Second, repentance existed also in the Old Testament.
Second, repentance existed also in the Old Testament.
§ 25. (II) No sacrament is common to both Testaments, but a sacrament is peculiar and proper to one or the other. But repentance existed also in the Old Testament. Therefore it is not a sacrament properly so called.
Bellarmine counters: “The sacrament of penance was first instituted by Christ. Therefore it is not strange if it did not exist for many thousands of years. In the Old Testament there was no power to forgive sins; therefore penance was not a sacrament.”
We respond. (1) Again, we note the disagreements among the Papists. According to Lombard (Sent., 4, dist. 22, C): “Some say that the sacraments of Baptism, confirmation, and of Christ’s body were instituted in the New Testament but that the sacrament of penance, as also of marriage, was instituted before the time of grace and even from the beginning of mankind.” But the Council of Trent (session 14, ch. 1) and Bellarmine (De poenit, 1, ch. 19) claim: “Penance is a sacrament of the new Law instituted by Christ after His resurrection.” Yet here they do not mean the penance of just anyone but only of those who fall after Baptism, nor do they mean the interior repentance, which they call a virtue of the mind, but only the exterior penance.
(2) Repentance existed in the Old Testament; this cannot be denied with any appearance of truth, since [in the Old Testament] there are many examples of true contrition, public confession, free reconciliation with God, and fatherly chastisements imposed upon the reconciled. And no one has yet been able to prove that Christ changed this into a sacrament. If repentance in the Old Testament was a salutary means of reconciliation with God, though not a sacrament, surely in the New Testament it can also be a salutary means of reconciliation with God even if it is denied that it is a sacrament. “We believe that we are saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in the same way (καθ’ ὃν τρόπον) as our fathers were” (Acts 15:11).
(3) That there was no power to remit sins in the Old Testament is an ambiguous statement. For if this is to be understood as a reference to some praetorial or judicial power, we say that such has not been given to ministers of the church in either the Old or the New Testament. But if it is meant to refer to the ministerial power to forgive sins, we assert that this has existed in the church in the time of both Testaments.
(4) What else could it be? Either sins were forgiven to believers in the Old Testament, or they were not forgiven. The latter cannot be claimed, since without the forgiveness of sins there remain no consolation and salvation to man. If the first is true, either God Himself forgave them without means or by means of the ministry of the priest. But now, all of Scripture bears witness that God deals with people in the matter of salvation through means.
(5) What is more clear than what Nathan says to David: “The Lord has transferred your sin” (2 Sam. 12:13)? Bellarmine counters: “Nathan did not say ‘I forgive you,’ but merely signified that it had been divinely revealed to him that David’s sin had been remitted.” This objection is in vain, since he was announcing forgiveness of sins to David not out of a specific revelation of God but because of the general rule that one must declare the forgiveness of sins to those who truly repent and believe in the Messiah, in just the same way as also ministers of the New Testament forgive sins not by an authority and power of their own nor out of a special revelation but in the name and by the command of Christ. Lombard (Sent., 4, dist. 18, D, from Ambrose): “The Word of God forgives sin; the priest is the judge. The priest indeed performs his office but exercises no right of power. He alone forgives sins who alone died for our sins.”
Nor is it the case, as Bellarmine counters, that Nathan once forgave only by an extraordinary foresight [providentia] of God; but special examples do not make a law. How else could it be? Should we think that the word of the Gospel was completely unknown in the Old Testament? Shall we claim that the sacrifices of the ancients were only silent ceremonies? The patriarchs and prophets not only reproved sin from the Law but also announced forgiveness of sins to the repentant from the Gospel. “Aaron confesses over the head of the goat all the iniquities of the people of Israel and all their transgressions, with all their sins, and places them upon the head of the goat and sends it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. That goat bears all their iniquities upon it to an uninhabitable land” (Lev. 16:21–22). By this ceremony the devout Israelites were informed about the Messiah, the “Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and were confirmed in regard to the free forgiveness of sins because of His merit. For this reason He is said to be “the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world” (Rev. 13:8), that is, because through the Word the benefits of Christ’s Passion came to believers even in the Old Testament.
(6) The apostles asserted that, about repentance toward God and about receiving forgiveness of sins, they were bearing witness to nothing other than what the prophets once said (Acts 10:43; 26:22).
Bellarmine objects, saying that they were speaking about repentance as it is a virtue and not as it is a sacrament. But this is begging the question. We shall not permit two different kinds of repentance which differ by an entire genus and even, as it is customary to say, by an entire heaven.12 One kind is a sacrament and, with regard to its genus, an action; the other is a virtue and, with regard to its genus, a habit, or at least a quality. In both instances the nature of repentance is the same, just as the benefits that are offered through the Word and that are to be apprehended through faith are the same in both instances. But if repentance is a habit of virtue, it will be either an infused or an acquired habit.13 Yet neither is said correctly. It is not an infused habit, for even though the Holy Spirit moves and bends a person’s heart to repentance, nevertheless this does not proceed from an inhering habit whose effect and “secondary actuality,”14 so to speak, is the acknowledgment and hatred of sin. Rather, this is kindled inwardly from the movement and efficacy of the Holy Spirit. Much less is it an acquired habit. Otherwise it could be acquired by usage and daily custom. But now, Scripture completely removes the true power to act, as well as salutary repentance, from the natural human powers. Accordingly, it must be said that repentance is not so much a habit of virtue as an effective movement of the heart kindled by the Holy Spirit.
Furthermore, disagreements also occur in the opinion of the Scholastics about repentance as it is a virtue. Bonaventure (Sent., 1, dist. 14, art. 1, q. 1) argues: “The virtue of repentance is the grace and mercy of God itself.” According to Thomas (Sent., 4, dist. 14, q. 1) there are some who wanted “repentance to be not a special virtue differing from other habits of virtues but contained under them all.” Scotus (Sent., 4, dist. 14) posits four different acts of the virtue of repentance, such as “to want to punish sin, to be unwilling to sin, to accept punishment for sin, to bear patiently the punishment sustained.” Durandus (Sent., 4, dist. 14, q. 2) contends that “the virtue of repentance is moral commutative justice itself.” Cajetan (Sent., 4, dist. 14, art. 2) asserts: “Repentance is religion itself.” Thomas claims ([ST,] part 3, q. 84, art. 4): “Repentance is a virtue in the will of man as in its own subject.” [Thomas again] argues (q. 85, art. 5): “The habit of repentance is infused by God.” Scotus contradicts him (Sent., 4, dist. 14, q. 3), as does also Durandus (the same dist., q. 2).
In regard to this subject, see Biel (Sent., 4, dist. 14, q. 1, art. 3, dub. 1), where he writes: “Just as the diverse acts of penance can be reduced to different virtues, so also their habits can be contained under various virtues. The act of vindication is reduced to the virtue of distributive justice; the act of detesting is reduced to various virtues; not wanting luxury, to the virtue of temperance; hating pride, to humility; enduring punishment for sins, to patience;” etc. Those are the words of Biel.
(7) If the sacrament of penance did not exist in the Old Testament, why, then, do they try to prove parts of it, especially satisfaction, from the Old Testament?
Bellarmine responds: “We prove only the virtue of repentance but not the sacrament from the Old Testament, or at least, perhaps, only from prophecies and figures.”
But they deny that confession and satisfaction pertain to the virtue of repentance, but rather they assign them to the sacrament, for they say that exterior penance constitutes a sacrament, as we saw earlier from Lombard. Thomas ([ST,] part 3, q. 84, art. 8): “Inner repentance, by which a person grieves over a sin he has committed, ought to last until the end of his life. But the exterior penance, by which he confesses to a priest in order to make satisfaction, should not last to the end of his life.” They want the acts of this external penance to be sacramental; nevertheless they try hard to prove this with the examples of Adam, David, Manasseh, etc.