Just finished reading: “Promise, Gift, Command: Mapping the Theological Terrain of Forgiveness” (2024) by Brad East, who main ideas can’t really be summarized but can be itemized. According to East, forgiveness is:
- from God [meaningless],
- peculiarly Christian [false],
- integral to but not the whole of the gospel [agreed],
- administered by the sacraments [false],
- tricky [can be, but not as a rule],
- when we extend it, evidence that we have been forgiven ourselves [can be, but not as a rule], and
- something about which he still has several important questions [good, because he is muddled and hasn’t written a cogent essay here].