Responsibility and Atonement by Richard Swinburne

After a year Tom went up to Bernard, stretched out his hand and said, ‘Let us reconcile and put the past behind us.’īernard looked at Tom’s hand. One day Tom stole Bernard’s bicycle and every day Bernard saw Tom cycling to school on it. “Once there were two boys, Tom and Bernard. In Country of my Skull, Antjie Krog relates a story told by Father Mxolisi Mpambani during a lunch time panel discussion at the University of Cape Town. Similarly, collective wrongs – the death of 6 million Jews (and others) in the Holocaust genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia, or Darfur the effect of warfare on a population the torture, persecution and oppression of blacks by whites in South Africa – these acts often have consequences that continue for generations. Personal wrongs – killing someone (deliberately or accidentally), sexual abuse or rape, exploiting someone’s vulnerability – can result in psychological damage that is not easily repaired. However, in real life serious wrongs are very difficult to put right. Swinburne indicates that once someone has fulfilled these requirements, forgiveness should inevitably follow. According to Swinburne atonement involves four stages penitence (recognising that you have wronged someone), apology (saying sorry for doing the wrong), reparation (doing what you can to put the wrong right), penance (going beyond merely putting the wrong right – offering compensation). The philosopher Richard Swinburne, in his book Responsibility and Atonement argues that forgiveness follows when someone has properly atoned for the wrong that they have done you. Therefore we have to say sorry and make up…like we were taught as children. I am sure you remember that from your own childhood, or with brothers and sisters, or at school? Mostly children co-operate with this, and will sulkily and grumpily say “sorry” – sometimes complaining that it wasn’t their fault or the other person started it!Ĭhristians often seem to think that it is an imperative for us to forgive others, and many Christians pray every day the Lord’s Prayer which contains the line, Forgive us our sins (trespasses) as we forgive those who sin (trespass) against us, as though we are in some sort of bargain with God, which means God can only forgive us if we are forgiving of others. One of the things we like to teach our children, when they get into conflict with others (often siblings) is to say sorry and make friends. What is forgiveness and what does it mean to forgive?

It is one of those concepts that everyone thinks they understand until asked to explain, and then it becomes clear that actually it is a slippery term that it hard to define and of which it is difficult to give a proper account. It seems to be a word that Christians use freely without giving much thought to what exactly it means. For a long time now I have been very exercised by the notion of forgiveness.

Responsibility and Atonement by Richard Swinburne