'To forgive is to blame, not to punish'.
I don't know if Byron has already commented on this thought from Volf's book Free of Charge, but it struck me afresh this morning. Forgiveness is actually an act of judgement rather than a lack of judgement.
As Volf goes on, he sees judicial punishment as now shorn of its retributive force (this sounds like Girard) because Christ is the end of retribution. He heralds a new way of blaming: forgiveness, which may of course be coupled with discipline and so one, but not retribution.
As Volf goes on:
Standing as I do in the tradition of Martin Luther, I think Christ took all the punishment upon himself. None of it can be justly doled out to anyone anymore. Expiation on the part of an offender replaces forgiveness and removes the reason for it. It cannot supplement forgiveness. The heart of forgiveness is relinquinshing retribution... . p. 171
6 comments:
Thats revolutionary...
No, I hadn't. But it's a point that Volf makes in Exclusion and Embrace - the necessity of truthfully saying what actually happened in order for there to be forgiveness and reconciliation (which is why Desmond Tutu insisted on a Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa after Apartheid).
However, there are actually two claims. First the positive one that forgiveness involves accusation and judgement. But then there is a second claim in Free of Charge that 'judicial punishment is now shorn of its retributive force'. Therefore, he claims, Christians ought to not look to the State to punish criminals (though we may look there to correct or restrain them). However, Romans 13, says that authorities bear the sword in order to be the servant of God executing wrath on the wrongdoer. Sounds like punishment, not simply reform or restraint?
I've also always found Lewis's argument to have some weight: that unless punishment is included as part of the goal of judicial action, then there is no particular reason for proportionality in response, indeed, no reason to wait for a crime to be committed before locking people up to prevent them doing something you think they might be likely to do (even vaguely likely to do: you're a Muslim, therefore you might be a terrorist).
to blame...
Yes, a similar point came up discussing Derrida and Volf on forgiveness.
Volf's point seems to me to have a limited value. Granted the Messiah has taken the punishment for all sin. Yet I wonder whether Abelard's complaint - "How can another pay for my sins?" - begins to bight here. If there is no subsequent punishment then the full extent of a crime against the community is eclipsed by the actions of God. I may be slipping into Kant's need for God to administer justice in the universe but I can't help feeling that there might somehow be an injustice if the death of the Messiah is the only place in which the consequences of sin are dealt - if you see what I mean.
cyberpastor - Do I hear you longing for purgatory?
purgatory makes everything so much neater...
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