I did not say this in the way you seem to think I did. I don’t believe that Packer said this either. I am saying Christ purchased the loan, just in the same way that when you take out a lone with 5th savings and loan, 5th has the right to sell that loan to 2nd savings and loan. Banks do this typically because 5th bank wants the money right away for funding better loans and 2nd bank wants the interest which will come in from the rest of the loan. Loan Consolidation companies involve the person in debt a bit more, and while negotiating with the various companies for the best prices at which to buy their loans, offer a longer term for the debtor to pay their rates over, and thus by giving the payer smaller more manageable payments, but a longer time in debt, which typically turns into a greater amount of interest paid in the end.
Of course, Christ doesn’t charge interest, so that part is irrelevent, but the point is that I hope I am making it abundantly clear that I am in no way arguing that Christ took our place as sinner or suffered the penalty of our sins.

Now you say:
Debt is impersonal and can transferred, assigned conveyed and paid off. Sin cannot.
And I agree with this, as stated above.
then you say:
He carries our sins, he is bruised for wickedness and the pain of our sins is transferred to him.
So you are saying the difference is that the sins are not transferred, but the pain of sin. I am saying the same thing, fundamentally, except I am saying that the pain of sin is being sinned against. I believe part of sin is that we sin against ourselves (self-deception) when we sin.

Now for what I don’t agree with or understand.

The Bishop example lines up with my theory because forgiveness on our part is merely a matter of choice and letting go.

But why did the bishop have to have experienced the same sin himself as the perpetrator of that sin in order to give forgiveness? I keep thinking of the Amish people forgiving the killer, and this seems like greater forgiveness than the bishop you outlined. I guess I am confused by that.

The atonement does nothing more than make us free to choose for ourselves and give us an example of unconditional forgiveness.

I disagree. It opens the gates to resurrection for one thing…

The atonement accepts us as we are so that we don’t have to prove that we are good enough.

Is this part of making us free to choose for ourselves, or part of giving us an example of unconditional forgivness? I will asume this is clarification of what you meant by the example”, but I disagree, based on D&C 19 and you yourself saying that Christ did not suffer for the sins of those who do not repent. Thus the atonement does not accept us “as we are” and we do have to “prove we are good enough”

If you’re going to speak in terms of I-Thou relationships, then it is a simple misunderstanding to speak in terms of impersonal economic transactions to clarify that relationship. That is the problem. Debt is impersonal and can transferred, assigned conveyed and paid off. Sin cannot. It is personal and must remain with the person who is accountable.

Further, the person in need of the atonement is the one who is culpable. No else can take on that culpability. That culpability cannot be transferred to another unlike a debt.

The Bishop example lines up with my theory because forgiveness on our part is merely a matter of choice and letting go. The atonement does nothing more than make us free to choose for ourselves and give us an example of unconditional forgiveness. The atonement accepts us as we are so that we don’t have to prove that we are good enough. Now what we let go of affects Christ. He carries our sins, he is bruised for wickedness and the pain of our sins is transferred to him. This last element of pain felt by Christ is what the other theories cannot account for. It requires accepting that there is a co-feeling or compassion in experience as an assumption. But that just is the basic assumption of process theology on which I base my views.

If Christ is mediating between us and those we have sinned against, then what on earth could explain how he becomes the one sinned against?

Christ and Heavenly Father, I believe are able to restore anything we have lost in mortality to us, as we use our agency to accept their compromise and release those who are indebted to us into the care of the father. This allows us to establish an I-Thou relationship with everyone while we are establishing an I-Thou relationship with the father.

Moreover, in terms of apostle Packer’s analogy of debt forgiveness, how could it become Christ that we owe?

That is exactly what Packer’s parable says, even saying something like “My terms won’t be easy, but they will be doable.” In the financial world, there are mediators who create debt consolidation loans or debt settlements by purchasing loans from others. We may even consider something like refinancing, but I think the debt consolidation loan is a better analogy.

I think equating sin with debt is somewhat a shallow, transaction based analogy, but I don’t consider it completely bankrupt.

it works economically if the debt is transferred to Christ by the creditor — but that isn’t how forgiveness works at all. We are forgiven, not the creditor who has no need of forgiveness.

I am not sure what you mean here. I will say that Christ can’t forgive our sins if he is not the one sinned against though. Isn’t that what the Amuleck says, where a man can’t substitute for another?

I think I covered what you said about Eric’s thoughts in my comments #118 and #120

Now if a young one is raped or violated, the offender has a great deal to answer for. However, our forgiveness of the perpetrator is not dependent on whether the perp repents. Our forgiveness is a gift we can give regardless of what the perp does.

I think this lines up exactly with what I am trying to say in Victim Substitution theory.
I am just saying we can give that forgiveness because of the atonement.

As for the Bishop, I understand what you are saying, and your analogy lines up perfectly with Geoff and J.’s atonement theory, or even Penal substitution Theory. But don’t you argue against those….

I would just say that if my family were killed by a drunk driver, would I then be able to forgive my drunk driver because I knew the Bishop had also hit someone? That seems illogical. If Christ came in and said he would deal with the Drunk driver and restore what I had lost, it becomes a lot easier for me to forgive.

However, in atonement it is our debt that he assumes. Now it works economically if the debt is transferred to Christ by the creditor — but that isn’t how forgiveness works as all. We are forgiven, not the creditor who has no need of forgiveness. So the analogy just won’t work. I agree with Nick that the analogy as you parse it doesn’t really track apostle Pacer’s analogy. I object to the entire nature of economic analogies (notwithstanding their scriptural pedigree) because they confuse the dynamics of an I-Thou relation and analogize it to an impersonal economic transaction. That is the move I find most disconcerting.

I also agree that Deity has no need to forgive because Deity has never chosen to take offense. However, we can do things that injure our relationship with Deity and that require Deity to obtain experience to cover the gap in the alienated relationship. For example, to know how to succor us, Christ became mortal. That succor took the form of experiencing the very kinds of deprivations that we also suffer as mortals. To now how to forgive, Christ was tempted that he would know the pull and sheer irrationality of sins and that we succumb to even when we know better.

I also agree with Eric that forgiveness arises from our recognition that we don’t have to hold the grudge or continue to demand payment, we can soften our hearts and simply let go of whatever is getting in the way of loving the person we believe has offended us. In truth, we simply chose to take offense.

Now if a young one is raped or violated, the offender has a great deal to answer for. However, our forgiveness of the perpetrator is not dependent on whether the perp repents. Our forgiveness is a gift we can give regardless of what the perp does.

Remember, for instance, the accident that occurred about a year ago when the Bishop’s family was killed in a car accident. The accident was caused by a young man who was drunk. The Bishop chose to immediately forgive him. In part that is because the Bishop had also hit and killed another. He knew the pain that comes from it. Like Christ, he had suffered what the young man suffered to know how to forgive. Moreover, he didn’t wait for the young man to change his ways. He softened his heart and simply exercised a power that he alone in all the universe had — the power to forgive the one who had definitely wronged him and his family. He didn’t require a pound of flesh or that someone else suffer before he gave this gift of forgiveness. Moreover, the young man probably didn’t even know that the Bishop had chosen to forgive him. If I were looking for an analogy to atonement, the bishop’s suffering loss is the one I would choose.

I would also point out the essential function of libertarian free will — the power to choose whether to forgive or withhold forgiveness — that is at the center of atonement.

Because hey…it makes total sense that a perfect, loving being would hold petty grudges when imperfect beings act imperfectly. Or not.

#111 Blake:
Great comment! I couldn’t agree more with your framing of the problems inherent in traditional understanding of the atonement.

#115:
And thus, if our hearts are pure, we will never have the need to forgive, because we will never seek hold a debt against another in the first place.

Which means that deity, being by definition “pure of heart,” will never seek to hold a debt against YOU OR ME in the first place, and deity has no need to forgive. Hence the notion of “atonement” and “forgiveness” is far more about what’s inside the head of the human offender, than it is about deity. Atonement theology is ultimately a mechanism for imperfect humans to get past condemning themselves, so they can move forward (i.e. “repent”).

It is this failure to release ourselves from our own misdeeds which causes us to be unable to dwell in the presence of God, but instead to “shrink” from his presence.

See mosiah 2:38

Nice point, which should be extended to deity. This brings us back to the theology of Hosea Ballou, the Universalist minister who taught the Smith family around the time of Joseph Smith’s birth. He argued that it was impossible for finite man to offend an “infinite” (using the term loosely) deity. I agree.

“…if these two forgivenesses are the same, then what accounts for the fact that our forgiveness is obligatory while God’s is conditional?”

To your point Eric:

D&C 64
9 Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin.
10 I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.

“…it’s false to believe that we forgive others by waiving their debts to us. It cannot be! They owe us nothing! Rather, we truly forgive when we come to realize that we never had a right to hold a debt against them in the first place…

Thus, forgiveness for us is a process of softening our hearts. It is letting go of the need to collect on a debt.”

This “feels” right to me Eric.