Os Guinness has written a fine book on the problem that evil poses to both believers and unbelievers and the responses to evil offered by each of the three families of faith: eastern, naturalistic, and Judeo-Christian. The book is titled Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror.
Guinness touches a lot of bases and says many worthwhile things about the topic that anyone can read with profit, but one thing in particular puzzled me. Guinness holds to the view that one person may forgive another of a serious offense even though the other neither seeks nor desires that forgiveness. It is possible, in other words, to have forgiveness without reconciliation. Guinness suggests that as long as the "forgiver" doesn't seek redress for the offense, as long as he doesn't hold a "grudge", then he has forgiven the offender.
I guess my problem is that I'm not sure what "forgiveness" means given Guinness' view of the matter. Let me illustrate the difficulty: John does Dave a grave injustice. John is unrepentant and is not interested in Dave's forgiveness. Dave nevertheless says that he forgives John. He treats him with a modicum of courtesy, even behind his back, and seeks no revenge or redress for the hurt. Even so, he no longer respects nor likes John. Their friendship has been irreparably sundered, and Dave doesn't wish to have anything to do with John in the future. Whenever he thinks about the situation he cannot help but think that John is guilty of an offense even though he doesn't insist that John make any compensation. They go their separate ways.
In what sense, then, has Dave actually forgiven John? In other words, can there be any meaning to forgiveness if the forgiveness is not accepted and if there is no reconciliation?
If one man forgives another man's debt then all record of the debt is wiped away, but if Dave forgives John, in Guinness' understanding of the word, then there is no wiping away of guilt, only a decision not to press for retribution. So, is forgiveness just a refusal to seek recompense, which is what Guinness seems to say, or is it something more than that? If it's more, then exactly what is it?
It seems to me that forgiveness entails the restoration of a relationship to at least some semblance of the status quo ante, just as in the case of debt forgiveness, but I don't see how this is possible apart from some measure of reconciliation.
I've always thought of forgiveness as a transaction. One party offers it, and the other accepts it. Until it has been accepted there is no transaction even if the offer still holds. God, for example, holds out forgiveness to everyone, but only those who accept it can receive it. If this is not the way God's forgiveness works then classical Christianity has an interesting problem: People God has forgiven will nevertheless find themselves suffering eternal punishment because, though they've been forgiven, they've never accepted that forgiveness and are thus not reconciled to God. Yet if hell is a consequence of sin and all sin has been expunged from the ledger (because it has been forgiven), why will there be anyone in hell? Indeed, what is the substantive difference between forgiveness and no forgiveness?
This quibble notwithstanding, Unspeakable is an excellent read and can be ordered here. Viewpoint recommends it to anyone interested in the phenomenon of modern evil.
