Forgiveness: A Theology

By Anthony Bash

Many endorse the idea of personal forgiveness without fully understanding its complexity and subtlety. This book is a careful and detailed theological exploration of personal forgiveness. It sets forgiveness in its ancient and biblical context, as well as drawing on contemporary debates among philosophers, psychological therapists, and international relations theorists. Forgiveness is written in a clear, accessible style for both the specialist and the non-specialist, and even the most difficult issues are clearly explained and their significance explored. Anthony Bash seeks to restore forgiveness to the center of Christian doctrine and practice, and to defend its place in personal and public life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: May 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781498201490

Anthony Bash

Anthony Bash teaches New Testament at Durham University. He is also Vice-Master of Hatfield College, Durham University. Anthony is author of Forgiveness and Christian Ethics (2007) and Just Forgiveness (2011).

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Forgiveness

A Theology

Anthony Bash

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Forgiveness

A Theology

Copyright © 2015 Anthony Bash. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

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ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-0148-3

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-0149-0

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Bash, Anthony

Forgiveness: a theology

Cascade Companions 19

xiv + 154 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-0148-3

1. Forgiveness 2. Title 3. Series

BT790.B08 2015

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 05/08/2015

Grateful thanks are given to Dr Imad N. Karam, Head of International Relations for Initiatives of Change-UK for permission to quote from the movie, Beyond Forgiving, © 2013, of which he is Producer and Director.

Cover Art by Jim Linwood [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

To Melanie

My best friend and most loyal critic

In deep gratitude, and with thanks to God

Cascade Companions

The Christian theological tradition provides an embarrassment of riches: from scripture to modern scholarship, we are blessed with a vast and complex theological inheritance. And yet this feast of traditional riches is too frequently inaccessible to the general reader.

The Cascade Companions series addresses the challenge by publishing books that combine academic rigor with broad appeal and readability. They aim to introduce nonspecialist readers to that vital storehouse of authors, documents, themes, histories, arguments, and movements that comprise this heritage with brief yet compelling volumes.

Titles in this series:

Reading Augustine by Jason Byassee

Conflict, Community, and Honor by John H. Elliott

An Introduction to the Desert Fatehrs by Jason Byassee

Reading Paul by Michael J. Gorman

Theology and Culture by D. Stephen Long

Creation and Evolution by Tatha Wiley

Theological Interpretation of Scripture by Stephen Fowl

Reading Bonhoeffer by Geffrey B. Kelly

Justpeace Ethics by Jarem Sawatsky

Feminism and Christianity by Caryn D. Griswold

Angels, Worms, and Bogeys by Michelle A. Clifton-Soderstrom

Christianity and Politics by C. C. Pecknold

A Way to Scholasticism by Peter S. Dillard

Theological Theodicy by Daniel Castelo

The Letter to the Hebrews in Social-Scientific Perspective

by David A. deSilva

Basil of Caesarea by Andrew Radde-Galwitz

A Guide to St. Symeon the New Theologian by Hannah Hunt

Reading John by Christopher W. Skinner

Acknowledgments

I am, as always, grateful to friends and to conversation partners. To Geoffrey Scarre, in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University, I owe a continuing debt of gratitude. I also thank John Barclay in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, for reading an earlier version of chapter 14. Hugh Firth has carefully read the book in draft twice, and given me incisive advice. The book is now much better for his critique. Ed Blancke has also read a draft of the book and made helpful suggestions. Above all, I thank Melanie, and our children, Hannah, Simeon, and Matthias, who have put up with me writing another book. They have used of me the computer term buffering. By this, they mean that when I have been thinking about this book (as I often have been, even when I should have been fully engaged in family matters), it has sometimes taken me a long time to respond quickly or coherently even to ordinary and everyday matters. Their loyalty, love, support, and patience are more than anyone could ask for, and more than I deserve.

Introduction

It is strange that interpersonal forgiveness, which is so widely regarded as fundamental to Christian identity and discipleship, is relatively neglected in academic theological literature. I cannot find modern books that offer a detailed theology of forgiveness set in a biblical context. Of course, there are popular books on forgiveness; some are better than others, and some, I think, are more pious than useful. On the whole, interpersonal forgiveness is remarkably under-researched. It is the Cinderella of theology. Though I am no Prince Charming, I hope this book will have a part in rescuing the theology of forgiveness from the obscurity of footnotes and of brief sections in books about related topics.

In contrast to the neglect of interpersonal forgiveness in modern theological writing, philosophers and psychologists are taking forward innovative work on forgiveness. To some extent and sometimes with different language, so also are lawyers and political scientists. Forgiveness is exciting if you are working in those fields. A lot of material is being published, and important new work is being undertaken.

Why is interpersonal forgiveness relatively understated among theologians?

I think one reason is because interpersonal forgiveness appears to be straightforward. However, it is in fact far from straightforward, both intellectually and practically. We have grown so familiar with the idea of interpersonal forgiveness that we pay lip service to it, without engaging with the fact that interpersonal forgiveness is hard to understand in its biblical setting. It is also the subject of considerable debate within the Christian Scriptures. Perhaps if I had not started to think about interpersonal forgiveness through an invitation to write about it in 2003, I would not now give so much time and thought to it.

Another reason why forgiveness is relatively understated among theologians is because interpersonal forgiveness tends to be overshadowed by books about related, and apparently weightier, matters, such as the atonement, divine justice, and divine forgiveness. These matters are not, I think, always necessarily weightier, although I agree they can sometimes be more complicated and more difficult to write about.

In addition, questions to do with the atonement, divine justice, and divine forgiveness have been at the center of theological debates and divisions for hundreds of years. They remain important topics of theological study for two reasons. First, because they have a critical place in the Christian understanding of salvation. Second, because they have sometimes had a divisive place in the history of the church and Christian thought. In contrast, people think interpersonal forgiveness is of peripheral concern, because it is apparently not one of the great doctrines of the Christian faith.

Perhaps people are right about the place of interpersonal forgiveness in terms of the narrative of Christian history, thought, and practice. What they may fail to take into account, however, is that the Synoptic Gospels (the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) suggest that God does not forgive those who do not forgive others. Whether people recognize it or not, the Christian Scriptures regard the practice of interpersonal forgiveness as a prerequisite of salvation, and as evidence of salvation. To put it more boldly, this book explores how and when people loose themselves from God, from God’s forgiveness, and from salvation if they do not forgive those who have wronged them. It also explores how interpersonal forgiveness is embedded in the great doctrines of the Christian faith, and how we can reaffirm its rightful place there.

We can perhaps go further. There is an unwritten and largely unrecognized narrative about un-forgiveness among individuals and communities that when properly told will, I suspect, point to perhaps more damage and division than have been caused by debates about the atonement and salvation. When I was a parish minister I never met a dying parishioner who regretted not spending more time at the office. I also did not meet any who took to their graves heartbreak about academic debates to do with the atonement. Sadly, however, all too many went to their graves grieving for friends and family from whom they were estranged through un-forgiveness.

I referred earlier to interpersonal forgiveness as the Cinderella of theology. I hope this book will help its readers see that it is in fact a Sleeping Beauty, ready to be woken by the kiss of a handsome prince. This Sleeping Beauty is intellectually fascinating, pastorally significant, and a Christian virtue. It is time for interpersonal forgiveness to be woken from the sleep in which it has been neglectfully left, and to take its rightful place in theology and practice. I hope this book will contribute to that task.

Part 1

Conceptual Questions

Chapter 1

Forgiveness and Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics, Meanings, and Forgiveness

On my first date with Melanie (to whom I am now married), as we began our meal together, I said to her, I have just written a paper on hermeneutics. May I discuss it with you?

You may find this an unlikely question on a first date. Melanie certainly did. Nevertheless, the question, and the range of answers to the question, are worth talking about, even (or perhaps, especially!) on a date.

When I put the question to Melanie, she said, What’s ‘hermeneutics’? It is not surprising that she should have asked the question, as issues to do with hermeneutics are outside her own academic discipline and field of research.

In answer to Melanie, I said that hermeneutics are the range of ways and assumptions we might use to interpret texts, especially biblical texts. What I meant is that hermeneutics alert us to the fact that we make suppositions in order to interpret a text. One needs a hermeneutic, that is, a framework of interpretive presuppositions, to understand any written text. I also said that hermeneutics are important because they give texts meaning; without hermeneutics, texts are no more than symbols in ink on a page.

The conversation about hermeneutics lasted the whole meal; the rest, as is popularly said, is now history.

In this book on forgiveness, I start with hermeneutics because the interpretive presuppositions we bring to writings about forgiveness in the New Testament, which from now on I refer to as the Christian Scriptures, will shape the outcome of our reading. Some of the hermeneutics I will bring to our reading I have deliberately chosen; others I have deliberately excluded because I think they are mistaken or irrelevant. Unfortunately, I will be unaware of some of the hermeneutics I adopt, and in years to come I may regret how excluding them has skewed the reading that I offer in this book. I want to be up front, as best I can be, about some aspects of how and why I read the texts as I do; you, the reader, may agree or disagree. So I am highlighting what I regard as important for explaining why I am approaching the interpretation of the Christian Scriptures on forgiveness in the ways I do.

I will now set out seven of the hermeneutical presuppositions that underlie much of the discussion about forgiveness in this book.

Forgiveness Is a Social Construct

We cannot describe what we mean by forgiveness and forgiving by reference to an objective notion of forgiveness, because no such objective notion exists. Rather, to speak of forgiveness and forgiving is to deploy language about socially constructed concepts that can best be understood against the cultural setting in which the concepts are used. This means we need to be sensitive to the context of the language and literature we are looking at. It would therefore not be surprising if words about forgiveness have one set of meanings in the Christian Scriptures, and another (but, of course, related) set of meanings in a different collection of writings or in popular, modern speech.

Forgiving Behavior Is Evidenced in a Variety of Ways

Forgiving behavior comprises a variety of different responses, with some of the responses more or less richly textured as behavior that we think is forgiving.¹ To accept an apology that is offered with a gift of a bunch of flowers as an expression of contrition is probably to forgive; so also (just about) is for a mother to receive and accept a surly grunt (that sounds like the word sorry) from a teenager who has been rude to her. In contrast, some patterns of behavior are related to what we understand to be forgiveness or forgiving behavior but they do not