SYNOPSIS: The Christian view that God owns mercy and gives it to us as a gift lacks intellectual depth.
It advocates for what we want pardon to be not what it is.
It says rightly that forgiveness is not condoning - allowing. It is not moving on from the hurt feeling. It is simply resolving to be good to the person who hurt you as if they did nothing bad to you. One reason you may do that is to give the person a chance to make things right.
If right and wrong and justice are independent of what anybody including a God thinks then as forgiveness goes with mercy which is linked to justice it belongs to nobody.
What we are going to explore here is how no God, or no person, can truly own forgiving or forgiveness.
Is morality moral for God says so or is it moral no matter what he says? If God does not own morality he does not own the power to forgive violations of it. We are told that morality is grounded in God's nature so we can deny it is independent of God or that he can make something good by merely commanding it. . Now we are asking if morality is moral for it is somehow God's nature or if it is independent of him! So we are no better off. Just because God's nature might be love does not mean that love is right and obligatory and by what standard is it love? The solution is extremely unsatisfactory and deflects.
If objective morality means anything it is independent of God and is impersonal. We find that appealing to God to validate objective morality does not work at all. For the purpose of argument, we assume that objective morality is independent and does not need any God or person's support.
No God or person can take credit/thanks for being forgiving and for pardoning but can only say that they recognise a principle that is not them and are TRYING to be in line with it. They can only INTEND to forgive and hope it is the right thing to do. A principle about what you must do is an abstract thing. It is not part of any God or any person. You being one person does not mean that the number 1 is you. Same idea. What matters is if it is just and merciful to be good to a bad person. The principle rules not you. You have to just hope you are in line with it. Math is not part of you. You have to be its instrument. It "owns" you. Same idea.
To sum up, if you really forgive you cannot seek praise for that or any reward for it is not yours. Praising human or divine mercy is mistaken. You simply say, "I praise you for hoping to be doing the right thing. But the right thing is the right thing and is not about you." You or God may forgive but the principle may not support you. What it is about matters not you or God.
You don't know if you are condoning or not. You can only try not to and hope you are not doing it. We all know how we can make a strong case for mercy and pardon and find we did not have all the correct information and accidentally condoned. Seeming to get it right depends a lot on moral luck. Moral luck suggests that our moral decisions can be influenced by factors beyond our control, such as incomplete information or unforeseen consequences, making it harder to be certain that we are doing the 'right' thing.
We conclude that you have to go by the best intentions when you forgive and you do not know very well if the moral law, if it could become a person, would agree with you. Because we are such frail creatures, we cannot escalate problems in this world so forgiving is to be encouraged. For that reason, a God of power and might and glory, can forgive if he wants but nobody should care. He does not need to do it like we do.
THE ARGUMENT:
A principle is an abstract thing like a number and we have to go along with it. It is not about us. It is not there for us. But for our sake we need to live it. What happens is you feel that in principle a person should be forgiven or forgiveness accepted. So you try to co-operate with the principle but all you do is try. The principle "owns", as it were. You do not. Religion is based on the lie that forgiveness is owned by God and us. If anything should be rewarded for it, it should be the principle.
A humble person admits that they forgive and will be good to the person and will say that they do it not for they own forgiveness but for they have reason to think a principle of mercy applies here. They will not acclaim a God who tries to own forgiveness. They will not worship a thief. They will not pray for their enemy to virtue-signal how forgiveness belongs to them and now they can patronise the enemy by lavishing it on them.
Forgiveness can be explained as ceasing to identify a person who has hurt you, with their sin or wrongdoing. You see them as something else now instead of the offender. They are now somebody to be good to even if they remain an enemy.
The argument that you need to forgive otherwise you only upset yourself by not letting go is blackmail. Real forgiving would not be forced by the threat of further pain unless it is done. It will not work. You may think it does until you explode one day at the person who hurt you. Those who make the argument will look the other way with a smug gaze.
Religion says that:
"Love, as in treating a person right, and justice go together and this sums up morality. Forgiveness is necessary for morality. Morality cannot work unless forgiving happens and is commanded."
Commanded then not merely advised. The inevitable danger with advising forgiveness or saying it is just each person's opinion whether to forgive is that it says it is okay if nobody forgives. As somebody said that an eye for an eye leaves us all blinded. That is a threat. The contradiction here is that you cannot command or pressure or influence anybody to forgive and it should be a spontaneous gift. Forgiveness is not the rational moral thing it is made out to be. As it is incoherent, it is no wonder the merciful cause so much trouble.
Forgiveness is about pragmatism not morality. Let us not dwell on that. Anyway we are going to assume that forgiveness is needed to help morality function or mean anything. We are going to assume that forgiving is based on principle, moral principle (it is not).
So let us take a look at morality right now.
If morality is a standard independent of God then he like the rest of us hopes he knows it. He cannot be completely sure for he is not it. It is because we cannot turn into mathematical principles to know them from the inside as it were, that we make errors. It is because principle is not us and is hard for us to verify that we have some doubt and always have to check ourselves.
Principle says you should forgive. But knowing is the problem. Is your forgiving them objectively moral or not? You cannot know that. Is the timing of your forgiving objectively the right time morally? Are your reasons in this case, every case is different, objectively all the right reasons? As forgiveness has to be kept up should we take it back in time?
When you forgive you hope it is in principle right. It is the same with God when he pardons.
If you say you are sure you are right when you are not you are lying. Even if by chance you are right and you line up perfectly to the principle of forgiving, you are still the kind of person who would lie. It is luck that makes you right not your honesty for you lack it. So if you think you are certain you should forgive then you are lying. A God who knows he is doing the right thing in forgiving is incoherent.
If you are only capable of having the opinion that you should forgive and are acting on that then that is very weak indeed. If the forgiveness lasts or does much, it is a wonder. Is it really forgiveness? Are you just condoning or mistaking the feeling that it does not matter now for forgiveness? Feeling you forgive us not the same as forgiveness. Feeling is shallow.
FINALLY:
A forgiving God is incoherent for forgiveness is incoherent. It should be free and generous and not forced but if we are told that the alternative is an eye for an eye we are being forced and we are agreeing with that lex talonis being used to force. God adds to an already existing problem for now we have something reinforcing a force that is already reinforced. He supposedly stands for and administers morality.
God cannot own forgiveness for if moral principle is independent of him forgiveness is independent of him. Like the rest of us, he has no authority to wipe away a person's responsibility for evil. He can only be praised for trying to affirm the person as no longer a sinner but that is all. The principle if they should be is what is important.
Christian forgiveness is tied to a notion called justification where sin is cleansed in the sense that somehow the person is more than just forgiven but is not a wrongdoer any more. This is a very strong extreme notion. It has overlaps with forgiveness as a sane person understands it but is not the same thing. It is going too far and is really just an excuse for rewarding the evil person. A God who is able to do that is trying to own forgiveness when he has no right to in its own right. And he has no right to own it anyway for that is a misuse. This insane toxic doctrine means an evil person has a fast track to self-righteousness.