Absolution: Divine and Human

Introduction

While the assumption that philosophy can serve as an ancilla (handmaid) for theology is uncontroversial, at least within some theological traditions, the idea that theology itself can enrich the philosophical enterprise is much less widely accepted, but not entirely without precedent, for example, in the so-called “theological turn” in French phenomenology, as well as in Maurice Blondel's vision of a “symbiotic” relation between theology and philosophy. ¹

In Blondel's methodology, theology and philosophy are, in practice, inseparable disciplines that cannot be pulled apart entirely, as rational human activities. Analogous to the relation of nature and grace, philosophy and theology, while remaining distinct and heterogeneous, are not at all extrinsic to one another. Philosophy is, therefore, intertwined in a “conjugal” or “symbiotic” relationship with theology, as a true adjutrix theologiae (helpmate of theology).

Moreover, Blondel contends that philosophy cannot itself honestly ignore religious questions, such as the supernatural, or the answers that people find in revelation and religious teaching to the question of human destiny. In this way, positive religious doctrines can themselves be legitimate objects of inquiry deserving philosophical examination, not as revealed, which would be to step into the theological enterprise, but as “revealing,” that is, by way of hypothesis, like mathematicians who suppose a problem solved and then work backwards from the “fictitious” solution through analysis. ² The positive teachings of Christian revelation, therefore, by no means represent a repression of reason. ³ Philosophy and theology are not juxtaposed. Instead, they are mutually dependent enterprises, each preserving its autonomy in cooperation with the other.

This short study is an exercise in Blondel's vision of the symbiosis of philosophy and theology. It argues that both disciplines, while heterogenous and autonomous, mutually enlighten each other in the investigation of forgiveness, more precisely, in the notion of “absolution,” which is inherent in any act of forgiveness, whether divine or human.

Forgiveness is a notoriously difficult concept. As a complex rational act with essential emotional, cognitive, and linguistic components, it is not completely enclosed within the bounds of any one academic discipline but invites a fruitful interaction between human sciences. ⁴ The study of human forgiveness a priori demands a multidisciplinary approach, which may partly explain why the topic fell into desuetude in the Western intellectual tradition for so long, given our tendency towards compartmentalization of academic disciplines. From being a “somewhat unfashionable” subject in moral philosophy, however, forgiveness, rather like virtue, has more recently been the subject of increased philosophical and psychological interest. ⁵

Following Blondel's lead, this study argues for the mutual illumination of the philosophical and theological enterprises by focusing on the notion of “absolution,” understood as the externalization of forgiveness in a signifying action either verbal or gestural, as essential to the act of forgiveness, both in the religious and in the secular sphere. Without this absolution, forgiveness remains incomplete and in the realm of the merely potential, a requirement that only a few philosophers of forgiveness have highlighted so far.

Considering forgiveness as divine action, from a theological stance, however, brings this need for absolution into sharp focus, an approach that is congruent with the work of philosopher Charles Griswold, who argues extensively that the context in which forgiveness takes root is a “dialogical narrative” of wrongdoer and victim. ⁶ In other words, the theology of forgiveness as divine act informs the philosophy of forgiveness as a human act.

The Christian theology of revelation in salvation history readily lends itself to interpretation as such a dialogical narrative between the human and the divine, one that takes shape in all the distinct sensory signs of revelation, such as Scripture and, above all, in that one historical life that is both fully divine and fully human. For the divine act of forgiveness to become real and known in human experience, it is conveyed to human beings in concrete signs that we can interpret, making divine absolution of sin a felt human reality. Scripture and the dogmas of the Christian faith as well as the sacramental and baptismal unity of the ecclesial community as body of Christ are all such sensory signs in this view, part of the divine–human dialogue.

This theological perspective on forgiveness as divine act taking shape through concrete signs in human experience shines light on the philosophy of forgiveness as human action. We find, in fact, remarkable congruence between divine and human forgiveness in that, essential to both is the expression of forgiveness in a signifying gesture of absolution that is both concrete and interpretable to the wrongdoer.

The Human Need for Absolution

Let us begin at the end, as it were, with the theology of divine forgiveness in its most ritualized and sacramental form. In the history of Christian theology, sacramental forgiveness has developed from a public practice to a private one and has seen a turbulent history. Since it consists entirely of a verbal exchange without the intervention of any material element or symbol, Calvin and other Reformers rejected its status as a true sacrament. ⁷ Lacking any material element, it does not obviously fit the Augustinian characterization of a sacrament (accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum; “the word comes to the element and makes the sacrament”) because it consists entirely of verba (words) without any elementum (element).

The sacrament involves a complex interaction between two human beings that are traditionally described in terms of the “acts of the penitent” and the “acts of the priest.” The acts of the penitent include “contrition” (an attitude of inner sorrow for sin), verbal confession of sin, and a promise not to reoffend, as well as some subsequent penitential act (or “satisfaction”), often in the form of prayer. The acts of the priest, on the other hand, include receiving the confession and pronouncing the verbal absolution of the penitent.

Crucially, however, the sacrament culminates in this verbal act of absolution, in the requisite and conventional words of absolution. These words vary in their concrete linguistic expression across different rites. In the Latin West, they are in the present indicative, “I absolve you of your sins,” while Eastern rites utilize passive forms, or the past tense: “Such a sin has been removed from your body and from your soul, in the name of the Father, Amen.” ⁸ In any case, in accordance with the classic Augustinian description above, the sacrament is not complete unless the words of forgiveness, absolution, are directly spoken to the penitent.

Remarkably, some authors in the philosophical literature also emphasizes a homologous necessity for “absolution” in human forgiveness: unless forgiveness is externally expressed, it remains incomplete. ⁹ The forgiver must externalize their forgiveness to the wrongdoer through some sign, in order for forgiveness to be done. Now this expression can be verbal, or it can take the form of a signifying action that lends itself to verbal explanation: that is, whose meaning could otherwise be made verbally explicit, especially in the context of an intimate relationship. Accordingly, a fundamental component of forgiveness, both human (vertical) and divine (horizontal), is “absolution” of the wrongdoer.

Forgiveness, in this view, does not reduce to a subjective change of heart or emotional-psychological state, but is only completed in an objective signifying action of the person who forgives, an external expression of an inner conversion of the will. Crucially, someone who forgives, without expressing it in a concrete absolving gesture (when that is possible) has not in fact completed the act of forgiveness.

This conception of forgiveness is rooted, therefore, in the fundamental orientation of the human being towards dialogical exchange and mutual recognition through language. Language is by its nature ordered towards dialogue: a conclusion that one can draw as easily from linguistic categories such as indexicality (deixis) as from the dialogical philosophy of Ferdinand Ebner and Martin Buber. ¹⁰

This approach also converges with what we can term the “performative hypothesis” about human language: that is, the idea that there exists no opposition between speech and action. To speak is to act. Words actually do something in the world and bring about new situations and states of affairs. This approach is often associated with the term “speech act theory” following the early usage of J. L. Austin and J. R. Searle. ¹¹ The basic insight is that verbal acts are intentional human actions just like any other nonverbal intentional human action. This contemplation on the potency of human language, however, is hardly the discovery of such Anglo-Saxon linguistic philosophers reacting to the limitations of logical positivism. As theologians know well, it is profoundly biblical. In the Scriptures, God’s word is God’s deed. It is not the mere verbal description of ideas, thoughts, and concepts, but is divine activity, which creates and heals. ¹²

The necessity for absolution, either in words or in a sign that lends itself to explanation in words, means that forgiveness is somehow predicated on our language capacity. Animals do not forgive, because they do not speak. This in turn makes so-called “speech act theory” an initially attractive prospect for the analysis of forgiveness. Attempts to understand forgiveness in terms of speech act theory can be found as early as 1963 in the work of Donald Evans. ¹³ More recently, Joram Haber and Richard Briggs have taken up the challenge. Broadly speaking, a “speech act” or performative utterance is one that performs some action by virtue of its utterance under certain conventional conditions, for example, “I bet you ten dollars,” or “You are hereby under arrest.” These words are effective simply by virtue of being spoken in an appropriate context. I argue here, however, that forgiveness cannot in itself reduce to a speech act. It can, however, involve mutually interacting acts of “absolution” and “confession.”

In other words, unlike classical speech acts of promising or wagering, discussed at some length in the work of Austin and Searle, forgiveness is not exclusively brought about or completed by words alone. On the contrary, sincere forgiveness necessitates an inner conversion of the will to overcome negative thoughts or emotions about the wrongdoer, and to forego revenge. Otherwise, forgiveness simply has not taken place. This inner conversion of the will is expressed externally, in an “absolving” gesture, whether verbal or not. ¹⁴

On reflection, in the context of intimate relationships, it is possibly the exception rather than the rule that forgiveness is expressed using an explicit verbal formula such as “I forgive you,” or confession expressed with explicit words of apology such as “I’m sorry.” In such relationships, it is possible to express forgiveness or to ask for it without using these words, or their cognates, or even words at all.

Moreover, it is unclear that sincere confession and repentance are even necessary for real forgiveness in everyday experience. Otherwise, parents would never forgive teenagers. It seems that sincere forgiveness can take place in human life without sincere confession of wrongdoing. Forgiveness of the unrepentant is always a real possibility. Yet this does not undermine the central hypothesis here. One can “absolve” without “confession” on the part of the wrongdoer, but by absolving, one is essentially confirming or soliciting a confession, with the ultimate goal of reconciliation. ¹⁵ Similarly, a confession explicitly opens oneself to the possibility of accepting absolution, were it to be offered. From a theological standpoint, human sorrow for sin is never in itself adequate to divine forgiveness, which can never be earned or merited, but is always gratuitous gift.

Forgiveness in Dialogical Narrative

What we have called “absolution” and “confession,” in everyday life, rarely take the form of a two-sentence exchange but are typically embedded in narrative, which necessarily takes a particular perspective, or has some moral stance. In the words of Paul Ricoeur “il n’est pas de récit éthiquement neutre” (“There is no ethically neutral story”). ¹⁶ Crucially, a narrative includes a certain perspective on events, and in that sense, is also a claim to truth.

Following Charles Griswold and Paul Ricoeur, in particular, the notion of “self-narrative” presents itself as being particularly relevant to forgiveness. This is a narrative in which the self is as another (soi-même comme un autre), one constructed around one's own role in a story, in which the external perspective is related in the first person. “Forgiveness” involves a refashioning of one’s self-narrative, looking both forward, to a future without resentment, and backwards, acknowledging the wrong committed. The road to forgiveness is not amnesia, but a change of heart. It does not excuse what has been done but commits to a new future that is not imprisoned by the past.

Forgiveness thus confronts the immutability of the past, what Hannah Arendt calls the “predicament of irreversibility,” without succumbing to the futile temptation to undo it in revenge. ¹⁷ For our purposes, however, forgiveness involves the construction and intertwining of two interdependent self-narratives, which constitutes a “dialogical narrative” in Griswold's terms.

In a dialogical narrative, each side offers a different account of the events, a distinct perspective of the story. It is exactly in the context of such a dialogue that the acts of absolution and confession occur. That is, the victim and the offender are not hermetically sealed off from one another, but engage in a dialogical exchange, in which each side offers an interpretation of the past. These narratives encompass each other, as each side listens from an external standpoint to the perspective of the other. This involves a commitment to make changes, either to mend one's ways, or to put aside resentment. Narratives of forgiveness, therefore, are projective as well as recollective. They look forward as well as backward. The self is viewed both in relation to a self-past and a “self-to-be.” Both narratives involve a decision not to be determined by the past alone. The acts of absolution and confession are merely the realization, in word or gesture, in signifying human action, of these shifts in perspective in the self-narratives of the participants.

All this corresponds with the theology of forgiveness outlined above: the sacrament is a ritualized form of just such a dialogical exchange between forgiver and forgiven. The linguistic exchange between penitent and priest is just such a dialogical narrative in which confession is made and absolution granted. If we broaden our focus now to all positive and historical revelation, we can also ask “Does God speak?” through them, to paraphrase Nicolas Wolterstorff, or more precisely, “Does God absolve?” ¹⁸

Absolution in Scripture and the Hermeneutic of Identity

The answer is a qualified yes—broadening our focus reveals the answer, which lies in the fundamentally dialogical nature of revelation and salvation history, culminating in the Incarnation. The divine side of the dialogical narrative encompasses the entire economy of revelation, of salvation history—not a divine monologue of self-revelation but a dialogue to which the hearer is invited to participate, as evidenced in Scripture, both communally and individually.

The Psalms and prophets contain many examples of “I-Thou” dialogues expressing the confession of human sin by an “I” (or “we,” in the case of the “corporate personality” of Israel) to a divine “Thou.” These dialogues, along with other scriptural expressions of divine forgiveness, do not merely describe divine forgiveness, or talk about it in a particularly clear and vibrant manner, but give content in concrete actuality to the divine side of the dialogical narrative of forgiveness to the hearer or reader of the divine word.

That is to say, the biblical text is not a mere recounting of God's forgiveness at some level of remove but is potentially the living mediation of divine absolution in the concrete circumstances of a human life. One way in which the human need for absolution is met is through Scripture, through prayerful listening to the Word. By self-projection into a dialogue proposed by the text, the hearer of the Word re-actualizes the performative or illocutionary language of confession and absolution. In other words, these “I-Thou” dialogues do not simply portray divine forgiveness from a distance or talk about it merely for the instruction and edification of the hearer. Much more than that, divine forgiveness is effectively declared a present reality for those who enter faithfully into the words of the text. Scripture can “speak” God's forgiveness in such a way that it becomes a living reality for the faithful person.

A “hermeneutic of identity” is at play by which the hearer of the Word, in her particular concrete temporal and spatial context, takes over the words of the scriptural author as her own. The text presents the reader with a ready-made self-narrative in which God’s forgiveness of sin features prominently, one that can be readily appropriated, dependent on disposition and, from the theological viewpoint, grace. Consider, for example, this extract from Psalm 51:4, which presents a human self-narrative: Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.

As an example of the divine side, consider Isaiah (44:21–22): Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.

The hearing or recitation of such texts is not exclusively mimetic, mere repetition, but can be therapeutic—in theological terms, providing the natural means for grace to do its work in human subjectivity. This observation is an ancient one recast in modern terms, and goes back at least to Athanasius, who claims that the one who prays the Psalms does so “as if they are his own words; and the one who hears them will be deeply moved, as if he himself were speaking, and will be affected by the words of these songs as if they were his own.” ¹⁹

The Scriptures then have the potential to reshape our inner life, if we recognize in them our deepest needs and longings, by giving us the words necessary to bring about change. They are, in a sense, not just evocative but truly performative: they make real or effect a change in one's relationship with God or an emotional state, which does not yet obtain until the recitation or reading of the text. Of course, all this is dependent on the theological perspective on grace operative through the divine word.

The ancient “speech acts” of confession, lamentation, blessing, and so on may be performed anew in any prayerful interaction with Scripture. It is this re-actualization of ancient language that effectively announces God's forgiveness of sin as a living reality in one's concrete actuality. By the hermeneutic of identity, divine absolution is efficaciously proclaimed in receiving the word in faith.

Note that this “hermeneutic of identity” is not equivalent to the rather more general notion of “proclamation,” as employed for example in the work of David Tracy, or Rudolf Bultmann to describe the kerygmatic addresses of the New Testament, that is, a “word of address bearing a stark and disconcerting shock of recognition for the self.” ²⁰ On the contrary, the hermeneutic of identity is much more specific: it is the adoption of the indexical categories of Scripture (including pronominal reference, tense, and other contextually provided elements) as one's very own, with a subsequent appropriation of the performative language in the text.

The hermeneutic of identity is a special case of the general problem of interpretation, as both “first-order” reference and “second-order” reference are involved. That is, by projecting oneself into the text as the referent for a pronoun, first-order reference is implicated, in addition to the second-order of reference, the “being-in-the-world” proposed by the text. In linguistic terms, this is one explanation for the especially powerful effect of the “hermeneutic of identity”: it is a special case of interpretation in which the self is reconstituted both at a first-order level of reference (by means of indexical pronominal reference) and at a second-order level of reference, as the reader self-interprets as confronted by the world of the text.

The devout reader or hearer of the word does not approach these texts as any novel or play or other form of fictional discourse, but as text inhabited by truth, even if the events and persons are not historical, such as in parables. The veridical nature of the text serves to reinforce the hermeneutic of identity, as it facilitates the insertion of self into the text.

Divine Absolution in Jesus’ Human Speech

We turn now to Jesus’ own words of absolution, his forgiveness of historical individual sinners, as for example in the cure of the paralytic (Matt 9:1–8; Mark 2:1–12; Luke 5:17–26) and the encounter with the woman who was a sinner at Simon's house (Luke 7:36–50). These words communicate forgiveness directly to the hearer, addressed in the second person, by a verb in the present tense in Mark and Matthew and in the perfect tense in Luke. By these words, Jesus directly declares absolution to the sinner: “Your sins are forgiven you.” ἀφίενταί σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι (Mk 2:5-9; Mt 9:2-5) ἀφέωνταί σοι αἱ ἁμαρτίαι σου (Lk 5:20-23) “Your sins are forgiven.” ἀφέωνταί σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι (Lk 7:48)

Putting aside any question whether these words represent ipsissima verba (actual words), it is uncontroversial that Christ expressed forgiveness of sin directly to particular persons, at particular times and places.

Taking Christ's words seriously as action, as event, is something that has been overlooked in Christian theology, which like most of Western thought fails to distinguish between language as action (utterance) and language in the abstract. More precisely, taking the performative view on human language, Christ's words have not been generally considered among his salvific acts. In a broader perspective, traditional soteriology has often failed to appreciate the redemptive nature of Jesus’ humanity as a whole, as both Karl Barth and Karl Rahner point out. ²¹

We are led to the conclusion, therefore, that Jesus’ verbal actions are deeds as much as any other. Moreover, his words of forgiveness directed to individual human sinners are the incarnate verbal expression of divine forgiveness in human speech. This is because he alone is uniquely able to pronounce the linguistic act of divine absolution of sin in historical speech: as action of a human body, in historical actuality, as opposed to the expression of divine absolution mediately through prophets and Scripture.

These historical acts of absolution, therefore, while distant in time, do not concern only those historical individuals but are of universal soteriological significance, as are all other acts of Christ's humanity, as instrument of human salvation. Through these words, the Logos in his assumption of human nature directly expressed God's words of forgiveness in human corporeal speech, and so divine absolution of sin entered history in the concrete action of a human body. Divine absolution is spoken on historical human lips, and in this conception, Jesus’ words of forgiveness are the perfection of the verbal expression of God's forgiveness to human beings prefigured in all prior mediations of divine forgiveness.

Conclusions

While this article raises more questions than it can answer, we have some firm directions. First, this investigation of absolution has demonstrated the fecundity of Blondel's vision of the mutual dependency of philosophy and theology, of their “symbiosis.” Without abandoning the autonomy of philosophy in any way, allowing theological and religious belief to be the focus of philosophical reflection has brought the necessity for absolution in the human act of forgiveness clearly into focus.

For theology, we find that salvation history can be viewed in terms of a dialogical narrative, which finds its ultimate expression in the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in historical concreteness, providing one avenue of response to the timeless theological question Cur Deus homo?

Moreover, on the Reformed side, the scriptural mediation of divine absolution through the hermeneutic of identity further underscores the ever-actual power of God's word, as a living presence in human experience, counteracting the loss of religious imagination that turns the biblical text into a verbal cadaver rather than allowing it to be a living source of divine forgiveness.

On the side of sacramental theology, one further consequence of this line of inquiry is that the institution of the sacrament of penance finds support not only in the granting of sacerdotal authority to forgive sin but in Christ's own acts of divine absolution. The scriptural foundations of the sacramental absolution, therefore, potentially go beyond those texts cited in the documents of the Council of Trent as definitive (John 20:23; Matt 16:19; 18:18) to include all of Christ's particular, historical absolutions of individual sinners, those words that represent the insertion into historical human speech events of divine absolution.

Finally, all this is inscribed in a view of the human being as homo loquens (speaking) as much as homo sapiens (wise). Part of what it is to be human is to have the use of language. Our capacity for speech, for dialogue, is a sign of our transcendent destiny and so the redemption of our language becomes an exigency of our fallen nature. Consequently, it is perhaps fair to speculate that the telos of a human life invites description as a “beatific dialogue,” as much as a beatific vision.

As we have seen, language is by its nature dialogical and relational. Part of what the scholastics called our “obediential potency” (potentia oboedientialis), that which makes us capax Dei (capable of friendship with God), therefore, is human linguistic capacity, our orientation to dialogue, itself ultimately rooted in the image of God as intra-trinitarian communication of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the divine processions. As human beings oriented to dialogue, our linguistic capacity finds its perfection only in the dialogue with the transcendent “Thou” that is already underway in the great dialogue of salvation history as well as in the concrete particularities of our own individual sanctification as members of the church as Mystical Body of Christ.