Is Forgiveness Possible? Thomas Aquinas’s Response

The contemporary concept of human interpersonal forgiveness presupposed by Catholic believers is challenged, both in academia and in popular culture. The core of the problem is the real possibility and coherence of its gratuitousness: forgiving seems to be always vitiated by the forgiver’s self-seeking motives and thus morally impaired. But Thomas Aquinas’s thought offers sufficient conceptual elements to dispel the charge. Although he addresses such forgiveness relatively rarely, his later works consider it a spiritual work of mercy, and therefore an act of the virtues of mercy and charity. In order to defend the notion’s gratuitousness (from Aquinas’s Latin term gratuitus—that is, the characteristic of the unselfish and undue gift), it is necessary to have a full understanding of his notion of the love of friendship and how this love shapes mercy and charity. This holds true on both the supernatural and natural levels, even if, following original sin, the natural level requires divine grace to fully escape the charge of lacking true gratuitousness. To resolve this question, this article demonstrates the coherence of gratuitous forgiveness regarding both the intention of the human agent and the essence of forgiveness itself. Its coherence depends on that of gratuitousness and, consequently, of charity. First, this study outlines the core of contemporary skepticism, drawing upon the thought of Jacques Derrida as its primary exemplar. Second, it proposes a solution by reconstructing Aquinas’s account, situating it within the love of friendship, mercy, and charity, and demonstrating why its intention and structure are coherently gratuitous. Several of the textual interpretations advanced here remain subject to scholarly debate. Finally, before concluding, this paper addresses a major objection to human gratuitousness: namely, that a gratuitous act, as described by Aquinas, could not be performed by a human person, insofar as human agents are finite and inherently profit from their own morally good actions. To resolve this, a metaphysical argument grounded in analogy is proposed.