How is Forgiveness Possible? Toward an Orthodox and Ascetic Answer

Abstract

Debates regarding the relationship between justice and mercy, which generally includes forgiveness, have long occupied a central place in Christian theological discussion. Beginning with the teaching of the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, among others, Christians sought to articulate their perspective in contradistinction to the norms of other various Jewish perspectives at the time, both within and without the Church (cf. Matthew 9:13, 12:7). Further complications have historically centered upon the theological question of the doctrine of the atonement. Yet another significant strand has to do with social ethics and criminal justice. Jordan J. Ballor, for example, outlines four schools of thought regarding the relationship between retributive justice, restorative justice, and forgiveness: complementary reformists, instrumentalist reformists, separatist radicals, and abolitionist radicals. Beyond all of these questions and distinctions, however, is the deeply pressing, personal and existential dilemma: how does one forgive?This essay, in a very limited manner, brings together social science research and the Orthodox ascetic tradition on justice, mercy, love, and forgiveness in effort to answer this question. Drawing from St. John Cassian, St. John Climacus, and St. Nicolas Cabasilas inter alia, I outline a three-tiered schema that ties together (1) sin, the antinatural, fear of punishment, and slavery; (2) justice, natural law, expectation of reward, and stewardship; and (3) mercy, the supranatural, love, and sonship. On the one hand, preliminary concrete findings of social science research are used to augment, confirm, and complicate this theoretical schema, while, on the other hand, the schema is used as an evaluative tool for the data. Understanding asceticism as the cultivation of virtue through various practices of self-denial in cooperation with divine grace, I conclude by suggesting that forgiveness, as an ascetic act, requires a flowering of the grace of God through personal discipline and situational prudence, sketching a picture of what this could look like and suggesting areas for further research.