Meta-analytic connections between forgiveness and health: the moderating effects of forgiveness-related distinctions

Objective: We explore meta-analytic associations between health and forgiveness, testing a number of potential theoretical and methodological factors that could alter that association, including the type of forgiveness measure (e.g. state vs. trait), the type of health measure (i.e. physical vs. psychological) and the target of forgiveness (e.g. self- vs. other-forgiveness).

Design: Our findings below reflect the meta-analysis of 103 independent samples consisting of 606 correlations with a total sample of 26,043 participants. The final sample included papers from 17 countries. The included samples were diverse including students, older adults, divorced mothers, combat veterans and others.

Main Outcome Measures: Various health measures, including physical health outcomes (e.g., blood pressure, cortisol levels, bodily pain) and psychological health outcomes (e.g., depression, anxiety, PTSD).

Results: We found a reliable overall association between forgiveness and health outcomes. The association was stronger for psychological health than for physical health, though associations with cardiovascular health indicators (i.e. heart-rate and blood pressure) were robust.

Conclusion: The findings provided considerable support to current theorizing about the health benefits of forgiveness. It is plausible that forgiveness might improve psychological health and reduce cardiovascular stress.     

THE MORAL AND POLITICAL BURDENS OF MEMORY

Memory brings the past into the present. It is a feature of human temporality, contingency, and identity. Attention to memory's psychological and social importance suggests new vistas for work in religious ethics. This essay examines four recent works on memory's importance for self-interpretation, social criticism, and public justice. My focus will be on normative questions about memory. The works under review ask whether, and on what terms, we have an obligation to remember, whether memory is linked to neighbors near and distant, how memory is related to justice and forgiveness, and whether memory sits easily with the kind of relationships that allegedly characterize life in democratic public culture.     

Søren Kierkegaard and the Impossibility of (Un)Forgiveness

Discussions of forgiveness within Christian theology have tended to focus on the conditions in which forgiveness may be a moral or divine imperative for believers. With regard to Søren Kierkegaard’s theological ethics, this article explicates a radical perspective. For the Kierkegaardian Christian lover, no definitive relational break with the other (however objectionable) can occur. As Kierkegaard emphasizes in Works of Love, in a discourse which bears this sentiment as its title, “love abides.” Indeed, I illustrate how in three consecutive discourses in Works of Love—“VI: Love Abideth,” “VII: Mercy, a Work of Love,” and “VIII: The Victory of the Reconciliation in Love”—Kierkegaard’s ethical vision is grounded in Christian love’s immutability. For Kierkegaard, if Christian love is present, then forgiveness is redundant, and unforgiveness is impossible.     

THE JUSTICE IN MERCY

It is natural to wonder how mercy is related to justice. I focus in this essay on a more limited question: how should we relate mercy and retributive justice? My suggestion is that attending to our situation as moral agents can help us solve this conundrum. I offer a pessimistic reading of our situation. Because of original sin and related forms of bad moral luck, we have limited control over our attitudes and actions. This has a surprisingly hopeful upshot, since our unfortunate condition makes it appropriate to respond to one another mercifully. I suggest that this response can take two forms. Without collapsing justice into mercy, it is right to make our approach to justice and punishment more merciful and to recognize the fittingness of “erring” on the side of mercy when we are uncertain how to apportion blame.     

Some Thoughts on The Anachronism in Forgiveness

Consider that forgiveness is always given ahead of time. Set within a moral context, this claim is apt to sound suspect, as it seems to invite transgression and all manner of immoral indulgence. When the context shifts to one of religious possibility, however, the claim can be read to entertain a redemptive anachronism: a memory of future innocence. The author examines forgiveness in both contexts and makes a case for the religious possibility.     

Hope as Grounds for Forgiveness

It is widely assumed that Christianity enjoins its followers to practice universal, unconditional forgiveness. But universal, unconditional forgiveness is regarded by many as morally problematic. Some Christian scholars have denied that Christianity in fact requires universal, unconditional forgiveness, but I believe they are mistaken. In this essay, I show two things: (1) that Christianity does enjoin universal, unconditional forgiveness of a certain sort, and (2) that Christians, and perhaps other theists, are always justified in exercising unconditional forgiveness. Though most philosophers treat forgiveness as grounded in our beliefs about the offender's current state, I argue that we might more fruitfully ground forgiveness in hope for the wrongdoer. Christianity's commitment to the existence of an omnipotent God who is concerned about the moral status of His creatures always justifies such hope and thus always justifies forgiveness.     

Can Isaac Forgive Abraham?

Forgiveness is an expression that befits agents who are at heart morally frail and imperfect. There is strong disagreement regarding its structure, conditions, and permissibility. Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonymously authored Fear and Trembling—already well understood as a challenge to our understanding of faith, religion, and the moral law through its focus on the biblical tale of Abraham's binding of Isaac—offers an indirect challenge to our understanding of forgiveness. Isaac is too often overlooked as characterless and philosophically uninteresting. What such a reading ignores is his potential expression for what Kierkegaard understood as forgiveness: a dutiful commitment to love equally. Rather than dispelling traditional accounts of forgiveness, Isaac's binding reveals the extent of its diverse expressions.     

FORGIVENESS WITHOUT GOD?

Of the many forgiveness‐related questions that she takes up in her novels, the one with which Iris Murdoch wrestles most often is the question, “Is forgiveness possible without God?” The aim of this essay is to show, in the first instance, why the question Murdoch persistently raises is a question worth asking. Alongside this primary aim stands a secondary one, which is to consider how one might glean moral insights from the Christian tradition even if one does not (any longer) endorse its theological commitments.