Mourning for forgiveness

Abstract

This article proposes a new understanding of unconditional forgiveness as a human moral act, based on brief considerations of Scripture and atonement theology, as well as attention to forgiveness as a public and pastoral practice. The article seeks to define unconditional forgiveness as a specific and limited discipline of Christian non-violence, and as a pastoral and spiritual practice of Christian mourning.

Spiritually Motivated Self-Forgiveness and Divine Forgiveness, and Subsequent Health and Well-Being Among Middle-Aged Female Nurses: An Outcome-Wide Longitudinal Approach

“…Philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard wrote extensively about the dialectic between despair, self-forgiveness, and divine forgiveness, ultimately concluding that genuine reception of and faith in divine forgiveness inescapably requires a person to forgive themselves (Kierkegaard, 1983;Podmore, 2009;Hanson, 2017). Other philosophers and historians note important distinctions between forgiveness and reconciliation (Jackson, 2009;Potts, 2019) and highlight the way that social, religious, and philosophical movements in modern Western history influence notions of self-and divine forgiveness. For example, the Reformation in the sixteenth century and the Enlightenment in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries both contributed to Western society's move away from an emphasis on religious institutional structures and sacramental rites toward an emphasis on the individual and an inward experience of religion (Konstan, 2012).…”