As I have said several times, the past in only relevant to the extent that it makes us who we are in the present. I have always said that our current self is a product of our choices in the past.

You are calling my distinction a false dichotomy, but let me explain why I think it is a necessary and useful dichotomy. BiV’s position as of #1 was that even if I were to develop a perfect character there could still be the stain of sin upon me which refers back to previous sins. Discussing the way in which the past carries forward into the future is crucial to that discussion. This is exactly what you discussed in #55, and it is what I am getting at when I talk about being judged based on who we are rather than what we have done.

Here is the problem: what we are at t2 is a result of what we did at t1. So we are not judged merely upon what we are at t2, but for the results of what we did at t1.

I’m not sure what is problematic about this. You can say we are judged for “the results” of what we did at t1, which is fine (I agree), but then, you must admit that those results only exist in the present, which gets you back to my position. The importance of my point is that it focuses the problem of sin and the nature of repentance on what we are becoming rather than some tally sheet of sins which must be marked off one-by-one. The reason I think all of this is important is that it affects the way we approach repentance.

Yes, it is reminiscent of the faith-works argument. Good works are a fruit of faith, but for the person struggling to have faith, it can help to do works as part of building their faith. C.S. Lewis hammers this point a lot about acting as you have a thing in order to gain it. The same is true of confession/restitution. It comes naturally to the truly repenatant, but for the person trying to figure out how to get there, they can follow a list of steps including confession and restitution which will help them. As you can see from my description, though, I view the ones that spring naturally from contrition as the ones that are intrinsic to repentance while I view the ones on a checklist as a possible aid to repentance. Hopefully that helps further clarify what I am saying.

If your concern is that I am telling adulterers they can repent while keeping their secret, I am happy to agree with you. In my mind, nothing I have said should give any comfort to them on that count.

As I see it, you are correct to the extent that “judgment” consists in the natural results of what we do. But then I would say there is no judgment in the sense of someone sitting down and assessing our moral status at t2 and then meting out reward or punishment accordingly. Rather, we just reap what we sow. Nothing revolutionary or new there. However,what we are at t2, light or dark, filled with spirit or empty of spirit, is the result and the “judgment” (natural consequence) that incur — but it is the result of the sum total of our lives, right? So the past is relevant because it makes us who we are now. So in a very real sense, what we reap is the direct consequence of what we sow, and that means in that sense we receive not what we are now, but the results of our past actions.

So at best you have a false dichotomy — judged based upon what we are now and not on what we did in the past. At worst, it is simply inconsistent.

If sins are, as you are contending, actually character flaws, then yes we can confess and and make restitution for every sin. We confess our character flaws to those we betray (and to ourselves) and change them. We make restitution for our betrayals of others by becoming more and more worthy of their trust. The end of that road is becoming like God.

My complaint was mostly that it seemed quite possible in the model you described earlier for an adulterer to confess to his priest or whatever and quietly reform/improve his character but never confess his adultery to his wife. I don’t think that is full repentance is all. Do you agree with that? If you are saying that confession and restitution efforts follow repentance then I suppose we are having one of those conversations similar to the faith-works debates. I say one must confess and attempt restitution to repent and you say that one repents first and those things always follow as signs of real repentance. (Perhaps it is a chicken and egg thing at that point)

Geoff, this misses the most important thing I said about restitution, which is that it is a fruit of true repentance. I never suggested that its use as a gauge of genuine repentace captures the importance of restitution. Obviously it does not.

He can’t undo the act, but he also is never truly repentant until he does all within his power to restore the trust he has betrayed.

Exactly my point. “He is never truly repentant until…” This is exactly what I am claiming by saying it is a fruit of repentance.

But, you also make another important admission in the statement above, which is that he can’t undo the act. Thus, just like confession (which we can’t do in most cases), restitution is also impossible in most cases. It is the willingness to confess and the desire to make restitution that are the hallmarks of true repentance.

You maintain that I am making too little of confession and restitution. Please answer my question about confession then. Is it required that we confess every sin to be absolved of that sin? Similarly, is it required that we make restitution for our sins to be forgiven of them? Well, we can’t make restitution for most sins, so maybe that is a bad question. How about: Given that we can’t make restitution for most of the sins we commit, how can you say restitution is a required part of repentance? If it is just our desire to make restitution, doesn’t this pretty much require the approach I have described?

Hmmm… This seems like quite a stretch. This restitution thing is too important to just assume in any theory of repentance. And I think you are wrong that restitution is only useful as a gauge of the change in a person’s heart. I think it is much more important than that. If you were right then any old gauge would work and restitution would not be required at all.

I think that confession and restitution and not just a fruit of repentance but a component of it. For instance, take the case of the adulterer. He can’t undo the act, but he also is never truly repentant until he does all within his power to restore the trust he has betrayed. That means he must confess to the spouse he betrayed (a confession that may be more important than confessions to ecclesiastical leaders) and he must work over time to restore that trust that he destroyed through his adultery.

Now perhaps you are right that if he dies before he earns that full trust back he will be ok in terms of the judgments of God, but I suspect that is based on the trajectory of his character more than on the state of his soul/character at the time of his death (while he was still going through the long restitution process).

I just think your model downplays these confession/restitution issues too much.

If you are saying what Blake said in #55 then I think I understand where you are coming from. However, it seemed from some of your comments that you were focused mostly on the stain of sin as the sorrow I feel knowing I hurt someone which is washed away by Christ due to my knowing he will heal those people. That description is fine as far as it goes, but it seems to lack any requirement that repentance is fundamentally about changing who you are. Remorse and the removal of remorse must be accompanied by personal reform or I am not ready to call it repentance. I suspect we agree on that, but I was just not picking it up as a strong component of your explanation of sins/stains/repentance.

If confessing is only a useful tool to help us change habits then the adulterer Mike brought up or the murderer Blake brought up would presumably never need to confess their crimes to be fully “cleansed” of them. I simply don’t believe that is true.

Confession has multiple functions. A very important one stems from the fact that God runs his church through the use of humans. So, bishops and stake presidents are judges in Israel and are responsible for making sure that the people who go to the temple and the people who bless the sacrament etc. are worthy to do so. For this reason, confession becomes a practical necessity. Confession is also important in some cases as part of the helping a person change. The adulterer you mention should confess for both reasons.

However, you cannot possibly believe that all sins must be confessed one by one. If not, confession is not intrisic to the nature of repentance. If it were, repentance could not occur without confession. Is it even possible to confess every one of our sins to God? Must you keep track of every sin and confess it to retain a remission of your sins? I am of the opinion that you cannot and need not.

So being forgiven for such a sin is much more that simply permanently changing habits.

As I have said, my definition of repentance is that we become a new person (the “permanently” above is not correct because a person can always change again). Habits are not a perfect measure of who we are because after we change it may take time to develop habits in accordance with our new person. I think habits are a useful part of thinking about this situation which is why I shared James’ comments on them.

So, repentance is becoming a new person. But of course, the new person is connected to the old person by way of memory and identity, so a person who has truly changed and remembers the sins they committed as their old self will want to make restitution as a natural result of knowing what they have done. We use things like confession and restitution as ways to gauge whether a person has truly changed because we don’t have any better measures and we can’t look in a person’s heart. Attempting to make restitution and willingness to confess are natural fruits of the humility and remorse that accompanies a fundamental change of character. They are not repentance itself, but the fruits of repentance, and by the fruits we know the tree.

I think Matt is getting it and for some reason I am having a hard time communicating it to you. The essential part of my position is that we are judged based on what we are at t2. I have never denied a causal relationship between the action at t1 and who we are at t2, in fact, that causal relationship is what my whole post is about. I never said that sin (itself) is merely our present tendency to sin. I said that the stain of past sin exists in the present by way of its effect on our current self. From your response to Matt I am wondering if our disagreement is largely due to my inability to communicate my position clearly.