|
Binding and Loosing
Jesus told the leaders of his Church, "Whatever you bind on earth
will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be
loosed in heaven" (Matt.16:19, 18:18). The language of binding and
loosing was (in part) a rabinnic way of referring to the ability
to establish binding halakah or rules of conduct for the faith community.
(See the Jewish Encyclopedia: "Binding
and loosing (Hebrew, asar ve-hittir)...Rabinnical term for 'forbidding
and permitting.'") It is especially appropriate that the references
to binding and loosing occur in Matthew, the "Jewish Gospel." The
Jewish Encyclopedia continues:
"The power of binding and loosing was always claimed by the
Pharisees. Under Queen Alexandra, the Pharisees, says Josephus
(Wars of the Jews 1:5:2), 'became the administrators of all public
affairs so as to be empowered to banish and readmit whom they
pleased, as well as to loose and to bind.'...The various schools
had the power 'to bind and to loose'; that is, to forbid and to
permit (Talmud: Chagigah 3b); and they could also bind any day
by declaring it a fast day (Talmud: Ta'anit 12a)....This power
and authority, vested in the rabbinical body of each age of the
Sanhedrin, received its ratification and final sanction from the
celestial court of justice (Sifra, Emor, 9; Talmud: Makkot 23b).
"In this sense Jesus, when appointing his disciples to be his
successors, used the familiar formula (Matt. 16:19, 8:18). By
these words he virtually invested them with the same authority
as that which he found belonging to the scribes and Pharisees
who 'bind heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but will
not move them with one of their fingers'; that is 'loose them,'
as they have the power to do (Matt. 23:2-4). In the same sense,
[in] the second epistle of Clement to James II (Clementine Homilies,
Introduction [A.D. 221]) Peter is represented as having appointed
Clement as his successor, saying: 'I communicate to him the power
of binding and loosing so that, with respect to everything which
he shall ordain in the earth, it shall be decreed in the heavens;
for he shall bind what ought to be bound and loose what ought
to be loosed as knowing the rule of the Church'" (Jewish Encyclopedia
3:215).
Thus Jesus invested the leaders of this Church with the power of
making halakah for the Christian community.
|
