What is Forgiveness

What is forgiveness?

            In their book The Faces of Forgiveness, LeRon Shults and Steven Sandage discuss an introducing facial hermeneutics. The face represents a powerful interpersonal text that evokes an attempt to interpret the feelings and dispositions of the other. Yes, they refer to the human face, but they also make up a verb, “facing,” that is, encountering and confronting the presence of other. Sandage, the psychological part of these writers, discusses matters like losing face and de-facing in that context. Shults discusses the biblical notions of the face of God and the human face. This book delves into the biblical concept of 'facing' reflecting the face of God to other people through your own face. And, this book stresses the need to forgive in the redemptive power that is found in community.

When they discuss forgiveness, they identify at least three different ways that we can define it. One definition is “forensic” or “legal” forgiveness — the kind that your insurance company wants to give you, or the kind that involves having a debt erased. This kind of forgiveness is a “transaction … in which one party agrees not to exact what the law requires.” This kind of forgiveness is situational and may be limited to one particular incident. The problem here is that it does not invite one into relational matters like justice and making peace. As human beings, we do not simply long for such forgiveness, that might one day pay off, but has no effect here.

A second definition of forgiveness connects it with a therapeutic benefit. Forgiveness in this sense is a process by which the offended party is motivated to become “less vengeful and avoidant and more benevolent” toward the wrongdoer. Forgiveness in this context does not condone the offense or forget about it. Forgiveness is about releasing claim over the offender and moving forward in another direction. This kind of forgiveness, like the legal definition, is also limited. It does not necessarily bring about reconciliation and restoration of a broken relationship.

A third definition is redemptive forgiveness. Forgiveness is about inviting people in the here and now into joyful, infinite life and glory of the Father, Son and Spirit, that is, into a community of infinite love. It's incarnate, unending grace. Redemptive forgiveness is when "a party agrees not to exact what the law requires" (pg. 20). Therapeutic forgiveness is a moral judgment that an offender is responsible for harmful actions, surveying the damage done by the hurtful actions and eventually remembering it differently (pg. 22). Redemptive forgiveness includes both forensic and therapeutic forgiveness but the "overarching meaning of [redemptive] forgiveness is manifesting and sharing redemptive grace" (pg. 23).

Shults writes, "I suggest that the overarching meaning of forgiveness in Scripture is manifesting and sharing grace" (125). "When forgiveness, an aspect of a broad horizon of salvation, becomes relational and present, it also becomes communal, not individualistic. "Speaking from a free-church tradition, Miraslov Volf argues that redemption is mediated through real relations in community, not simply 'immediately' to the individual" (160).

 

Just as salvation/redemption is "by grace through faith," so is forgiveness. Shults writes, "Trying to work up the energy to forgive another exhausts human resources. Divine forgiveness makes room for humans to share in the grace and joy of trinitarian love, which provides an infinite resource for human forgiveness" (169).