Love, The Foundation of Forgiveness

Hell, St Catherine of Genoa tells us, is established by us, by what and how we will:

Hell is evil will,
and since God does not manifest His goodness there,
the souls in hell
remain in a state of desperately evil will.
The evil lies clearly in the perverse will
that opposes God.
Persevering in its evil will,
the soul continues in its guilt. [1]

It is the evil which we will that binds us, closes us off from all others, even God. It is not that God wills our perdition: he allows it out of his love.  All the enticements, all the charm, all that he can do to persuade us to let go of our evil will, he will follow through and do. Even his establishment of laws serves this function, for he uses them, not to abuse us like a tyrant, but to show us the outcome of our actions, to warn us the consequences which we set in motion by our actions. We might pursue something which we think is good for us, which will satisfy some desire which we have, without realizing that some aspect or part of our being ends up wounded or hurt. Left to itself, such a perverse will uses our potential up without providing the satisfaction we seek, leaving us suffering for eternity. To prevent such an outcome, God warns us, pleads to us to change our ways before it is too late, before we have created a fetter by our perverse will that binds us in a hell of our own creation. Thus Calcidius in his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus explained God’s laws as functioning for our own good and are proclaimed by him because he will do all that he can for us to help lead us away from evil:

He says that these laws we communicated to the souls by the great craftsman god, and indicates the reason for communicating them: in order that no responsibility for wrongdoing would in the future fall to him for keeping silent, his intention being to show that human beings experience evil, not because of the decree or will of god, but because of an imprudence and depravity all their own.[2]

While God seeks our beatification, which comes about by being in his presence, there is one thing God will not do to make that happen and that is to force a change of will upon us. Such an act would go against his character as the God who is love (cf. 1 John 4:8). He has made room in his infinite freedom for us to make decisions of our own, for us to decide for ourselves who and what we will be through our use of the freedom given to us.[3] While it might seem like an easy solution to the problem of hell if God were to take control of us and force us to change our will, and make us receive the beatific vision despite what we have made for ourselves, such action would change the very nature of God. He would create an evil will in himself and end up recreating hell in himself with his own evil will. And, if such an impossibility were to occur, we would once again find ourselves in hell, because his use of force would make us return to him and be with him and the hell which he has made out of himself.

He provides spiritual medicine to those who are willing to change their will, once they see and understand where their perverted will leads them; that is, he gives us aids to help us fix our will once it has become bound by habits of evil and we want out of such spiritual bondage. Though he will not force our conversion, if we seek help to turn back to him, and to overturn the evil habits of the will which we have created, he is willing to help us, to give us the grace which heals our will from the damage we have done to it, to free us from the fetters of a perverse will. What we give to him, he is willing to take from us; a defective will given over to him will find the defect excised, and the balm of grace put in its place. But for the healing grace to take effect, we must then continue to give ourselves over to God and follow him in his goodness by imitating him in his act of love. It is love which perfects the will, it is love which leads to the good, it is love which is good when we know God, who is good, is love. This is why Jesus constantly warned us that to receive forgiveness, for grace to take effect, we must act with the same forgiving spirit to others. “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you;  but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14-15 RSV). If we want forgiveness, if we want the love of God in us, healing us, we must be people who live out that forgiveness, giving such forgiving love to others, even to, especially to those who wish us ill.  “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk. 6:35-6 RSV).  It is love which makes us good, because it is love which is the fulfillment of the law (cf. Rom. 13:10), and so the one who is one with love will be open to God and their neighbor alike, doing good for their neighbor like God does for them.

The forgiveness of sins, therefore, is always connected with love. As love is diverse and willing to engage people in many different ways, so the forgiveness of sin is offered in a variety of ways.  Egbert of Liège, in his pithy way,  summarized the forms of forgiveness, giving us seven of them:

In seven ways sins are abolished in the flesh. First, it is done through the clear waves of baptism; second, by worthy martyrdom and real blood; third, when consoling hands are extended to the needy; fourth, when the Eucharist is taken worthily and reverently; fifth, when love is turned toward all our neighbors; sixth, when the sinner does penance for his earlier sins; seventh, to forgive completely the faults of your brothers. [4]

The key to this text is to see how love is central to the forgiveness of sin. Consoling others, showing them love, showing them forgiveness, gives us the same love and forgiveness back. Helping our neighbor, serving them in justice and grace gives us such justice and grace in return. The love of God opens up to us, and awaits us to open up to it in return, and when we do, we receive his loving grace. Because the grace of baptism is given to us in and through our death to the self, and by it we put the fallen, perverse will up to crucifixion, it too is understood as an engagement with love, because we cut ourselves from selfishness and open ourselves to being one with the God of love (which is why, even if we do not receive water baptism itself, if we die in and with such open love for God, we can receive the grace of baptism).[5] Similarly, we can understand penance, as it is a return to the spirit of baptism, as being engaged as an act of love as we cut off the habits of self-will which we let form after our baptism be removed and excised once again.[6]

As Charles Williams understood, Jesus on the cross shows us what forgiveness is, for Jesus on the cross renders his love to all, as a way to replace and fix any loss in us as a result of our evil and perverted will. It is why Jesus said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” (cf. Lk. 23:24) because he was showing that the whole purpose of the cross was the revelation of divine forgiveness, where he took all the evil of the world and let it be taken upon him, which then he gave the grace of forgiveness in exchange:

It was in this state that he forgave: forgave? say, he loved and renewed those who had brought him into it; he loved them so as to maintain them while they brought him into it, as he had maintained the tree that made the wood and the metal that made the nails. He forgave them from the state of ‘the eternal terrors of the lost soul.’  He so forgave that he exchanged his love for man’s loss: he received the loss and gave the love. It is the mere nature of forgiveness; there can be no other;  but it was there, and therefore everywhere; it is its nature – yes, but then its nature does exist. [7]

The very nature of forgiveness is love, and the nature is to render that love to the one who is forgiven so that their being can be made whole. Those who are unwilling to die to the self, to exchange their selfish enclosure of the will, create all around themselves the very unlove which fuels their personal hell. Where we do not love, there we create the need for forgiveness, the need for love to come in and overturn our ill-will, less we find ourselves unforgiven. Again, this is why Jesus not only said he gives us forgiveness and the grace of salvation, but he constantly told us how we are to receive it is by cooperating with it, by letting it transform us so that we become holy, and we find the image of God, the image of love, properly restored in us and cleansed from all the defilement of sin.

[1]  St. Catherine of Genoa, Purgation and Purgatory  in Purgation and Purgatory, the Spiritual Dialogue. trans. Serge Hughes (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1979), 74.

[2] Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus. trans. John Magee (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 433.

[3] Because we are finite beings, our freedom must also be understood as finite; it is real, but it exists within the confines of relative being, so that it must not be made confused as an absolute. There are various contours of our existence which define the space and limits of our freedom; while they are important to note, they extend beyond our interest and discussion here.

[4] Egbert of Liège, The Well-Laden Ship. trans. Robert Gary Babcock (Cambridge: Dumbarton Oaks, 2013), 223-5.

[5] Peter Lombard explained the thing in itself, baptism, and differentiates it from the grace of baptism, showing that some can undergo the act of water baptism without being baptized (because of some defect, such as a defect of intention which leads to an improper form), while others receive the grace without the sacrament:  “Here it is to be said that some receive the sacrament and thing, others the sacrament and not the thing, others the thing and not the sacrament,” Peter Lombard, The Sentences Book IV. On the Doctrine of Signs. trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010), 18 [IV-1.1].

And so he pointed out baptism of blood as an example of where we can find the grace of baptism without the thing, sacramental baptism: “For those who shed their blood for the name of Jesus, even if they do not receive the sacrament, receive the thing,” ibid., 21 [IV-4.2].

There is also baptism of desire, which he explained, can and also does give the grace of baptism: “Nor is it suffering alone which fills the role of baptism, but also faith and contrition, where necessity precludes the sacrament, as Augustine plainly teaches…,” ibid., 21 [IV-4.3].

When there is ill will, and so someone avoids baptism, and never desires it but desires to remain closed off in themselves apart from what God entices them to do out of love, then they can be said to be closed off from the grace of the sacrament. Thus, in interpreting the command of John 11:25, where Jesus said we must be regenerated, by water and the Holy Spirit,  and if we do not, we cannot enter the kingdom of God, Lombard wrote that, “… the Lord’s words are to be understood of those who can be baptized, but contemptuously fail to do so,” ibid., 23 [IV-4.7].  Likewise, he explained (in the same section), regeneration is possible by the Holy Spirit, so that those who enter the kingdom of God, even if not baptized, they will have the grace of baptism and have acted in accordance to its purpose.  The key is to understand that we need the grace of baptism, which is normally offered to us in and through the sacrament but is not limited to it, so that if someone were not to receive the things, due to no fault of their own, and yet opened themselves up in love to God, they can receive the grace of the sacrament without receiving the thing in and of itself. God knows who they are, we do not, which is why for us, we must encourage the sacramental reception of the grace to those truly seeking God and his love.

[6] We can consider penance to be analogous to doctors checking us up after major surgery to determine what else we need for our health to return.

[7] Charles Williams, The Forgiveness of Sins in He Came Down From Heaven and The Forgiveness of Sins (Berkley, CA: Apocryphile Press, 2005), 156.

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