Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Forgiveness

Today we had the first of our Mid-Day Dialogues for this academic year at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. The idea behind these dialogues is to take an issue that is approached differently by Catholics and Protestant or Christians or Jews and explore them from those different faith traditions.

Our topic for today was forgiveness and I was joined for that my my friend and colleague Mitchell Gordon. Because most of our audience was Christian, Mitchell spoke at great length about the Jewish perspective, after which I made some quick responses to his talk from a Christian perspective before inviting our audience to comment. Helpfully, he began with a broader look at the differences between how Jews and Christians see the world and their relationship with God, before speaking directly to the issue of forgiveness.

You can access a recording of my talk here or stream it from the icon below. (The podcast runs for 38:01.) I am not attaching the handout Mitchell distributed, as most people have easy access to a Bible; he referenced Deuteronomy 30. Although the discussion following our talks was rich, as usually, I turned off the recording before opening the floor to the participants.

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