Annotation LXXI

”To thee I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 16:19

Whether the power of binding and loosing resides in priests.

Jerome, in book 3 of the Commentaries on Matthew, expounding this, seems to hand down that priests have no power of loosing and binding, and that nothing else was granted to them by Christ except that they may show and pronounce sinners [to be] bound or loosed. Which opinion he embraces in these words: “Bishops and presbyters, not understanding this passage, assume to themselves something of the pride of the Pharisees — so as either to condemn the innocent, or to think that they loose the guilty — whereas before God not the sentence of the priests, but the life of the accused, is inquired into. We read in Leviticus concerning lepers, where they are bidden to show themselves to the priests, and, if they have leprosy, then to be made unclean by the priest — not that the priests make [them] lepers and unclean, but that they may have the knowledge of the leper and the non-leper, and may be able to discern who is unclean and who [clean]. In what way, then, the priest there makes the leper clean or unclean: so here too the bishop or presbyter binds or looses — not those who are innocent or guilty [as such], but, by [virtue of] his office, when he has heard the varieties of sins, he knows who is to be bound and who to be loosed.”

Peter [Lombard], bishop of Paris, explaining Jerome’s words more clearly, in book 4 of the Sentences, distinction 18, speaks thus: “Various [things] are handed down by the doctors on these [matters]; and in this so great variety, we can indeed say and hold this — that God alone forgives sins and retains [them]. And yet he conferred on the Church the power of binding and loosing; but he himself looses or binds in one way, the Church in another. For he alone by himself forgives sin, [he] who both cleanses the soul from [its] interior stain and looses [it] from the debt of eternal death. But this he did not grant to the priests, to whom nevertheless he gave the power of loosing and binding — that is, of showing men [to be] bound and loosed. Whence the Lord first by himself restored the leper to health, and then [sent him] to the [the Lord sent him] to the priests, by whose judgment he might be shown [to be] cleansed. So too he presented Lazarus, now brought back to life, to the disciples to be loosed [unbound]: because, even if someone is loosed before God, yet he is not held loosed in the face of the Church except through the judgment of the priest. In loosing faults, therefore, or in retaining [them], the evangelical priest so operates and judges as of old the legal [priest did] concerning those who were defiled by leprosy, which signifies sin. And this manner of binding and loosing Jerome noted above.” Thus far Peter [Lombard].

There have emerged from this explanation of Jerome two errors. The former and older is that of certain scholastics, asserting that an excommunication unjustly imposed is of no force, and therefore is not to be feared — the handle for which assertion they took from the fact that Jerome said that the bishops who suppose themselves to condemn the innocent and to loose the guilty assume [this] from the pride and haughtiness of the Pharisees, condemned by the testimony of Christ.

Whether an excommunication unjustly imposed is of any force.

Meeting these [errorists], St. Thomas, in [book] 4 of the Sentences, distinction 18, question 4, says that Jerome spoke as far as concerns guilt, not punishment. For no innocent [person] can be bound in [his] sins by priests, nor can anyone deliberately persisting in sins be absolved from [his] sins; but in ecclesiastical punishments, sinners can be bound even by unjust pastors excommunicating [them] out of anger and hatred.

The latter and more recent error is that which Martin Luther here and there twisted [out of it], teaching that in no way can sins be retained or loosed by priests. Refuting his madness, Alphonsus de Castro, in the first book Against Heresies, elucidates the present passage of Jerome in this manner: “But that Luther adduces Jerome for his own opinion proceeds from a depraved understanding; wherefore these words must be well discussed, that their clearer sense may appear. First, then, it must be observed [what] Jerome said — namely, that the priest, by [virtue of] his office, when he has heard the varieties of sins, knows who is to be bound and who to be loosed; but he did not say, ‘He knows who has been bound, or who has been loosed,’ as he had previously said of the priest of the old law, that he discerns who is clean and who is unclean. From which words it is most plainly proved that blessed Jerome placed some distinction between the priest discerning about leprosy and the evangelical priest absolving from sin. For the priest of the old law did not cleanse the leper, but only judged that he had been cleansed; whereas the evangelical priest judges the penitent, who confesses his sins before him, through the key of knowledge and discretion, [as to] whether such a one is worthy of absolution or not — yet he is not as yet absolved before the priest utters the words of absolution; just as the leper, after cleansing has been obtained, is truly clean before the priest judges him clean. Wherefore blessed Jerome, speaking of the priest of the new law, did not say, ‘He knows who has been bound, or who has been loosed,’ but said, ‘He knows who is to be bound, or who to be loosed’; because from the knowledge of the sins, and from the disposition of the penitent himself, he recognizes whether he ought to absolve or to bind. For if he knows the sinner to be obstinate in evil, such that he suspects him to be in a purpose of returning to his vomit, he judges him unworthy to receive absolution. Since, therefore, Jerome said of the priest that ‘he knows who is to be bound, or who to be loosed,’ he intimated plainly enough that after the priest’s inspection — that is, after the hearing of the sins — something still remains that is to be done by the priest concerning the penitent himself, namely to bind or to loose. And as to what Jerome said, that before God not the sentence of the priests, but the life of the accused, is inquired into — [this] is to be understood not as though the life of the accused alone is inquired into, but that it is inquired into more principally, as the foundation of the whole structure, on which whatever the priest shall afterward do somehow rests. For if the sinner be in a resolve of sinning, however much the priest may utter the words of absolution, the sinner will never be absolved. Something more, therefore, the evangelical priest does concerning the penitent than of old the priest of the old law used to do concerning the leper.” See above, Annotation 62 of book 5, and Annotation 45 of this book, and below, Annotation 202.