It is easy to be glib about forgiveness.

Our study of forgiveness so far has confirmed that the idea of forgiveness is ‘fraught with methodological, analytic, and conceptual difficulties’ (Flanigan 1998: 95) and that there is even a degree of ‘logical havoc’ about forgiveness (Kolnai 1973–4: 99). Without, I hope, being glib, I now want to address the question, what is forgiveness?

Many assume that forgiveness is one identifiable phenomenon, recognisable by certain characteristic markers, and that if some of the markers are absent the phenomenon (whatever else it may be) is not true forgiveness. Even in the scholarly literature on the subject, there is debate, in the words of Scarre (2004: 63, 66), as to whether forgiveness is a ‘multiform phenomenon’ that cannot be forced ‘into a single mould’ with not all instances of forgiveness having the same ‘contours’, or whether it is right to hold to a ‘rigorous model of forgiveness’ and to insist that forgiveness always has certain identifiable characteristics. Murphy (2003: 15) refers to an instance of what he regards as a ‘less morally rich definition of forgiveness’, though apparently not with approval.

Within the Christian tradition, many people hold the view that the imperative of the Gospels is that people should forgive, that it is wrong not to forgive and that Jesus modelled and practised forgiveness. They may fail to observe that, for example, according to John, Jesus beat the moneychangers in the Temple (John 2: 15), rather than forgiving them.