Repentance and Moral Injury: A Theological Response to the Unresolved Space Between Perpetrator Trauma and Forgiveness
Andrew McCoy, PhD, Hope College, Holland, MI
Moral injury describes a broad array of traumatic experiences occurring when persons perpetrate or witness harmful actions which violate central ethical beliefs. Discussion of moral injury has grown significantly over the past decade not only in clinical literature but also widely throughout other scholarly disciplines. An unresolved issue in these interdisciplinary conversations remains how to understand the trauma of perpetrators in relation to moral injury. Should the pain of perpetrators be treated the same as survivors of other forms of trauma? What distinctions should be made as perpetrators face processes of justice and restoration? Can perpetrators be forgiven while continuing to acknowledge the trauma of innocent survivors?
In addressing these issues, this paper examines two prominent, recent works on moral injury and trauma. Literary scholar Joshua Pedersen’s book Sin Sick: Moral Injury in War and Literature (Pederson, 2021) begins with a “clinical portrait” of moral injury, but primarily explores the concept through the lens of literary criticism. Some critical scholars argue on ethical grounds against the treatment or healing of perpetrators, but Pederson makes particular use of “adaptive disclosure” as a treatment model developed by Brett Litz and others (Litz et. al., 2015). Despite his embrace of healing for perpetrators, Pederson argues that sustained “resentment,” over and against forgiveness, should be the primary ethical stance towards moral injury. Pederson makes particular use of Tadeusz Borowski’s, This Way for Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Borowski, 1946, 1992), a fictional account of Borowski’s experience as a Nazi prisoner forced to aid Nazi actions in Jewish concentration camps. While Borowski demonstrates ongoing resentment of moral injury, Pederson does not address either Borowski’s subsequent suicide or the manner in which it reflects Borowski’s traumatic experiences of the death camps (Borowski committed suicide by filling his own apartment with gas). This complicates Pederson’s own presentation of healing in relationship to the complicity of moral injury.
Judith Herman’s new book Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice (Herman, 2023) approaches justice in relationship to both survivors and perpetrators. Many of Herman’s chapters detail specific issues and offer concrete steps to be taken by perpetrators who seek restoration, including chapters on acknowledgement, apology, and accountability as well as restitution, rehabilitation, and prevention. Herman does not tend to approach trauma in terms of moral injury, but the overlap between her reconciling process for perpetrators and other approaches to moral injury is significant. She writes that justice “centers on repairing the harm to survivors and correcting wider historical wrongs rather than punishing perpetrators,” and that she means to develop “further the idea of justice as healing for victims, perpetrators, and the larger society” (Herman, 2023, 16-17). Herman is notably critical of traditional Christian understandings of forgiveness; in a section titled “Resisting Forgiveness” from her chapter on apology, she writes, “Modern Christian religious teachings frequently exhort victims to transcend their anger through forgiveness…and the virtue of forgiveness has been especially recommended to women and members of other subordinate groups, whose justified resentment might make those in power uncomfortable” (Herman, 2023, 105). Herman makes no apologies for resentment on the part of survivors while also calling for restitution (on numerous levels) on the part of perpetrators.
In conversation with Pederson and Herman, I propose that a Christian theological account of forgiveness should not be construed as a boundaryless gesture from victims to perpetrators that overlooks or “forgets” concrete realities of trauma and moral injury. Rather, forgiveness is contained within relationship to God, and specifically in human repentance as a turning away from sin, evil, and injustice and toward God who offers forgiveness. Survivor forgiveness of perpetrators, in this important theological sense, is secondary to (and contingent on) a reorientation of survivor anger toward the call for perpetrators to repent. True repentance to God includes aspects of acknowledgement, apology, and accountability in relation to survivors which mirror much of Herman’s “visions of justice” (and this despite the fact that Herman herself often criticizes theological accounts of forgiveness or justice). Likewise, the healing of perpetrator pain can be understood in relationship to both repentance and forgiveness. Repentance means perpetrators, as they turn to God, acknowledge the ongoing realities of moral injury as called for by Pederson, including the trauma and resentment of survivors. However, repentance also turns perpetrators to the embrace of God’s forgiveness, away from self-destructive resentment, and towards a healing process of restoration and repair.
In addressing these issues, this paper examines two prominent, recent works on moral injury and trauma. Literary scholar Joshua Pedersen’s book Sin Sick: Moral Injury in War and Literature (Pederson, 2021) begins with a “clinical portrait” of moral injury, but primarily explores the concept through the lens of literary criticism. Some critical scholars argue on ethical grounds against the treatment or healing of perpetrators, but Pederson makes particular use of “adaptive disclosure” as a treatment model developed by Brett Litz and others (Litz et. al., 2015). Despite his embrace of healing for perpetrators, Pederson argues that sustained “resentment,” over and against forgiveness, should be the primary ethical stance towards moral injury. Pederson makes particular use of Tadeusz Borowski’s, This Way for Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Borowski, 1946, 1992), a fictional account of Borowski’s experience as a Nazi prisoner forced to aid Nazi actions in Jewish concentration camps. While Borowski demonstrates ongoing resentment of moral injury, Pederson does not address either Borowski’s subsequent suicide or the manner in which it reflects Borowski’s traumatic experiences of the death camps (Borowski committed suicide by filling his own apartment with gas). This complicates Pederson’s own presentation of healing in relationship to the complicity of moral injury.
Judith Herman’s new book Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice (Herman, 2023) approaches justice in relationship to both survivors and perpetrators. Many of Herman’s chapters detail specific issues and offer concrete steps to be taken by perpetrators who seek restoration, including chapters on acknowledgement, apology, and accountability as well as restitution, rehabilitation, and prevention. Herman does not tend to approach trauma in terms of moral injury, but the overlap between her reconciling process for perpetrators and other approaches to moral injury is significant. She writes that justice “centers on repairing the harm to survivors and correcting wider historical wrongs rather than punishing perpetrators,” and that she means to develop “further the idea of justice as healing for victims, perpetrators, and the larger society” (Herman, 2023, 16-17). Herman is notably critical of traditional Christian understandings of forgiveness; in a section titled “Resisting Forgiveness” from her chapter on apology, she writes, “Modern Christian religious teachings frequently exhort victims to transcend their anger through forgiveness…and the virtue of forgiveness has been especially recommended to women and members of other subordinate groups, whose justified resentment might make those in power uncomfortable” (Herman, 2023, 105). Herman makes no apologies for resentment on the part of survivors while also calling for restitution (on numerous levels) on the part of perpetrators.
In conversation with Pederson and Herman, I propose that a Christian theological account of forgiveness should not be construed as a boundaryless gesture from victims to perpetrators that overlooks or “forgets” concrete realities of trauma and moral injury. Rather, forgiveness is contained within relationship to God, and specifically in human repentance as a turning away from sin, evil, and injustice and toward God who offers forgiveness. Survivor forgiveness of perpetrators, in this important theological sense, is secondary to (and contingent on) a reorientation of survivor anger toward the call for perpetrators to repent. True repentance to God includes aspects of acknowledgement, apology, and accountability in relation to survivors which mirror much of Herman’s “visions of justice” (and this despite the fact that Herman herself often criticizes theological accounts of forgiveness or justice). Likewise, the healing of perpetrator pain can be understood in relationship to both repentance and forgiveness. Repentance means perpetrators, as they turn to God, acknowledge the ongoing realities of moral injury as called for by Pederson, including the trauma and resentment of survivors. However, repentance also turns perpetrators to the embrace of God’s forgiveness, away from self-destructive resentment, and towards a healing process of restoration and repair.