‘Who Can Forgive Sins but God Alone?’ Third-Party Forgiveness and Christian Practice

In recent years, third-party forgiveness has received renewed attention, much of it negative. While a few have undertaken important attempts to defend or expound accounts of third-party forgiveness, many suspect that it is incoherent, vicious, or both. If true, this would be bad news for Christians, for Christians rely on notions of third-party forgiveness for their accounts of salvation and pastoral authority. I think there is reason to think that some notions of third-party forgiveness can overcome the critics’ worries. In what follows, I argue that third-party forgiveness is more common, coherent, salutary, and diverse in species than many critics suppose. After considering key objections to third-party forgiveness, I offer a constructive account of it that makes sense of these objections while also defending the underlying concept and act. What emerges from this defense is a newfound appreciation for the diverse species of third-party forgiveness. Still, some of these species are more intelligible and safeguarded from declension than others, and I conclude by examining the limits of third-party forgiveness by considering its most contentious species.