Christian forgiveness as an unconditioned and inalienable gift: beyond the unconditional–conditional binary

Abstract

This article examines the conditional and unconditional models of forgiveness in Christian ethics, suggesting that the binary rests on an inadequate modern gift theory. The unconditional model, shaped by modern notions of the ‘pure gift’, risks overlooking the moral necessity of repentance, while the conditional model risks reducing forgiveness to a transaction. Drawing on Douglas Davies’s theological application of the inalienable gift and John Barclay’s Pauline theology of the unconditioned (but not unconditional) gift of grace, the article proposes understanding Christian forgiveness as an unconditioned inalienable gift. This framework preserves forgiveness’s priority while affirming its relational demands, offering a nuanced, pastorally responsible alternative to the unconditional–conditional binary.

Introduction

Forgiveness in Christian ethics has often been conceptualized as a gift. For instance, Japanese theologian Anri Morimoto has described forgiveness as ‘a pure-gift that is not conditioned by anything’. ¹ This implies that forgiveness stands in contrast to all forms of transaction. Christians are often instructed to forgive as Christ has forgiven, extending forgiveness even to enemies, mirroring Christ’s forgiveness on the cross (Luke 23.34). ² However, this paradigm of forgiveness as an ‘unconditional gift’ has faced increasing scrutiny. A principal critique is that such unconditional forgiveness tolerates unrepentant offenders and thereby promotes injustice. ³ On the other hand, framing forgiveness strictly as a conditional response risks reducing it to a form of ‘transactional forgiveness’, ⁴ a model many theologians regard as incompatible with a properly Christian ethic. ⁵

As a way forward from this binary impasse, we will critically examine both strands of the unconditional/conditional forgiveness debate and their underlying gift-theoretical assumptions, proposing an alternative framework. Drawing on the work of Douglas Davies and John Barclay, we argue that Christian forgiveness is better understood as an unconditioned and inalienable gift – distinct from a transactional exchange by virtue of its inalienable nature and priority – yet one that nonetheless demands a response of repentance.

Forgiveness as an ‘unconditional gift’

Christian forgiveness has often been understood as an unconditional gift. A defining feature of this view lies in the priority of forgiveness, granted independently of the wrongdoer’s repentance. Gregory Jones articulates this perspective in writing that ‘Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom transforms the relationship between repentance and forgiveness by stressing the gracious priority of forgiveness’. ⁶ The cross is the pivotal revelation of the character of the God who offers forgiveness prior to the sinner’s repentance. Miroslav Volf argues that this unconditional shape of forgiveness, as revealed in Christ’s self-gift, is what Christians are called to imitate. ⁷ In response to the question ‘Why should we forgive unconditionally and indiscriminately?’, Volf replies, ‘Because Christ died for all, we are called to forgive everyone who offends us, without distinctions and without conditions.’ ⁸ In this theological stream, unconditionality and priority are central to Christian forgiveness. ⁹

This view is partly inspired by Hannah Arendt’s concept of a ‘new beginning’, in which forgiveness disrupts the cycle of retribution. Arendt argues that the irreversible nature of past actions can trap individuals and communities in a cycle of revenge. Forgiveness, then, becomes the only viable means of interrupting this cycle and initiating a new beginning. ¹⁰ This leads to Arendt’s well-known and contested claim that Jesus was the ‘founder of forgiveness’. ¹¹ This sense of forgiveness as a ‘new beginning’ underpins the priority of forgiveness and distinguishes it from forms of exchange. As Phillip Stoellger observes, ‘Forgiveness in the theological sense is not just a “very special kind of exchange”, but something fundamentally different: a gift that neither arises from exchange nor dissolves into it.’ ¹²

It is important to note that the proponents of the ‘unconditional gift’ view do not advocate for mere toleration or forgetfulness. As Jones asserts, forgiveness requires the naming of injustice and is thus a ‘judgement of grace’. ¹³ Such an account aims to make repentance ‘integral to, but not a prerequisite for’ forgiveness. ¹⁴ It is also not to be confused with mere ‘forgetting’, but requires what Volf calls ‘remembering rightly’, which leads not to erasure of memory but to its healing. ¹⁵

Forgiveness as a ‘conditional response’

The ‘unconditional gift’ view of forgiveness has come under increasing criticism in recent years. Studies on abuse within the Church have revealed how teachings on unconditional forgiveness have often contributed to the silencing of victims. As Thaeda Franz observes, the notion of Christian forgiveness has often served to shame and pressure victims into forgiveness, leaving them no viable alternative. ¹⁶ Anthony Bash echoes such concerns, stating: ‘To argue that Christianity applauds, endorses and promotes forgiveness for the unrepentant is, in my view, theologically misguided – and often pastorally naïve, simplistic, and dangerous.’ ¹⁷

Critics contend that the unconditional model fails to adequately account for the moral requirement of justice; instead, they advocate for understanding forgiveness as a conditional response. Nicholas Wolterstorff, for instance, defines forgiveness as ‘a response by the victim to indications of repentance on the part of the wrongdoer’. ¹⁸ Similarly, Richard Swinburne argues that ‘a victim’s disowning of a hurtful act is only to be called forgiveness when it is in response to at least some minimal attempt at atonement, such as an apology’. ¹⁹ Bash supports this conditional view through scriptural exegesis, claiming that biblical accounts of divine forgiveness overwhelmingly portray it as a response to repentance rather than an unconditional gift. ²⁰

While this perspective still maintains the link between divine and human forgiveness, it diverges from the unconditional model in its theological assumptions. It does not regard divine forgiveness as a gratuitous gift given irrespective of repentance, but rather as a response to repentance. ²¹ On this basis, Bash argues that if human forgiveness is to mirror Christ, it follows that we cannot extend forgiveness where even Christ has not – to the unrepentant sinner. ²²

The underlying gift theory

As outlined above, both views locate divine forgiveness as the pattern for interpersonal forgiveness. The unconditional gift view sees that pattern in the prior gift of Christ, while the conditional response view locates it in God’s response to repentance. Hence the debate can be summarized as follows: is forgiveness an unconditional gift or a conditional response?

At this point, we must interrogate the philosophical backdrop behind the language of the ‘unconditional gift’. As the English for-give, French par-donner and German ver-geben suggest, forgiveness etymologically depicts a prior gift, positioned as the antonym of exchange. ²³ A particularly influential stream of thought is evident in Jacques Derrida’s definition of the ‘pure gift’. In Donner le Temps, he writes: ‘If there is gift, the given of the gift must not come back to the giving. It must not circulate, it must not be exchanged, it must not in any case be exhausted, as a gift, by the process of exchange.’ ²⁴ In other words, for a gift to remain distinct from exchange, it must involve no circularity, not even an expectation of a return gift. This idea of the ‘pure gift’ radically separates gift from transaction, rejecting anthropological accounts such as those of Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss, who describe gift giving in terms of social obligations.

In Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, Derrida applies this logic to the concept of forgiveness. Vladimir Jankélévitch has famously stated that ‘forgiveness died in the death camps’, implying the existence of the ‘unforgivable’. ²⁵ However, for Derrida, such an understanding of forgiveness risks succumbing to a ‘logic of exchange’. For Derrida, contrary to Jankélévitch, ‘forgiveness only forgives the unforgivable’. Once conditions like repentance are introduced, the act no longer qualifies as forgiveness, since the person ceases to be unforgivable. ²⁶ Derrida criticizes conditional forgiveness as being ‘a conditional logic of the exchange’, ²⁷ whereas ‘unconditional forgiveness is a pure gift’. ²⁸

Alternative accounts of the gift

Returning to the debate on the conditionality of forgiveness, it appears that the model of unconditional forgiveness and its critique both presuppose the notion of a gift defined by the non-circular ‘pure gift’. But is non-circularity the proper foundation for understanding forgiveness as a gift? Or are there alternative ways of understanding the nature of a gift?

Douglas Davies and the inalienable gift of grace

Derrida’s notion of the ‘pure gift’ has been the subject of critique, notably by theologians such as John Milbank and Ingolf Dalferth. Milbank has argued for grounding the gift, not by erasing reciprocity, but in its purification, grounded in Trinitarian gift giving. ²⁹ Likewise, Dalferth has pointed out that the underlying phenomenological method – which isolates the gift from its social context – ultimately results in the erasure of the very phenomenon it seeks to describe, and argues that a gift should be defined by the passivity of the recipient. ³⁰ A central limitation of the pure gift view lies in its reductive tendency to categorize all acts as either gift or transaction, thereby collapsing the complexity of gift giving into a binary. A valuable contribution comes from religious anthropologist Douglas Davies, who draws on Maurice Godelier’s refinement of Marcel Mauss’s classic theory, particularly the distinction between alienable and inalienable gifts. ³¹ Much contemporary discussion on gift giving remains constrained by the gift-versus-transaction binary, overlooking the phenomenon of what Godelier terms the inalienable gift, defined by its non-transferable nature. Examples include family inheritances or the awarding of a Nobel Prize, where ownership is not transferable to the recipient. As Chris Gregory illustrates, inalienable gifts are like a tennis ball attached to a string: the giver retains its control and ownership even after the gift is offered. ³²

Davies adopts Godelier’s concept of the inalienable gift and transposes it into a theological key, applying it specifically to the gift of Christ. He writes:

To see Christ as God’s gift in which the divine retains an interest, yet which alters the state of the recipient, is, precisely, to see him in terms of the inalienable gift – one that enhances the notion of grace as a quality of relationship, and not as some commodity that has been passed from one to another. ³³

For Davies, grace is best understood as an inalienable gift, one that confers Christian identity and grounds it in the historical and theological narratives of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. ³⁴ Likewise, the Holy Spirit is an inalienable gift which is inseperable from its donor, in which ‘the recipient is caught up into the intention of the donor, and must act with a similar intent’. ³⁵ By applying the concept of the inalienable gift to Christ – and, by extension, to grace and the Holy Spirit – Davies offers a way beyond the binary imposed by the modern ‘pure gift’ account of the gift.

John Barclay and the unconditioned gift of grace

Another alternative account of gift comes from New Testament scholar John Barclay, who has argued extensively that understanding gift as a non-reciprocal ‘pure gift’ is foreign to Scripture. ‘What we associate with “gift”, including its definition in our dictionaries, may be a product of modern cultural shifts, and it would be anachronistic to retroject these connotations onto the past or to take them for granted in our reading of Paul.’ ³⁶ Barclay contends that we should understand the meaning of grace (charis) within Paul’s own context of gift giving, rather than through the lens of modern gift theory. So how does Paul’s view of the gift differ?

To analyse various views of gift, Barclay offers a taxonomy that classifies six ‘perfections’ of a gift. When an act is described as a gift rather than an exchange, it is understood to exemplify one or more of the following: (1) superabundance, (2) singularity, (3) priority, (4) incongruity, (5) efficacy and (6) non-circularity. ³⁷ Of these, the most relevant to our discussion of forgiveness are priority, incongruity and non-circularity. These are characteristic features of the modern, pure, unconditional gift. Priority indicates that the gift precedes any action by the recipient; incongruity means that a gift is given to an unworthy recipient; and non-circularity denies any expectation of return.

Through close exegesis of Galatians and Romans, Barclay demonstrates that while Paul affirms both the priority and incongruity of grace, he never describes grace as a non-circular gift. Those transformed by Christ are no longer defined by social or religious ‘worth’ (Gal. 3.28); their worth is constituted in Christ through the prior and incongruous gift of grace. Yet Paul does not reject ‘works’ outright, as he exhorts believers to walk ‘according to the principle of the new creation’ (Gal. 6.16). Barclay summarizes his argument as follows:

Across Paul’s letters we have found grace to be defined consistently as an incongruous gift. It is given ‘freely’ in the sense that it is given without prior conditions and without regard to worth or capacity. But that does not mean that it comes with no expectations of return, no hope for a response, no ‘strings attached’. ³⁸

Paul emphasizes that grace is given without antecedent conditions; it is a gift that precedes the recipient’s response. However, it carries subsequent conditions – namely, that the recipient is obligated to respond. Barclay thus prefers the term unconditioned over the more common unconditional to describe Paul’s understanding of grace. As he explains, ‘For Paul the unconditioned gift – given in the absence of worth and without regard to worth – is not also unconditional in the sense of expecting no return.’ ³⁹ He adds, ‘None of Paul’s hearers would have been surprised to learn that as recipients of the divine gift they were placed under obligation to God.’ From Barclay’s Pauline theology of the gift, we gain theological grounds to reject non-circularity as the essential nature of a gift.

Forgiveness as an unconditioned inalienable gift

We have outlined the ‘unconditional gift’ and ‘conditional response’ models of forgiveness, noting how both presuppose non-circularity as a defining essence of a gift. This foundation inevitably creates a false dichotomy between ‘conditional’ and ‘unconditional’ forgiveness. Yet Davies and Barclay, in different ways, reveal the limitations of the ‘pure gift’ framework and offer a more scripturally grounded foundation to situate forgiveness as a gift. Combining insights from both Davies and Barclay, we propose that Christian forgiveness is better viewed as an unconditioned inalienable gift.

First, forgiveness is an inalienable gift because it cannot be transferred from one to another. Although Douglas Davies does not develop this theory in relation to forgiveness, he does suggest distinguishing ‘payment-type’ transactional forgiveness (alienable gift) from ‘pardon (inalienable gift)’. ⁴⁰ In the case of alienable gifts, ownership is transferred and cannot be reclaimed. Forgiveness, by contrast, remains inseparably tied to the forgiver, as it is a fundamentally relational concept. Conceiving of forgiveness as an inalienable gift contrasts with Nussbaum’s critique of ‘transaction forgiveness’, wherein forgiveness is reduced to a symbolic exchange of speech acts. Because forgiveness is inalienable, it cannot function as a ‘get out of jail free card’, absolving wrongdoing without accountability. Rather, it establishes a bond that carries the expectation of an appropriate response from the recipient.

Second, forgiveness is better seen not as an unconditional but as an unconditioned gift: a prior gift given to the unworthy that still demands a moral response. While Barclay does not directly address forgiveness in Paul, the term used in the pastoral epistles for forgiveness is charizomai, the verb form of charis (grace). Paul’s instruction to ‘forgive one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you’ (Eph. 4.32) expresses the circularity of the gift of forgiveness within the Christian community. Following John Webster’s call for theology as ‘biblical reasoning’, ⁴¹ a Pauline gift theory – rather than the modern ‘pure gift’ – offers a more scripturally grounded foundation. This does not negate the core insights of the unconditional view but refines its language. Advocates of the unconditional model seek to uphold both the priority of forgiveness and the necessity of repentance. As Gregory Jones notes, ‘[W]hile there are no conditions for God forgiving us, we must engage in practices of repentance in order to appropriate that forgiveness.’ ⁴² Similarly, Volf undergirds the importance of repentance by distinguishing two moments of gift giving: the act of giving (forgiveness) and receiving (repentance). Forgiveness may be offered apart from the recipient’s response, but it must be received by the wrongdoer through repentance to be efficacious. ⁴³ Hence, the unconditioned language, rather than unconditional, may better reflect the core motivations behind accounts of forgiveness articulated by theologians who emphasize its nature as a prior gift.

This nuanced framing addresses potential pitfalls of both unconditional and conditional models. Critics of the unconditional model point to the possibility of forgiveness being weaponized for coercion and control, as has been attested in studies on church abuse. On the other hand, critics of the conditional view worry that such a view reduces forgiveness to a mere transaction. When viewed as an inalienable gift, forgiveness is derived from the giver but remains inseparable from them, always embedded within the giver–recipient relationship. This fundamentally distinguishes forgiveness from a one-time transactional act but construes it as a beginning of a relational process. ⁴⁴ Understanding forgiveness as an unconditioned (prior) but not unconditional (no strings attached) gift allows the forgiver to demand apology and change of behaviour even after forgiveness is offered. As an unconditioned gift, even when granted prior to repentance, forgiveness imposes subsequent moral demands on the recipient. This has important pastoral implications, as it shifts the burden of forgiveness from the victim to the wrongdoer.

Conclusion

We have argued that the binary between conditional and unconditional forgiveness arises from an inadequate gift theory. Drawing on Douglas Davies and John Barclay, we have proposed a more balanced view: forgiveness as an unconditioned inalienable gift. This account affirms both the priority of forgiveness and the moral responsibility of the recipient, aiming to bring greater nuance to Christian discourse on forgiveness in resisting both transactional reduction and the weaponization of Christian forgiveness.