two views of christian forgiveness: traditional vs. modern

why the traditional view is better and why the modern view degrades christian morality: a hard line in the sand

in light of recent events and of my being heavily ratioed on x for criticizing a certain person whose name i will not mention here, i decided to write the following short essay.

people are right that there must be unconditional inward forgiveness in christianity. but there is a traditional view and a modern one.

the traditional view is that with this inward forgiveness you love the other person and do not seek private revenge. (though you can rebuke them privately or seek their punishment with the authorities, as appropriate, if they do not repent.)

but you do not show them favor or reconcile with them until they have repented.

this view has been the consensus by biblical interpreters for almost 2000 years.

the modern view on the other hand, also known as the therapeutic view, is that you seek an “inner release” and let go and that the goal of forgiveness is just that. this is not biblical—nowhere in the bible do you ever read anything about “just letting go man”—yet is today widespread if not, strangely, canonical.

now, this modern view still allows for the separation of this “inner release” from the step of reconciliation, as we saw earlier.

one problem however is that if the motivation is inner release and comes from a place, let’s be frank, of psychological fragility rather than a motivation for moral uprightness, it can end up moving too quickly to the reconciliation step, i.e., “everything’s fine”! as this view was emerging, c.s. lewis warned about this problem in many places. bonhoeffer called it “cheap grace”, that is, grace that cheapens the moral value of grace.

if this becomes the norm (as it has) it can also lead to pressure on those transgressed against to “set things aside” at the expense of the truth and justice that would be required for morally appropriate reconciliation. in this way, it leads to the diminishment and “making light of” transgressions that should be properly seen as such by the community, as augustine worried about. this “making light of” indeed degrades the moral standards of the community, or, alternatively, even can cause the person transgressed against to be transgressed against a second time by a community that is morally disengaged and disinclined to enforce appropriate moral standards and accountability.

indeed, since this modern understanding of biblical forgiveness is in practice (if not in theory) collapsed into a single step—forgiveness and reconciliation at once—this subtle corruption of communities’ moral standards has become more commonplace.

personally, between us, i think that seeking some therapeutic benefit for forgiveness muddies the waters, is self-focused rather than god-focused, and is unmanly.

if, say, the leader of an organization takes the therapeutic view, it subtly sends a message that grace is not a serious virtue but expected by default, and that it is incumbent on everyone to ignore bad behavior lest they be considered an unforgiving christian, which ironically undermines christian morality.

now, the problems with the therapeutic view aside, it is certainly even worse to “make light” of bad behavior in public, even, as aquinas called it, the sin of active scandal. and, as the christian writers say, such demonstrations of piety—which are not pious but in fact bad—publicly are unseemly.

in conclusion i propose that we make the medieval great again. and that the only release we should yearn for is the doing of good things and the right behavior. which seemed to suit people just fine until very recently when people decided they needed to change the religion.