(08-02-2025, 05:53 PM)Chris Wrote: Just what we were saying, that ultimately God's Mercy goes beyond even the degrees of the Church. On one hand, yes, quite obvious, but makes you think how to put that scripture in context. In the text, Jesus himself is saying that whatever the Church binds on Earth is bound in Heaven (at least that's how that it was always traditionally interpreted) and yet, in this case what was bound by the Church, was then released in Heaven.
Yes. And perhaps also this: this passage in Matthew 16 seems to be about inner experience of the spiritual life, and discovering God within it.
Meaning;
Peter is a "template" for recognizing this internally in his spiritual life, and this exact mechanism becomes the "rock" of the church. As in the community of people who have experienced that same internal spiritual recognition. Not so much the institution of the Church, which often strays.
So the keys of the kingdom of heaven could be here: seeing how one's earthly life can grow or diminish your inner spiritual life and participation in the infinite spirit and Kingdom of God.
The "loosed and bound" are about alignment with transcendent spiritual realities. The Church cannot "decide" over these things - as Dante sort of suggests with Manfred being saved, despite his official excommunication.
Btw. the Greek is also fascinating here;
the bound/loosed words (δεδεμένον - "having been bound," λελυμένον - "having been loosed") are perfect passive participles, suggesting not "will become bound", but something that is already there.
A more precise English rendering could be:
"Whatever you might bind on earth will have already been bound in heaven, and whatever you might loose on earth will have already been loosed in heaven."
In the sense of confirming Dante's ideas; the spiritual realities are eternal and transcendent, and our "task"/gift is to discover and align with these.