It is customary to begin an Inaugural with praise of the previous holder of the Chair to which one has just been appointed. This task is made harder these days by the fact that Chairs don't behave in a predictable and seemly way. Time was when an established Chair had a persistent identity, but now Chairs are frozen and thawed, come into and go out of existence, in the most alarming manner. The Chair of Philosophy has recently undergone amoebic fission, it having being found necessary to appoint two people to replace Jonathan Dancy. I shall leave it to Andre Gallois, who specialises in such matters, to consider the problem of whether he and I have half the Chair each, or whether it has wholly ceased to exist and two new ones have been created. Nothing daunted by mere metaphysical problems, I will take the opportunity publicly to praise and to thank my predecessor.
Jonathan and I were colleagues for 25 years; we grew up philosophically together and it is to him that I owe my biggest philosophical debt. Jonathan is both ingenious and courageous. He delights in championing neglected and unpopular positions, and defending them with ingenuity and panache. The result is that people are forced to re-examine and take seriously avenues of approach which, without his efforts, they would have dismissed out of hand. He also has both breadth and depth. His wide-ranging interests include both theory of knowledge and ethics, and the cross-fertilisation between the two offers new insights in both areas. But above all he is a deep, tireless and self-critical thinker, returning to the same topics again and again, never satisfied with what he had said before and always uncovering more detail as he delves deeper.
I wish to extend the praise and thanks accorded to my predecessor to the rest of my department to whom I owe an incalculable debt. Since I am a home-grown rather than an imported Professor, my career has been shaped by the very department of which I have the privilege of being, at least for now, Head. It is impossible to imagine a friendlier department, or a livelier. Philosophical discussion continues, literally, at coffee, lunch and tea, and at many times in between. Most importantly, this discussion is cooperative, not competitive. Everything I have written recently has benefited greatly from that discussion, and much of that work is collaborative (a comparatively rare thing in philosophy). Tonight's lecture is a case in point since it is not my work alone but arises from a paper written jointly with Eve Garrard.
Like many philosophy students, my early philosophical hero was Socrates, and I started out with high hopes that the study of philosophy, and especially of moral philosophy, would tell us something about how to live. But the post-war period was not a good period to be a philosopher with those aspirations. Philosophy was an ingenious form of intellectual exercise, for those who liked that sort of thing; a discipline which left everything as it is. Science told us what the world was like and there were no objective values, so there was no task for the moral philosopher but to examine the logic of the word 'good' or, if he were very advanced, the logic of 'right' and 'ought'. I found this approach constricting and unfruitful, but it seemed, regrettably, intellectually rigorous. It was Jonathan Dancy who first taught me to question these prevailing orthodoxies, and led me eventually to defend a robust realism about values and morality. Philosophy has now reconnected with that great tradition which goes back to Socrates, and which takes philosophy to be continuous with life and which, to quote Plato in Gorgias, takes the finest inquiry to be the investigation of "what a man ought to be like, and what he ought to practise, and how far, when he is older and younger"
The topic of forgiveness is a part of a wider ongoing enterprise in which Eve and I are continuing a project started by Iris Murdoch, to see to what extent the ethical ideals of the Judaeo-Christian tradition make sense to a non-believing thinker. The guiding idea is that the concepts which have informed religious thought are not restricted to the believer but part of our shared heritage, and that leading religious notions often have a secular analogue. Our work has, of course, no pretensions to being theologically scholarly. That is not its purpose.
ABSTRACT
Basic Claim
Unconditional forgiveness of those who have wronged us is wholly admirable (though not
necessarily a duty)
Objections
Unconditional forgiveness is wrong because
(a) it fails to take the wrong seriously
(b) it shows a lack of self-respect
Analysing Forgiveness: The Three Elements
(a) overcoming of hostile feelings towards wrongdoer
(b) restoration of relationship
(c) wiping the slate clean
A Overcoming Hostile Feelings
Object of resentment is lack of respect shown us by wrongdoer.
Those who have no self-respect cannot
resent.
Those whose self-respect is impregnable are beyond resentment.
The absence of resentment is not sufficient for forgiveness:
(i) compatible with contempt
(ii) compatible with hatred
Forgiveness and the Feelings
Forgiveness requires an attitude of good will or love towards wrongdoer
B Restoring the Relationship
Not essential to forgiveness
There may be no relationship to restore or it may be bad or dangerous to do
so
One must be prepared to restore the relationship where appropriate
C Wiping the Slate Clean
Forgiveness compatible with:
Reply to Objections
Forgiveness compatible with:
Forgiveness not a negotiated contract - hard to accept an unconditional gift
The case for unconditional forgiveness
Many people think that the capacity to forgive those who have wronged us is a wholly admirable one. Lying in the rubble of the Eniskillen Remembrance Day bombing, Gordon Wilson held the hand of his daughter, Marie, as she lay beside him, dying. At that moment he forgave the bombers. It would seem churlish, to say the least, to feel anything but unreserved admiration for what he did.
Forgiveness is, of course, a central virtue in the Christian tradition. In the Lord's Prayer Christians ask God to forgive them the wrongs they have done, even as they themselves have forgiven those who have wronged them. This ideal of forgiveness is expressed in, among other places, the parable of the prodigal son. One reflection on this parable, from the sermons of H.A. Williams (then Fellow and Dean of Trinity, Cambridge) has remained with me ever since I was an undergraduate.
On this understanding of the parable (I don't claim that this is the only understanding of it) the father has already forgiven the son before the son has apologised, before he has heard the extent of the son's offence, even before the father knows why the son has returned home, or that he has repented. This passage seemed to me then, as it does now, to express an inspiring ideal of forgiveness which could appeal to the secular moralist as well as the Christian. On this view, the highest form of forgiveness, to which men might aspire but which God might instantiate, would be unconditional and universal. It would be freely, spontaneously and lovingly offered to all who had offended, even if they were unrepentant. In Gordon Wilson's case the forgiveness is immediately and readily given even though there is no reason to suppose that those who planted the bomb had repented.
Objections to unconditional
forgiveness
When I turned to what philosophers had written on this subject, however, I found the ideal of unconditional forgiveness rejected as morally unacceptable. In some cases, the objection was that one should not be too willing to forgive: over-eagerness to grant forgiveness is a fault, not a virtue. Here are two instances of this objection. The first is from Richard Swinburne, the second from Jeffrie Murphy.
This approach is also endorsed by Berel Lang, who claims there are cases where "because of the nature of the violation or of the harm caused or because the conditions for forgiveness have not been met, the act of forgiveness would itself be a wrong" (p. 110-11). Lang goes further than Swinburne and Murphy, however, in suggesting that there may be acts so wrong (the Holocaust springs to mind) that there are no conditions under which they should be forgiven.
I said earlier that it would be churlish, to say the least, not to feel unstinted admiration for Gordon Wilson's gesture at Eniskillen, but Eve Garrard has told me that she knows of people who dissent from this view. Firstly, it can be seen as an easy gesture, which puts those who cannot or will not forgive in a poor light. Secondly, it might be seen as undermining the position of those who are committed to fighting the evil of terrorism, to rooting out and destroying evil.
These objections can, I think, be summed up under two heads. Unconditional forgiveness of a serious wrong is undesirable: first, because it fails to take the wrong seriously; second, because it shows a lack of self-respect or self-esteem. As S.J. Perelman wittily put it: "To err is human, to forgive, supine". What we would like to show is that there is conceptual space for a coherent and defensible conception of forgiveness which is not vulnerable to these criticisms. I shall concentrate on the issue of whether forgiveness can or should be unconditional, leaving aside the issue of universality - the issue of whether there are wrongs so heinous that they cannot be forgiven. Our claim will be that, assuming that the wrong in question is not unforgivable, unconditional forgiveness is always admirable without qualification. We are right, on my view, to think it preferable to a forgiveness that is hesitant, equivocal, or granted only once certain conditions have been met. In saying that unconditional forgiveness is admirable I am not saying, however, that it is always obligatory. Far from it. In many cases it will be difficult, perhaps even impossible, for the victim to forgive. In such cases no blame will attach to the victim if he does not forgive, and he will have done nothing wrong. Using a technical theological term which philosophers have taken over for their own purposes we can say that forgiveness is supererogatory - a meritorious act over and above the call of duty.
Analysing forgiveness - the three
elements
In order to defend this claim I need to look much more closely at what forgiveness is. For, we contend, much of the hostility to unconditional forgiveness stems from confusing forgiveness with other (related) concepts. In analyses of the nature of forgiveness three factors are commonly mentioned. First, that it involves the suspension or overcoming of hostile feelings towards the wrongdoer. Second, that it involves or fosters reconciliation and restoration of relationships. Third, that forgiveness involves, in some sense, the removal or bracketing off of the wrong, or of the guilt created by the wrong - the wiping clean of the slate. None of these elements are, as yet, very clear, but enough has already been said to explain the hostility felt to unconditional forgiveness. For, first, is it not perfectly proper and a sign of a virtuous character to feel various kinds of hostility to serious wrongdoing? Second, are there not wrongdoers with whom it would be morally wrong to associate? Finally, if we wipe the slate clean do we not let the wrongdoer off too lightly by waiving the just requirement for reparation from and punishment of the wrongdoer? And do we not thereby fail to take seriously the wrong which may have been done to other victims, who do not or cannot forgive? It seems reasonable to suppose that anything which would count as forgiveness must contain or imply some version of these three elements. The task, therefore, of one who seeks to defend the acceptability of unconditional forgiveness must be to produce an analysis which contains these three elements in some form, but which does not have these unacceptable consequences.
A: Overcoming hostile feelings
(1) Resentment
Nothing is more natural than that we should resent wrongs done to us. Both Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton (in a useful dialogue in their book Forgiveness and Mercy) take it that the object of resentment is the lack of respect shown to us by the wrongdoer, and both see resentment as a way of defending one's self-respect. To that extent, resentment is a sign of weakness for, as Hampton argues, someone whose self-respect is totally secure may be hurt and wounded by being wronged, but she will not feel slighted, and so cannot resent. In a subtle and persuasive analysis, Hampton distinguishes between those who are beyond or above resentment, those who cannot resent and those who do resent, in terms of their differing attitudes to the implied verdict on their status revealed in the wrongdoer's disrespectful act.
Those who cannot resent are those whose self-respect is undermined, who take themselves to have the low status which the wrongdoer's act implies that they have. Those who are beyond resentment are so secure in their self-respect that nothing can ruffle their equanimity. They may recognise the demeaning nature of the wrongful act, but they are not, and do not feel themselves to be, diminished or degraded. The resenter, she suggests, has insecure self-respect. While believing to some degree that he is worthy of respect, he also fears, to some extent, that he may not have the status he likes to think he has. This makes him touchy. Resentment, she claims, is an emotion whose purpose is the defiant reaffirmation of one's rank and value in the face of treatment calling them into question in one's own mind. It involves the desire to vindicate one's rank either by vanquishing your enemy by inflicting a harm on him (malice) or, perhaps less satisfyingly, hoping some evil will befall him so that he will join you at the bottom of the heap (spite). It is thus competitive in spirit, concerned with one's relative ranking.
This attractive account seems along the right lines and for our purposes it will do. I want to point out two consequences which will be important in what follows. First, on this account one can only resent a wrong which has been done to oneself. Resentment is a personal reaction to an attack on one's own status or self-respect. This seems plausible. I can be appalled and outraged by the massacres in Algeria, but I cannot resent them unless I see myself, in some way or another, as a victim, as someone who has been wronged. Second, I want to develop her thoughts about people who are beyond resentment. There is a way of being beyond resentment which does not ground forgiveness. One may regard oneself as so superior to the pygmies who have had the temerity to attack one that it is beneath one's dignity to resent their puny insults. This is the attitude of Aristotle's great-souled man.
But if he is honoured by just anyone, or for something small he will entirely disdain it; for that is not what he is worthy of. And similarly he will disdain dishonour; for it will not be justly attached to him. ...
He is not prone to marvel, since he finds nothing great; or to remember evils, since it is not proper to a magnanimous person to nurse memories, especially not of evils, but to overlook them.
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics (trans. Irwin) 1124a; 1125a
Whether or not Aristotle was right to find such a person admirable it is clear that, though he does not resent, this is not a portrait of a forgiving spirit. For here what is foregrounded is one's own superior status and the attitude to the offender is one of contempt to an inferior. The mere absence of resentment does not seem sufficient, therefore, for forgiveness. Something more is required. If we are to find room for forgiveness there must be some other, more attractive, way of being, or moving, beyond resentment.
(2) Indignation and anger
Are there any hostile feelings, other than resentment, which may also need to be overcome before one can forgive? Any one who comes to learn of a serious moral wrong may feel moral indignation; there seems no reason why the victim should not feel at least as indignant as anyone else. Indignation, as Hampton notes, is impersonal, in a way that resentment is not - in the sense that third parties can feel it on behalf of victims. Indignation, I suggest, is a form of anger, and may take either or both of two forms. The first type of reaction is to wish to do what one can to resist the wrong, by fight or protest, and to bring comfort and succour to the oppressed. But anger can also take the form of hatred, the desire to see the other person suffer without any thought of what good it would do. Let him rot in hell. This second form of anger, hatred of the wrongdoer, seems pretty clearly incompatible with forgiveness. It is the thought that the first kind of anger is also ruled out by forgiveness which seems to me a main source of the objection that unconditional forgiveness would be a way of condoning the wrong, of not upholding morality and, if one is the victim, might even be seen as indicative of a lack of self-esteem. I shall shortly argue that feeling the first form of anger is compatible with forgiveness.
Forgiveness and the feelings
What place do feelings have in forgiveness? First, forgiveness is impossible if there is resentment, for resentment is a form of ill will, and forgiveness is surely incompatible with ill will. Second, and for the same reasons, forgiveness is impossible if there is hatred of the wrongdoer himself (and not simply of his deeds). If either of these is present, they must be overcome. (I turn briefly to the question of how this is possible later.) Third, these hostile feelings do not have to be present, and then overcome, in order for forgiveness to be possible. No doubt forgiveness which strives against obstacles has a heroic quality, and is particularly therapeutic for the forgiver, but one in whom the quality of forgiveness is deeply embedded may never feel hatred in the first place. Effortless virtue is still virtue. Fourthly, as we have seen, there is more to forgiveness than the mere absence of hatred and ill will, for their absence is compatible with cold indifference or haughty contempt, with a wish to dismiss both the person and the deed from one's mind. What more is required? Our suggestion is that to forgive is to adopt an attitude of good will or love towards the wrongdoer, in the face of the wrongdoer's injury to the person who forgives. There has to be some concern, which may vary depending on context, for the wrongdoer's well-being. The forgiver moves beyond resentment, but not in the manner of Aristotle's great-souled man. The focus is different; it is not on his own superiority but on the needs and concerns of others, including the wrongdoer.
Third-party forgiveness
Most writers in this field think that forgiveness is essentially first-personal. Only those who have been injured have anything to forgive. Some, however, contend that it is possible to forgive wrongs which did not directly affect you. On our account, forgiveness requires the absence of both resentment and hatred. While the former is something only the victim can feel, the latter is something anyone could feel. So our account leaves room for forgiveness by third-parties, while not insisting on its possibility, since overcoming or suspending hatred of wicked people could, if one wished, be seen as a form of forgiveness.
B Restoring the relationship - Love and
reconciliation
Is this account sufficient on its own, or do we need to add to it? As I pointed out earlier, the second element that is often mentioned in accounts of forgiveness suggests that we do need to say something a little more specific: forgiveness is closely tied, those accounts suggest, with reconciliation and the restoration of relationship. How close is that tie? One suggestion is that forgiveness involves a desire and willingness to restore the relationship damaged by the wrong. (This is particularly prominent, of course, in accounts of divine forgiveness.) That conception of forgiveness goes with one understanding of the third element in most accounts of forgiveness, that forgiveness involves wiping the slate clean, making it as if, as far as possible, the wrong had not been done.
We contend, on the contrary, that a willingness to restore a prior relationship is important in many cases of forgiveness but it is not always possible, and where it is possible it is not always required, desirable, or even permissible. Here are some examples to illustrate the point.
1 Sometimes there was no prior relationship to restore. A hit and run driver damages my car (or me, or my child). Surely I am not precluded from forgiving the driver just because we have no prior relationship. (I shall mention, without discussing, an interesting response to this objection: namely that even those who have never met stand in a moral relationship, in virtue perhaps of their common humanity, which can be breached by thoughtless or wicked conduct)
2 After an acrimonious and bitter quarrel two friends (or two lovers) who have shared a house for a long time go their separate ways. Later, both parties learn, perhaps through counselling, to forgive each other. Does this mean that they are required to restore their full former relationship? No. They may if they wish. If they have since entered into other relationships then it may not even be desirable or permissible for them to return to the status quo ante.
3 A restoration of relationship may be dangerous. A battered wife may forgive her husband but she may rightly think it too dangerous to live with him (even if he has repented).
4 I may realise that a restoration of relationship would be bad for the person I have forgiven. Perhaps he sees me as a prop and needs to be independent, or perhaps my company would be a reminder of past pain.
5 Forgiveness is compatible with a refusal, at least at first, to restore full trust or full privileges in a relationship. You borrow my car and crash it. I forgive you. Do I have to lend you my car again? You are constantly unreliable. I forgive you, but I cease to entrust you with important tasks.
6 Finally, we can forgive the dead, with whom we cannot restore a prior relationship.
[It might be thought that this last case raises difficulties for our account. For how can I really adopt an attitude of good will towards the dead, if that means wishing them well. For (leaving issues of personal immortality aside) they are beyond the reach of good and ill. But that last claim is doubtful. What happens after you die can affect how well your life has gone. If the great project to which your life was devoted, finding a cure for cancer for example, collapses immediately after your death, then your life has surely gone worse than it would have done had the project succeeded. And what the survivors do can make a difference to the goodness or badness of one's life. That is why we think maligning or slandering the dead, or failing to respect their wishes is deplorable. And just as we can harm the dead we can benefit them. If someone completes your project after your death then they have helped to make your life go better. Why shouldn't my overcoming hostility and adopting an attitude of good will towards you after your death make your life to have gone better?]
If this is right, then a willingness to restore the relationship cannot constitute forgiveness, though it may follow from it, where the circumstances demand it. The analysis we have put forward shows why. To adopt an attitude of good will towards someone may involve a willingness to enter into a fully restored relationship when that is the appropriate way of expressing that good will.
C Wiping the slate clean
In forgiving, the forgiver is thought of as wiping the slate clean. One way of conceiving of this is that the forgiver behaves as if the wrong had never happened. And that seems to mean that, once forgiveness has taken place, all reference to the wrong must be dropped, and all the consequences that might flow from wrongdoing are cancelled. So conceived, it is easy to see how unconditional forgiveness can be portrayed as letting the wrongdoer off too lightly. On the analysis I have suggested, forgiveness does not entail these consequences. An attitude of good will to the wrongdoer in the face of the wrong he has done me is, I claim, in principle compatible with the forthright condemnation of his wrongdoing, the acceptance of his apologies and regrets, the payment of reparation, and with the wrongdoer's punishment.
Protesting and resisting
To forgive an unrepentant, or a persistent, wrongdoer unconditionally does not rule out protesting at his wrongdoing and, where necessary, resisting it. For to protest and resist are not incompatible with an attitude of good will and love. This is easily seen if we think of a case where a good friend is contemplating doing something wrong to someone else. Is it incompatible with a proper loving relationship that I should do everything reasonable to dissuade him? Forgiving your enemies is compatible with engaging in a just war against them.
Atonement and reparation
When I am wronged I normally have not one but two grounds of complaint. The first is that I have harmed insofar as I have suffered some loss or injury. But of course I can be harmed without being wronged. The second is that, in harming me, the perpetrator has wronged me. And in wronging me, the wrongdoer has failed to show me proper respect, perhaps demeaned me in some way. When I forgive before full atonement has been made I waive that second ground of complaint, and in this we find the (limited) truth behind the notion of wiping the slate clean. I do not hold it against the wrongdoer that he has wronged me. What does waiving the second ground of complaint amount to? It consists in not insisting on full atonement. Swinburne distinguishes four elements in atonement: repentance, apology, reparation and penance. On our view, to forgive involves waiving one's right to apology and penance. (By penance, Swinburne means doing something extra, offering some gift, to make up for the wrong.) To insist on an apology is to insist that the wrongdoer humble himself before one, and this implies that there is some residual resentment, some loss of self-esteem which still requires recompense. And similar remarks apply to insisting on penance. This does not mean, however, that I should refuse either apology or penance if the wrongdoer still wishes to give them despite my assurance of forgiveness. For it may be important to the wrongdoer's peace of mind that she apologise, and perhaps explain, and to brush it aside would itself be evidence that one had not fully forgiven, that one's attitude was more one of distancing both of us from the event rather than genuinely facing and forgiving the wrong done. And to refuse a gift would be churlish and unforgiving in the extreme. Nor, if the forgiveness is unconditional, can I insist on repentance as a condition of forgiveness, but I can hope for it and work for it - not for my own satisfaction, but because it is part of wishing the person well that I should wish her to repent. (A failure to forgive might go with the hope that the wrongdoer does not repent so that I can feel justified in keeping up my resentment.)
But things are quite different with reparation, in so far as it is restitution or compensation for the harm done, leaving the wrong to one side. If you damage my car and I forgive you do I have to let you off paying for the repair? Of course not. It might, in some circumstances (I am rich and you are poor) be generous of me to let you off, but I don't have to waive my right to reparation in order to have forgiven you. Because I have forgiven you, I suggest, the harm has been separated from the wrong. As someone who has harmed me you are still in my debt; since it is not unloving or unforgiving to insist on payment of a debt in a normal case (assuming you can afford it) it is hard to see how it could be unloving in the case where I have forgiven you for wronging me.
Punishment
To forgive is not necessarily to waive punishment, where that is in your power, or to plead that it be reduced or removed. That would be to confuse forgiveness with mercy. Holding that it is right to punish someone can be quite consistent with having an attitude of good will towards them.
Holding it against you
Does forgiveness require that I somehow discount the wrong in all future dealings with the wrongdoer, that I am never allowed to mention it again? No. Suppose I not only forgive you for crashing my car after you have borrowed it but, in response perhaps to your repentance, lend you my new car. You crash it again and I forgive you again. Am I precluded from saying "You have crashed my car twice now and I'm not going to lend it to you again (at least until you learn to drive more carefully)"? No. It would be absurd to say that I had not really forgiven the first time because now I am counting it in again. The reason seems to me the same as in the reparation case. It is not qua wrong that I am bringing up the earlier crash, but qua harm. Drawing this distinction does suggest that to offer the fact that this is the second time you have wronged me (or wronged me in this way) as a reason for not forgiving you on the second occasion would indicate that I had not really forgiven the first wrong; that I still bear some grudge, which, when added to the second offence, has tipped me over the edge. To forgive a wrong entails not bringing it up when some new wrong is committed, as a further black mark against you, a stick to beat you with. Indeed, whether we are tempted to do this can be an acid test of whether we have forgiven; we may think that we have ceased to resent and hate, but only time and circumstance will tell.
Condoning
Forgiving is therefore not condoning. To condone is to overlook a wrong that should not be overlooked, to excuse what is not excusable. A common form of condoning is failure to register one's protest at wrongdoing in an appropriately forceful way. To forgive is not to overlook, nor to deny that the wrong was not really as bad as it seems. One forgives someone for the wrong he has done to you. Forgiveness of serious wrongs would not be the morally admirable thing that it is unless it took the wrong seriously. To take the wrong seriously may require the forgiver not to treat it as if it had never happened.
Swinburne takes it that the only alternative to forgiveness which is conditional on proper atonement is condoning the wrong.
As a complaint against condoning the wrong this is justified. What we hope to have shown, however, is that unconditional forgiveness is nothing like the distasteful scenario Swinburne here describes.
Hate the sin but love the sinner
Nearly everyone who writes on this topic cites Augustine's tag with approval. This dictum requires us to separate our reaction to the sin from our reaction to the sinner. It does not follow from this that we can only do this if the sinner is in some way distanced from the sin. To go down this road leads to the view that one can only forgive if, for example, the sinner has repented, or if she has redeeming features, so that her sin is not to be seen as a typical or full expression of her personality. Jean Hampton holds that it is legitimate to hate someone who is morally rotten. If we can't disassociate her from her act then we can't, and ought not to try to, forgive. We can only do that if we come to believe that the person is fundamentally decent. This is how she characterises the change of heart in forgiveness:
Some such change of heart may indeed help someone forgive, but we deny that it is necessary. We have two main objections to her account. First, I am highly sceptical of attempts to divide people, despite the mixed nature of their actual characters, into those who are fundamentally decent and those who are not. Second, it confuses love with moral approval. It is, no doubt, easier to love those who are decent, lovable and nice, but the tradition to which I am appealing demands more of love than that. The point is put crisply by C.S. Lewis in a fine passage on hating the sin and loving the sinner:
(The only quarrel I have with this is that Lewis is too sanguine about our ability to love ourselves. As Hampton points out, perhaps the greatest gift that forgiveness brings is that it may help the wrongdoer to love himself. If the forgiver can love the wrongdoer, although he is unlovable, then so may the wrongdoer.)
Answering the objections
We have argued that unconditional forgiveness of serious wrongs is compatible with maintaining your self-respect and with outright condemnation of the wrongdoing and a determination to fight against it if the perpetrators continue their wrongdoing. It is thus possible for Gordon Wilson to forgive the IRA without in any way condoning terrorism. Nor need we see his action as implicitly critical of those who do not or cannot forgive. To perform a heroic or saintly deed is not in itself to insist that others are wrong not to act this way.
The model of forgiveness we are rejecting sees forgiveness as involving a sort of negotiated contract: if the wrongdoer does enough then the wronged party will meet her part way. This is not an ignoble ideal; it is far superior to the vendettas and vindictiveness we see around us. But it is not a particularly noble ideal either. And it may teach the wrong lesson to the wrongdoer: that the way to get back into favour, into the offended party's good books, is to abase oneself, to have a quick grovel. I have nothing to offer except my low opinion of myself, so I will at least offer that. And that can lead to a very nasty form of spiritual pride; a glorying in one's own recognition of one's unworthiness, as if that were itself a kind of poor substitute for virtue which one could offer when all else failed. In the tradition to which I am appealing, to sound a theological note again, God does require many things of us, but first he is giving us something which we cannot earn: forgiveness. All we can do is to accept it. But to accept a completely unearned gift humbles our pride.
The quotation with which I began from H.A. Williams continues thus:
© David McNaughton
Keele University
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