Reasonable Faith

Guest (Male): Dear Dr. Craig, we know that forgiveness is central to the Christian life. Matthew 6:12, 14, and 15, Matthew 18:21-35. However, forgiveness does not require complete restoration of a broken relationship.

I am thinking of a situation where one spouse is unfaithful. The betrayed spouse would be responsible to forgive their spouse and even the affair partner. But most counselors and therapists would strongly advise that the couple establish a no-contact relationship with the affair partner so they can rebuild their marriage.

Likewise, if someone murdered a family member, we should forgive, but that would not mean we are required to have a close relationship with the murderer. Thinking of these instances and assuming that everyone involved—the spouses, the affair partner, the murder victim, and the murderer—are all Christian, perhaps the murderer becomes a Christian because of the forgiveness of the surviving family.

In both the intermediate state where we are with Christ and the final resurrection when God creates the new heaven and the new earth and we dwell with God for eternity, what will be the relationship of these individuals? Perhaps a simple biblical way to put it is: how is Uriah the Hittite going to relate to both King David and Bathsheba? Ed, United States.

Dr. William Lane Craig: Your question, Ed, connects in an interesting way with my current work on eschatology to close out my systematic philosophical theology. Eschatology is the doctrine of the so-called last things, such as the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, and the new heavens and new earth.

Your central point, that forgiveness does not imply or require the victim's reconciliation with the offender, is a good one that philosophers writing about forgiveness often make. The question it prompts is eschatological: will there be reconciliation between victims and offenders in the intermediate state between death and resurrection, and in the new heavens and new earth?

Your question raises the issue of purgatory, whether Christians who die in sin, though fully forgiven, must nonetheless be purged of the stain of sin through further suffering after death prior to going to be with Christ. Although purgatory is not a biblical doctrine, advocates of the doctrine of purgatory will sometimes argue that those who deny the doctrine cannot explain how people who are incompletely sanctified in this life are suddenly made fit for fellowship with Christ. Purgatory is said to make sense of a person's progressive sanctification after death until it is complete.

It seems to me, however, that the idea that after death, Christian believers will experience the so-called beatific vision—that is to say, a fuller and deeper apprehension of God such as Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13:12: "Now we see through a glass dimly, but then face to face"—the beatific vision explains how all of the effects of sin in a person's life could be instantly purged away. In the final state of the new heaven and new earth, people experiencing the beatific vision will be holy and unable to sin. But if the beatific vision is received immediately upon death, then people in the intermediate state will also be freed of sin's effects.

It might be objected that this leaves nothing more to be had in the final state. But as Thomas Aquinas points out, people in the disembodied state between death and resurrection cannot experience full happiness because they are not complete human beings, but mere souls without bodies. By differentiating between human happiness and complete sanctification, we allow room for the happiness of completely sanctified souls to be augmented by their acquisition of glorified, resurrection bodies.

To come back to your question, then, complete sanctification would entail reconciliation between victims and offenders who could not be reconciled in this life. In the life after death, people will be fully loving and Christ-like persons who would want to be reconciled with one another and could not be pained by it. Thus, the issue you raise serves to augment even further our eschatological hope.