What, then, is the meaning of this: “T*o receive his mercy, we must admit our faults”?*
So, what is given the unrepentant? It would appear to be neither mercy (from above) nor forgiveness: "The church can forgive nothing except to a penitent."
Recognize the difference between Creator and creature is not by degree but categorical. The former is sinless; the latter all sinners (save one). Therefore, in forgiving sin God’s way cannot be our way.
I understand why you believe this, but nowhere is this explicitly stated; this is a conclusion you have drawn. In contrast to this, it is explicitly stated that we are to forgive conditionally: the condition being that the sinner must repent.
Restating and simplifying the instruction for analysis:
It means just what it says. To receive his mercy, we must admit our faults.
The offering of mercy aids the offender regardless of his state, because as JP2 said in the quote above, mercy is the power for conversion.
And so your question is “must we forgive the unrepentant?”
How do you know when a person has contrition, or has repented, given that a particular person may never tell you they’ve repented, and you are not present to hear their thoughts and prayers. Since we are not God, how do you know a person is “worthy” of your forgiveness?
What happens when two people stand there with their arms folded?
Yes, this is what is said in Luke.
But this is demonstrably not true. As you pointed out, the perpetrator and the victim act independently of one another, and there are surely innumerable cases where the victim did not forgive the sinner yet the sinner repented anyway.
That seems a likelier conclusion than the one that says “If the sinner does not repent you have a duty to forgive anyway.” If forgiveness is not tied to repentance then how does one make sense out of Christ’s declaration in Luke?
Your assertion does not seem to square with this:“Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”
I may be wrong but I believe this passage is more about Jesus giving the 12 the gifts of the holy spirit. Telling them to go out and convert the world to Christ’s Church. Basically making them what we know today as priests. Remember in that time everyone was still in need of baptism which which removed all sin up to that point. It also gave the 12 the authority to hear confession and grant absolution. This is my understanding of the passage.
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Yes. Because we are not God, we have no right to cast judgement on others, yes we must forgive. By that I mean we may not hold ill will toward anyone in our hearts or minds.
The truth value of conditional statements is well understood and accepted by logicians.
There is a difference between forgiveness of one individual to another, and absolution.
Be that as it may, it seems the meaning of the passage is clear: not all things are forgiven. That’s the point I’m trying to convey.
I think that’s a reasonable analogy. Relief is available to us, but it requires a prior act on our part to attain it.
Be careful here. That we may not judge the extent of ones responsibility for his sin against us does not mean we cannot judge him to have sinned against us in the first place. It is not all judgments that have been denied us, only judgments about things we cannot know.
Hi Clem, I tend to agree with you. My question is how should that forgiveness look?
How did Jesus love all his neighbours as he loved himself? Those who condemned him to death and nailed him to the cross?
Thanks for the link Clem. It was helpful in something I am trying to reconcile/sort out in my own personal life.
I was not familiar with this concept, but I accept it as logically valid. I will point out, however, that logic only guarantees that the answer is logically valid…not that it is true.
It’s taken me a while to figure out a response to this. Let’s take a different example. In “American Sniper”, Chris Kyle had overwatch responsibility for the marines he was serving with. His orders essentially were “If a person threatens the marines, then shoot him.” The contrapositive of that would be “If he is not shot then he is not a threat.” This is clearly a false answer even though it is logically valid.
Yes, this is (pretty much) the question.
If the bi-conditional does not apply in the case of “If he repents then I must forgive”, then how can it be said to apply in the case of “If he threatens then I must shoot”? We might want a person to forgive whether or not someone repents, but we surely do not want the sniper to shoot someone who does not threaten, but what is the logical case where I can argue for the former but not the latter?
You agreed that if the statement is true then the contrapositive must be true, yet we see from the sniper case above this is not always correct. My agreeing that the converse is false is no more damaging to my position than the fact that the contrapositive is false damages yours. This logic does not apply to these cases because they do not cover the entire set of possible actions.