Redeeming the past

Abstract

I take up Richard Swinburne's point, in his Responsibility and Atonement, Ch. 5, that although the past cannot be changed, wrongdoers may change its significance by ‘disowning’ their actions through atonement, just as their victims may do so through forgiveness. I argue that the point can and should be pressed much more strongly than it is by Swinburne within the terms of his own discussion; and that it has a much wider significance, transcending that discussion, for there is a constant interplay between events, human actions, and our retrospective assessment of the past. Finally, I look tentatively at the question in an eschatological perspective.