[This transcript was generated by AI, so while it’s been checked it over, it may contain small errors.]
REBECCA: Hi, I’m Rebecca Lowe, and welcome to Working Definition, the new philosophy podcast in which I talk with different philosophical guests about different philosophical concepts, with the aim of reaching a rough, accessible, but rigorous working definition.
Today I’m joined by Ben Brophy. Ben is Vice President of Strategic Engagement here at the Mercatus Center. He’s a pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Alexandria. He has multiple degrees in both political science and theology. He has an excellent Substack called Grace Under Pressure, where he often writes about the conjunction of theology and philosophy. He’s also one of my favorite people to talk with, often argue with, about these matters.
Today he’s going to be talking with me about forgiveness. Thanks so much for joining me, Ben.
BEN: It’s great to be here.
REBECCA: So I thought, to start with, I was wondering if you could just give us what you think is a paradigmatic example. So, some really easy, straightforward, non-controversial example of forgiveness taking place: someone forgiving someone for doing something. So we have something to come back to, bounce off, test out, do all that philosophy stuff.
BEN: Yeah, let’s do it. I think if there are any evangelicals listening to this podcast, they will immediately know the example I’m going to give, because it comes from Tim Keller, who’s a relatively well-known pastor, at least in my circles, not all circles. He passed away in 2023. But he often gave this example of forgiveness.
Suppose that, Rebecca, I invite you to my home. You come to my home and you break my lamp. At this point, forgiveness would look like not making you pay for the lamp. Indeed, I have to take on, incur, the cost of the lamp to myself. That can mean I’m going to go to Target and buy myself another $40 lamp. Or I can forego that altogether and just say, I’m not going to buy a new lamp, but I now am lampless. And so I incur the penalty that you caused on my behalf, and then I release you from any obligation to pay for it.
Yeah, I think we can leave it there. I’m not going to make you pay. I’m not going to hold anything against you. I basically volunteer to suffer the loss of my lamp, on your behalf, that you broke in my home.
REBECCA: Okay, so I think something like someone coming to your house and breaking a lamp seems to me like the kind of thing you might well forgive somebody for doing. It seems both like it’s the kind of thing which isn’t so big that we might not get into these questions about, is it forgivable? It also seems like quite an ordinary example.
But you said something which I feel is a little bit controversial here, though, about this idea of incurring the costs. Is this something necessary? Like, if I didn’t incur all the costs, could it still count as me forgiving you?
Imagine I’m, like, look Ben, you know, I don’t have much money. I have all these kids I’ve got to spend my money on. I just can’t really afford to replace the lamp. I really want to forgive you, but can we just go halves on it? [laughter] Would it still count as forgiveness?
BEN: I think it can if I say, if there is any absorption on my part of a debt that you owe, that you’ve incurred by act of your behavior, then yes. Then I’m extending some measure of forgiveness. Or even, if you want to use the word, grace, or unmerited favor. That is something that’s happening.
But, you know, the reality breaks in. It’s again, to use your example, I can’t really, like, I don’t have any light in my house. Can you please help me here? Now, this is where your part of the bargain, you’ve done the wrong against me, you’ve broken the lamp, and there is that side of it. What responsibility, what role does repentance play in forgiveness? These are all thorny and complicated and debated issues in Christianity, and, I assume, also philosophy.
REBECCA: Yeah, so one thing I’m particularly interested in — I’m interested in these concepts where you have some kind of action, and it’s directed at somebody. Some of these, maybe there needs to be some kind of interaction. So, for instance, I actually wrote a paper recently in which I argued that one difference between consent and promising is I think consent is part of an interaction.
So, for instance, if I say to you, “I consent for you to drive my car.” I feel like that doesn’t really make much sense unless you’ve asked if you could drive my car. That’s maybe just quite a blunt example. Whereas, I think I can promise you something without you having expected something. I can write to my brother and say, “I promise I’m going to send you some Lego at Christmas.” My brother’s a grown-up who likes Lego. Fair enough, lego is cool! I don’t think he needed to ask for the Lego. Whereas, again, if I say, “I consent for you to play with my Lego,” I feel like it’s part of an interaction.
So forgiveness, I find, is interesting because it just doesn’t seem to me super clear about the role that the ‘forgivee’ — the person who the forgiveness is directed at — needs to play, if anything at all.
BEN: Yeah, I think what Christian theology would propose — and again, I’m channeling Tim Keller on this particular issue — there are essentially two forms of forgiveness, and you see this in a couple of places in the New Testament. The one would be the idea of internal forgiveness. So I’m going to, and I think scripture always requires the Christian to, internally forgive.
REBECCA: Requires? So you’d say, I was going to ask you about this as well — I was actually going to ask, do you think, can you ever be obligated to forgive? But you’re suggesting that it’s always a matter of obligation. Is that right?
BEN: Yes. So there is a relatively well-known parable from Matthew 18, it’s the parable of the unforgiving servant. I won’t read it to you, but I’ll recap it.
Essentially, there is a man who owes money to the king, a large amount, decades — I mean, actually, it’s such a large amount of money that it could never be repaid in one’s lifetime. The point of the number being so large is to be like, he could never repay. The king calls him in and says, “All right, you owe.” And the servant goes, “Please have mercy. I cannot pay.” And the king forgives the debt, has mercy on him, releases him from his debt.
The servant then turns around, grabs some other servant who owes him a minuscule amount of money, and says, “Hey, pay me what you owe, or I’m going to put you in prison. You’ve got to give it to me right now!” The king hears about it and goes, “Yo, that’s messed up.”
REBECCA: That is messed up. [laughter]
BEN: This is my translation, the Brophy Standard Version! [laughter] “I forgave you this massive, massive, massive amount, and you’re going to nickel and dime this other servant, who owes you a little bit? Now you’re going to pay the cost of what you owe,” which is essentially debtor’s prison.
And the moral of the story is, essentially, for the Christian who’s been forgiven this infinite amount, how can we then withhold forgiveness from people who wrong us on a much smaller scale?
REBECCA: But actually, going back to that point about whether there has to be some interactive nature, this seems like it’s a whole web of things! It’s not just how the wrongdoer acts in relation to being forgiven. So it’s not something like, do they have to ask for — do they have to show repentance? Do they have to understand the wrong that they’ve committed? Those things. It also seems like, in the rest of their life, they have to act in some specially good way in relation to the kind of institution of forgiveness. That’s pretty hardcore.
BEN: Well, I don’t know that I would agree with that second part, but for the first part — so, let’s talk about the interaction between repentance and forgiveness. So I think Christianity requires internal forgiveness, which means I’m going to not hold internal resentment against somebody who wrongs me, because I live in light of the grace that I’ve received from Christ.
REBECCA: So we can take two things from this. One is something like the internal state you have to be in for it to count as forgiving. If I don’t genuinely feel these things, it doesn’t count. Me just saying “I forgive you”, when I actually don’t feel the internal change of heart, that doesn’t count.
BEN: Yes.
REBECCA: Then the second thing, I think, is not just about how you’re feeling, but something maybe to do with your reasons, or —
BEN: Well, Christianity is concerned with what happens internally as well as externally. So if you think about, I can say, “I forgive you for breaking my lamp,” but then every time I see Rebecca Lowe at the office, I go, “That stupid philosopher broke my lamp!” [laughter]. And I just rehearse the wrong that you did to me, and it continues to come up in my mind. Have I ever actually forgiven you?
REBECCA: Great question.
BEN: And I would also suggest, if that is the kind of play that you are rehearsing in your mind, it’s hard for me to believe that that will not colour future interactions with said person.
REBECCA: So one thing I was wondering about, I was thinking about this this morning, sometimes when we try to think about what kind of thing something is, we might say, you know, is it an event? Is it an action? Is it an interaction, which is what we’ve been talking about. Is it some kind of state of affairs? It did strike me that I think some people will hold — and I think you’re suggesting this — that forgiveness has to be something that persists across time.
BEN: Yes.
REBECCA: So it’s not just, “Hey, I forgive you.” It’s, “I continue holding you in this state of forgiveness,” or something like that.
So one question I have for you is something like, let’s imagine that I’ve forgiven you for something, but then something changes. It might be that I just find, actually, I’m still frustrated with you for having done the thing. Or maybe something — I just learned something new. So maybe I learned you didn’t actually do it. It was your twin brother! We have these examples in philosophy. [laughter]
Was it the case that I ever did forgive you? Is it that forgiveness is conditional and it sometimes holds? Or is it that sometimes, down the line, if I no longer hold you in the forgiving state, I never forgave you in the first place? Does it have to persist for it to ever have existed? I mean, where do we get on the metaphysics of this?
BEN: So, I mean, I think persistence is, at the base level, persistently forgiving you for wrong done is necessary for me to actually forgive you.
Now, if I’ve forgiven something that didn’t actually require forgiveness, is that itself forgiveness? In some senses, I think Christianity would hold — because it’s a matter of the heart — yes, you actually did.
REBECCA: This is interesting — coming back to your point about the internal change. You could have had the internal change of feeling, which you think is part of forgiving somebody.
But I feel I want to be pretty hard-line and say forgiveness only obtains, only occurs, in the instance of a wrong. So Aristotle mentions something about blameworthiness. I just think instinctively, when I think about what we talk about ordinarily — which is my approach of going into these things — when we talk about forgiveness, I feel as if we reserve it for instances where somebody, not just something bad has happened, but somebody’s done something wrong and they’re blameworthy.
So it’s not accidental. It’s not like hardcore diminished responsibility. It’s like, no, Ben, you are actually to blame for this thing! So then if it turns out you weren’t, even though the internal change of heart has happened in the forgiver, I’m just not sure I want to say that it was a case of forgiveness.
BEN: Yeah, if I was to play a little bit of semantic games, I would say the spirit of forgiveness was in the forgiver, regardless of whether there was actually a wrong done. To run this down the line, so if I think you’ve wronged me and then I forgive you, and then it turns out that you actually didn’t wrong me, all the better that I, quote unquote, forgave you. Because then I didn’t damage the relationship, damage you, all those types of things.
REBECCA: So this could be a kind of practising the virtue.
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: Even when it turns out actually — so maybe it’s practice in both senses. You could be practising for the instance when you actually do have to practise the virtue.
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: I liked what you said, you said the spirit of forgiveness. I feel like that could be quite a nice distinction here between the actual forgiving and the spirit of forgiving.
BEN: Sure.
REBECCA: And that could maybe help us to get beyond this problem.
BEN: Sure. Yeah. And I think what’s happening in somebody internally — again, Christianity has this conception of the fruit of the spirit. And so if there’s a forgiving spirit, like there’s a spiritual life in which I’m adopting a forgiving stance to everyone around me, regardless of whether they’ve done me wrong, Christianity would say that is good. That is virtuous. That is something that should be cultivated.
REBECCA: It seems to me, if you want to move beyond the forgiving spirit to actual instances of forgiveness, I feel like we’re moving towards the idea that you need more than just that internal change.
BEN: Well, and so, yeah, this is the part we haven’t got to, which is: is repentance, or is you acknowledging the wrong that you’ve done to me, required for forgiveness?
REBECCA: I feel also some of these other conditions — like, I feel like some wrong has to have taken place.
BEN: Yeah, okay.
REBECCA: I think I have this view — maybe this is too thin and formulaic — but I feel like some of the necessary conditions I want to be in place for forgiveness to be occurring are things like: there has to be a wrong. It has to be directed at some wrongdoer who’s committed some specific wrong. I’m not sure I can forgive you for generally. I think I have to forgive you for something specific. I also think it has to be something that I’ve been the subject of wrong about. I don’t think I can forgive you for doing something wrong to someone else. I think I’m probably quite hard-line on this.
But what I’m saying is, beyond the conditions that we expect the forgivee to meet or not, which, as you’re coming to, is around whether they repent, I feel like there are just some other kind of things that have to be the case of the matter for it to count as an instance of forgiveness. So, some wrongdoing, some particular wrong act. I feel like the person doing the forgiving —
BEN: Has to be the one wronged.
REBECCA: I think they have to be the one wronged. And then I think the forgiving has to be directed. I think it’s a kind of goal-type thing, it has to be directed at the specific wrong as well.
BEN: Yeah, I think, with an explanation or a caveat, I can agree that the person who does the forgiving has to be the one wronged. Which immediately leads my mind to, well, okay, if that’s what Rebecca is proposing, how then does the Christian say, well, we need God’s forgiveness?
REBECCA: Right. That’s right.
BEN: And gratefully, theology has an answer to this, which is, all sin or all wrongdoing is first directed at God, and then directed at the person suffering the wrong.
REBECCA: Right.
BEN: So Psalm 51 is a famous psalm where David confesses, essentially, murdering the husband of the wife he then takes advantage of sexually. And so it’s a long repentance. He says, “Against God, against you only, have I sinned,” not meaning he hasn’t sinned against the woman he abused, or the husband he had murdered, or those things. But rather the person who he’s first and foremost, the primary person he’s wronged, is the very God who gave him everything he has. His life, his breath, his kingdom, his position, all of these things. And he still violated the very conditions of what the Lord would have him do.
So I think there is a — yeah, I think with that caveat, that all sin is, all wrongdoing is, first and foremost, against God, before the other human being. Yes, I think the person who forgives needs to be the person affected by the wrongdoing.
Now, the other example I would give is there are things, Christian concepts of mercy or grace, which are adjacent but different.
REBECCA: I want to come on to those, because one way that we can try to pick out what’s special about some particular concept is to compare it with some nearby concepts.
But I did have a thought, which is something like — there is this overly, I think, simplistic narrative that, towards the second half of the last millennium, people started taking the individual a bit more seriously. So there’s discussion, for instance — I’m very interested in rights. If you read some of the meta-analyses of what the operative concept of the right was back in Roman and Greek times, and then through medieval times into the early modern period, some people say things like — and it tracks very closely with what you’re saying — people didn’t really think about individuals being wronged. They thought about God being wronged through actions against individuals. And it was only when we started having this concept of individual rights — I think this is far too overly simplistic a narrative — that we start to think about the individual being wronged. And then that allows us maybe to think more about responsibility.
But I think what you’re saying — I like the way you put it — you said something like primarily God being wronged. So you are allowing some space for the agency of the individual. For wrongs to occur against individuals.
BEN: Yes, very much so. I mean, we talk about rights all the time. I, of course, think those are grounded in the image of God and every person in the imago Dei. And so there is that holds — that has weight here, too — in the sense of one of the ways we’re wronging God is by wronging other people who are made in his image. And so there’s shared — yeah, there’s shared wronging.
REBECCA: So I want to come on to both your nice point about moving to some nearby concepts. I also want us to bank a starting definition. But just one other thought I did have, at this stage while we’re talking about rights, is there’s a general sort of distinction, at least within philosophy, around the kinds of obligations that correlate with rights and the obligations that don’t.
So, for instance, I have an obligation not to torture you. You have a right not to be tortured. My obligation is a really, really serious one. I think of this as an obligation of justice. It’s a rights-correlative obligation. And then we have these kinds of loose or less demanding obligations, which correlate with the good. So philosophers sometimes call these imperfect obligations.
So if you’re walking down the riverbank and you see a kid struggling in the water, but you’re not a very good swimmer, and it’s really cold, and you’re feeling ill, I don’t think — it would be quite unusual for somebody to say that you’ve violated the child’s rights by not diving in and trying to save them and quite possibly dying. Nonetheless, you might say there’s some kind of lesser obligation, that it would be good.
I wonder whether it might be useful for us to think of forgiveness within the charity sector, so to speak [laughter] rather than the justice sector. So when you’re saying you’re obligated, are you meaning obligated in the sense of it would be a charitable action, it would be a good action? Or are you saying, no, you’d be going deeply wrongly against justice?
BEN: The latter.
REBECCA: The latter!
BEN: Again, and this is just dependent on the forgiveness that Christians contend that they’ve received.
REBECCA: So you’d always be wrong if you didn’t?
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: Wow, this is pretty hardcore.
BEN: Yeah. Again, because if what we believe is true, if there was a Jesus who was fully God and fully man, and perfectly innocent and gives his life in order that we might be reconciled to God. As the parable of the unforgiving servant kind of says, to then spit in the face of that and say, “You owe me for that lamp...” Yeah, it’s unjust.
REBECCA: What if you just can’t bring about that internal change of heart?
BEN: This is a good question.
REBECCA: So, I mean, there’s this idea in philosophy I’m quite interested in called doxastic voluntarism. This is the idea about whether you can change your own beliefs. So it’s like, I’m going to tell you, Ben, I’ll give you like a hundred dollars if you will believe that there’s an elephant in the room. It’s really, really, really, really hard to make yourself believe that.
I mean, if we can sometimes condition ourselves into believing things by only reading certain types of — my friend John Heil has a great paper about this. But I worry for your account, in which you’re always doing wrong, you’re going to have to have a load of control over that internal change of heart. What if I know I’m supposed to forgive you for the thing, and I know I’ll be doing the wrong thing, but I just can’t find it in myself?
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: Have I committed an offence against justice?
BEN: Well, here’s the other side of the coin for a Christian, which is going to sound like a heck of a cop-out. [laughter] But the other thing is, I have not arrived. I am still flawed. And so when I’m unable to do the thing that my Christian faith requires, the Bible would require, the answer is to fall back on the forgiveness that Christ offered. Because I’m just not — there are people who have wronged me that I don’t — I’m not quite there yet.
REBECCA: Yeah.
BEN: But the question then becomes, is forgiveness a feeling, or is it a virtue to be practiced?
REBECCA: Absolutely.
BEN: And Christianity would hold that it is an act of the will. So, you’re going to do the best that you can, and then know if you fall short of actually forgiving somebody, that you get back on the horse and try again.
And of course, again, I can hear evangelicals being like, “You’re talking about works righteousness,” which, you know, fair. But that has to be — we also claim that there’s a supernatural change happening in the individual.
REBECCA: So if it’s an act of the will, what about if I don’t want to change my — I don’t want to have that internal change of heart — but it just happens? I wake up one morning, and suddenly I forgive Ben. I have this feeling in my heart. But it’s not an act of will. I mean, I didn’t intend to. In fact, I went to bed thinking, man, I’m really annoyed at Ben about that thing. And then just something — or maybe even we could think of a more extreme example! Let’s imagine I take some paracetamol because I’ve got a headache, and it interacts in my brain in this way, and suddenly I feel —
BEN: Now I feel I forgive him?
REBECCA: Is that going to be enough? So you want both the internal change of heart, and you want the act of the individual’s will.
BEN: I want it all! [laughter]
REBECCA: You want it all!
BEN: I want it all — I mean, God wants it [laughter] I want it all. I do, yeah.
REBECCA: Oh, so if it’s only — is it just God’s will then? I mean, God’s will acting through you?
BEN: The interaction between us.
REBECCA: Because I can see your way out here. That was God acting on me. It wasn’t the paracetamol! Causality? Rebecca, you can’t possibly prove causality there!
BEN: Well, the interaction between God working on our internal being — soul — and our will. We’re getting down to Calvinism. Is it God’s sovereignty, or our free will? I would say it’s both. If you want me to pick it.
REBECCA: You want to have it all! I also, again, coming back to something you said earlier, this point around the spirit of forgiveness. It suggested to me almost this Aristotelian notion of practising it. Trying to get there, doing it over time. You won’t manage in all instances, but thankfully you’ve got some of God’s forgiveness to —
BEN: That’s right! To fall back on.
REBECCA: Okay, so at this stage, let us try to bank some kind of working definition. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your actual fully worked-out view.
Imagine a little kid comes up to you on the street and says, “Hey, Ben, I was in your church the other day or heard you on Rebecca’s podcast. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear the whole thing. I just want to know, I’ve got to go and give this presentation in school tomorrow, but I’ve got to give a really simple answer. What is this forgiveness thing? What is forgiveness?”
BEN: I don’t know that I’ve moved off my original definition. Which is releasing someone who’s wronged you from obligation or debt that they’ve incurred.
REBECCA: That’s very clear. Releasing someone who’s wronged you from obligation or debt they’ve incurred.
BEN: And I think this is very human, any time you’ve been wronged, or anyone’s been wronged, it seems to me that the natural reaction is like, “That’s not fair!” [laughter] If you have kids, and one of the siblings wrongs the other, there’s this immediate emotional, human like, “What is this?” And we adults do the same thing.
It’s an immediate sense of, we are owed. This person wronged me. I’m owed some sort of recompense. I’ve not met many people whose first reaction is like, “Eh, it’s fine.” I’m sure there are some, but it’s very human to say, “I’m owed something when I’m wronged.”
REBECCA: So one way — philosophers like this term ‘standing’. This idea of how you stand in relation to somebody, whether that’s in society, you have maybe some particular position, or how you stand in relation to your friend, to other people in the world. One way I think you could look at this is it’s some kind of reparation of standing or something.
Does it have to have this nature of being aimed at repairing this? Is it much more just specifically about the wrong? Is it about being made to feel okay? I mean, how much of that is about you feeling like you need to be released from the wrong, and how much is it about being able to stand again in some good relation with this person?
BEN: Yeah, I think Christianity, or Christian theology, would start talking about the idea of reconciliation. So this is where internal forgiveness is required, but reconciliation is not always required, in Christianity. So this is the part where repentance matters from a Christian worldview. For me to reconcile the relationship with the wrongdoer is going to require their repentance in many cases, not all.
So, for instance, to go back to the lamp example, you break my lamp. I go, “All right, like, I’m going to forgive the lamp.” I may no longer let you be my interior decorator. [laughter] Until you repent of the breaking of the lamp. Okay, now maybe we try and let you be my interior decorator again, now that I can try to trust you not to break my lamps. But reconciliation would be a full restoration of the relationship.
REBECCA: Of the original —
BEN: Before the wrongdoing.
REBECCA: And you think that’s a little more than —
BEN: That depends, I mean, and this gets very practical in pastoral ministry. So, like, it really comes up with divorce. Not to go super heavy, but this is — it comes up all the time. Like, this spouse did the thing, whatever it is, adultery, whatever, cheated, whatever, and they end up, the marriage ends. There’s some sort of repentance and there’s forgiveness. Does that necessitate a restoration of the marriage? I don’t think that it does. It can. It can be a wonderful thing. There can be wonderful reconciliation there. But I don’t —
REBECCA: It’s not like there’s some necessary chain.
BEN: That’s right.
REBECCA: It does seem like one way we could look at this, I think, from what you just said, is there is some kind of progress, though. You need the repentance to have the forgiveness. You need the forgiveness to have the reconciliation. It’s just that they don’t kind of necessitate the next one. So the chain goes that way. It just doesn’t go —
BEN: Yeah. And I think you can think of any number of examples. Again, if somebody stole a whole bunch of money from me, I might forgive them, but they might not be my personal investment —
REBECCA: Yes, I think that’s a good point. So I just want to test out this idea of the other person’s involvement and ask you a few questions.
Let’s imagine that we go back to the lamp example. I like this one. We want to work out what role the lamp-breaker has to play in forgiveness taking place, right? So let’s imagine that the lamp-breaker didn’t know that they broke the lamp. They go away on their holiday to Australia. They’ve lost their phone. Can you forgive them before they know that they broke the lamp?
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: You think they can?
BEN: I think so.
REBECCA: So they don’t need to have even that level of awareness. What about if they died? What if they died on the ship to Australia? It wasn’t just that they didn’t know, but —
BEN: There’s nothing they can do.
REBECCA: They’re never going to know.
BEN: Yeah, I think forgiveness is still possible. And this happens all the time. Scripture talks about overlooking an offence. We bear with one another.
REBECCA: So repentance can’t be a condition, then?
BEN: No. I think for internal forgiveness, no.
REBECCA: The change of heart.
BEN: In fact, we do this, you do this all the time. [laughter] There are people that do annoying things to you or wrong things to you and you go, “Ah, whatever, I’ll let it go.” We forbear.
REBECCA: We do. We do forbear. Forbearance, I think, may be different from forgiveness, though.
BEN: Fair enough.
REBECCA: I’d probably — I haven’t thought about forbearance, maybe ever as a concept! [laughter] I mean, I know the word, obviously. But just my gut instinct is I would be happier to say some of this stuff about the other person not needing to be involved, about forbearance. Forbearance implies to me, me standing strong in the face of some bad thing. Whereas forgiveness seems to me very other-directed. I’m not sure I can just forgive — I think I have to forgive the person.
BEN: It depends on how you’re thinking about forbearance. But if forbearance means I’m enduring the wrong thing and I release all bad feeling, all punishment, all — then I think you’ve both forbeared and forgiven.
REBECCA: Interesting. So let’s just try a few more of these out.
What about if the person knows that you think that they broke the lamp, but they just don’t admit it? You call them up and you’re like, “Hey, look, you broke my lamp. I know that, you know, it was in a…” We probably don’t want to say it was an accident. Do we want to say — could it be an accident? Can you forgive somebody for doing something accidentally? Because that comes back to the blameworthiness thing.
BEN: But then it becomes like, why did the accident happen? You think of like a drunk driver, why did the accident happen?
REBECCA: So luck egalitarianism, yeah, that’s right. But let’s imagine it’s not one of those things.
BEN: They just knocked into it.
REBECCA: Yeah, it wasn’t like they should have been paying better attention.
BEN: Then that’s not something that I think necessitates forgiveness.
REBECCA: I think that’s right, too.
BEN: There’s no moral element.
REBECCA: So let’s park that. I think that’s something we can definitely agree on — I do think this blameworthiness — I think that needs to be not just something bad’s taken place, but something wrong, in the sense of intentionally bringing about some bad against some other person. That’s a simple way of putting it. So I think there needs to be intention involved. I think there needs to be genuine blameworthiness held on the part of the forgivee.
BEN: Yeah, wrongdoing. I agree.
REBECCA: So let’s say it’s not the accidental thing. But let’s say you call up your friend and say, “Look, you were in this fit of rage and you broke my lamp, but I’m willing to forgive you.” Great. And the person’s like, “No, I didn’t break your lamp! You were out of the room. Your kid did it.” [laughter] And you know that’s not true. Or even if you don’t know it’s not true.
BEN: Ok, wait. Well, that makes a difference.
REBECCA: Yeah, so let’s do both of them. So the first one: you turned your head, you’re out of the room. Actually, your kid broke the lamp. And you don’t know. You don’t know who it was who did it. But you’re pretty sure —
BEN: I’m inclined to believe it.
REBECCA: Oh, you’re —
BEN: Because of my kids! [laughter]
REBECCA: Hilarious. So let’s imagine, however, that in this particular instance, it was your kid who was actually really careful. And actually, let’s say that your kid was distracted by reading a good book at the same time. And you just think, no, no, no.
BEN: I think if I don’t know — I think I have to, another biblical principle, I have to assume the best.
REBECCA: But again, if the blameworthiness is necessary, I think you probably do need to know that they’re to blame.
BEN: Yes.
REBECCA: And again, then we come to the question about, I mean, knowledge is a very high bar. If it turns out down the line that actually they thought they were to blame, and you thought they were to blame, but some weird philosopher’s thought-experiment-like objection comes up. And actually they did break a lamp, it just wasn’t your lamp, and your lamp was broken, it just wasn’t by them, and, you know, all of this weird kind of —
BEN: Yeah. And I’m willing to allow for those edge cases. But at a base level, I have to know.
REBECCA: That they’re blameworthy.
BEN: That they’re blameworthy. That they’ve done wrong.
REBECCA: Good. But you don’t think they have to know this?
BEN: No.
REBECCA: Because they could be on the ship to Australia.
BEN: That’s right.
REBECCA: They could be dead.
BEN: Or they could —
REBECCA: But what about the denial again?
BEN: They could literally say, “I don’t think it was wrong.”
REBECCA: Right, good, yes. So let’s think of those cases where you are convinced, sufficiently convinced, reliably convinced, that they did the wrong thing, that they’re to blame. They know that you think that, but they, for some reason, deny it — either because, like you say, they don’t think it meets the conditions of counting as wrong, or they think that —
BEN: Or they self-justify. “You have so much money and I have so little!”
REBECCA: That’s right. Or, “It was just an accident, didn’t you see!”
BEN: Yes, yes.
REBECCA: In those instances, does that have any effect on your capacity to forgive?And I don’t just mean in the sense of whether you’re likely to do it. I mean, can you do the forgiving? Can the forgiving obtain if the person is in denial about their blameworthiness?
BEN: Yes.
REBECCA: And they are blameworthy.
BEN: If we maintain the distinction of internal forgiveness and external reconciliation, then yes, internally you can still forgive, even if we’re not going to reconcile over the issue of the lamp.
REBECCA: So we come to two things here. One of those is the place of forgiveness in that little order of things, the forgiveness. So you come to some change in your standing. You ameliorate, or you re-ameliorate — your standing goes back in some sense to how it was, but not fully. You don’t have the full reconciliation.
And then the other distinction is something to do with, well, you’re feeling like you’re having the spirit of forgiveness, but maybe the forgiveness hasn’t fully taken place yet. Do they need to accept the wrongdoing for it to be fully forgiveness? If it persists across time — so you said earlier, you know, the forgiving has to continue. Let’s imagine you still feel forgiving towards them ten years down the line. But every time you see them, they’re like, “Ben, really! Yeah, I just didn’t,” for whatever it was.
BEN: Yeah, I think there is something still missing. So internal forgiveness, yep, got that. But I do think external forgiveness does lead to —
REBECCA: And you mean by external forgiveness, you mean the actual forgiveness following through in terms of the person being forgiven? Or you mean in terms of the role that they play?
BEN: So I think the external forgiveness requires reconciliation, meaning the relationship is restored to exactly —
REBECCA: Yes, because you said again —
BEN: But if we’re at issue about what reality is, about what wrongness is, the relationship can never be the same. So I do think repentance, or admitting of being blameworthy, is required for that relationship to go back to what it was.
REBECCA: I also liked your point about the relationship might not return in all senses. So maybe they’re not going to be your accountant anymore, your lamp-handler anymore. [laughter]
BEN: That’s right.
REBECCA: I do feel, I think, quite strongly that forgiveness has to be directed at a particular wrongdoer for a particular wrong. So I also think, again, I’m not really sure it makes sense to say something like, “I forgive you, generally.” I think I forgive you for that specific thing. I think then the kind of restoration you’re talking about is in relation to that particular thing.
So in some sense, you’ve managed to get past that matter. Now, it might be the case that it has some other knock-on effects, or maybe you’re annoyed at them for some other things. Maybe they’ve also wronged you in some other ways.
BEN: Yes.
REBECCA: I think you can forgive them for that particular thing, and you can still have these other problems of standing.
BEN: Which, again, marriage is super helpful here. You see in my own marriage, there is a fight, I’ve wronged my wife, or she’s wronged me. We forgive one another. And yet, I also didn’t take out the trash. At all times, there are multiple wrongs in the air.
REBECCA: So it’s a pretty specific kind of a notion, isn’t it? It’s something involving specific people for some specific thing. And the act itself, if we think of it as being some kind of directed action — action directed at someone else — is about that particular thing. So it has a lot of specificity, it seems to me.
BEN: Yeah, I think it does. If we’re going to go beyond the forbearance/internal category, yeah, I think you have to be specific.
In fact, another sort of virtue that theology will talk about is, there’s something that Christians will do, or they’ll be like, “Well, just forgive me.” Like, “I confess generally I’m a wrongdoer.” And it’s like, that’s a start, but actually you do need to be specific. What are the actual things that you think are wrong and not wrong, and where? Let’s actually talk about those. I think this blanket — that can be unhelpful.
REBECCA: Are there some of these other nearby concepts — I’m just wondering, off the top of my head, something like grace, holding somebody in a state of grace, Christians sometimes talk about that, that seems to be maybe less specific.
BEN: Yeah, yes.
REBECCA: “I’m just going to hold you generally in a state of grace, Ben.” It’s not as specific as “I forgive you for breaking my lamp that time”.
BEN: Yes. State of grace is not quite my tradition, so we’d have to call it —
REBECCA: Which tradition is that from? I’m not even sure who I’ve heard say it.
BEN: That language is typically more Roman Catholic, and I love my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. I think there are, from a Christian conception, there’s a sense in which we are not even aware of all the ways in which we’re not living up to what we ought to be. And in those circumstances, you’ll see in scripture, like, there’s a tax collector who prays something like, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” And it is this general confession of, like, I don’t even know the ways in which I’m missing the boat, but I know I am.
REBECCA: So it’s being kind of a more general kind of charitable —
BEN: Yeah. And I do think the Lord does forgive that. He’s condescending to our level.
REBECCA: It’s very meta!
BEN: He knows all the ways in which we failed, and he forgives each one of them in their specificity, even as we have incomplete knowledge as to the specific wrongs that we —
REBECCA: So I think something that could be quite useful in categorising some of these nearby concepts, they all seem to be about wrong in some sense — responsive to wrong in some sense.
BEN: Mercy, grace.
REBECCA: Mercy, grace, forgiveness. Maybe some things nearby, like atonement, excusing people, punishing people. We should talk about mercy. It seems to me like there’s at least one very simple way in which mercy is different from forgiveness.
So if mercy, I think, is to do with how you treat someone who’s done something wrong to you, it’s to do with the kind of treatment. So you might say, for instance, the judge gave a more lenient sentence because the judge was merciful. So it’s a kind of post — both of these are post-wrongdoing. They’re post, yes, there’s some blameworthiness.
But it seems to me that mercy is about the way in which you might mitigate, or you might show some discretion around the punishment you apply. Whereas it seems to me forgiveness is, I’m happy, I think, pretty much to go with what you’re saying, something about restoring the standing or releasing somebody from — I don’t think I want to go into the whole incurring of the cost stuff. I feel like that might be a bit too much for me.
But therefore it seems like mercy is about working out a punishment, whereas forgiveness is about some attempt at restoring some standing.
BEN: Yeah. And I think it’s very hard to talk about mercy without talking about justice.
REBECCA: Yes, this is right.
BEN: Rightly rewarding the good and rightly, I don’t know, punishing is a loaded word in your world, but rightly punishing.
REBECCA: Yeah, I just wrote a whole piece about punishment, which I know you want to respond to because you disagreed so strongly. [laughter] I love that. I saw Ben this morning, and he’s like, “Rebecca, I really liked your piece. I liked it so much, I’m going to write my own piece about how wrong it is!”
BEN: Incomplete — I think incomplete!
REBECCA: But this is exactly what I’m looking for. That is, to me, the best possible response someone could give me. [laughter] Because it shows that they really engaged with it. I just think this is — yeah, so I can’t wait to read your piece.
BEN: So to go back to mercy —
REBECCA: Do you think then that mercy is an element of justice? Because I would be more tempted to put it on the charity side. I don’t think you’re obligated, in the rights-correlative sense, to. Actually, a piece that people, listeners, should read, I don’t know if you’ve read this, Ben. My ex-boyfriend, John Tasioulas, he’s a very good Australian legal philosopher, he wrote a great article just called Mercy. It’s a very good piece. He, I think, says something like mercy is an element of charity, and it’s about — it’s a form of charity that kind of justifies punishing somebody less severely.
BEN: I think that’s right. I’m not inclined to disagree.
REBECCA: Less severely than — I think I even wrote this down — less severely than they deserve according to justice.
BEN: Yes.
REBECCA: So this comes back to our post-wrong thing. So we’ve recognised that the person’s done the wrong thing. They’re blameworthy, it’s a matter of justice, we can go as far as to say. But then the judge, or whoever it is who’s going to afford mercy in this instance, takes some charitable approach on which mercy justifies them from punishing less severely than justice actually requires.
BEN: I think that’s right. I think he’s right.
REBECCA: I think it also does help us with this distinction between justice and charity. And I think similarly, I think I want to — I think you and I might differ on this — but I feel like I want to keep forgiveness in this charity bucket. That’s because I don’t think you’re obligated to forgive. I think it’s certainly not you’re justice-obligated to forgive, whereas I think you do think that. But I think that’s because of the role that you’re putting God in here.
BEN: I specifically think Christians are required to forgive. As for non-Christians, I think they probably are too. But it does not surprise me that it’s hard to mandate forgiveness without a Christian worldview, I think, in the way that I am, essentially.
REBECCA: That’s very interesting. So one thing, actually, I did want to ask you is about the distinctness of a Christian notion of forgiveness. Do you think that — so first of all, how do you think it is distinct? Do you think, for instance, that this discussion of forgiveness we’ve been having is one in which some of our — we’ve had some overlaps — but some of our differences of view are because we’re just going about it in a different way?
Rebecca’s doing kind of ordinary-language-philosophy thing, where what Rebecca’s interested in is what can we learn about truths about the world, and how we treat each other, in terms of this particular term that we use? If somebody comes along and says, “Rebecca, no, there’s just a technical understanding of forgiveness, which is completely different from all the ways that people ordinarily use it. Technically, forgiveness means baguette!”, I’m just going to laugh.
So that’s the kind of field I’m operating in, which is, what can we take from — what is the concept underlying this ordinary term, and how we use it? How can we learn, therefore, about truths, about morality, about the world?
Whereas I think what you’re doing is something like: there’s this important concept, which has many overlaps with my ordinary concept, but it has this very specific context in biblical teaching, and in other ways we can learn about God, whether it’s through, I don’t know, personal experience, prayer, testimony —
BEN: Reading the Bible.
REBECCA: The Bible.
BEN: All those things.
REBECCA: It’s very overlapping, but it is slightly different.
BEN: Well, yeah, I think that’s right. I think also the history of the idea of forgiveness. I mean, I’m sure you did a little light reading of the classics, as I did. I mean, Aristotle doesn’t quite have a concept of forgiveness, he has a concept of overlooking.
REBECCA: Yeah. It’s not one of the core Aristotelian virtues, anyway.
BEN: Being above it. Greek and Roman culture, like the idea of forgiveness is pretty foreign. Even, in some ways, grace is considered, in some places — the idea of grace and mercy — is on vice lists.
REBECCA: Grace seems pretty religious to me.
BEN: Yeah. And so there is this sense in which the formulations of forgiveness, and then nearby concepts of grace and mercy, have been very shaped by Christianity. And I think Christianity brought something pretty unique to it.
REBECCA: This seems to me right. So one reason why I’m saying I think our approaches are quite overlapping is I do feel that ordinary discussion, at least in Western countries like America and Britain, are pretty heavily influenced on this kind of topic by Christianity. You and I have had many conversations about —
BEN: Which came first.
REBECCA: We have pretty similar worldviews in many ways. I think that Christianity just happens to get these things right.
BEN: Just happened to stumble upon the moral order of the universe!
REBECCA: That’s right. I think these are truths regardless of whether God exists. I don’t believe in a moral God. I think it’s probably rational to believe in a creator God. Nonetheless, I am quite open to thinking about this — I’m certainly open to thinking about it — but I’m quite open to the idea of it being true that we might need certain things, certain conditions might need to obtain, for us to get to the truth of the matter.
I’m interested in thinking, like, if you had a culture which didn’t have, say, religion at all, but maybe Christianity and Judaism particularly, whether we might find it harder to get to some of these concepts.
BEN: Judaism, because the Old Testament, the Old and New Testament —
REBECCA: There is this notion in which forgiveness is quite a New Testament thing. Is that fair, or is that an over-reading?
BEN: I think it’s probably an over-reading.
REBECCA: There is a lot of vengeance and stuff in the Old Testament!
BEN: I think that’s an oversimplification. [laughter] There is certainly the idea of redemption, forgiveness, mercy, all of those things, in the Old Testament, for sure. So I do think those two —
REBECCA: Jesus seems, though, to have some particular focus on, I mean, forgiveness seems to me to be —
BEN: So the way theologians would put it is, it’s progressive revelation. What does that mean? It means, as you walk through the scriptures, it’s all true. But as we move from the beginning towards the end, more and more of God’s character is being revealed, and most obviously and primarily in Christ. So there’s ways in which we understand the concepts of forgiveness, grace, and mercy because of the New Testament. However, the elements run throughout the entire corpus of scripture.
REBECCA: Interesting. So one other question I think we should consider in terms of kind of context is the extent to which people have to know about this thing for it to obtain. So I’m thinking particularly — there’s this thing I like in this philosophy paper, R. M. Hare has this paper called The Promising Game. It’s mostly about the ‘is/ought problem’, but — and when does promising occur. So it’s quite relevant for our conversation. He has this nice bit at the end where he talks about the institution of promising. And he says something like, to be able to promise, there have to be enough people around you who get what promising is.
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: Now, it seems to me this conversation we’ve been having about the role Christianity’s played in helping us uncover this thing, or teaching us this thing, or even creating this thing, if we want to go that far —
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: Is it the case that if somebody didn’t understand — and I don’t just mean that they didn’t understand that they’d done any wrong, and they didn’t just accept the wrong — what if they just didn’t get the concept of forgiveness? Could I then forgive them? Would they then stand in this relation of forgiving? I mean, do they need to have some kind of — and I don’t just mean, again, particularly, they could be on the ship to Australia, they could be dead. Is there anything to be said for they have to be within this ‘institution of forgiveness’, in the same way that —
BEN: So if an alien flies in on a spaceship, no human concepts whatsoever. [laughter] He breaks my lamp. [laughter] Does he have to have any grounding, any sort of —
REBECCA: Let’s say he is the kind of thing [laughter] — I’ve already called him a ‘he’, suggested he has some kind of personhood or something.
BEN: He’s an alien. [laughter]
REBECCA: He’s an alien. But let’s imagine, though, that the alien is the kind of thing to whom you could assign blame. So the alien is blameworthy. That means the alien has to have some free agency. It means the alien has to have some kinds of, I think, moral apparatus.
But let’s just say that forgiveness just isn’t something that’s in the alien culture. So we’re happy to accept that blameworthiness and wrongdoing are. Let’s go that far. It’s not just that they are capable of these things, but they also have sufficient awareness maybe even to be able to discuss them. But forgiveness just isn’t in the picture.
BEN: Yeah, for the alien.
REBECCA: Is that a problem? So I think for you to do the forgiving, you probably need to be in the institution. Does the forgivee need to be within the institution? I think you’re going to say no, but maybe you’re not.
BEN: I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so. Whether or not somebody is aware of the fundamental moral truths of the universe as revealed through scripture [laughter] or because they just exist —
REBECCA: [laughter] Yeah.
Ben: His understanding of it has no bearing.
REBECCA: Yes, how interesting. Because the problem for me, I think, is if forgiveness is some kind of act, it’s not just some truth that obtains, we need to actually do something with intention to bring it about. I still think there are these outstanding questions about whether you can forgive somebody who doesn’t know that they’ve committed the wrong — that they deny committing the wrong.
You sometimes get these cases, don’t you, you see somebody standing up and they say, “I forgive this person for killing my son.” Sometimes, I think, if you were being really cynical, you might say, oh they’re looking for solace. They’re not actually really directing it at the other person. But then you sometimes see a response in which the person who has killed the son — and let’s say they did kill the son, we know that — they say, “I don’t want your forgiveness. Your awful son, you know, I hated your son.” I find it quite hard to accept that that’s forgiveness.
Sorry, I’m going to have one last go at this, in terms of requiring some kind of responsive response, or [laughter]
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: And not just a response, but some kind of —
BEN: I think even the forgivee’s response to my forgiveness, again, I think has no bearing on what’s happening to me internally, or the degree to which I’m reflecting the moral requirements of my faith or the universe, right?
REBECCA: Sure.
BEN: So yeah, I think there’s a sense in which it doesn’t matter what the wrongdoer does.
REBECCA: But there are questions about the reasons, though. So if they were just doing it to reach some sense of solace, it seems to me like we don’t want to say that that’s a genuinely — that’s not in the forgiving spirit. The forgiving spirit seems at least to have to be other-directed. I don’t just want to restore the standing in order to look better. Or in order to, you know, be able to buy the eggs from your bakery anymore or whatever it is.
BEN: And you’ll see this kind of thought in —
REBECCA: Charitable to the person, right?
BEN: Yeah. There are some self-help folks who will just say, “Hey, you got to, like, let it go. You don’t want bitterness to consume you.” And there’s truth to those things.
REBECCA: Yes.
BEN: For sure. But is, like, my stratagem for leading a healthier happier life, actually forgiveness? Probably not. And this is why Christianity is so concerned with the atonement.
REBECCA: So coming back to where we started, where you separated out the internal state. Sometimes I think people think, it’s the Bishop Butler idea in philosophy that forgiving — another clergyman! [laughter]
BEN: I thought Bishop was his first name. I was like, whoa! [laughter]
REBECCA: I think this is sometimes reduced down to a view which is something like: forgiveness is about getting over your negative emotions. But I think you’ve given a richer notion of forgiveness, in which that’s only one part of it.
BEN: Well, and I think our culture offers two visions of how to deal with wrongdoing. One is kind of, self-help, be therapeutic, like, “Oh, just...” And then the other one is like, “You must self-flagellate enough until I’ve decided you’ve done enough to forgive you.” And both of those I find very unsatisfying.
REBECCA: Neither of these seems very attentive to the wrongdoer.
BEN: That’s right.
REBECCA: And the good of the wrongdoer.
BEN: Well, yes.
REBECCA: So it seems to me like I also would probably want to moralise in some sense and say, I feel like forgiveness has to be directed at the good of the wrongdoer.
BEN: Well, and here’s where Christianity speaks to this, right? So if you’ve been wronged, what is your responsibility to go and do? It is actually to engage with the wrongdoer and say, “Hey, you’ve done wrong.”
REBECCA: Yes.
BEN: The Bible’s like, if your brother’s sinned against you, go to him.
REBECCA: Yes, that’s another important distinction. But then again, this does lead us to requiring some kind of responsiveness from the wrongdoer.
BEN: Not necessarily.
REBECCA: Because going to them, and saying, at least trying to engage. So then that would be difficult for the one where the guy’s on the ship to Australia, or the guy’s dead. Can forgiveness obtain if the guy is dead?
BEN: Confronting someone about wrongdoing is different than forgiveness. So there is a sense in which, who is — this is often a question people ask — who is responsible for fixing the wrong thing? And the Bible will say both the person who’s been wronged and the person who’s done the wrong. So you’re both supposed to go to each other and try to work it out in repentance and forgiveness. That’s the ideal.
So the person who’s on the ship, hopefully they realise they’ve done something wrong and come back. But if they don’t, that doesn’t alleviate me of my obligations to forgive the person. And yet I’m still called to go to the wrongdoer, and maybe it’s an email, and say, hey, this thing you did, it was wrong.
There is a category of forbearance, which we’ve alluded to, which is sometimes, I don’t consider the wrong that big enough to be worth the conversation. And I just go, eh, we’re going to forbear and forgive.
REBECCA: And that’s different from excusing.
BEN: Yes.
REBECCA: It’s saying it just doesn’t meet some sufficient threshold.
BEN: Right. Like, if you insult me, you’re like, “Brophy, that guy, idiot.” [laugher] And I’m like, in my mind, I’m like, “Ah, it stung a little bit.” Is that something that necessitates a conversation? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the person. [laughter]
REBECCA: I think it’s pretty hardcore! [laughter]
BEN: All right, something even like, “Ben, your shoes are dumb.” [laughter] And I was like, “Oh, man, I really love these shoes. I picked them out!” Like, that hurts a little bit. Like, you know, that’s probably not worth a “Hey, you’re wrong!”
REBECCA: So actually, let’s just finish with this idea about — I think you’ve dealt now with how bad something has to be for it to be the kind of thing about which forgiveness comes in.
BEN: There’s a little bit of relativity there, though.
REBECCA: You’re saying there are some things that you don’t get that. Sometimes people say, you know, “I couldn’t possibly forgive someone if they did that thing.” So is there something out the other end, where, could you conceive of something — can you either think of an example, or could you conceive that there could be something, where you just think it’s so grave —
BEN: Never be forgiven?
REBECCA: Yeah. It’s not even that it couldn’t be forgiven because you couldn’t get to that stage in your heart, or however you want to put it.
BEN: Sure, yeah.
REBECCA: It’s just it would be inappropriate to forgive somebody. I know you want to say that we have these obligations to forgive, but even when we have obligations, sometimes they’re —
BEN: All right, give me a concrete example, you’re very good at this.
REBECCA: A good example would be something like genocide. It would be something like, you know, torturing babies for fun. That’s the awful example philosophers give.
BEN: Well, here’s the thing. Is that a wrong directed towards me?
REBECCA: But let’s imagine that you — this is a good point — but you are wronged by this. Could you forgive for your element in that?
BEN: So the baby they torture is mine.
REBECCA: Yeah. Now, again, you can’t forgive for the torturing of the baby, but you could maybe forgive for the wrong done against you.
BEN: The damage they’ve done to me, yeah.
REBECCA: On your conception. It’s a great — it’s a great objection, though, that you’re making.
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: So yes, one answer could just be —
BEN: The wrong wasn’t done to me. Genocide wasn’t done to me, I’m still alive.
REBECCA: The only wrongs that would fit in this category are wrongs whereby I’m not here anymore.
BEN: That’s right.
REBECCA: And therefore, that doesn’t count because I’m not here, so.
BEN: Yeah, so I think —
REBECCA: What about torturing somebody? Okay fine: somebody tortures you every day. They lock you in a box for ten years. There’s, like, nails in the box. They just give you enough food to have. They play loud music at you. The worst possible torture for ten years. So you’re still here to be able to forgive.
BEN: I mean, this is The Gulag Archipelago, right? Like, the guy, he’s locked up. He’s imprisoned. He’s tortured. And then, by the end of the book, he basically says something along the lines of, “I realized I’m the same as my guardsman. The line of good and evil runs through every human heart,” and then forgives the dude!
REBECCA: Because he’s already admitted that he’s evil too? I mean that’s a —
BEN: Yeah. So I think I would say, I would say at a human level, I’m imperfect. There’s a chance —
REBECCA: So you might not be able to get to the spirit of forgiveness, in some things?
BEN: Yeah, I’m going to be dealing with that for the rest of my life.
REBECCA: And if that is a condition, you have to have this human —
BEN: I think the principle would be, yes, I want to forgive that person. I ought to forgive that person. I’ve been forgiven so much more, et cetera, et cetera. But at a human level, we are frail, fallible creatures.
If my congregant tells me this story of being in prison for ten years, it’s like, “I’m really struggling with forgiveness,” I’m not going to be inclined to wag my finger. And yet we may start like, okay, what would it look like for you to forgive? Do you want to explore that? Let’s talk about what the Bible has to say.
That’s a very practical human side of it. The principle would be like, yes, we want to get to a place where we forgive, but there are wrongs that are just so awful that it’s going to be hard, at a human level, to actually do the thing. And that’s okay.
REBECCA: Okay. So I think we’ve sort of ended in a pretty similar place. You have your releasing somebody who’s wronged you from an obligation or a debt they’ve incurred. I don’t mean — we didn’t talk much about your early very big claim about having to effectively pay off all the debt for them, although then I think we did qualify that a little bit.
BEN: Yeah.
REBECCA: I think I probably want to say something like it’s a response to a specific wrong, to a specific wrongdoer, aimed at restoring the standing around that particular wrong.
BEN: Let me ask you this.
REBECCA: Yeah.
BEN: Do you think forgiveness is required?
REBECCA: No.
BEN: Like, from your side, from like, so from a rights perspective.
REBECCA: No. I think, oh but again, we come back to this distinction between — I think I want to say it’s a matter of charity, therefore, I don’t think it’s a rights-correlative obligation. I think it’s often the case that it’d be good for you to forgive somebody. I don’t think you ever — I don’t think anybody ever has the right to demand forgiveness from you. But that’s just, I’m just doing this conceptual work of putting it within the domain of charity.
BEN: That part I agree with — you can’t demand forgiveness from me. It’s something I have to offer.
REBECCA: But also, I think, I mean demand in this also sense of it —
BEN: Being a principle or something.
REBECCA: Being the case that, or something.
BEN: That’s interesting.
REBECCA: So, I don’t think you violate someone’s rights by not forgiving them. Ever. I don’t think that’s a rights violation. So I don’t think you’re obligated as a matter of justice. I think it’s a good-to-do obligation in many instances, as a charitable obligation. But I still think that’s not the case in all instances. So I think I probably want to have it as some special element of morality, which is largely within the charity bucket. [laughter]
BEN: So you would encourage people to forgive, not mandate?
REBECCA: I think it’s good to forgive.
BEN: But not necessary?
REBECCA: Because if it’s aimed at the good of the other person — and I think it’s probably good for you as well sometimes. I think sometimes, though, it’s probably bad for you to forgive. And I would say I think it’s bad for you to forgive somebody if they haven’t acted in such a way as to be worthy of your forgiveness. I feel like then you’re going to be playing these complicated mental games.
I think sometimes it’s really important to attend to the wrong that has been done to you, and to other people. And I think if forgiveness becomes something that’s required of you, as opposed to something that you work hard to determine when it’s relevant, when it’s appropriate, I worry that something might be going wrong there. So I think we have a bit of a difference on this.
BEN: I do. I also just want to make the point that forgiveness does not always satisfy justice.
REBECCA: Oh, yeah. I think we agree on that.
BEN: Yeah. So like the woman forgiving the murder of her son, that doesn’t mean the woman’s releasing the murderer from death row, or whatever.
REBECCA: I think that comes back again to the point around the distinction about whether it’s about the punishment. I actually don’t think forgiveness has anything to do with the —
BEN: I don’t either, but I was curious if that changed anything for you.
REBECCA: Although it might well be the case that once you’ve forgiven somebody, then you decide that, in that context, that has some effect on how you punish them, if you are indeed the person to punish.
I think generally, though, we — I mean, Locke has this line about giving up the individual right to punish, to kind of collectively manifest justice, when we enter political society. Personally, I have real problems with punishment, generally. It’s justified along deterrent or retributivist lines. I don’t buy those things. I certainly don’t buy the idea of physical punishment, ever. I actually kind of just want to get rid of the notion of punishment, to be honest.
BEN: This is adjacent to this conversation.
REBECCA: I think defence — you’re justified oftentimes in defending yourself and other people. Bringing punishment in — I don’t like the idea of it ever being seen to be a good thing to do something bad to someone under your control. And when — to punish somebody, they have to be under your control.
BEN: Yeah, so I sympathise, and I think I agree with your concern for the rights of the person being punished.
REBECCA: Yeah.
BEN: But I do think that you may be giving short shrift to the rights of the person who’s been victimised.
REBECCA: See, I think it’s bad to do bad things. I don’t think it’s just bad to the person you do it to.
BEN: Sure.
REBECCA: And if inherent in the notion of punishment is something like it can be justified to do something bad to somebody who isn’t free to defend themselves, you’re intentionally doing that. And you’re not just doing it, you’re doing it because it’s good, in order to bring about the good. So again, you either have the kind of justified-by-the-end thing, or you have this heavy desert kind of vengeance —
BEN: I think you have a bigger problem with the rights of the victimised than you think you do.
REBECCA: Interesting. I think I should think about that more. I do think that that’s probably going to be the strongest objection.
BEN: Which is going to be my response!
REBECCA: It’s going to be, well — we look out for your response!
I would just say, though, that while it might feel human and natural to feel like you have all of the power when you’ve been wronged, either in forgiving somebody or in punishing them, I think sometimes that stuff lies outside of your purview. I mean, you should accept this as a man of God! [laughter]
You think sometimes that’s — I’m big on this idea of what is your business? Just because I’ve been wronged doesn’t necessarily give me the power to determine what happens to the wrongdoer, or what their moral standing is, or even in relation to our own standing between us. There might just be some things that I can’t do. I don’t have the capacity to do, as a matter of morality.
And if somebody does something wrong, it’s wrong in itself as well as being wrong against me. Again, that’s partly why I like the specificity of this idea of forgiveness we’ve been talking about. But I really want to keep it very tight. I don’t want to be able to think about — I don’t think it’s the case you can forgive somebody for doing something to somebody else.
BEN: I agree.
REBECCA: Anyway, we’ve got to wrap up.
BEN: This is good.
REBECCA: Thank you so much. I forgive you for all the things you got wrong in this conversation! [laughter]
BEN: I don’t forgive you. No, just kidding!
REBECCA: Well, there we go! You heard it here!
BEN: Now I’ve just immediately been a hypocrite for everyone to see [laughter]
REBECCA: I think hypocrisy isn’t that bad of a wrong. [laughter] All right.
BEN: But it is a wrong.
REBECCA: Thanks so much, Ben.
BEN: Thanks, Rebecca.
REBECCA: Thank you.
