So I like a lot of Lutheran thought processes and theology so far, but have a few hangers yet.
One of them is confession and absolution. I have seen multiple places where it seems they justify the pastor saying "I absolve you of your sins", and then relate it to the keys given in the Gospel for binding and loosing.
I am having a hard time seeing this as any different than Catholicism - it looks identical, and even explained with the same passages.
There are, naturally, going to be some similarities. Just like Lutheran baptism and Roman Catholic baptism look nearly identical. You kind of have to go a little bit beneath to surface to find how the differences are both substantial and nuanced.
In Roman Catholicism it is expected that when someone makes Confession they are to spell out their sins. It may not be this way anymore since Vatican II, but in the past if you left the confessional with sins you forgot to confess, you actually just had more sins added on top of everything else you already confessed. So Luther, and the Lutheran Confessions place a great deal of emphasis that in no way is it necessary to have to try and remember every single tiny niggling little sin. This was a source of great anxiety for Luther when he was a monk, and it drove his confessor and spiritual father in the Augustinian Order crazy because Luther's conscience could never be made well. Rather than the conscience being freed by Absolution, it drove Luther to agony and despair.
So we understand that the point of Confession and Absolution isn't about trying to remember every teeny tiny little sin--we sin so often and so frequently and often without even thinking about it that if we tried to recount every single sin it would, like Luther, drive us mad. Rather we have the opportunity to bring those sins that are injuring our conscience, confess them to the pastor who does by the name and authority of Jesus Christ exercise the office of the Keys to pronounce our sins forgiven.
And that brings us to a second key difference. Private confession to the pastor is not required. Nobody has to make private confession, but it is available for our benefit, that we might have our consciences healed by God's gracious forgiveness which is declared to us. Because it is not as though pastors have magic sin-forgiving powers, it's just that they are Christ's ministers, who exercise the office of the Keys which Jesus Christ gave to His entire Church. The corporate and general confession of sins we pray every Divine Service is more than sufficient. When we come together as the Church and begin our worship by confessing to God that we are sinners, we have failed to love God, we have failed to love our neighbor, we have sinned by what we have done and left undone, in our words, in our thoughts, and in our deeds. So we confess and pray for the forgiveness of God who is, as St. John says, "faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
And then there is a third difference. In Roman Catholicism it is believed that the Keys are somewhat uniquely given to St. Peter, and thus the exercising of the Keys requires pastors to be under the Pope. While it is true in Matthew 16 our Lord says to Peter, "I will give you the Keys of the kingdom", He also says to all His Apostles in John 20 "Whoevers sins you forgive are forgiven them". The Keys do not belong to Peter only, but rather through the Apostles Christ has given the office of the Keys to the entire Church. Pastors, therefore, do not have a special "sacerdotal" (a word basically that means "priestly" in the sense that there were priests in the Temple in the Old Testament, the English word "priest" actually comes from the Greek presbyteros, "elder", i.e. a pastor) grace which somehow sets them apart from ordinary Christians. Pastors are ordinary Christians. Pastors are called and ordained by the Church (that means pastors are not over the Church, but under the Church, as servants) whom the Church for the purpose of good order calls and ordains for the work of pastoring, of exercising the Keys. Jesus called Apostles, but Jesus did not institute deacons, pastors, bishops--the Church did. The Apostles created the diaconate to delegate certain responsibilities. Likewise, the Church delegates, we delegate this specific ministry to certain persons--pastors.
Those are going to be some of the really big and important differences.
But, and this is important, that Christ said for His Church to preach the word, to proclaim forgiveness of sins in His name, that He said "I give you the Keys of the kingdom" and "whoever's sins you forgive are forgiven them" is all very explicitly biblical. The Church wouldn't be the Church if she didn't have Confession and Absolution anymore than she would be the Church without Baptism, the Lord's Supper, or the preaching of the word. It is Word and Sacrament which makes the Church the Church. Without Word and Sacrament the Church might as well be a fraternity hall or a bowling alley. It is only because Jesus called together for Himself a Christian people to hear and believe and preach the word, baptized, gathered at His Table, confessing their sins and receiving forgiveness of our sins that we are what He calls us to be.
And so it is upon this Rock: Jesus Christ and the confession that He is, indeed, the Christ, the Son of the living God, that His Church is built and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
-CryptoLutheran
