Absolution as a Sacrament
When asked what Luther’s chief gift to the church
was, Luther’s chief lieutenant, lawyer and friend Philip Melanchton said it was
Luther’s correct teaching and proper use of the Sacrament of Penance.[1] And yet it was Melanchton
who wished to retain private confession as a third sacrament in the foundling
church and Luther did not. Their dispute centered on their definition of what a
sacrament is. Luther wrote:
it has seemed proper to restrict
the name of sacrament to those promises which
have signs attached to them. The remainder, not being bound to signs, are
bare promises. Hence there are strictly speaking but two sacraments in the
church of God – baptism and the bread…The sacrament of penance, which I added
to these two, lacks the divinely instituted visible sign, and is, as I have
said, nothing but a way and a return to baptism.[2]
Luther thought of private confession as “salutary,
but not sacramental.” According to Rittgers, Luther considered it “a
pseudo-sacrament, a means of returning to the inexhaustible supply of grace one
received in baptism.”[3] Melanchton, meanwhile, in the Apology of the
Augsburg Confession, counts absolution as a sacrament of repentance, of being a
symbolic act as a witness of grace and the forgiveness of sins. He wrote in Article
XIII, “Therefore, the sacraments are actually baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and
absolution, (the sacrament of repentance). For these rites have the command of
God and the promise of grace, which is the essence of the New Testament.” [4] If Luther needed an
outward sign, then the laying on of hands by the priest to the penitent would
suffice.[5]
The argument over private confession took a
different turn in the German town of Nurnberg, where a famous preacher, Andreas
Osiander, considered private confession as the only valid confession, banning the
practice of corporate confession of
sins – “a congregational recitation of a confession of sin followed by a
clerical absolution spoken to the whole assembly”[6] – which was also widely
practiced and accepted by the Reformers. Osiander’s argument was that
“laypeople would not attend private confession if general confession were
practiced, because they would think the individual encounter with a pastor
redundant.” [7]
While both Luther and Melanchton were sympathetic to Osiander, saying that
private was superior to general confession, they agreed that both should be
retained in Nurnberg.[8]
Out of this storm came the conclusion that private
confession a) was not a sacrament b) was still commended, c) should not exclude
a general confession of sins. The Reformers agreed that private confession
should be retained as a practice for Christian living.
The Demise of Private Confession
So what happened to it?
Rittgers blamed Luther’s hedging. “Luther
contributed directly to Lutheranism’s uncertainty about the status of private
confession. For better of for worse, the new rite was his rite.” According to
Jeske and Kuhlman, in the years following the Reformation, the practice of private
confession waned due to a combination of
·
“familiarity breeds contempt”: Jeske concludes, “the institutionalization and
establishment of any Gospel-centered practice will eventually lead to some
abuse through negligence and indifference. So it was with private confession.”[9]
·
practicality:
The sheer enormity of one pastor – John Winkler, chief pastor in Hamburg –
confessing 30,000 people’s sins made a mockery of the rite.[10]
·
War:
The Thirty Years war decimated Lutheran territories, and many Lutheran churches
did not have pastors for those decades; naturally, confession fell into disuse.[11]
·
Pietism:
Its emphasis on individual’s confessing their sins to God alone instead of to
the pastor and his theory of the transformation of the inner man led Spener to
criticize it for its mechanical quality by 1670.[12] By 1698, the Elector of
Saxony ordered all confessionals removed from churches.[13]
·
Enlightenment:
Calling it “this unhappy remnant of the Roman enslavement of souls,” [14] private confession was
almost totally abandoned by the end of the 18th century. [15]
Johnson concludes, “The evident fact is,
contemporary Lutheranism lives in a combined state of ignorance and denial
concerning this ancient churchly practice commended at several places in the
Augsburg Confession and urged on us by the reformers and many faithful teachers
in our own day…true Confession and Absolution have not so much been reformed as
simply abandoned.” [16]
[1] Kuhlman, p. 29.
[3] ibid
[5] Werner
Klän,
“The ‘Third Sacrament’: Confession and Repentance in the Confessions of the
Lutheran Church,”
in
Heilvolle Wende - Buße und Beichte in der
evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche Oberurseler Hefte, Ergänzungsband 5,
edited by Werner Klän and Christoph Barnbrock, translated by Mathias Hohls, Göttingen: Edition
Ruprecht, 2010, p. 9.
[6] Rittgers, p. 315.
[9] Jeske, p. 3.
[13] Mark
A. Jeske, "The Practice of Private Confession and Absolution in the
Lutheran Church," essay file, Wisconsin
Lutheran Seminary Library, last
modified 2010, accessed February 6, 2014, http://www.wlsessays.net/node/1017, p. 4
[14]
Kuhlman, p. 31.
[16] Phillip
Max Johnson,
“Exposed by the Light: Confessing our Sin and Naming our Sins,” in Whatever Happened to Private Confession, Lutheran Forum, Vol. 31, No. 3, 1997,
p. 15
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