Causal Responsibility for an Act
A) You are causally responsible for an act you intentionally or negligently did (whether the act is right or wrong), if and only if

1) you could have done otherwise had you chosen to and
2) you could have chosen to

Causal Responsibility for an Omission or Failure to Act
B) You are causally responsible for not having done, or for failing to do, an act you intentionally or negligently didn’t do (whether the omission is right or wrong), if and only if

3) you could have done the act had you chosen to and
4) you could have chosen to

The following all refer to acts or omissions for which one is causally responsible.

Blameworthiness for a Wrong Act You Did
C) If the act you did was wrong, then you are blameworthy for having done it, if and only if

5) you knew it was wrong or
6) (in cases of negligent ignorance) you should have known it was wrong, and
7) you had no reasonable excuse or legitimately mitigating reason for doing it

[The “and” in 6 goes with either 5 or 6, meaning that if and only if 7 is true and either 5 or 6 is true, then you are blameworthy for the act you did.]

Blameworthiness for a Wrongful Omission or Failure to Act*
D) If the act you did not do is one that you should have done (i.e., if it was wrong for you not to have done or to have failed to do), then you are blameworthy for not having done it (i.e., for failing to do it), if and only if

8) you knew it was wrong not to do it or
9) (in cases of negligent ignorance) you should have known it was wrong not to do it, and
10) you had no excuse or mitigating reason for not doing it.

[The “and” in 9 goes with either 8 or 9, meaning that if and only if 10 is true and either 8 or 9 is true, then you are blameworthy for not doing the act or for failing to do the act.]

* ”Failing to do an act” is potentially ambiguous in that it can refer to ‘a failure to attempt to do the act’ or to ‘an unsuccessful attempt to do the act, doing it in a way that fails to achieve the intended result or complete the act.’  Certainly one is blameworthy for failure even to attempt to do a right act, but one is also blameworthy for failing to succeed if that failure is one’s own fault in some way too, as in making a half-hearted or not particularly reasonable effort.  It is not a “failure to act,” if one’s serious attempt is thwarted by something fully outside of one’s control, but then also one is not then responsible for any such act of omission.  So ‘failing to act’ in these cases of omissions mean basically not doing something one should have done or at least seriously attempted to do with a reasonable expectation and chance of success.

Punishment**
E) You should be punished for a wrong act you are blameworthy for having done or blameworthy for having failed/omitted to do, unless you deserve forgiveness.

11) feeling genuine remorse
12) sincerely and honestly expressing your regret and remorse to the victim(s) of your act or omission [i.e., giving a sincere apology to the victim(s)]
13) making restitution for all the harm and work (and lost beneficial opportunities) you caused by your act or omission (including any ‘opportunity costs’ incurred by those involved in catching you if you had to be caught)
14) making a serious and sustained effort to rehabilitate yourself so that you do not commit the wrong again.

In cases, such as murder or permanent injury where 12 and 13 are not possible, one might still deserve forgiveness if one has, without coercion, bargaining or in any other form of merely trying to avoid (further) punishment, done something to make up for one’s wrongdoing as much as possible by a serious, strenuous, and sustained effort to help others in a way one would not have done had one not done (or failed to do) the act and been remorseful for doing (or failing to do) it. I believe that forgiving someone for a blameworthy act -- i.e., a wrong act for which they have no justified excuse -- means believing they no longer deserve (further) externally inflicted punishment (as opposed to suffering from their own conscience) because they have done something sufficient to atone for the act for which they are blameworthy.  Part of what is sufficient atonement involves repentance, and in some cases voluntary sacrifice or risk of sacrifice of something important to the wrongdoer.  I will say more about that later.

To try to make these questions easier for my students, I ask them to consider a fairly easy, non-emotional kind of case, as I think one should generally begin many kinds of inquiries (whether ethical, mathematical, scientific, etc.) and see whether they can figure out what one should do to deserve forgiveness and then try to generalize from there.  The case is: your dog gets out of your yard and goes into the neighbor's yard and poops on his driveway and tears up some of his flowers in a flower bed.  Assuming, what seems reasonable, that you are at least to some extent responsible for your dog's doing this because you did not have it secure or well-trained (which would not be true if someone else broke into your reasonably secure house or yard and put the dog in your neighbor's yard, gave it a fast-acting laxative, and put some sort of rabbit scent in the soil of the flower bed, etc.), what do you need to do in order to deserve forgiveness for it?  There are at least four things.  What are they?  Generalize then about any wrongdoing.  And, can a different neighbor forgive you for what your dog did to this neighbor's yard?  Why or why not?

Many or most of my students, generally having been raised as Christians, almost universally try to begin by talking about what they believe is the Christian view of forgiveness, combined with a conventional, contemporary psychological view of it -- that one should always be forgiving because 1) Christ died for our sins so that we all (including wrongdoers in any particular case) can thus be absolved of them, 2) Christ commanded us to love our fellow human beings, including wrongdoers, and 3) the point of forgiveness is to help the victim (or loved one of the victim, or the observer) of the wrong overcome his/her bitterness, resentment, hatred of the wrongdoer so that it doesn't further do more harm to them by 'eating at them' or festering and so that he can love others as commanded.  They further say that forgiveness is always a gift from the victim or the observer to the perpetrator, just as God's grace for sinners is, and that third party forgiveness, particularly by God is possible -- but then they do not apply any of these ideas when they discuss the dog case, because they say the dog owner does need to do specific things in order to deserve forgiveness, and that if he does those things, he then deserves forgiveness and you should forgive him. 

You, as the dog owner, they say correctly, have to 1) sincerely apologize to the neighbor, 2) actually have remorse or regret (in the sense of being sorry) it happened, 3) clean up the mess and plant new flowers for him, and 4) try to make your own fence more secure, etc. so your dog is not likely to be able  get loose again like that.  In short, you need in general, whenever possible to: 1) have remorse, 2) express that remorse as a genuine statement of regret and apology, 3) make restitution (where possible), and 4) make a serious and reasonable attempt at rehabilitation to prevent further recurrence (even if you are unsuccessful, since one cannot totally guarantee the dog can never escape again). 

But surely, if their general Christian and psychology views with which they began were what they believed about forgiveness, they should believe that you, the dog owner, would not need to do anything other than to gently remind the neighbor (or have someone else gently remind the neighbor) whose yard your dog harmed that both for his own peace of mind and as a Christian, he should just forgive you and not be upset over any wrong done to him, perhaps particular such small wrongs as this one.  Essentially just let him know, or have a friend of his or some other third party he trusts let him know, that he should just 'suck this up' or 'walk it off' and get over it and be more tolerant and loving, and that holding a grudge will only harm him and not do any good, and Christ has already atoned for your sin, so no more needs to be done. 

But the New Testament requires at least a claim of repentance for his action by the wrongdoer, though it has seemingly conflicting comments about whether that claim of repentance needs to be honest and sincere.  Stressing actual repentance are Luke 15:10  "Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth" and Luke 17:3 "Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him."  But Luke 17:4 seems only to require a statement or claim of repentance: "And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him."  Luke 17:4 just seems to require saying one repents, as opposed to actually repenting.  That strikes me as odd, particularly repeatedly doing wrong after saying one was sorry the first time or two.  Repeated wrongdoing after saying one repents strikes me as a hollow, insincere claim of repentance, unless possibly "trespass" means "errs", which could include mistakes, and the person is unfamiliar with the work and keeps making different errors out of excusable ignorance.  If that were the case, it would possibly be reasonable to keep excusing the person, but in my terminology, that would not be about forgiving him or her, since they are not to blame in the first place for their ignorance, and their continued apologies shows they have good intentions and mean well -- that they are deserving people. But people who actually repent their errors are also considered to be deserving, as pointed out in the following: Luke 15:7 I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.  Luke 15:10 "Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."  So it is not clear that Christianity requires automatic forgiveness without the wrongdoer's doing something to deserve it.

Some of my students in an onground ethics course challenged some of the ideas I presented above, and the following is my description of their objections and my responses to them:
I thought more about our discussion of forgiveness (beyond what I have already said about that), particularly in regard to 1) Sydney’s objection about my criteria taking away the power of the victim to be the one to forgive and putting in the hands of the perpetrator, 2) Katie’s objection that it was not the Christian view of forgiveness, and 3) Alex’s objection, in part supporting Katie’s, that there were different meaning of forgiveness for different people.

First Alex’s.  Words in a common language cannot mean just anything people want them to.  To say “I forgive you” doesn’t mean, for example, “This elevator goes really fast.”  The question is what the concept of forgiveness implies or means, and how much variation there can be in it, and a different question -- the one I was asking and trying to answer -- whether there are criteria for deserving forgiveness and what they might be. 

Now it seems to me that a minimal meaning of forgiving someone is holding that although they did something wrong for which they had no excuse or mitigating factor, they no longer deserve punishment because they have done something to ‘make the situation right in some way’ or that they have done something to make up somehow for the wrong they did.  If an act is not wrong to begin with, forgiveness does not apply.  It would be a joke to tell someone who does you a favor or is very good to you “I forgive you” just as it is a joke to tell someone you ‘blame’ them for giving you a great life, as in responding to someone who says you have a great marriage “That is my wife’s fault” in order to give her all the credit but in a humorous way.  And if someone has a legitimate excuse for doing something wrong, as in running a stop sign that is hidden by trees, they also should not be punished, and they don’t need forgiveness.  They are excused for their wrong act, not forgiven for it.  Forgiveness is about reaction of a certain sort to a perpetrator of a wrong act s/he committed without legitimate excuse.

 As stated previously, the normally proper response to someone who does a wrong act without excuse would be that s/he deserves punishment, and the reason I gave for that was in order to penalize the person to redress the imbalance of undeserved evil s/he caused and undeserved benefit s/he gained and to make him/her at least partially share in (if not fully bear) all the burdens and harms done by his/her act -- including pain and suffering, torment and agony, and labor and opportunity costs, etc. of resources used in investigating the wrong, pursuit of the perpetrator, future security, etc.  Forgiveness wipes out penalizing or punishing the person any further, probably because s/he has suffered enough for any part of the wrong, including any part s/he has not redressed or remedied.  It is granted because the imbalance has been voluntarily righted by the perpetrator him/herself by his/her making full or sufficient restitution (as possible) and sharing in the suffering.  It removes the need for or point of any (further) punishment.  As Katie accepted, God’s forgiveness involves not consigning the person to eternal damnation for his/her transgression.  If God said He forgave you but was sending you to hell for what you did anyway, that would not be forgiveness.  So in part, there was something wrong or strange about the reaction of the loved ones of the Charleston church killing victims who said they forgave the murderer but wanted him punished to the full extent of the law.  That is one clue that whatever they mean by forgiveness, it is not the normal meaning, and probably has to do with their not being consumed with animosity and anger or bitterness toward the killer but dispassionately and logically think he deserves punishment. But although genuinely forgiving someone may naturally lead to not being consumed by animosity, anger, and bitterness toward them, the reverse is not necessarily true.  Simply not being consumed by those things is not by itself forgiveness.  You can’t just skip the step of genuinely believing they don’t deserve (further) punishment.  If one could take a pill or a really good anger management course in order to psychologically “get past” or overcome one’s anger and bitterness toward the perpetrator by a kind of emotional anesthetic or amnesia, that would not be to forgive them or to achieve the outcome via forgiveness.  It would be achieving that particular outcome a totally different way.  And since the assailant in the Charleston church murders did not even claim to repent before the congregants said they forgave him, he does not even meet the lesser criterion for forgiveness of Luke 17:4.

Now in regard to the question of religion, what I am concerned involves ‘theology’ more than mere religious belief that might be preached from a pulpit.  Theology is systematically developed religious theory and belief for deeper understanding.  It is like philosophy except that it begins with, and accepts the religious beliefs themselves and tries to explain and justify or support them so that people can be sure they correctly understand what God intends and insofar as possible can see why it is reasonable.  Understanding it is important, since if you misunderstand or do not fully understand what God asks of you, you are not likely to do the right thing.   An easy example of the point is the mistaken view many people have that one of the ten commandments is one should not kill another human being.  That is clearly not what God meant, at least at the event at Sinai, because there were actually 613 commandments that God gave then, there is no distinction given in importance between the first ten and the other 603, and some of the 603 others are commandments about punishment, including capital punishment.  Capital punishment is not just allowed, but required in certain cases.  And He delegates man to carry out His will in that regard.  So anyone who claims that it is a sin to execute a murderer because it violates the ten commandments is not understanding the commandment correctly, which is that one should not murder another human being, where murder is the wrongful killing of an innocent person. 

And if one thinks that the New Testament keeps the first ten commandments but not the other 603, then one has to square that somehow with Matthew 5:17ff, where Jesus said He did not come to abolish the laws but to fulfill them, and said “18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” And also clearly Jesus showed that people’s shallow understanding of the commandments was not necessarily what God meant.  In Mark 2:27, he said it did not violate the Sabbath to pick grain to eat because “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

As to Sydney’s view that my criteria put power in the hands of the perpetrator, not the victim, I don’t see that as true in an unqualified way.  I think it is true in a specific sense of forgiveness, if we distinguish between truly believing someone deserves forgiveness and emotionally and psychologically actually feeling forgiveness toward them, feels forgiving of them.  Consider an analogy.  If someone does or offers to do something nice for you that is strictly voluntary on their part and not something necessary, the proper response by you should be “Thank you”, even if it is not a gift you wanted or wanted from them and that receiving doesn't make you feel appreciative or thankful.  If it is appropriate for you to do so, and if you are capable of doing it well, you may say in a kind and tactful way it was not something you want, but you still need to thank them for their offer, effort, and good intention.  And you should still be appreciative of their giving it to you, even if you cannot feel appreciative.  That does not take power away from you; it is just the right thing to do.  People who do what is right are not less powerful or autonomous than people who do what is wrong out of a hardened heart or spiteful will.  But Sydney's contention would be true if we take it to mean no one can rightly force a person to actually be and feel appreciative or thankful.  If the perpetrator can do something to deserve forgiveness, than it does not diminish the victim’s power to be forgiving. But, of course, it is dependent on the victim whether to fully believe and accept psychologically or emotionally "in his or her heart" to feel forgiving, as opposed to believing the person deserves forgiveness or not -- whether the belief and acceptance or whether disbelief and rejection of it are reasonable or not.  Even if one forgives the wrongdoer, that does not require one to be friendly with him or her or to have any sort of cordial or business relationship.  One might avoid contact with the wrongdoer because at the very least it would bring back painful memories.  One can perhaps even still have resentment for the wrongdoer, but truly believe they no longer deserve (further) punishment; but it is just that you can not warm up to them or be friends or anything better than civil.  In other words, the concept of forgiveness can be considered to have both a logical and a psychological component.  The logical component may or may not influence the psychological one, but one cannot be legitimately forced to feel forgiving, even if one ought to believe, and actually even does believe, forgiveness is deserved.  What the perpetrator does may require his/her victim logically to accept they should not be further punished, but it cannot require the victim to feel forgiving, particularly in a loving or friendly sense or way.

Moreover, while Dostoevsky's claim is that only the victim has the right to forgive, that doesn't mean the victim therefore always has the right to bestow forgiveness.  It is common, for example, for women and children who are violently abused by their husband or father (or children who are violently abused by either parent) to be too charitable toward the abuser and/or too ready to blame themselves and too accepting of harm as some sort of deserved punishments for their own behaviors or emotions and attitudes.  So even if the abused spouse or children are forgiving, that doesn't mean the state should not punish the abuser for what he has done to the victims.  So even if Dostoevsky is correct that the victim's consent is necessary for forgiveness to be right, that does not mean the victim's consent to forgive is sufficient for it to be right.  And oppositely, in cases where the abuser does logically deserve forgiveness, the victim's withholding of consent to it is not sufficient for the state not to grant it, even though the state cannot control the victim's granting or withholding psychological forgiveness.

Sydney’s view of not allowing anything the perpetrator does to possibly even count toward logically deserving and requiring forgiveness (as opposed to being given it by the victim emotionally and psychologically) is the total opposite logic of the Charleston people’s view of granting immediate ‘forgiveness’ toward a perpetrator of wrong without his having to do anything.    Both views seem wrong although I can give three kinds of scenarios where Sydney’s view would not be totally mistaken.  But the first is because forgiveness can never be deserved for some acts, and the second is that it can never be known by other people to be deserved, even if it is deserved.

The first case where Sydney’s view would be right is where the wrong done is so clearly heinous and malicious that nothing can “make it right” or in any way understandable how anyone with a shred of understanding or decency could do it.  Nothing can repair the damage or explain how someone could be genuinely remorseful afterward without being sufficiently mindful not to do it in the first place.  It is a wrong so bad that it is impossible to make up for it, at least to the loved ones of the victims, if not to everyone.  On my criteria that is a case where restitution cannot be sufficiently made.  I think that Dostoevsky in part says that is why God should not forgive some wrongs (even if it were logically possible for Him or any third party to grant forgiveness), particularly, but not only, where the perpetrator is not even sorry. I do not know whether the crimes Dostoevsky recounts in that section of The Brothers Karamazov are real or fictitious ones, but similar crimes occur all too frequently in real life today, even in supposedly 'advanced', civilized countries.  Little children are kidnapped, drugged, raped, beaten and murdered, and their dead bodies desecrated.  Teenagers and adults are also, often being treated in terribly brutal ways that defy the understanding of any civilized and decent person.  Even when there is no torture or desecration involved, mass shootings and stabbings murder innocent, undeserving people randomly when they were simply minding their own business.  As I write this there were two separate incidents in the United States this past weekend, where people were attacked even during religious observances, which seems to be a particularly heinous, disrespectful, irreverent, obscene, inhumane, and indecent act.  At least two of the people attacked died.

The second case where Sydney’s view would be right (and this picks up also on a point of Misty’s) is where it is impossible for us to tell whether the perpetrator is genuinely sorry and actually trying to make up for the wrong or where s/he is simply trying to have their punishment decreased or is trying not to get caught by ‘lying low’.  On my criteria that means we cannot tell whether the perpetrator is genuinely remorseful or not.  Notice, God is attributed not to have this particular problem because supposedly God can see into the perpetrator’s heart and soul to see whether there is true remorse and repentance or not.  (Jeremiah 6:20 "To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me.")  And God wants you to do what you do out of love, not out of having to seek forgiveness (Mark 33  "... to love one's neighbour as oneself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.")

Insofar as God is omniscient, as it is claimed, He can see whether someone has repented or not for a wrong s/he did, or whether s/he is just trying to avoid condemnation and punishment.  We humans cannot do that, except sometimes -- particularly those times where the transformation is dramatic and clearly self-motivated when the person had not been caught and was not likely to be caught.  Once the person is caught, it is impossible or at least extremely difficult, to distinguish true remorse from “jailhouse repentance” intended just to get a lighter sentence or to get parole or early release, or to know whether their regret is simply from having been caught and punished rather than out of actual contrition from having committed the wrong and caused harm, extra work, or suffering to others.  To regret having done the wrong thing because one is being punished is not the proper kind of regret for one's wrong act.

The third kind of case is probably closer to what Dostoevsky had in mind: the act harms the victim in ways that are unfathomable to, or unable to be sufficiently felt by, others and that the perpetrator has not yet had sufficient contrition, made sufficient restitution, or suffered enough to adequately share the pain and suffering s/he has caused.  There is a sense in which only the victim feels or experiences the torment it caused him or her (and continues to cause if the victim survives) , and the toll it has taken and continues to take.  Others may perceive the damage it did and/or is continuing to do to the victim, perhaps in some cases even better than the victim does.  But in the sense of perceiving one's feelings directly, only the victim can do that and know when they feel 'restored' and feel 'whole' again in some way (whether they are actually restored or not), given the actions of the wrongdoer in seeking forgiveness.  Insofar as the victim is either overly sensitive to, or is insufficiently aware of, the toll the wrong act took on him or her, s/he could still be too slow to grant deserved forgiveness or too quick to grant undeserved forgiveness.  But that doesn't mean others can say enough has been done to compensate for the felt harm done to him or her.  The best they can say is that s/he ought or ought not to be over the torment by now, not that s/he is or isn't over it.  They can say s/he ought to feel forgiving but not that s/he is able to, or even to believe s/he should feel forgiving.  And even if someone else can do things to help the victim recover their previous state of mind from before the wrong done to them, that doesn't mean the victim can attribute that to the perpetrator's having done enough to restore that state.  If someone steals my car, other people may restore my faith in the goodness of some people by giving me a new car, but that doesn't make me want to forgive or feel forgiving of the thief.  We can know which parts of our joys and sorrows to attribute to which people and events. 

Another way to state this last point is that, as above, it is possible for people to agree about the criteria for logically deserving forgiveness (which is different from being granted forgiveness psychologically/emotionally) while still logically disagreeing about a particular case, because they disagree about whether the criteria have been met in that case. When someone is considering forgiving someone else for a wrong that person did to him or her, s/he can often better determine whether the wrong has been sufficiently remedied or not, or whether the wrongdoer has suffered as much as s/he has, and not require further restitution or further suffering by the perpetrator.  But a third person cannot determine that, particularly if the victim is dead.  The best one can know is that the victim would have said the perpetrator has suffered enough or not.  But that is tenuous.  God, it might be supposed, can ask the dead victim what s/he thinks or can know it directly.  But even then there might be disagreement that the victim is being too enabling or too merciful, just as we can think a living victim is being too enabling or merciful and that the wrongdoer does not deserve mercy or remission of (further) penalty or punishment.   And while it is easy to imagine someone's being too forgiving for being murdered, abused, beaten, molested, or raped, it is difficult to imagine that someone who didn't want to die or be physically or emotionally severely harmed can be too stingy or demanding by withholding forgiveness for such acts.  Even if being murdered gets an innocent person to heaven sooner, they likely would have preferred to wait to take that trip and cannot be blamed for being unforgiving especially of someone unrepentant.   

Returning to Katie’s and Alex’s views, while I cannot speak for them or for God on this, I would think that 1) either a person is not a Christian just because s/he professes or even has a particular belief, or 2) that if s/he is one, s/he does not just deserve mercy because s/he takes the deal just to get salvation and avoid damnation.  Suppose their mindset is “Let me get this straight.  In order to avoid going to hell for all the things I’ve done, all I need to do is believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins.  Well, sure then; I’ll take that deal.  I’ll believe it, especially if my believing it makes it true.  Do you want me to sign something to that effect?  I mean, I’ll sign it.  I don’t want to go to hell.”  Would you call that person a true Christian?  Would you think God would?  Do you think that absolves them from serious punishment?  I would hope you wouldn't think that.  As a missionary I met told me, it is not the proper Christian attitude, spirit, mentality, or understanding to simply declare "We are saved, so party on!"

Or returning to Sydney’s contention about the idea of earning and deserving forgiveness robbing the victim of the power whether to bestow it or not, consider an analogy of forgiving a debt.  Suppose some guy borrows $100 from you or perhaps $10,000.  He needs to repay it.  However, suppose that he saves your life at some risk to his own.  Would it not be ungrateful normally to still make him repay the $100?  Maybe even the full $10,000 (unless perhaps you needed the money and he could easily afford to repay it).  Has he, by saving your life, especially at some risk to his own, not wiped out part of the debt he owes you?  Has he not actually given you (back) more than he owes you, though he did not pay it back in money, but something even more valuable?  Are you not really more in his debt than he is/was in yours?  And does forgiving that part of his monetary debt take away your “power” any more than if he had actually repaid in money that part of the debt?  I wouldn’t think so.

However, insofar as harming someone means you owe them and society from whom your action required assistance and to whom your wrongdoing exposes a threat by yourself or by others that has to be guarded against at some cost, you have incurred obligations to those you have given these burdens.  The debt is not settled until they are repaid and close out the debt, but the debt cannot be settled simply by someone else's payment to them, nor can it be cancelled by someone else on their behalf.  The debt is personal between the two of you.  You owe them sufficient suffering, sacrifice, and contrition that they can absolve you of any further externally inflicted penalty. 

It seems to me that granting forgiveness automatically as perhaps some of the Charleston people did -- if they also thought the perpetrator should not be punished -- is less about being forgiving than it is about believing no act, no matter how wrong deserves punishment.  Perhaps if one believed that all acts are just mistakes or are just excusable, one could believe that.  Or if one believed there are no wrong acts, one could believe that.  But I doubt that any of you believe there are no wrong acts or that all wrong acts are simply mistakes or are immediately excusable.  I certainly don’t believe that or see any reason to believe it.  And I don’t see any reason to think God believes it, or at least that He has always believed it, especially since He stated in the laws given at Sinai what the punishments should be for certain wrong acts.

Finally, it is also possible to believe that although some acts are wrong, or that a particular act is wrong, and the agent is both responsible and blameworthy, that punishment makes matters worse because it is too harsh a response. For example, while it is wrong for someone to break a date by standing you up with no warning or explanation simply because they have changed their mind, that is not, and should not be, a police or court matter.  If it were, that would probably cause more problems than it solves.  (Now I am not talking about avoiding legal procedures, such as getting a restraining order against a stalker, because it will escalate the stalker's anger and bad behavior, but am talking about using law to criminalize behavior that shouldn't be criminalized because the natural consequences of criminalizing it cause greater harm, harm that is unnecessary.  In the case of restraining orders which just anger stalkers and escalate their bad behaviors, the problem is not in criminalizing stalking but making restraining orders an insufficient legal remedy for it and insufficient protection from it.  Stalking should be illegal, but the protections against it need to be more realistic and effective.)  Presumably the idea that punishment is too harsh a response to wrongdoing is the justification for putting young children in 'time out' instead of spanking them or even yelling at them, etc.  However, even "time-out" can be a punishment for some children, it may be 1) insufficient remedy against repeat offenses, and 2) too lenient, and insufficiently punitive or penalizing, for serious offenses. 

The idea is that punishments should be commensurate with the severity of the offense and that worse offenses deserve harsher penalties.  It is relatively easy to rank offenses by order of their severity and to rank punishments by order of their harshness, but it is difficult to know how to line them up with each other in terms of what the gaps should be between offenses and between penalties, and what the floors and ceilings of the penalties should be.  For example, overparking for two hours is worse than overparking for one hour because it hogs the parking space twice as long, but should that mean the fine should be double for doing it twice as long?  And whether or not it is double, should the fine for overparking one hour be $10 or $50 or $500?  $500 seems excessive for one hour parking at an expired meter.  $1000 for two hours seems really excessive.  But both would meet the criteria of a harsher penalty for a greater wrong.  In regard to more serious crimes,  while some people think execution (capital punishment) is too harsh even for murder, other people think it too lenient for particularly heinous murders or other crimes, and that something like ongoing severe torture before execution is more appropriate.  At the other end of the scale, some penalties seem a 'mere slap on the wrist' for a wrong that other people believe deserves a harsher penalty.  For example, if someone rich were to speed for thrills through a residential neighborhood where small children live and play, even if s/he doesn't hit anyone or anything, a fine might be only 'chump change' to them and thus instead of being a deterrent is merely a licensing fee to do it.  Or consider that in Huntsville, Alabama the penalty for driving with an expired license tag, even if inadvertent and even if the tag only recently expired and one was not sent a renewal notice, is more than the penalty for running a red light, even if intentionally and relatively fast (though within the speed limit).  The fine alone for driving with the expired tag is higher, but on top of the fine, there is also a late renewal fee penalty.  To me it seems that 1) running a red light -- particularly intentionally and at great speed (even if within the speed limit) -- is a far more serious offense than inadvertently driving with a recently expired tag and, thus, should have the stronger penalty, and 2) that the fine for speeding is too low while the fine for the expired tag is too high, particularly for poor people, so that even if the fine for speeding was made a few dollars more than the fine for driving with the expired tag, the penalties would still both be incommensurate with the seriousness of the offenses, even though the red light violation would then be more than the expired tag violation.  For penalties to be reasonably punitive, they should not only be serially ranked in the same order as the offenses, but each penalty must be commensurate or appropriate to the seriousness of the offense, taking into account the circumstances of the wrongdoer so that what is very harsh for one person is not just a wrist slap to another.  If the idea is that punishments should exact suffering that is appropriate to the offense, it has to be in some sense proportional to the toll it takes on the wrongdoer, not just the absolute amount, say in dollars.

The point of these last two paragraphs is that withholding punishment that is too harsh or that is strategically problematic (as is criminalizing someone's "standing up" a date or their breaking a date with insufficient justification or a lame excuse) is not the same thing as forgiving.  And it is not the same thing as withholding (further or greater) punishment because forgiveness is deserved.