Power of the Keys

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Scott

Puritan Board Graduate
The WCF has a very strong statement of the power of the keys held by church officers. I wanted to pass along these Reformation era forms of excommunication used in the French and Scottish churches. They exhibit a similarly strong understanding of the power of the keys.

The French form says, for example, "the Son of God will ratify and make efficacious to him [the offender]" the church court's sentence. It also notes that to ministers "God has given power on earth to bind and to loose" and church courts have actual authority: "we . . . by the authority of God´s Son pronounce against him" the judgment. The Scottish form similarly affirms the authority to bind and loose sins: "And his sin (albeit with sorrow of heart) by virtue of our Ministry we bind and pronounce the same to be bound in heaven and earth."

This was used in French Reformed churches and was agreed on at the Synod of Alais in 1620:
We Ministers of the Word of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom God has given power on earth to bind and to loose . . . do cut off "œN" and hereby aforesaid from the Communion of the Church, do excommunicate him, and do cast him out from the Society of the Faithful, that he may be to you as a "˜heathen man and a publican,´ and that among true believers he may be Anathema and a Curse . . . . Which sentence of excommunication the Son of God will ratify and make efficacious to him, until the sinner, confounded and abased before God, glorifies Him by his conversion, and freed from the bonds of Satan, mourns over his sin with tears of penitence. Beloved Brethren, pray God that He may have mercy on this poor sinner, and that this fearful judgment which with regret and great sadness of heart we by the authority of God´s Son pronounce against him, may serve to humble him, and bring him back to the Way of Salvation, a soul that has wandered from it. Amen.

The Scottish form (1571) from the Book of Common order reads:
We farther give over into the hands and power of the devil the said N., to the destruction of the flesh . . . . And his sin (albeit with sorrow of heart) by virtue of our Ministry we bind and pronounce the same to be bound in heaven and earth. . . .Thy Church from which this day (with grief and dolour of our hearts he is ejected.

The source for these is James L. Ainslie, The Doctrines of Ministerial Order in the Reformed Churches of the 16th and 17th Centuries, which similarly removed the missing pieces.

These forms are stronger than, say, the PCA´s form of excommunication in the PCA's Book of Church Order. The PCA´s version is true as far as it goes, but its subject is primarily suspension from the sacraments and shunning the person excommunicated. It does not refer to the binding or loosing of sins in heaven and the like. I could not find a sample of the OPC form online. Does anyone have one they could post?

Scott
 
Thanks, Jessica. I saw had looked at that but did not see a form of excommunication too.
 
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