Confession and Absolution

In church, do your sins actually get forgiven, or are you only assured that in general God likes to forgive sins? Do you have to be penitent for the absolution to work? How penitent? Can a mere human absolve on God's behalf? And if so, how do absolvers know whether they ought to loose something or whether they'd better keep it bound up? In this episode, Dad and Sarah discuss Luther's little known 50 Theses on the Remission of Sins, from the year 1518, which has been dubbed by scholar Oswald Bayer as really truly the first Reformation text. From there we talk about general and corporate absolution in public worship in comparison with specific absolution of a private confession, and what qualifies as a faithful, evangelical liturgical practice of absolution.

Notes:

1. Luther's 1518 Theses on the Remission of Sins

2. Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg

3. Studying Luther in Wittenberg

4. Bayer, Promissio

5. Liturgical resources for confession and absolution from the Lutheran Church in Australia and New Zealand

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