A reader thinks so:
Mark Vernon seems to think that just because the father of the prodigal son did not say "I forgive you," that the son wasn't technically forgiven. Poppycock. This is as ludicrous as the idea that one cannot love another without saying the words "I love you." The actions of the father in the parable speak much more loudly about the fact of his forgiveness than any words ever could. If it were necessary for Our Father in Heaven to literally say "I forgive you" (or "I love you" for that matter) before it would be real, then no-one would be forgiven nor loved by that sublime association as I know (and you know) we are in an unending stream of spiritual generosity.
Another Christian writes:
To answer Vernon's question, no, this is not what God's forgiveness is like. I believe Christian forgiveness is real not because of the feelings or actions which may be associated with it secondarily, but because it primarily describes the satisfaction of a debt owed to God, incurred by sin, in a legally concrete way. The story of the prodigal son describes God's response to those who accept his forgiveness, but does not describe the means by which this forgiveness is made possible, namely the sacrifice of Christ.
Sometimes we talk about "forgiving" each other for wrongdoing to refer to one person deciding that they are not going to hold the wrong done to them against the one who did it. Vernon is right that forgiveness is impossible if he means one human debtor absolving another human debtor for sin. But it does not mean this to Christians in the special case of the Gospel, which is a big reason the Gospel matters to people who believe in it.
Paul's repetitive use of courtroom language in Romans has helped me to think of forgiveness in these terms: If God is the grantor of existence, life, and consciousness to humanity, all human effort is owed to him. So anything taken for ourselves, even if that selfishness is expressed in harm to other humans, is still spiritually a debt to him. We may invent social penalties to deter and express a sense of justice in the world, but these penalties have nothing to do with obtaining God's forgiveness.
Since we're talking about parables, I'll try one: Suppose someone owns an orchard which is the only place in existence where apples can grow. He hires people to work in the orchard, but they all steal apples from him. Even if they decide they're sorry and want to pay him back, there's no way for them to give him what they've taken from him. The apples are gone. Even if one worker steals apples from another, and the other forgives him (meaning that he won't resent it and that he still accepts the other person), it does not pay the owner the debt he is owed. Even if the workers grow trees from the seeds of the stolen fruit, it doesn't really pay back the owner because he was supposed to have all the trees from all the apples ever grown. So even if the workers pay a penalty in some other form, as in our social systems of justice, this does not literally replace what the owner has lost. There is a debt owed to the orchard owner which may be socially satisfied, but is not a real repayment in the sense that its substance is not equal to what was taken from him.
So also spiritually, I think that all humanity is indebted to God by any decisions we make which are consciously against our best understanding of goodness. And so all of us have a debt that justice demands be repaid. But the trick/genius/enigma of the story about Jesus is that theologically many of us have the idea that he suffered as if he owed a debt though he owed no debt, and that because of this, God's justice owed a debt to him. Maybe a little like if the orchard owner punished the one worker who didn't take any apples. And in the same way that it is impossible to measure how far we are "in the red" to God (in that our being is owed to him anyway), so also the measure to which Christ's death is "in the black" is without limit.
So the Christian idea of forgiveness actually being real is that Christ satisfies God's justice for us, and our debt is wiped out. People may "forgive" each other in terms of deciding that a certain action should not be punished by them for their own and the other party's well-being, but this is not the whole of what Christian forgiveness means.
Sorry if this is too Bible-y, but I think this is a profoundly Christian question.
Indeed it is. I hope to write my own reflections on this topic soon.
The Dish 