St. Thomas Aquinas on Human and Divine Forgiveness

Two major influences guide St. Thomas Aquinas in his discussions of forgiveness-Greek and Roman philosophical thought and Christian Revelation. Although there is certainly some notion of forgiveness, human and divine, in pagan thought, it turns out to be quite different from Christian forgiveness. The foundations for this difference lie in how pagans and Christians understand what it is to be human and the meaning of divinity. In this paper, we shall not try to trace out the intricate relations between pagan and Christian thought on matters human and divine. Rather, we shall limit ourselves to a consideration of the notion of forgiveness as it may be found in Aristotle and in St. Thomas. In both cases, the model of human forgiveness is closely associated with that of divine forgiveness.