CHAPTER ONE: CHRISTIANITY

FAITH AND PRACTICE

 

Does faith include practice?  Or is a sinner still a believer?  These are questions debated in Christian history. In Islamic history the dispute between ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī raised the question whether the party “in the wrong” is a Muslim or not.  In Christian history the context was different.  This chapter looks at the treatment of sinners in Christian history.[1]

1.1       New Testament times

In New Testament times the shocking realization that sin after baptism is possible and does occur raised the question what is the status of such a person before God and the Church, and how he should be pastorally dealt with.  The question also arose how even good Christians can fall short of or deviate from the demands of their calling.

1.1.1    The Gospels

Jesus demanded a whole-hearted conversion and did not tolerate standing on the fence: Faith and baptism take away all sins (Mk 16:16); once your hand is on the plow don’t look back (Lk 9:62); choose father and mother or me (Lk 14:25); seed is sown in different places with different results (Mt 13:3ff).

Yet the Gospels also reflect the experience of the Christian community that sin among the baptized is a fact.  Forgiveness is possible, except in the case of a “sin against the Holy Spirit” (Mt 12:31).  This is a sin against faith, not believing that Jesus (or God) can forgive sin; in such a case a person cannot even desire, ask for or receive forgiveness.  The impossibility is on the part of the person, not on the part of God who can forgive anything anyone repents of.  God, moreover, could intervene from within and restore the gift of faith which the person rejected.

The fact of sin among Christians and the possibility of repentance is presupposed in Mt 6:12 (forgive us our trespasses, in a daily prayer), 7:11 (“as bad as you are”), 7:21ff (those who say “Lord, Lord”, but do not act), 13:24ff (wheat and weeds together in the farm - the Church) 18:15-17 (if your brother sins against you try to be reconciled), 18:18 (binding and loosing; cf Jn 20:21-23), 25:1-13 (the foolish virgins).

1.1.2    Paul

Paul likewise insists on a thorough-going conversion in 1 Cor 5:7ff (Passover bread without yeast), Rom 6:2-12 & Gal 2:19ff (be buried with Christ; sin should have no more power over you).

But sin is a constant danger for Christians: 1 Cor 4:4 (my conscience is clear, but that does not prove my innocence), 7:27 (the athlete fearing disqualification), Phil 2:12 (work in fear and trembling)).  Paul warns Christians against sin: Rom 6:12, 13:14, 1 Cor 6:18ff, Col 3:10, Eph 4:24.  The lists of sins which exclude from the kingdom of God (Gal 5:19ff, 1 Cor 6:9ff, Eph 5:3ff, Col 3:5) reflect actual failings of believers, whom he sometimes rebukes for dissension (1 Cor 3:3ff, 11:18ff), idleness (2 Thes 3:6ff), sexual sins (2 Cor 12;21).  “Some are sick and weak, and several have died” (1 Cor 11:31).  But for these sins repentance and forgiveness is possible (2 Cor 7;10); Jesus pleads on our behalf (Rom 8:34).

The pastoral treatment of such people requires first admonition (Gal 6:1ff, 2 Tim 4:2, 2:25) and, if necessary, excommunication (1 Cor 3:3-5, 1 Tim 1;20, 2 Thes 3:14-15, 1 Tit 3:10 = Mt 18:15-17).  The purpose of this treatment is to win the person back to God and the Church (2 Cor 2;5-11).  The Church goes no further than this; physical coercion is out of the question.

1.1.3    The other letters

Hebrews 5:4-6 raises the question of the possibility of repentance: “How can those who abandon their faith be brought back to repent again?.. It is impossible..” (See also 10:26,29).  These passages envisage the same situation as Mt 12;31 etc., referring to “sin against the Holy Spirit”, the “sin which leads to death” of 1 Jn 5:16 and the “second death” of Rev 2:11.  This is the greatest sin.

As for the next category, sins “which exclude from the Kingdom of God”, James rebukes those who have faith, but not the actions that should accompany it (1:22ff, 2:14-26).  His famous conclusion is the “faith without actions is dead” (2:26).  A Christian should be perfect and avoid sin altogether: Jam 1:4,18, 1 Jn 3:9ff (The child of God does not continue to sin), 2:8-11 (hating one’s brother).

But forgiveness of these sins is still available (Jam 1:21, 5:19-20, 2 Pet 3:9, 1 Jn 2:1-2).  While Paul stressed the effect of sin upon the Church and the need for pastoral attention to the sinner, other letters introduce the practice of confession and prayer for the sinner: Jam 5:14-16 (with anointing), 1 Jn 5:14-17.

Yet another category is indicated by a number of other passages referring to frequent or daily sins on the part of Christians, but not in a way that cuts them off from the love of God or excludes from his kingdom: James recognizes that “in many things we all offend” (3:2).  1 John 1:8-10 likewise notes that “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves..”  Revelation ch. 2-3 praises the bishops of seven churches for their good work, but tells some of them to repent: the bishop of Ephesus for losing his first fervour, the bishop of Pergamum for a “few matters”, the bishop of Thyatira for tolerating a false prophetess, that of Sardis for being nearly “dead”.  Compare Mt 7:1-5 (the splinter in your brother’s eye).

From all these passages we can see gradations of sin: 1) the most serious is “sin against the Holy Spirit” which, rejecting the gift of faith, eliminates the ability of a person to turn to God in repentance.  2) Next are sins which exclude from the kingdom of God, in Paul’s lists.  These are contrary to the love of God and neighbour.  3) Finally there are the “many things in which we all offend” which do not kill the love of God in one’s heart, but do wound it.

The psychological basis for this last category of sin is the fact that we do not always fully realize what we are doing or fully intend to harm.  Sin in Greek (¯:"DJ\") means missing the mark.  Sometimes we can be close to it, sometimes far away.  Our orientation to the ultimate good which is God can remain even while we are sometimes distracted and move erratically.  We are not like angels who are fully conscious of all that they know and see the full implications of every choice; they cannot commit any sin without completely rejecting God.

On the other hand, we are not behaviouristically determined so as to lose all responsibility for what we do, and we have to be careful.  Just as careless words and neglect in small matters can build up and lead to a divorce, so our relationship with God is threatened by any negligence, even if it does not immediately make us his enemy.

1.2       The early Church

The first three centuries are not well documented because the persecutions resulted in the destruction of much Christian literature.  Nevertheless, in the Didache, the letters of Ignatius and Clement and other early writings there are references to fraternal correction, sometimes excommunication, and prayer for sinners, including those excommunicated.  Prayers of repentance were said by all at the Eucharist, but those guilty of more serious sins were to be excluded for a time until readmitted by Church authorities, who forgave in God’s name.

Hermas (c. 150) is most significant at this time for introducing the idea that there is only one opportunity for repentance and reconciliation in the Church after baptism.  Anyone who sins after that, he says, “will attain life with difficulty”.  This does not mean that God or the Church cannot forgive, but that the person does not have a sincere spirit of repentance, without which penance is “unprofitable”.

As the Church spread, the pastoral treatment of penitents became more varied.  Soon Montanism (beginning c. 172) arose as a rigorist movement opposed to what it saw as laxism.  The Old Testament was said to be the era of the Father, the New Testament that of the Son, whereas Montanus was the oracle of the Spirit beginning a new age.  The Montanists also claimed for their prophets authority to forgive sins, as opposed to the bishops of the Church, but wanted it to be used only for lesser sins.  Speaking as an “oracle of the Spirit”, Montanus said: “The Church can forgive sins, but I will not do so, lest others also commit sin.”  In Carthage Cyprian mentions that some bishops in North Africa would not grant peace to adulterers.

Tertullian (c. 160-220) promoted Montanist teaching in North Africa.  He took over Hermas’ teaching that reconciliation for sin is available only once after baptism, but made it a dogma rather than simply a pastoral practice as it was with Hermas.  Tertullian also introduced the novel idea of “unforgivable sins”, which included idolatry, murder, adultery, fraud and false witness.  Although his teaching was rejected by the Church, it continued to influence theological thinking about forgiveness of sin for some time to come.

Elsewhere at this time Irenaeus defended the practice of forgiving any “who do penance and are converted”.

A new chapter in the development of this question came with the treatment of the Christians who had lapsed during the persecution of Decius.  In the immediate aftermath of the persecution Cyprian (bishop of Carthage 249-258) tried to steer a moderate course, allowing any lapsed Christian to be readmitted to the Church, but only after a “full period” of penance, except for the dying who were to be reconciled right away.  Grounds for mitigation were also to be considered in individual cases.  Cyprian’s correspondence with Novatian in Rome shows agreement in policy.  Later at the synod in Carthage at Easter 252 under the threat of a new persecution Cyprian went along with the need to reconcile the penitents as quickly as possible.  Reconciliation took place in a public ceremony concluding with the imposition of hands by the bishop and clergy.  Cyprian anticipated the rigorism of Donatus in not recognizing baptism by heretics; in this he came into conflict with Pope Stephen I.

Novatian (c. 200-258), in the meantime, was disappointed in his bid to be elected Pope, and led a schismatic group accusing the Catholic church of laxism for readmitting the lapsed.  Cyprian pointed out that Novatian allowed adulterers and cheats in his church; so later Novatianists expelled all grave sinners.  Novatianism lasted several centuries and represented a strong rigorist tendency holding that the Church is a Church of saints, and sinners have no part in it.

Clement of Alexandria (150- c.210) adopted Hermas’ idea of a single chance of reconciliation after baptism and contrasted the difficulty of this reconciliation with the simple instantaneous forgiveness given in baptism.  For Clement, repentance demands not just a change of mind, but also a painful process of purification or healing.  If it is not finished in this life it will continue in the hereafter, but those who have not repented in this life will have no chance of such purification in the next life.  The psychological and therapeutic conception of reconciliation became a tradition in the Greek Church.  A spiritual director is important in this process, according to Clement.

Origen (185-254) was another theologian of Alexandria who had a very fertile mind.  Not all of his ideas have been accepted by the Church.  One of these is the idea of apokatastasis or restoration, which meant that purification for sins will continue in the next life to the extent that even grave sins will be removed and hell will be emptied.  Origen uses the term “sins unto death” in a wider sense to include “idolatry, adultery, unchastity, deliberate murder and any other similar serious sin”.  These the Church can forgive only once, but must impose a suitable penance which must be performed for the forgiveness to be complete.  A person must confess grave sins publicly, even if he committed them in secret, and - Origen is the first to say it - such a person is barred from any Church office for life.  Apart from public confession, Origen stresses the need for a spiritual director, a holy man not necessarily a priest, to whom a person lays open his entire soul and who guides the person on the way of spiritual growth and purification from all selfishness.

Origen’s pupil, Dionysius (bishop of Alexandria 247-265) led the opposition to Novatian’s rigorism, and said that the lapsed could be readmitted to the Church after three to ten years of penance.

Both in Carthage and in Alexandria martyrs, that is, those who were imprisoned and suffered for their faith - but escaped death, were highly venerated.  Lapsed Christians flocked to them to seek their intercession, and they took it upon themselves to reconcile them to the Church by giving them a “certificate of peace”.  In Carthage this was done quite indiscriminately, and Cyprian contested the practice, insisting on a period of penance first.  Yet in Alexandria, and even in Carthage, the bishops gave weight to the intercession of the martyrs and reckoned it as compensation for part of the penance required of the sinner.  For Origen, not only martyrs but other “friends of God” can “help us and make us worthy to obtain forgiveness.”

1.3       After the peace of Constantine (4th-6th centuries

With the disappearance of persecutions, the way was open for masses of people to join the Church at little cost to themselves.  If there were moral problems among Christians before, now the general standards tumbled.  Public penance continued to be the norm for grave sins, but those committed through “weakness and inadvertence” were forgiven by prayer and almsgiving practiced in private, according to Augustine, Ambrose and Pacian.  The purpose of public penance was not to humiliate the penitent, but to enlist the support of the faithful on his behalf.  This penance involved first of all confession and being prayed over by the bishop, and secondly fasting, vigils, sexual abstinence, kneeling in church, exclusion from communion etc.  If the sin was committed in secret the person still had to perform public penance, but was not required to mention the specific sin before the congregation.  Reconciliation after the period of penance was performed by the bishop or by a priest he delegated, usually on Holy Thursday.  But it was given without delay in danger of death or in time of war, according to the Council of Nicaea and St. Augustine.

The peace brought to the Church by Constantine was disturbed in North Africa by the Donatist schism.  While keeping in mind the political basis of this movement in mobilizing the anti-establishment sentiment of the Berbers, we can note that theologically Donatism was another expression of rigorism.  Maintaining the rule that a lapsed cleric could not be reinstated, Donatus and his followers contested the ordination of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage in 311 because it was performed by Felix of Aptonga, a bishop who had surrendered sacred books during the Diocletian persecution.  The Donatists would not recognize the validity of any sacraments performed by reinstated clerics who had once lapsed.  They maintained, moreover, that the holiness of the Church excludes the presence of any sinners.

Augustine (d. 430) wrote extensively against the Donatists, distinguishing between Christians who had received the sacraments only (baptism, and the first steps of repentance) and Christians who received the sacraments and also had the holiness that the sacraments give.  Donatism dwindled greatly through Augustine’s efforts, but lasted until the Arab conquest.  Then the Berbers who once were Donatists became Khārijites in opposition to the Arab Muslims.

Augustine developed the theology of reconciliation in his commentary on John 11: It is the direct work of God to awaken someone to repentance, just as he raised Lazarus to life, but the Church, acting with the power of the Holy Spirit, unbinds the person.

The rule still was that one chance of reconciliation was allowed in a lifetime.  Out of caution, people gradually postponed this until they were dying, so that public penance became rare in the 6th century and unheard of in the 8th.  “Reception of penance” when dying then became a normal practice for all Christians, whether they were great sinners or not.  The Church by this time had come to a situation where it had no more pastoral programme for sinners who were in good health and leading an active life.

Although St. John Chrysostom (349-407) was accused of reconciling people to the Church more than once, the first general breaking of ranks took place in Spain, where repeated reconciliation became common in spite of the Third Synod of Toledo (589), which considered this an abuse.  Then Pope Leo I mitigated the requirements of penance for those who had been reconciled in danger of death but recovered; he allowed them to marry if they wished.  Clerics and monks were not allowed public reconciliation at all, but were debarred from exercise of any office in the Church and made to do penance privately.  In fact, taking vows in religious or monastic life was considered equivalent to a conversion.  Reconciliation and communion should be available to all the dying, whether lay, clerics or religious.  In monasteries both in the West and in the East frequent confession to a spiritual director, not necessarily a priest, became a common practice.  This was not sacramental or an act of the Church binding and loosing, but did affect medieval development of official Church reconciliation.

1.4       The early Middle Ages

Reformation of penitential practice came from the Church in Ireland.  There the “reception of penance” consisted of confession, the acceptance of the satisfaction fixed by the priest, and finally reconciliation.  It was available to all at any time, and there was no public exposure of the penitent’s sins.  Penances were fixed in books by various authors according to the gravity of the sin.  These were severe by today’s standards, such as fasting, sexual abstinence etc. from 15 years down to one day, but were lighter than those common in the Roman and African world where the penance might last for life.  The Irish penitential system spread over Europe through the evangelizing activities of Columban and other Irish monks, who revived the culture of Europe in the Dark Ages.

The concrete penalties for each sin paralleled the civil law of the time and emphasized the need for repentance to be genuine, but abuse came in through the practice of “redemption”.  Initially this was for those who were unable to perform the penance; they got someone to do it on their behalf.  Soon big men began to hire people to do their penance for them by proxy.  Various synods in the Carolingian period insisted on going back to the old discipline, but repetition of reconciliation was not questioned, nor the axiom “public penance for public sins, private penance for secret sins”.

Various synods, bishops and preachers urged the faithful to make frequent use of “confession” (as the whole process of reconciliation came to be called).  The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) made confession once in a year the general law of the Church.  There was some criticism of this, but the practice of at least an annual confession became general.  This was normally done to a priest, but Bede, recognizing the therapeutic value of confession, urged confession of “daily light sins” to any lay person the penitent may trust.  This practice, reflecting monastic custom, did not become very common.

The most noteworthy development of the early Middle Ages is the joining of confession and reconciliation.  Beforehand, penitents confessed their sins, were given a penance lasting some time, and finally were reconciled and admitted to communion.  By the year 1000, the giving of reconciliation at the same time as the confession, with some penitential practice following, became general.

At the same time the term “absolution” became common, obscuring the concept of reconciliation.  The power of the keys to “bind” was understood as the imposition of a penance, and to “loose” as the lifting of excommunication (when present), the removal of sin and of the obligation to further penance.  Some of the penances which became common in this period were pilgrimage (to Jerusalem, or Rome, Santiago de Compostela, Mont-St.-Michel and Tours), entry into a monastery (although the Gregorian reformer Peter Damian greatly criticized this), and self-flagellation, sometimes called “the discipline”.

1.5       Medieval theology of penance

The practice of the Church had brought into evidence several components of penance: sorrow for sin, confession, various penitential practices, and absolution or reconciliation.  The interrelationship of these components gave rise to various conflicting theories as scholastic theologians applied their minds to the question.

Without discussing all the complicated theories, we can note some of the view of Thomas Aquinas which gained wide acceptance.  He presupposes the distinction between light or indeliberate sin and serious sin.  The former can be forgiven in many different ways, such as prayer, acts of penance, communion and even confession to a lay person.  Serious sins, however, which cut a person off from God and the Church, must first be repented of in the heart by an act which turns away from sin and turns towards God in love.  This act itself, he says, takes away sin and restores a person to grace, but it must be joined with reconciliation to the Church in the acts of confession and absolution.  The action of the Church, in intercession, counseling, and most particularly in the formal act of loosing from sin, reinforces the person’s efforts to turn away from sin and towards God, lifting the person beyond his own efforts by a divine strength to amend his life.

Alongside the Catholic concern with the proprieties of reconciliation there was a widespread pre-Reformation Protestant movement of Waldensians, Wycliffites and Hussites, who maintained that the Kingdom of Christ was an assembly of saints and had no place for sinners.  For them any procedures for penance and reconciliation were totally irrelevant.

1.6       The Reformation, Trent and after

The scholastic theologians differed greatly among themselves as to the detailed interrelationship of the parts of penance.  In particular, they looked on the forgiveness of sins more as a personal matter than as something demanding reconciliation with the Church.  The debates over the sufficiency of “attrition” (sorrow for sin because of fear of hell) as opposed to “contrition” provided the Reformers with material to mock the existing system.

Luther retained the practice of confessing one’s sins to a pastor, but he denied the Church any real power of forgiveness.  The Church, for him, simply “declared” the person forgiven after he obtains forgiveness directly from God.  Luther’s critique began circumstantially, from abuses raging in the Church in Germany at that time, but his solution went radically against Christian tradition as it had developed from Apostolic times.

Luther’s fundamental principle was the radical corruption of human nature by sin.  The only divine quality remaining in man was faith.  Good works naturally followed from faith, but were worthless in themselves.  Religion itself is a worthless man-made product, the Church being just a corrupt human organization, not enjoying any divine powers or guidance of the Spirit.  All that is left is a fellowship of believing sinners, who try to support one another in their individual faith life.

In such a conception the Church has absolutely no role to play in the forgiveness of sins except to preach repentance, nor is there any need to talk about reconciliation with the Church as somehow embodying the presence of Jesus on earth.  The Catholic Church looked on sin as so many movements of the human will compromising or negating the life of grace (indwelling of the Trinity) and love (an action stemming from the presence of the Spirit, and therefore divine in quality).  For Luther, sin was a permanent condition or state of corruption that must coexist with faith (“simul justus et peccator”)One is simultaneously just and a sinner).

Luther was concerned with the danger of relying too much on external practices, especially indulgences, to the neglect of interior repentance.  Yet in stressing faith to the expense of works he fell into another kind of laxism, as he wrote to Malenchthon:

Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice more strongly in Christ, who is the conqueror of sin, death and the world.  As long as we are in this state we must sin; this life is not a place for justice, but we wait, said Peter, for a new heaven and a new earth in which justice will dwell.  It is enough for us, through the riches of God’s glory, to acknowledge the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Sin will not take us away from him, even if we fornicate or kill thousands upon thousands of times a day.[2]

The Council of Trent was held to answer the challenge of Luther.  It insisted that the sacrament of penance does reconcile the penitent to God through the Church’s use of the power of the keys.

1.7       Assurance of salvation

Two questions are involved here: 1) Can we be sure that we have the grace/love/friendship of God in our hearts? and 2) Can we be sure we will continue to enjoy this to the end?

Regarding the first, the general Catholic teaching is expressed by Thomas Aquinas,[3] who admitted that someone could have certitude that he has the grace of God by a special revelation, as Paul had.  Otherwise we cannot have absolute certitude, because grace comes from and relates us to the very mystery of God which we cannot directly experience.  Yet we can have a sufficient indication by observing the fruits of grace: having joy in God, detachment from things of the world, and not being conscious of any serious sin.  This assurance is augmented by sacramental confession and absolution.

As for the second question, Thomas takes a similar approach.  Our perseverance in grace in this life depends on God’s gift.  We do not know his mind nor can we force his gift, but we can ask for it with the knowledge that he answers our prayers.  The surest sign that we will persevere to the end is that we continue to pray to be faithful to God.

In his commentary on Romans, Luther agreed with the above positions, but in that on Galatians and later works he insisted that a Christian can experience the Spirit within himself and be absolutely sure he is in grace and that he will be saved in the end, because God protects his own.  The assurance gained from inner experience replaced that offered by communion with the Church and its sacraments.

Luther’s theory gave rise to the assurance that many Christian groups seek in a conversion experience whereby they are “born again” to be immune thereafter from all sin, with entry into heaven guaranteed.

1.8       The question of purgatory

We have seen allusions to this question above, in Clement of Alexandria, Origen etc.  The Protestant reformers challenged the concept of purgatory on the following grounds: 1) that it denies the automatic sufficiency of an act of repentance or conversion, meaning that a person could be forgiven and God would still hold something against him. 2) It is contrary to the goodness of God to consign a forgiven sinner to what was likened to a “temporary hell”, complete with fire and every sort of torment. 3) It seems to imply the error of “justification by works”, since the punishment due to sin can be reduced by doing good works. 4) It was linked with the practice of “indulgences”, to be discussed below.  On the other side of the question, we can quote Pope Paul VI:[4]

Every sin effects a disturbance of the universal order which God has disposed in his eneffable wisdom and infinite love.  It also involves the destruction of immense benefits with respect both to the sinner himself and to the community of mankind.  Christians of all ages have clearly understood that sin is not merely a transgression of the divine law, but also)though not always directly or openly)contempt for or neglect of personal friendship between God and man.  They have also seen it as a true and never wholly measurable offence against God and, indeed, as an ungrateful rejection of the love of God offered to us in Christ, who called his disciples friends rather than servants.

The full remission of sin, therefore, and full reparation, as it is called, require more than the restoration of friendship with God by a sincere conversion of spirit, and more than the expiation of the offenses against his goodness and bounty; it is also necessary that all those values be fully repaired which had suffered destruction or damage as a result of sin, whether they be personal or social values, or those involved in the order of the universe.  Such a process may involve voluntary reparation, which will not be without its penal side, or it may involve the acceptance of the penalties laid down by the just and most holy wisdom of God, penalties by means of which the holiness and splendour of the glory of God shine out over the entire world.  The existence of such penalties and their gravity are an indication of the malice and stupidity of sin and of its evil consequences.

The doctrine of purgatory shows clearly that even after the guilt of sin has been forgiven the sinner can still retain)and indeed frequently does retain)liability to punishments and can remain in need of purification from the effects of sin.  After death, souls which had died, truly repentant, in God’s love, but without having done proper penance for their sins of commission and omission are purified by purgatorial punishments.  The same point is made by the liturgical prayers which the Christian community has recited from antiquity as Mass, praying: “May we who are justly punished for our sins be freed through your mercy for the glory of your name.”

All men, however, commit small or “daily”, as they are called, sins while they are on their earthly pilgrimage.  For this reason, they are all in need of the mercy of God so that they may be freed from the penal consequences of their sins.

Thus remission of sins is not simply a matter of God’s decreeing forgiveness, but it involves a human process: first the turning of the will from sin to God (this is justification); secondly repairing the damage of sin to the sinner, namely, habituation to sin and emotional disorder and instability; thirdly the damage done to others, which the sinner is bound to compensate.  A sinner who dies after completing only the first step is forgiven and will not go to hell, but still needs purification from the after-effects of sin.

The Catholic Church has no defined teaching on the length or nature of purgatory.  Essentially it is a delay in seeing God.  This is very painful in the hereafter when there is no earthly thing to distract the soul from longing for the object of its desire.  It goes without saying that just as this life is the only time for renouncing sin and being forgiven, it is best time to repair the consequences of sin.  That is best done by a strong love of God and neighbour (living faith = faith + love), as the Song of Songs 8:6-7 says:

            Love is as powerful as death; * passion is as strong as death itself.

            It bursts into flame * and burns like a raging fire.

            Water cannot put it out; * no flood can drown it.

1.9       Indulgences

Indulgences were popular in the past, when the Reformers protested against them.  Because this historical question is sometimes still debated today, we should present a short explanation.  “An indulgence is the remission in the sight of God of the temporal punishment due to sins which have already been blotted out, so far as guilt is concerned” (Paul VI).  The practice goes back to the “martyrs” who suffered in the Roman persecutions; penitents sought their “intercession” to alleviate the public penance assigned to them.  The penitents also enjoyed the intercession of the priest and people in church services.

When public penance disappeared around the year 1000, the penitents began to invoke the merits of the suffering of Jesus, the martyrs and all the saints.  In this way “the faithful understand that they could not of their own unaided efforts make expiation for the evil which they had brought on themselves and indeed on the whole community by sinning.  Thus they learn a salutary humility” (Paul VI).  As a penitent takes steps to repair the harm his sin has done (by prayer fasting etc.), his efforts are matched by the power of Christ and all the saints.  His enjoyment of their solidarity is the essence of an indulgence.

In practice, indulgences have been relegated to a very marginal position in the Catholic Church.  In his major document on penance, Reconciliatio et paenitentia (Dec. 1984), John Paul II makes no mention of indulgences.

1.10 Summary

In Christian history there have been extreme rigorist movements, such as Montanism, Novatianism and Donatism, which excluded sinners from the Church and refused to forgive certain grave sins.

Besides this there was a fairly widespread rigorous practice of public penance in the early centuries, which in some cases extended to lifelong penalties.  The Irish penitential system brought about a general mitigation and privatization of penance.

The Reformation raised again the question of faith and works, putting the emphasis on faith and subjective assurance of salvation, taking the extremely lax position of demanding nothing of the penitent but confession to God in his heart.

A contemporary problem is the widespread loss of consciousness of sin.  This is a result of behaviourist thinking,[5] or lack of consciousness of God, since many people think they have sinned only if they are caught.

 



[1]Cf. B. Poschmann, Penance and the anointing of the sick (Herder, 1964).

[2]Cf. Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, IX-I, 1247.

[3]Summa theologiae, I-II, q.112, a.5.

[4]Sacrarum indulgentiarum recognitio, 1967.

[5]Cf. the study by the psychologist, Karl Menninger, What has become of sin? (New York, 1973).