrition, confession, penance, and absolution (Tkacik SLU 2023).
Overall, the communal aspects of sin and reconciliation also means putting more attention on current social issues that may lead to sin and often affect the greater society. For instance, while topics such as abortion, homosexuality, different forms of discrimination, and sexual abuse can be difficult to navigate and discuss, they are all, nonetheless, topics that affect everyone and the Church’s relationship with society. With a fuller, more well-rounded approach to addressing the nature of sin, forgiveness, and reconciliation, the combination of each individual’s faith journey and the Church’s mission in the world mean being sensitive to cultural attitudes and changes, while still upholding the Gospel message and speaking truth (Power 556, 557).
Works Cited
Power, David N., author. Fiorenza, Francis S., and John P. Galvin, eds. Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011.
Tkacik, Michael J. Saint Leo University, 2023.
Tkacik, Michael J. Saint Leo University, 2023.