Forgiving the forgiven

Suppose that Alice wronged Bob, repented, and God forgave Alice for it. Bob, however, withholds his forgiveness. First, it is interesting to ask the conceptual question: What is it that Bob withholds? On my account of objective guilt, when Alice wronged Bob, she gained a normative burden of guilt (minimally, she came to owe it to Bob that she think of herself as guilty), and forgiveness is the removal of that normative burden.

Now in forgiveness, God removed Alice’s normative burden not just to himself, but to Bob. For if God did not remove Alice’s normative burden owed to Bob, then it would be in principle possible that Alice is in heaven—having been forgiven by God—and yet still carries the burden of having wronged Bob. But no one in heaven has a burden.

But if Alice’s normative burden owed to Bob has also been removed by God, and forgiveness is the removal of the burden, then what is it that Bob is withholding?

I think the answer is that there are two parts of forgiveness: there is the removal of the burden of objective guilt and the acknowledgment of the removal of that burden. When God has removed the burden of objective guilt from Alice, all that’s left for Bob to do is to acknowledge this removal.

Note, too, that it would be rather bad for Bob to fail to acknowledge the removal of Alice’s burden, because we should acknowledge what is real and good, and this removal is real and good.

One might think this problem is entirely generated by the idea that God can forgive not just sins against God but also sins against other people. Not so. There seems to be a secular variant of this problem, too. For there seems to be a way in which one’s normative burden of objective guilt of wrongs against fellow humans can be removed without God’s involvement: one can repent of the wrong and suffer an adequate punishment. (Of course, any wrong against neighbor is also a sin against God, and this only removes the guilt with respect to neighbor, unless the punishment is adequate to sin against God, too.) In that case, the burden is presumably removed, but the victim should still acknowledge this removal.

This points to a view of forgiveness on which we ought to forgive those whose normative burden has been removed. If we think that God always forgives the repentant, then this implies that we should always forgive the repentant.

This is close to Aquinas’s view (in his Catechetical Instructions) that we are all required to forgive all those who seek our forgiveness, but it is even better (“perfect” is his phrase) if we forgive even those who do not.