Nothing can be more perplexing than the phenomenon of forgiveness. While many theologians have sought to articulate a Christian view of forgiveness, Matthew Ichihashi Potts’s volume is a unique addition to the discussion, as he refuses to affirm traditional theological presuppositions and aspires to construct a new Christian view of forgiveness.

The book opens with the voice of Reverend Waltrina Middleton, a cousin of Depayne Middleton, a victim of the 2015 Charleston shooting. To “insist upon a narrative of forgiveness is dehumanizing and violent, and it goes against the very nature of lament” (p. 12). This frames the central question of Potts’s book: how can forgiveness wrestle with lament? He endeavors to answer it by laying out a “modest theological defense of forgiveness” (p. 18) in which the victim’s grief and legitimate anger are not brushed aside by a triumphant narrative of cheap forgiveness.

The first chapter explores how forgiveness can keep perpetrators accountable for their sins. Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Buried Giant (London: Faber & Faber, 2015) is used to frame the conversation, while Vladimir Jankélévitch, Jacques Derrida, and Hannah Arendt serve as philosophical interlocutors. Historically, retribution has been the default reaction against wrongdoing, often institutionalized by a violent sovereign. Yet such attempts at “bookkeeping” inevitably lead to a never-ending cycle of violence. Hence Potts argues that what we need is Arendt’s “new beginning,” which is only accomplished by accepting loss as irrevocable and abandoning any compensatory means of righting the past.

The second chapter turns to the issue of confession. Following an analysis of Michel Foucault and Martha Nussbaum, Potts demonstrates how confession of sin has functioned as “currency” for transactional models of punishment and forgiveness. Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004), with its narration of intergenerational patterns of unforgiveness, is used to point to the dangers of self-articulation as a means of self-justification. Developing the insights of Judith Butler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Tanabe Hajime, Potts argues for the impossibility of self-narration and the necessity of persistent penitence. Instead of confession functioning as a “price paid for absolution” (p. 111), it may serve as a giving over of the self to foster common memory.

The third chapter deals with the theology of atonement. Traditional accounts have articulated forgiveness in terms of the foreswearing of anger, whether divine or human. Potts rejects the inclusion of affective change in his definition of forgiveness. This also leads him to deny substitutionary models of the atonement, as forgiveness “upsets the entire compensatory economy of loss” (p. 210). Borrowing from Julian of Norwich and Hans von Balthasar, Potts proposes we view atonement not as sin’s erasure, but as God sending away Christ, who “crosses the distance of sin” (p. 243). Christ’s estrangement from God allows the span of divine embrace to reach the lost. Louise Erdrich’s LaRose (New York: HarperCollins, 2016) is then used to illustrate both the impossibility of substitutionary atonement and also to point to an alternative. As the gift of LaRose served as a bridge between the two families in ending the cycle of revenge, so Christ serves as our bridge to forgiveness, not as a substitute for our sins but because our love for him compels us to foreswear retribution.

The fourth chapter questions the relationship between memory, forgiveness, and resurrection. Potts criticizes triumphant portrayals of the resurrection that eclipse the tragedy of the cross. The empty tomb was first and foremost a loss for the disciples, which gave rise to the Gospel narratives in their attempts to make meaning out of loss. When our vision of forgiveness is too preoccupied with the “happy ending” of the resurrection or eschatological vindication (a tendency Potts sees in Miroslav Volf), the risk is a dangerous erasure of the past. This danger is vividly illustrated by Potts’s fresh interpretation of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (New York: Knopf, 1987). To avoid such a pitfall, Potts builds upon Rowan Williams and M. Shawn Copeland to develop a view of the resurrection imagined as loss, which essentially leads to mourning and narration.

Potts’s volume makes a valuable contribution to the discussion about forgiveness. The sheer breadth of interlocutors he invites to the table makes it a must-read for anyone interested in the subject. As an exercise in moral theology, it not only attempts to revise traditional accounts of forgiveness but, in redefining sin, love, atonement, and resurrection, turns several key doctrines upside-down. Potts is thus highly innovative in his approach. Moreover, he is right to challenge the tendency of the tradition to portray forgiveness as a transaction, for the past can never be exchanged by retribution or confession. Indeed, a model of forgiveness which does not grapple with the impossibility of undoing the past risks suppressing painful memories for the sake of premature “reconciliation.” Viewing forgiveness as a form of mourning, then, is a necessary corrective, as it does not eclipse but includes legitimate anger and lament as constitutive of forgiveness.

Another important element in Potts’s work is his analysis of forgiveness in relation to systemic violence. He asks the salient question: “Why is it so often people of color and people already marginalized by systemic violence upon whom this forgiving responsibility falls?” (p. 12). While forgiveness has often been discussed in terms of the relationship between the wrongdoer and the victim, Pott’s volume is exceptional in addressing systemic and generational evil. The social and intergenerational elements are evident in the four novels with which he interacts, expanding the reader’s insight into the scope of forgiveness.

However, the book’s attempt at reconstruing Christian forgiveness encounters serious challenges. Although the reconfiguration of sin as distance is a helpful concept, this spatial imagery encounters difficulty when love, too, is defined in terms of keeping a distance for the sake of the other. Perhaps most questionable is his idea that, because of love, God is infinitely other to himself in his triune economy, and “love within God admits space for the distance of sin” (p. 241). This bifurcation between the immanent and economic trinities would seem to fly in the face of orthodox trinitarian affirmations of God’s unity. Furthermore, although the critique of traditional models of atonement merits consideration, the alternative proposed by Potts offers too little as a remedy for sin. When the atonement is narrated as Christ crossing the distance of sin, it is unclear how Christ also delivers us from the effects of sin. Similarly, while Potts’s depiction of the resurrection as mourning is intriguing, it contradicts numerous New Testament texts, where the resurrection is proclaimed as the victory of God (e.g., 1 Cor 15). Finally, his radically revisionist “alternative account” of forgiveness risks rendering the theology of forgiveness unintelligible to ordinary Christians, particularly the voiceless and the marginalized. This is ironic, since Potts truly intends to speak on behalf of those who are most likely to suffer from the excess burdens of forgiveness.

If traditional models have erred in demanding too much of forgiveness, I worry that Potts is asking too little. His rejection of any affective dimension to forgiveness, his isolation of forgiveness from reconciliation, and his minimalistic definition of forgiveness as a foreswearing of revenge, reveal that what Potts describes as “forgiveness” is far removed from what is normally understood by the term. In his zeal to escape “cheap forgiveness,” he may have wandered into the realm of “costly despair.” Although traditional models have tended to deny victims their right to lament and feel legitimate anger, Potts’s account risks depriving them of the healing and reconciliation they need.

Forgiveness: An Alternative Account is a truly original work that will benefit anyone wrestling with the dilemma of forgiveness. While its main thesis cannot be endorsed, it provides a helpful corrective in a world where forgiveness is too often replaced by cheap grace.

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