During my 13 years as a priest, I’ve become something of an evangelist for the sacrament of confession, or what the American prayer book calls “The Reconciliation of a Penitent.” My zeal for this rite is founded in my experience both as a penitent and as a confessor. Like many former Evangelicals who have walked the Canterbury Trail, I stumbled my way into my first confession as a 20-something who had rarely named any of my specific sins out loud to another human being. I was baptized as a young child and raised in a Christian tradition that took sin (and grace) very seriously. Yet, while there was much emphasis on confessing one’s sinfulness, there was little emphasis on confessing one’s sins. After all, God had forgiven all our sins on the cross, so focusing on one’s past sins—a kind of spiritual navel-gazing—wasn’t encouraged.
As I grew older and my faith led me to explore more liturgical expressions of Christianity, the practice of confessing one’s sins was taught as a pillar of Christian discipleship. But the act of confession was largely a matter between “you and God.” We were encouraged to reflect on our failures and shortcomings and to name them, privately, in our prayers. The “confession of sin” was an integral component of every worship service: We were given a moment to reflect, in the sanctuaries of our hearts, on our recent sins, to express our sinfulness corporately in a congregational prayer, and to hear a declaration of God’s forgiveness. This declaration was grounded in Christ’s saving work on the cross and the promises of God’s forgiveness recorded throughout the Scriptures.
This is, coincidentally, the way many Anglicans approach confession. It’s a strange convergence among Exvangelicals and most cradle Episcopalians: namely, the idea that it’s important to confess your sins, but it’s also nobody else’s business except yours and God’s.
Yet, when one looks at the table of contents of the Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer, there in bold, black ink, one finds “The Reconciliation of a Penitent.” It’s a rite of private, auricular confession, just as one finds in Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. It involves the naming of specific sins out loud. While it’s true that the 1979 prayer book was the first edition to include the rite in its entirety, the practice of private confession has been present in the prayer-book tradition since the beginning. For example, the original Exhortation to Holy Communion (1549) prescribes the following:
“And if, in your preparation, you need help and counsel, then go and open your grief to a discreet and understanding priest, and confess your sins, that you may receive the benefit of absolution, and spiritual counsel and advice; to the removal of scruple and doubt, the assurance of pardon, and the strengthening of your faith.”
Similarly, the Visitation of the Sick (1549) says, “Here shall the sick person make a special confession, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.” A form of absolution is provided, and the rubrics explain that the same form of absolution should be used by priests in all private confessions.
Private confession indisputably belongs to our Anglican heritage, yet few Anglicans today make use of it. Many are unaware that it’s available in our churches. It doesn’t help that the meager resources online and in print only offer bumper-sticker theology, including the assertion that Anglican teaching on private confession amounts to “All may, none must, some should.” This is the equivalent of a road sign that says: “Exit Ahead. But you probably won’t take it, and we’re not going to tell you why you might need to.”
In my pastoral experience, I’ve found that many Anglicans are intrigued by the idea of private confession yet remain perplexed because they cannot meaningfully distinguish the act of privately confessing one’s sins to a priest from the confession of sin that occurs in the Holy Eucharist or the Daily Office. Many wonder, “Why would I need to confess my sins to a priest when I confess them every Sunday and receive absolution?” It’s a fair question.
The answer, in fact, is right under our noses. We have only to examine the wording of the two different absolutions to see that something rather different is happening in each instance. In the Holy Eucharist (Rite II), the priest declares: “Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.” In a similar vein, the officiant at Morning Prayer (Rite I) declares: “The Almighty and merciful Lord grant you absolution and remission of all your sins, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of his Holy Spirit.”
The wording of these “absolutions” is deliberate. They thread the needle by recognizing God’s merciful character, on the one hand, yet on the other hand, they stop short of declaring in absolute terms that the congregants’ specific sins have been definitively forgiven. Some readers may be shocked by this description. But given the nature of the general confessions that precede these absolutions, it couldn’t be any other way. I’ll come back to this point in a moment.
Consider, by contrast, the absolution declared by the priest in the Reconciliation of a Penitent: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive you all your offenses; and by his authority committed to me, I absolve you from all your sins: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (emphasis mine).
First, a grammatical observation. In the Eucharist and Daily Office, the “absolution” is an optative construction expressed through the English subjunctive. It is neither an indicative nor an imperative statement. Instead, it expresses a prayerful wish or invocation. It belongs to the same genus as a blessing or a prayer for healing. For example, when visiting a sick person, a priest might pray:
“May God the Father bless you, God the Son heal you, God the Holy Spirit give you strength. May God the holy and undivided Trinity guard your body, save your soul, and bring you safely to his heavenly country; where he lives and reigns for ever and ever” (BCP, 460).
This is wholly good and appropriate. But notice what this prayer does not do: It does not declare that the person has been healed of illness or disease, nor does it declare that the person will be protected from bodily harm in the near or distant future. The prayer doesn’t claim these things, because to do so would be presumptuous and theologically spurious.
In the rite of Reconciliation, however, the absolution is in the simple present active indicative: “I absolve you from all your sins: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Furthermore, it’s a performative utterance, in the same genus as the priest’s declaration “I pronounce that they are husband and wife,” or a sovereign’s dictate that begins “I hereby declare…” It’s the kind of statement that does not merely describe an action, but accomplishes it in the utterance.
What warrants such different responses to these confessions of sin? In the case of general confessions, the limitation is that they are just that: they are general. A priest cannot declare a definitive absolution in response to a general confession of sin any more than a physician could declare a patient cured without knowing the nature of the illness. This isn’t due to some limitation of God’s forgiveness or an insufficiency in Christ’s work on the cross. It’s simply due to the limited nature of general confessions.
Felicia Skene, the 19th-century Anglican social activist, writes, “In truth, it were utterly impossible, for the Priest to give Absolution, unless he had a perfect knowledge of all the sins that burden the conscience of the penitent. It were simply an unreal mockery to say, ‘I absolve thee of all thy sins,’ when he knows not whether they be such as can be absolved, or whether the penitence of the sinner be such as to render the Absolution indeed efficacious.”
Skene’s point (and the point of this essay) is not to underscore the limitations of general confessions. Rather, it is to magnify the great gift of the Reconciliation of a Penitent. In this rite, the priest does declare a definitive forgiveness of sins. The Anglican tradition teaches that this apostolic authority has been given to priests directly from our Lord, who said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). The prayer book is quite clear that only priests may offer such absolutions, and this is precisely because it is not the human person (who is a fellow sinner) who declares absolution but rather the priest acting in persona Christi who says, “I absolve you.” For sinners in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness, there can be no more comforting words than these.
In the Orthodox tradition, it’s customary for the penitent to make the confession while looking directly at an icon of Christ. The priest merely stands by as a witness and a vessel of God’s mercy. In the same spirit, some Anglicans make their confession in a chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, reminding ourselves that we are not confessing to another human being but to Christ himself. In the end, it’s true that confessing one’s sins is “nobody else’s business except yours and God’s.” But thankfully, God has given us a ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18) in which we can hear Christ’s words spoken audibly to us: “I absolve you from all your sins.”
The Rev. Dr. Stewart Clem is associate professor of moral theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis and theologian in residence at the Church of St. Michael & St. George.
