Why there is no room for God’s forgiveness in Christianity

The basic fault of the traditional understandings of salvation within Western Christianity are that they have no room for divine forgiveness!

For a forgiveness that has to be bought by the bearing of a just punishment, or the giving of an adequate satisfaction, or the offering of a sufficient sacrifice, is not forgiveness, but merely an acknowledgement that the debt has been paid in full. But in the recorded teaching of Jesus there is, in contrast, genuine divine forgiveness for those who are truly penitent and vividly conscious of their utter unworthiness. In the Lord’s Prayer we are taught to address God directly as our heavenly Father and to ask for forgiveness for our sins, expecting to receive this, the only condition being that we in turn forgive one another. There is no suggestion of the need for a mediator between ourselves and God or for an atoning death to enable God to forgive. Again, in the Lukan parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15), the father, when he sees his penitent son returning home, does not say, ‘Because I am a just as well as loving father, I cannot forgive him until someone has been duly punished for his sins’, but rather he ‘had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”^* But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” (Luke 15. 20-24)

And again, in the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the latter, ‘standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified’ (Luke 18. 13-14).

And yet again, there is his insistence that he came to bring sinners to a penitent acceptance of God’s mercy: ‘Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’ (Matthew 9.13).

This was fully in accord with contemporary Jewish understanding. E.P. Sanders in his authoritative work on Jesus’ Jewish background, says that ‘The forgiveness of repentant sinners is a major motif in virtually all the Jewish material which is still available from the period (Sanders Jesus and Judaism SCM Press p.18,1985); and it continues today in the prayers on the Day of Atonement. For Judaism sees human nature as basically good and yet with an evil inclination that has continually to be resisted.

However, God is aware of our finitude and weakness, and is always ready to forgive the truly penitent. In Islam there is an essentially similar view. God is always spoken of in the Quran as Allāhi raḥmāni raḥīmi  ’God the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful’. God knows our weakness and forgives those who, in the self-surrender of faith, bow before the compassionate Lord of the universe.

Excerpt from The Metaphor of God Incarnate (second revised edition) published by SCM, 2005.

Professor John Hick is a world-renowned philosopher of religion and Christian theologian.