Forgiveness: A schematic and a microessay

I finally feel comfortable with my grasp of the relationship between non-retaliation, forgiveness, and reconciliation, together with God’s will regarding all three

I normally reserve this space for essays and reprints of theologically minded correspondence, but I thought the above schematic, taken from a leaf of my journal, a pithy enough piece of theological ethics to be presented largely on its own, although my working definition of “forgiveness” is probably a necessary coupling to fully understand it:

forgiveness noun 1 : dismissal (of wrongs committed or debts owed) as grounds to claim amends

The diagram and the definition both are a natural outgrowth of my having recently written about Jesus’ reasons for subjecting Himself to execution, which include most fundamentally providing for the just extension of divine forgiveness to us and, derivatively, furnishing us with a model for how we are to extend forgiveness to each other. Through that writing and some earlier writing of mine on the duties of offenders, I discerned a lot of confusion, apprehension, and misapprehension about forgiveness—both its definition and its best practices—in the world, in the church, and in myself.

To further explore the subject and hopefully collaboratively suss answers to these questions, I recently read Potts’ challenging Forgiveness: An Alternative Account as well as Comment Magazine’s recent issue “The Call to Forgive” and several relevant essays in Stricken by God?: Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ. Among the questions these writers or I brought or developed through my reading were:

1. What is forgiveness’ relationship to reconciliation?

2. What about its relationship to memory? And anger?

3. What about justice? Does forgiveness require amends be given, or does it preclude them? Or is neither necessarily the case?

4. Might forgiveness be, as Potts would have it, merely mournful non-retaliation?

5. Who can forgive whom?

6. Can you forgive someone who is dead?

I now feel like I have answers to these questions, whatever those answers are worth to you. Here they are in brief:

1. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. It is rather a necessary but insufficient precursor. Other things are required before reconciliation can rightly happen. See above diagram.

2. Forgiveness is not forgetting. And, although I found I disagreed with Potts’ abstruse and minimal definition of forgiveness, I do agree with him that forgiveness is not the same thing as the abatement of anger.

3. Forgiveness does not by definition require amends from the offender, although it does require some form of confession. That said, best practice of forgiveness does require repentance, and a wise victim will often require amends as evidence of repentance. If you find difficult to digest the idea that forgiveness should often involve amends, try making a distinction between forgiveness and readiness to forgive and see if that helps. Also, remember that, depending on the relationship of the people and the nature of the crime, amends might be as simple as a genuine apology. Ultimately, the amends required are up to the sinned-against.

4. Contra Potts, forgiveness is not mere non-retaliation. He rightly sees all kinds of problems with requiring victims unconditionally extend forgiveness as traditionally understood, and I think that’s his main reason for promoting such a revised, minimal definition of it. But he loses a lot in doing so, including much of the wonder of God’s forgiveness of us, not to mention any way of making sense of John 20:23. I solve his problems a different way: Forgiveness is by definition offered conditionally (upon confession or its equivalent) and usually best offered even more conditionally (upon repentance and amends), as I wrote in the answer above. God’s forgiveness is conditional.¹ So should ours be.

5. Only the sinned-against can forgive the sinner. That even goes for God: He can forgive our sins against Him (i.e., disobedience as well as idolatry in all its forms, like greed, envy, lust, and pride), but He cannot forgive our sins against others, except insofar as those sins are also sins against Him (which, admittedly, they always are, but only in part).

6. It might be OK to forgive someone who is dead because the condition of incapacity is met: Dead people are no longer capable of confessing and communicating their repentance, at least that we can observe while we’re still alive. However, it might also be OK to retain the deceased’s sins in hope of witnessing their repentance in heaven. Would-be forgivers’ mileage may vary.

I realize here I’m offering mostly conclusions in the absence of much evidenced problematization, sustained argumentation, or even biblical prooftexting. But perhaps the proof is in the usage: Try these definitions and answers out in your own life—and let me know how it goes!

1. Potts makes much of Jesus’ request that the Father supposedly unconditionally forgive His executioners. But to the contrary, His request is clearly predicated on the condition of His crucifiers’ ignorance: “…for they know not what they do.”