First, “the power to forgive sins must be reserved for God alone.”
First, “the power to forgive sins must be reserved for God alone.”
§ 17. The remaining arguments of the Novatians are of less importance. (I) “The power to forgive sins must be reserved for God alone.”
We respond. There must be a distinction between primary [authentica] and ministerial forgiveness. The first belongs to God alone, against whom only we sin (Ps. 51:4). Nevertheless God has instituted the “ministry of reconciliation” among people (2 Cor. 5:18) and has given the power to forgive sins to the ecclesiastical ministry (John 20:[23]). Ambrose (De poenit., bk. 1, ch. 2): “No one does a greater injury” (to God) “than those” (Novatians) “who want to rescind His commandments and to refuse the duty He has entrusted to them. For our Lord Jesus Himself said in His Gospel: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you remit are remitted unto them,’ etc. [John 20:23]. Who is it, then, who honors Him more: the one who obeys His commandments or the one who resists them? In both cases the church preserves obedience to both bind and loose sin.”