Auricular Confession

Here's part of a debate I recently had with a Catholic apologist:

Notice how Catholics like Daniel shift priorities. The litmus test is no longer about confessing Christ, but confessing Mary. This is part of the Catholic racket. First invent make-believe sins: the sin of denying Roman Catholic dogmas. Then concoct a system of "reconciliation", in which you invent a sacerdotal office, then ascribe to your priests the make-believe authority to forgive make-believe sins.

Once again, notice how Daniel shifts the litmus test from confessing Christ to confessing patristic Mariology. Then he throws around the term heresy. Suppose I'm a heretic by the standards of his religious sect. So what? I'm a heretic by the standards of Mormonism, the church of Swedenborg, the Moonies, Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, &c. Since I don't acknowledge the dogmatic authority of his religious sect, the charge of heresy is only as good as the bogus authority of his sect. I don't care. That's not my touchstone. Divine revelation is my touchstone.

Confess your sins to someone you didn't sin against, and the priest will give you false assurance of divine forgiveness by presuming to confer absolution absent divine authority to do so. Great system.

What, I can’t back up that Christ conferred the authority to forgive sin (Matt 18:18, 2 Cor 5:18, John 20:22-23)

Mt 18:18 is a promise to the local church, not popes or bishops or priests. No lay/clerical distinction. So your appeal backfires.

2 Cor 5:18 has nothing to do with auricular confession. 

Jn 20:22-23 doesn't get you anywhere near auricular confession (much less to a Roman Catholic priest).

or that the NT isn’t filled with regulations on choosing deacons, presbyters, etc.

Followed by equivocation, where you apply NT labels to later ecclesiastical developments. Daniel then plays a shell game by switching from that to apostles appointing elders, as if that flows out of the appointment of Mathias. But that's categorically different. Then there's the equivocation over apostles installing bishops, as if you can backdate subsequent developments in the office of bishop to the mid-1C.

The context of Mt 18 has the local church in view. You need to learn how to do exegesis.

2 Cor 5:18 refers to the ministry of reconciliation, how this ministry worked out is clear from anyone who looks at the historic early Church

Watch a legend evolving in real time. Notice the bait-n-switch. 

or sees that confessing sins, and specifically to another is taught (1 John 1:9, James 5:16).

More traditional spooftexting, as if either one of those passages describes auricular confession, much less confession to a Roman Catholic priest. 

There's nothing in Mt 18 that confines the prerogative to forgive sin to the clergy. In fact, it doesn't even mention the right to forgive sin. Rather, it uses the binding/loosing metaphor. 

So no, I don’t think binding and loosing was something Jesus was qualifying as the capacity of some local church.

That's the context in which the infraction takes place: 

15 If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

By Daniel's logic, the Disney corp. c. 2017, is the same organization founded by Walt Disney in 1923. There's an unbroken chain of executives from Walt Disney to the current board. Therefore, the Disney corp's current LGBT fare represents a legitimate development of Walt Disney's original vision. 

The central question is whether the Early Church confessed sins, and offered penance.

That's the central question if the questioner happens to be a lay Catholic pop apologist. That's not the central question for a Protestant, who takes divine revelation as the benchmark of our religious duties.

Steve merely insists that we take Mt 18 in absolute isolate and applied only to a particular local Church…

Because, as I just illustrated, that's the context. One professing believer sinning against another professing believer, both of whom belong to the same nearby Christian community. Everyone knows each other in this setting. Mt 18 lays out a process that can be repeated at other times and places, but in each case, that would still be localized. 

don’t connect it to John 20!

I don't use Mt 18 to interpret Jn 20, or vice versa. That's exegetically illicit. We need to interpret Matthew and John on their own terms. 

Don’t connect it to Mt 16!

I'm quite prepared to discuss Mt 16. Be careful what you ask for.

At the risk of stating the obvious, which is always necessary for apologists like Daniel, serious errors arose very early in church history. Indeed, the NT letters document heresies arising contemporaneously with the apostles, sometimes in churches planted and overseen by apostles. So merely quoting early Christian literature or early church fathers carries no presumption of apostolic pedigree.

You misconstrue the context of Mt 18. You are basically arguing that since it describes how a local Church should function, it only applies to this one local Church. That isn’t how it was read historically, and the inference doesn’t follow. It is bad exegesis, Steve.

Daniel is unable to follow the most rudimentary argument. I didn't say or imply that Mt 18 only applies to one local church, in the sense of only one congregation that existed at one time or place. Rather, as I made clear, it applies to local church situations. 

We can, and almost all Bible commentaries do connect Mt 18 and John 20.

Once more, Daniel is unable to follow a simple argument. Proper exegetical method is to first establish what Matthew and John mean on their own terms, then see how they interrelate. By contrast, Daniel acts as though you can simply use the language of a text from Matthew to construe the language of a text from John, or vice versa. 

There are much better Biblical commentaries out there without such an obvious agenda.

Yes, there are some fine commentaries on Matthew, by scholars like Blomberg, Carson, Chamblin, Davies/Allison, Evans, France, Gundry, Hagner, Keener, Nolland, and Turner–none of whom endorse Daniel's anachronistic, revisionistic, Catholicizing interpretation. 

You claim it is a later development and I show early sources for the tradition.

Tradition is development.

Let's begin with a definition. Auricular confession is about confessing sin to a priest who allegedly has the authority to forgive the penitent of his sins. 

That's a specific claim. Evidence for that claim must be equally specific. Statements about generic confession aren't evidence for auricular confession. Not one of Daniel's NT prooftexts describes auricular confession.

I mean, come on Steve, do some real work here. You list fine commentaries and claim proper exegesis precludes the idea that Matt 18:18 and John 20:20-21 are about the same teaching of the ability to forgive sin being passed on to the Church. Show me the commentaries that prove this only held for one particular Church and not the whole. Catholic Church. Show me the exegetical argument against the connection. Don’t just say “you’re doing it wrong and your not a Bible scholar”. Be specific. Who does it right, and what do they say that shows the passage need to be isolated from one another.

Be careful what you ask for:

[Jn 20:23] The meaning and significance of forgiveness (or lack thereof) must be defined by the preceding context…The Gospel connects the mission of the church specifically to the forgiveness of sins…The message of the church is the forgiveness of sins through Christ, and the mission of the church is to liberate the world from the power of sin. And this commissioning cannot be narrowed to a single task but is prescriptive of the very life of the church, E. Klink, John (Zondervan 2016), 866.

[Jn 20:23] Yet Matthew's context is very different from the present one…focussed not on a mission to the world but on relationships within the Christian community. 

What exactly, then, is Jesus promising his disciples? Is appears to be a corollary of 13:20, 'the person who receives whomever I sent receives me, and the person who receives me receives the One who sent me,' while taking into account as well the negative equivalent now preserved in Lk 10:16: 'The person who hears you hears me, and then person who reject you rejects me…' J. R. Michaels, The Gospel of John (Eerdmans 2010), 1014.

To summarize, Jn 20:20-21 has nothing to do with auricular confession. Rather, the context is about a missionary church, where evangelized listeners are forgiven by believing the apostolic kerygma, but remain unforgiven if they disregard the apostolic kerygma. 

[Mt 18:17] The local community is here meant, not the church universal. Davies/Allison, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (T&T Clark 1991), 2:785.

[Mt 18:17] At the risk of becoming repetitious, it is appropriate to point out again that no specific officers or leaders in the church are mentioned in these verses, R. T. France, The Gospel of St. Matthew (Eerdmans 2007), 696.

Mt 18:15-17] The case Jesus presents involves an individual believer who has been wronged by another Christian ('brother'), presumably in the same community of believers…The illustration here is personal…Ideally, the two individuals should resolve the problem without involving anyone else…In this context [v16] these people will almost certainly be fellow believers, though no particular officers of the church are specified.

…if the matter does eventually have to come before the whole church…if step two fails [v16], step three [v17] requires a person to bring the complaint before the 'church'…This disassociation has come to be called 'excommunication' or 'disfellowshipping,' though usually these terms imply a much more institutionalized procedure than can be derived from Jesus brief comments here. C. Blomberg, Matthew (Broadman 1992), 278-79.

To summarize, Mt 18:15-17 has nothing to do with auricular confession. The context is local church discipline. The passage is about the duty of the offending party to make amends to the offended party. Failing that, the entire congregation must shun the errant "brother".

Daniel has the same methodology as Mormon missionaries. I used to talk to Mormon missionaries. They'd leave me Mormon tracts. Their tracts had prooftexts for Mormon distinctives. The prooftexts consisted of Biblical and extrabiblical sources. 

Guess what? None of the Biblical prooftexts demonstrated Mormon distinctives. Their Biblical prooftexts had to be fortified by the Mormon scriptures to put the Mormon claims over the top. So why not skip the Bible and cut straight to the sources that actually witness to Mormon distinctives? 

Daniel's the mirror image of a Mormon missionary. None of his Biblical prooftexts specify Catholic distinctives. He can only get to his destination by adding extrabiblical supplements. So why not drop the pretense, leave the Bible out of it, and just quote the church fathers, church councils, &c? That would be more honest.

At best, Daniel's biblical prooftexts are consistent with auricular confession. Mind you, auricular confession is demonstrably at variance with NT theology overall.

But suppose we grant for discussion purposes that his biblical prooftexts are at least consistent with auricular confession. That creates no presumption in favor of auricular confession. Something that's consistent with X is consistent with not-X. It's consistent with Scripture that Jesus was 5' 8". Nothing in Scripture rules that out. But it's equally consistent with Scripture that Jesus was 5' 7" or 5' 9". The consistency of Scripture with the possibility that Jesus was 5' 8" creates absolutely no presumption that he was, in fact, 5' 8".

In addition, theological literature after the NT is a swamp. Rife with legend and pious fiction. Consider all the apocryphal gospels, apocryphal acts of apostles, &c. Antiquity, per se, creates no presumption of historicity or orthodoxy.

Steve asks for evidence that auricular confession occurred in the NT. I gave verses in which we are instructed to confess to one another…

Note Daniel's bait-n-switch. Mutual confession is hardly equivalent to auricular confession. Is Daniel that lacking in elementary analytical clarity?

and used his own recommended commentary to show that we should understand the capacity to forgive or retain sins was given to the church.

I didn't recommend one commentary in particular. Rather, I listed several commentators on Matthew. Moreover, Blomberg doesn't agree with Daniel that Mt 16, Mt 18, and/or Jn 20 teach auricular confession, which was the question at issue. So this is another bait-n-switch by Daniel. 

Steve then has a commentary that discusses the contextual difference between Mt and Jn. There is, no doubt an expansion in context, and that was precisely my point.

What's the exegetical justification for assuming that John's account represents a contextual expansion compared to Matthew's account?

it is about the mission of the Church and not auricular confession. Historically one was fulfilled through the other. Just read church history.

Church history is no criterion. Church history is indiscriminate. We can find everything in church history. 

In addition, this is Daniel's backdoor admission that his Johannine prooftext is silent on auricular confession.