CHAPTER VI

THE MEANING OF FORGIVENESS

In the last chapter we treated the imputation of evil to the innocent. We must now consider the right attitude toward actual evildoers.

In discussing sin, one of the points emphasized was that of the moral solidarity between the individual and society. The moral interest of the individual is always identical with the moral interest of society; and, on the other hand, the failure of the individual is a social failure. The human race sags morally at the point of some particular member of it.

Again, we defined the task of humanity as the incessant endeavor to embody the ideal spiritual order in the finite sphere of human relations. This effort meets both with partial success and with failure. The gain derived by the human race from its experiences, its labors, its sufferings, is that the spiritual universe in its unattainable elevation and sublimity is more and more revealed to the inner eye; in other words, that by way of effort and recoil, and renewed effort and renewed recoil from the finite, the infiniteness of the infinite world is realized. The essential point is that the boon of realization must be gained both through partial success and failure. Now sin is failure; everyone fails, everyone is convicted of sin. There is no exception. In insisting on this point the Christian account is exact. Only it should be remembered that sin or failure itself is one of the instrumentalities by which the end of human existence is achieved. These preliminaries being understood, certain propositions may be brought forward as to the treatment of sin, and in particular as to repentance, punishment and forgiveness.

Repentance is recoil, recoil not from the bad act and its painful consequences, but from the principle underlying the act. Every kind of sin is an attempt in some fashion to live at the expense of other life. The spiritual principle is: live in the life of others, in the energy expended to promote the essential life in others. Moral badness is self-isolation, detachment. Spirituality is consciousness of infinite interrelatedness.

Punishment, rightly regarded, is a name for the steps taken to lead the unrepentant up to the point of repentance, _i.e._, up to the recoil. Punishment is itself criminal when undertaken for any other object. Punishment on the vindictive _lex talionis_ theory, or on the bare deterrent theory, is excluded. Reformatory punishment as commonly understood is no less inadequate, because it restricts the idea of reformation as a rule to the externals of conduct.[58]

The steps taken to lead the evildoer up to the point of repentance are to be criticised from this point of view. Transient or prolonged separation from ordinary society may be necessary. Severe discipline may be indispensable. Capital punishment, however, is wholly out of the question, since the prevention of the crime now being impossible, the achievement of the spiritual gain is the point to be aimed at. But the most effectual aid in promoting repentance is faith in the better nature of the wrongdoer, in that spiritual principle resident within him which no crime committed by him can wholly crush, and which in the most apparently hopeless cases is still to be presumed. But faith in the good that persists in those whom we call bad must go hand in hand with the acknowledgment of the bad that remains unexpurgated in those whom we call good. The prison reformer who poses as impeccable and righteous himself can never win the confidence of the poor human derelicts with whom he has to deal nor effect in them the desired change. He must share with them the conviction of sin if he would impart to them the power of the resilience which he experiences within himself.

Faith in the potential power of goodness resident in the evildoer is often confounded with forgiveness. The distinction between the two, however, should not be obliterated. Faith is help proffered from the outside to effectuate the inner change. Forgiveness is a record of the fact that the change has actually taken place, and belief that it is likely to be permanent. Forgiveness, in the mind of spiritually-minded persons, takes place almost automatically when the conditions on which it depends are fulfilled. So long as he remains unrepentant a man cannot be forgiven, although we may have the conviction that it is in his power to repent and the earnest desire to bring about the change in him. Jesus on the Cross says: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Perhaps “open their eyes so that they may see the Light” may be the more just interpretation of the meaning—not “forgive” in the strict sense, for forgiveness is not feasible while the heart of the offender remains closed.[59]

Both faith and forgiveness are factors in regeneration: the one to assist in accomplishing the change, the other to assist in making it permanent. But both the faith and the forgiveness are exceptionally difficult in the case of our personal enemies. _Enemies in the spiritual sense there are and can be none._ Every human being, even one who has done me the most cruel harm, is yet, from another point of view, a fellow member of the spiritual society. But to discriminate between the two relations in which the man stands to me—that in which he is my foe, and the other in which he is my fellow—to be able to put aside as less important the harm he has done, the suffering he has forced me to endure, and to desire with perfect sincerity that the recoil, the transformation, may take place in him, that is the most searching test of one’s own ethical character.[60]

The forgiveness of personal foes, when complete, establishes a strangely tender spiritual fellowship between the pardoner and the pardoned. Both have transcended their normal empirical selves, both have become partners in a sublime transaction: the one delivered from the clinging of his baser desires, the other released from his first crude reaction against evil. They will never forget what they thus owe to one another. They will continue to walk hand in hand, the one still leaning, the other supporting and himself unspeakably strengthened by the support he gives.

Finally, to forgive is not to forget—quite the contrary. To forgive is to remember the past action, but to remember it as belonging to the past, as the act of one who has since undergone the great change. The miracle of the change of water into wine at the feast of Cana would not have seemed so wonderful to the guests had they not remembered that what was turned into wine had before been water. To forgive is to remember that what was water has become wine. And he, too, who has been forgiven may not forget. The remembrance of the past he will need as a warning and a safeguard.[61] Not to see the essentially divine nature in others, and thus also in one’s self is the essence of the wrong. To teach the guilty to see it is the object of punishment. To forgive is to declare that what before was ignored is now seen and known.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] I mean that it is usually considered sufficient, for purposes of reformation, to bring the wrongdoer up to the average standard of law-abiding citizenship, to restore him to the bosom of society as a safe and industrious member. Whereas a person who has had the searching experience of deep guilt is a candidate for a higher station in the moral scale. Humanity having fallen in him, he should be helped to rise to a higher than the average altitude. This at least should be the aim. Consider the fact that Jesus selected some of his most spiritual companions from among publicans and harlots.

[59] Compare the words addressed by Sir Thomas More to his judges when sentence of death had been pronounced upon him—“For though you have been my judges to condemnation, may we meet merrily hereafter in everlasting salvation.”

[60] Everyone admires a disinterested prison reformer, one who is able to see and to call out the good in a so-called bad man; but it is one thing to be disinterested and generous towards men who have acted badly towards others, and quite another thing to take the ethical attitude towards those who have acted wickedly towards oneself. Hence the touchstone of the character of the prison-reformer is to be found in the way in which he behaves and feels towards his personal enemies, for instance, towards those who malignantly attack him and interfere with the business of prison reform on which he has set his heart.

[61] Perhaps I may add a word as to the forgiveness of those who, by an extension of meaning, may be called our intellectual enemies. By intellectual enemies I understand those whose point of view is radically opposed to our own, whose principles and premises, if accepted, would render the entire theory of life on which we act, and on which we found our convictions, untenable. We are apt to be exasperated in listening to them, or in reading the works in which they express their opinions. We are apt to feel that there is no room in the world in which we live for such ideas as theirs, that we and they cannot exist side by side. The bitter feuds of rival religious factions, the notorious _odium theologicum_, and in more recent times the thinly veiled animus shown in the controversies of philosophical schools are all alike traceable to this source. Racial antagonisms, too, are partly to be accounted for on the same ground. There are certain primary attitudes of mind, modes of feeling and directions of impulse, the correctness of which we cannot demonstrate just because they are primary, and which we all the more vehemently assert when we find them disputed. Love your intellectual enemies, may usefully be added to the stock of moral commandments; keep an open and hospitable mind to opinions and ways of acting, thinking and feeling which naturally repel you. And it will help us to discipline ourselves in this difficult behavior if we reflect that the views most contrary to our own are nevertheless sure to contain some element of truth which we cannot afford to disregard, and which will serve the purpose of correcting and supplementing such truth as we may ourselves possess.