Forgiveness & Accountability
Jesus preaches radical forgiveness. Jewish law says forgiveness without repentance lets the offender off the hook and abandons the victim. Both are right — and the tension between them is the point.
The Answer
Jesus says to forgive "seventy times seven" times (Matthew 18:22). He says to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39). He forgives people from the cross who are in the process of executing him (Luke 23:34). Radical, unconditional, unlimited forgiveness is genuinely central to what he preached.
And yet: Jewish law (Teshuvah) holds that true forgiveness is a process, not a unilateral act. It requires the wrongdoer to acknowledge the harm, stop the harmful behavior, make genuine amends, and commit to not repeating it. Without those steps, what looks like forgiveness may actually be abandoning the victim to continued harm while releasing the offender from any obligation to change.
Both of these things are true. The tension between them is not a contradiction to resolve — it is a truth to live with.
What Jesus almost certainly did not mean by "forgive seventy times seven" is: return to the person who is hitting you, over and over again, and call it virtue. What he clearly did mean is: do not let bitterness calcify into a prison that traps you more than it harms them. Forgiveness, in his framework, is ultimately for the one who forgives. It is a refusal to be defined by what was done to you.
That is profoundly different from pretending nothing happened. Or from telling an abuse victim they need to reconcile with their abuser. That confusion has caused enormous harm.
The Jewish Reformer's Lens
Teshuvah is the Hebrew concept most often translated as "repentance," but its literal meaning is "return" — a turning back toward your most authentic self and toward right relationship with others. Jewish law identifies four distinct steps for genuine Teshuvah:
- Recognition (Hakarat Ha-Chet): genuinely acknowledging that you caused harm, without minimizing or deflecting
- Remorse (Charatah): feeling genuine regret for the harm caused — not just for the consequences you experienced
- Restitution (Vidui u'Vaker): making concrete amends to the person harmed where possible
- Behavioral change (Kabbalat Ha-Atid): committing to not repeat the behavior — and demonstrating that commitment over time
Maimonides teaches that the ultimate test of genuine Teshuvah is whether the person behaves differently when faced with the same situation again. Words without changed behavior are not repentance. They are performance.
This framework also protects victims: a person who has been wronged is not obligated to forgive someone who has not completed genuine Teshuvah. To demand forgiveness of a victim before the offender has made genuine amends is a second harm — it prioritizes the offender's comfort over the victim's dignity.
Tochacha — the commandment to rebuke someone who has wronged you or others (Leviticus 19:17) — is an act of love, not aggression. The rabbis teach that the opposite of Tochacha is not forgiveness. It is passive complicity that allows harm to continue. Genuine love sometimes requires naming what happened and demanding accountability.
The concept of Lo Taamod al Dam Re'echa ("do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor" — Leviticus 19:16) applies here too: silently absorbing ongoing harm, or enabling it in others by demanding premature forgiveness, is not a virtue in the Jewish framework. It is a failure of active love.
Catholic Social Teaching
Catholic moral theology has always distinguished between forgiveness (an internal disposition of the will — releasing resentment and wishing the wrongdoer well) and reconciliation (the restoration of relationship — which requires genuine change from both parties). These are not the same thing, and conflating them has caused real harm.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2843) reflects this: "It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession." Forgiveness is about what happens within the person who was hurt. It is not about pretending the harm didn't happen, or that the relationship is restored, or that the wrongdoer faces no consequences.
The restorative justice tradition in Catholic Social Teaching (developed especially in the USCCB's Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration, 2000) is directly relevant: justice is not served by punishment alone. But neither is it served by erasure of accountability. Restorative justice brings victim and offender together — with appropriate support — to acknowledge harm, hear its impact, and work toward genuine repair. This is a more demanding process than either pure punishment or cheap forgiveness.
Pope Francis, in Fratelli Tutti (2020, §§240–242), addresses forgiveness and justice together. He writes: "Forgiving does not mean forgetting... When injustice is committed, it is important for the sake of society itself to have the wrong clearly named and acknowledged." He explicitly rejects the idea that forgiveness means silence about what happened.
Importantly, the Church is also honest about its own history of using forgiveness language to suppress accountability — particularly in the sexual abuse crisis. The lesson learned, painfully, is that protecting victims and maintaining institutional accountability are not enemies of forgiveness. They are prerequisites for it.
Sources & Citations
- Matthew 18:21–22 — The Gospel of Matthew (New Testament) Peter asks Jesus how many times he must forgive someone who sins against him — "up to seven times?" Jesus answers: "Not seven times, but seventy-seven times" (some translations say "seventy times seven"). This is a Hebrew idiom meaning "without limit." It immediately follows a parable about a servant who is forgiven a vast debt and then refuses to forgive a small one — making the context clear: forgiveness is about releasing the grip of resentment, not about enabling harm.
- Luke 23:34 — The Gospel of Luke (New Testament) "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Jesus says this during his crucifixion. The forgiveness is directed toward God — it is an act of releasing the offenders to divine judgment, not a declaration that what was done to him was acceptable or that nothing needs to change.
- Leviticus 19:17 — The Torah (Hebrew Bible) The third book of Moses. "Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt." The commandment to rebuke (*Tochacha*) is placed immediately alongside the commandment not to harbor hatred. The Torah sees honest confrontation as an alternative to resentment — not as its opposite.
- Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance, 2:1–4 Maimonides (1138–1204 CE) was one of the greatest Jewish legal scholars and philosophers. These sections of his legal code define the four stages of genuine *Teshuvah* and establish that true repentance requires more than words — it requires demonstrated behavioral change. Foundational for understanding the Jewish approach to accountability and forgiveness.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2843–2845 The official compendium of Catholic teaching. These sections address Christian forgiveness as an interior act of the will — releasing resentment and surrendering the desire for revenge — while making clear that this is distinct from denying that harm occurred or from the restoration of relationship.
- Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti (2020), §§240–242 Encyclical letter on fraternity and social friendship. These sections address forgiveness in the context of social and political life. Francis explicitly states that forgiveness "does not mean impunity" and that naming injustice clearly is necessary for both forgiveness and social healing. Full text at the Vatican website.