The Paradox of Forgiveness

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When is it right to forgive a person for harm she has inflicted on you?

Is she required to change her ways for her to deserve your forgiveness?

Does forgiveness even make sense? Or is it paradoxical?

Imagine that Jason finds out that his wife Ava has had a love affair with another man for the past year. When Jason finds out, he is terribly hurt. Although Ava guarantees the affair is over, Jason wants time to think about whether he can forgive Ava.

But then he gets stuck on the paradox of forgiveness:

Paradox of Forgiveness

1. Either Ava's is culpable, or she isn't.
2. If she's culpable, then what's the point of forgiving her?
3. If she isn't culpable, then there is nothing to forgive.
4. So, either way, it seems pointless to forgive.

Or as Yale professor Miroslav Volf puts it: “Forgiveness [...] at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender.”

What should Jason do? Is there something wrong with his reasoning?

There is. The paradox of forgiveness assumes that if you are culpable for what you did and deserve to be punished and not forgiven, then you are always culpable for what you did.

But that's got to be wrong.

People can make amends and change. Perhaps they can even be forgiven, because they have served "their sentence."

Can amends and personal change undo past harm? Of course not. A past harm can never be undone. But don't think of forgiveness as a way of changing the past. Don't ever think of it as a way to forget. It's neither of those things. It's a way of ending negative feelings toward the person, not her past actions.

But can we really stop being upset with an offender and yet continue to be upset about what happened?

I believe we can stop being upset with a person without accepting what she did. But to deserve forgiveness, something must change. Jason should not forgive Ava if she doesn't regret what she did, or if he has reason to think she might do the same thing again.

But perhaps it's too strict to be unwilling to forgive unless we can see a change in our offender. Why can't they just serve "their sentence" and then be forgiven?

If we draw an analogy between interpersonal justice and criminal justice, that would be the natural conclusion to draw.

At least some criminals who go to prison serve their sentence and then get released into society without any repercussion. Whether they are eventually released does not in every instance depend on whether they regret their crime or denounce the kind of person they once were and perhaps still are.

If forgiveness in our interpersonal justice system and releasing criminals from prison in our criminal justice system serve similar functions, then the offender will eventually have served her “sentence,” and ought to be forgiven, even if she has only "done time" but hasn't changed a bit.

The analogy between criminal justice and interpersonal justice is indefensible, however. In a democratic republic, like the U.S., Germany or France, the criminal justice system is required to "listen" to the preferences, values and concerns of the majority of the population while still protecting basic human rights. Because interpersonal justice isn't based on what the majority think, it is very different from criminal justice.

If you cut your offender out of your life, she may suffer. Yet this does not automatically make her deserve forgiveness. If you forgive your offender without demanding changes, why did you take offense to begin with? You took offense because what she did was offensive. She brought suffering upon you. You reacted by cutting her out of your life. Only regret and personal change can give her access to re-enter your life and make her deserve forgiveness.

There is one caveat. In special attenuating circumstances, forgiveness can be justified even if you don't know whether the other person regrets what she did and perhaps might be prepared to do the same thing again. This will be the discussion point of part II of this post.