Key Arguments

• The discoverer of the role of forgiveness in human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth.
• Religious context is no reason to discount the insight 'in a strictly secular sense.'
• Political thought tradition has excluded many authentic political experiences for contingent reasons.
• Rudiments appear in 'spare the vanquished' and commutation rights of Western heads of state.

Source Quotes

Nothing appears more manifest in these attempts than the greatness of human power, whose source lies in the capacity to act, and which without action’s inherent remedies inevitably begins to overpower and destroy not man himself but the conditions under which life was given to him. The discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that he made this discovery in a religious context and articulated it in religious language is no reason to take it any less seriously in a strictly secular sense.

The discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that he made this discovery in a religious context and articulated it in religious language is no reason to take it any less seriously in a strictly secular sense. It has been in the nature of our tradition of political thought (and for reasons we cannot explore here) to be highly selective and to exclude from articulate conceptualization a great variety of authentic political experiences, among which we need not be surprised to find some of an even elementary nature.

Certain aspects of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth which are not primarily related to the Christian religious message but sprang from experiences in the small and closely knit community of his followers, bent on challenging the public authorities in Israel, certainly belong among them, even though they have been neglected because of their allegedly exclusively religious nature. The only rudimentary sign of an awareness that forgiveness may be the necessary corrective for the inevitable damages resulting from action may be seen in the Roman principle to spare the vanquished ( )—a wisdom entirely unknown to the Greeks—or in the right to commute the death sentence, probably also of Roman origin, which is the prerogative of nearly all Western heads of state. It is decisive in our context that Jesus maintains against the “scribes and pharisees” first that it is not true that only God has the power to forgive, and second that this power does not derive from God—as though God, not men, would forgive through the medium of human beings—but on the contrary must be mobilized by men toward each other before they can hope to be forgiven by God also.

Key Concepts

• The discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth.
• The fact that he made this discovery in a religious context and articulated it in religious language is no reason to take it any less seriously in a strictly secular sense.
• to spare the vanquished ( )—a wisdom entirely unknown to the Greeks—or in the right to commute the death sentence, probably also of Roman origin,

Context

Section 33; historical attribution and secularization of forgiveness as a political capacity.