A Chinese-American Theology of Forgiveness (part 1)

There's no "nice" way of putting it: most Chinese churches don't understand forgiveness.  It's almost as if it were excised from our daily vocabulary, struck off the diptych of our theologies.  What results is a community of judgment, the same judgment that places us at the foot of the bema while judging Jesus who sits on the same bema (see John 19).  We have unreachably high expectations for church members, from moral standards to educational attainments, and woe betide those who fall below any of those high bars we have set.

One of the most comprehensive philosophies of forgiveness comes from Boston University philosopher Charles L. Griswold.  In his book Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration, he sketches certain conditions for forgiveness to occur.  On the part of the offender, there are 6:  (1) the offender must acknowledge his responsibility for effecting that offense.  So, if I accidentally slapped the offended in the face, I must admit that, yes, I slapped the offended in the face.  (2) The offender must repent of his offense.  That is, he must disassociate his self from the deed.  Thus, to follow my small example, I must ensure that who I am is not related at all to slapping others in the face.  (3)  The offender must experience and express regret at having caused the offense.  So, I must relay to the offended that slapping others in the face is very atypical of my character.  (4)  The offender must commit to a renewed character in which the offense shares no concrete part of.  I must assure the offended that this offense will never happen again.  (5) The offender must show that he understands the offense as it has affected the offended from the offended's perspective.  And lastly, (6) the offended must give some form of a narrative account of the offense, his repentance, and why he deserves forgiveness.  (50-51)

I'm not asserting that Griswold's philosophy is gospel truth.  Griswold himself admits that he approaches his philosophy on forgiveness from a secular point of view.  But for Christians, the crucifixion event raises questions as to the theology behind forgiveness.  After all, Jesus did, on the cross, ask God to forgive the Jewish and Roman leaders who condemned him to the cross, "for the knew not what they do."  How could Jesus offer forgiveness when the offended did not recognize their actions as an offense?  And how does that provide a theological framework for how we approach forgiveness?  One penetrating theology of forgiveness comes from Yale University theologian Miroslav Volf's Free of Charge.  In the brilliant and personal book, Volf argues that forgiveness reorganizes the expectations between the offender and the offended in that the offended, while rightly expecting the offender to acknowledge his offense, does not impute upon him the requirement to provide any recompense to atone for the offense.  In other words, God's forgiveness severs the tie between the offense and the offender.  Thus, Christ could still ask for forgiveness on behalf of his executors, because their sins were not imputed on them.  This sounds simple in the Scriptures, but in real life the tire has a hard time meeting the road.  In another book, Exclusion and Embrace, Volf recounts the beginning of his theological journey towards understanding forgiveness and reconciliation with his Ph.D. mentor, Jürgen Moltmann's simple question: "But can you embrace a cetnik," a cetnik being a Serbian paramilitary group which had instituted essentially a reign of terror in Yugoslavia against the Croats (Volf is a Croat).  For Volf to assent would mean to divorce a cetnik from his or her involvement in the acts of terror against his people.  It would require Americans to release Osama bin Laden from the consequences of the 9/11 attacks.  It may be difficult, but the fact of the matter is that God has forgiven humanity; to follow Jesus is to do no less.

But what we have assumed so far in our discussion on forgiveness is that it is a matter between an offending party and a offended party.  We assume, in other words, that sin is, in essence, a relational one. This is a uniquely Western approach, given the Western emphasis on individual autonomy and responsibility.  But is it true in the Far East, with the traditional Confucian and Buddhist influences which emphasize more communal orientations as opposed to the Western individualist ones?  And how do those influences affect how those cultures perceive forgiveness?

In the 2010 Surjit Singh Lecture in Comparative Religious Thought and Culture at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA, Anri Morimoto (professor of philosophy and religion at the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan) offered a rather simple theology of forgiveness influenced by Japanese Buddhist folk legends.  These legends were key to the work of two psychologists, Heisaku Kosawa and Keigo Okonogi, both of whom introduced a psychoanalytic phenomenon known as the Ajase Complex, an "Asian version" of the Oedipus Complex formulated by Sigmund Freud.  The Ajase Complex is simply "an intense feeling of guilt generated by the experience of being forgiven by the victim of his wrongdoing."  According to Morimoto, the Japanese never apologize outright.  Rather, the initiative for the forgiveness begins with the offended, who begins the reconciliation process by first forgiving the offender.  The offender, upon realizing his or her sin, experiences guilt and responds in kind with an apology and recompense.  This model of forgiveness is unique to Japan and is shown in full force in the Buddhist legend of Ajase, from which the Complex is named.  Ajase sought to kill his mother for trying to kill him upon childbirth, but when ill, he experiences guilt after his mother expressed forgiveness by caring for him and tending to his illness.  But more importantly, the Japanese model of forgiveness is premised on the idea that sin is structural.  Forgiveness and sin, in other words, are not the cause and effect of two parties, but have explanation in whole societies.  Thus, one never entirely pins the blame of the offense squarely on the offender; consequently, one never wholly seeks to absolve him or herself from the sin entirely.

Morimoto asserts that such a view is very unique among East Asian cultures, which was why Japanese apologies for their atrocities during WWII often fall flat in the ears of South Koreans and Japanese.  So for Chinese churches, the question to be raised is whether there are cultural resources from China from which Chinese-Americans can draw a unique theology of forgiveness.  It is, after all, necessary because as bicultural people, we need theological resources to bridge the difference between two seemingly oppositional forgiveness theologies, one emphasizing individual autonomy and responsibility and the other emphasizing communal or familial responsibility instead.  To do so, however, we need to first uncover the attributes of "Chinese forgiveness" if there is such a thing.