Protestants Joining Catholics in Confession Comeback

Who knew that the ancient Christian practice of confession was making a comeback in a big way? While running a routine bookmarked Google Blogsearch, I discovered this short post, which led to this larger post by a Lutheran pastor, which led to this WSJ article. That's how blogs should work. One should be led from a statement of fact, to a source, and then to other sources.

What originally, caught my attention was the fact that earlier this past summer, 2.5 million Lutherans decided to revive the ancient Christian practice of confession. It seems that, for the last 100 years, no one in this particular denomination of Lutherans had been practicing confession to a priest. In the cited Lutheran example, the pastor wears vestments, stands near the altar, and penitents kneel and confess their sins.

Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved. For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much.
James 5:15

Now, while the Lutheran revival of confession may be mind blowing to me and some of you good folks, what really toasted my grey matter was the Wall Street Journal article that the good Father Eckardt cited at the bottom of his post. The revival of confession wasn't limited to the 2.5 million Lutherans. Oh, no. God seems to have initiated a confessional renaissance of the entire Christian church. Even evangelicals are practicing confession! Who knew?

Some evangelicals don't need any prompting. Joshua Wilshusen, 29, a respiratory care student from Lomita, Calif., started meeting two other Christian men for a weekly group confession two years ago. They gather at a park or coffee shop to ask questions such as "Have you coveted this week?" "Have you been sexually pure?" "Have you just lied to me?" Confessing helps him resist temptations. "There've been times when a sin has hurt me all week, when I've lusted after a woman or lost my temper at work, and then I confess it and the peace is restored."

Confession is one of the oldest Christian practices and historical documentation of the practice dates back to about 70AD where it is mentioned in the Didache:

"Confess your sins in church, and do not go up to your prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of life. . . . On the Lord’s Day gather together, break bread, and give thanks, after confessing your transgressions so that your sacrifice may be pure"
Didache 4:14, 14:1

Around the same time, we find the ancient Christian practice of confessing confirmed in the Acts of the Apostles:

Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices.
Acts 19:18

The early fathers of the Christian church were not silent regarding confession. Origen in his homilies on Leviticus states:

"[A final method of forgiveness], albeit hard and laborious [is] the remission of sins through penance, when the sinner . . . does not shrink from declaring his sin to a priest of the Lord and from seeking medicine, after the manner of him who say, ‘I said, "To the Lord I will accuse myself of my iniquity"
Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 2:4

I am particularly fond of this quote by Basil the Great from around 288AD:

It is necessary to confess our sins to those to whom the dispensation of God’s mysteries is entrusted. Those doing penance of old are found to have done it before the saints. It is written in the Gospel that they confessed their sins to John the Baptist [Matt. 3:6], but in Acts [19:18] they confessed to the apostles"
Basil the Great, Rules Briefly Treated

About a decade later John Chrysostom would write:

"Priests have received a power which God has given neither to angels nor to archangels. It was said to them: ‘Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose, shall be loosed.’ Temporal rulers have indeed the power of binding; but they can only bind the body. Priests, in contrast, can bind with a bond which pertains to the soul itself and transcends the very heavens. Did [God] not give them all the powers of heaven? ‘Whose sins you shall forgive,’ he says, ‘they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.’ What greater power is there than this? The Father has given all judgment to the Son. And now I see the Son placing all this power in the hands of men [Matt. 10:40; John 20:21–23]. They are raised to this dignity as if they were already gathered up to heaven"
John Chrysostom, The Priesthood 3:5

Remember...

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness"
1 John 1:9

However, if I am to confess my sins to another, I want it to be to another who has this authority from Jesus:

Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."
John 20:21-23

Source: WSJ - Confession Makes a Comeback