Irreconciliation & Unforgiveness

De Tertullien à Augustin, vers une définition de l’irrémissible
Tertullien, s’appuie sur l’impossibilité de l’intercession fraternelle quand il y a « péché qui conduit à la mort » (1 Jn 5, 16) pour définir les péchés « irrémissibles », que la grande Eglise ne peut remettre. Laissant ouverte la question de leur pardon ultime par Dieu, il n’évoque qu’à la marge l’irrémissibilité absolue présentée dans le logion du blasphème contre l’Esprit (Mt 12, 31-32). Il faut attendre Augustin pour retrouver l’adjectif forgé par Tertullien au cœur d’une réflexion – qui culminera dans le Sermon 71, mais dont on peut suivre l’évolution dès 394 –, associant les deux passages scripturaires déjà convoqués par le Carthaginois : posant quant à lui, dans le souci de préserver l’unité de l’Eglise animée par l’Esprit, l’équivalence totale entre le pardon qu’elle accorde par l’intermédiaire de ses ministres et le pardon de Dieu, Augustin renonce à toute définition de l’irrémissible selon des critères externes : ce n’est plus l’Église qui refuse son pardon, mais le pécheur qui se met volontairement dans l’incapacité de le recevoir, par sa persévérance intérieure dans l’endurcissement de l’impénitence. On notera entre les exégèses des deux auteurs de nettes similitudes méthodologiques, et, chez l’un comme chez l’autre, la prégnance des enjeux ecclésiologiques, qui conditionnent la sotériologie.

From Tertullian to Augustine, towards a definition of unforgiveness
Tertullian’s definition of the unforgivable sins, – which cannot be forgiven by the Great Church –, is based on the impossibility of fraternal intercession in case a "sin leading to death" has been committed (1 Jn 5, 16): the question whether God ultimately forgives has been left open, Tertullian recalls just by the by the unforgivable sin mentioned in the logion of the blasphemy against the Spirit (Mt 12: 31-32). It is not until Augustine that the adjective created by Tertullian appears again, at the very heart of a reflection combining both scriptural passages already quoted by the Carthaginian, which culminates in the Sermon 71 but finds its origin in 394. In order to preserve the unity of the Church animated by the Spirit, Augustin makes a total equivalence between forgiveness the Church grants through its ministers and God’s forgiveness. He gives up by the way the external definition criteria: not the Church denies forgiveness, but the sinner makes himself deliberately unable to receive it because of his hardness and impenitent heart. Methodological similarities between our two authors’ exegesis should be noted, as well as the significant influence of the ecclesiological issues on their soteriology.

Since the 1980s, truth commissions, official mea culpas, and other state-authored processes of reparation and reconciliation have emerged, in rapid succession, across the globe. Although a transition to democracy is the paradigmatic context for the establishment of these kinds of official bodies, it is not the only context in which nation-states have chosen to confront historical injustice. Mechanisms of transitional justice have recently come to the fore in the absence of regime change, including in persistent Settler states like Canada and the United States. These engagements have operated through a rough dialectic of admission and absolution, vacillating between moral and legal domains, so that in the twentieth-century, historical injustices have summoned forth a ‘politics of forgiveness’ to animate an ‘age of apology.’ Writing about the now-paradigmatic South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Desmond Tutu described its work as predicated on the belief that every individual has the potential to seek, to merit, and to bestow forgiveness; along with a sense that the health and unity of a post-conflict polity rests on activating this potential. The hope that forgiveness can invoke a tabula rasa is particularly powerful in a society divided by grave historical injustice – yet increasingly, and particularly in non-transitioning societies, those who have suffered historical injustices are expressing a refusal to forgive. The implications of such a refusal are many and serious; however, the literature on transitional justice has thus far omitted any treatment of the topic. This paper examines the moral, theological, therapeutic, political, and legal aspects and applications of unforgiveness.

Forgiveness is a powerful idea. Over time, this key religious virtue became a catalyst of peaceful unity in liberal political thought – yet something important was lost in the transition. One way to probe that loss is to examine the convergence of religious and civic virtue in the project of reconciliation, where forgiveness is so often invoked. With their histories of forced conversion and assimilation, Settler colonial societies provide particularly fruitful ground for such an enquiry. In the many states now moving through (or past) Indigenous-Settler reconciliation projects, what does it mean to be unforgiving? Or unforgiven?

If colonialism is an evil, and the appropriate response to evil is outrage and hatred, then Settlers today should reasonably expect to be in the presence of Indigenous indignation and hostility everywhere and at all times. These “emotionally saturated engagements of decolonization” (West-Newman, 2004, p. 190), oft-overlooked and routinely denigrated, are needful subjects of inquiry – yet detached engagement with ideals, here, beggars our understanding, as our sense of justice is as emotionally as cognitively grounded, and the foundations of morality are not just rational but also affective. Inspired Peter French’s assertion that “[r]evenge delivers a message, or, rather, revenge is a message” (2001, p. 84), this presentation argues that written and spoken iterations of Indigenous unforgiveness and irreconciliation (including anger, resentment, hatred, and vengefulness) are fundamentally communicative acts, with Settlers both their legitimate objects and intended recipients. Properly parsing and morally responding to these messages is a pressing concern in North American Settler states, wherein the mechanisms of transitional justice roll on in the absence of transition, and nation-founding injustices remain unexplored and unassailed. This paper will contribute to moral-political understanding of the retributive passions by applying practical ethical theory to critical voices in contemporary Indigenous music and literature, tackling common myths about historical unforgiveness and its affective predicates, and providing a cogent defence of Indigenous-Settler irreconciliation in the face of enduring injustice.