Author: Jojo Agot

Today the formula of vicarious suffering is as familiar to us as it is difficult for us to explain. Ever since Kant’s work on religion of 1793, it has been asserted repeatedly that the idea of vicarious suffering is no longer comprehensible because guilt, as an “intrinsic personal failure,” is nontransferable. Guilt, according to Kant, is

not a transmissible liability which can be made over to somebody else, in the manner of a financial debt (where it is all the same to the creditor whether the debtor himself pays up, or somebody else for him), but the most personal of all liabilities, namely a debt of sins which only the culprit, not the innocent, can bear, however magnanimous the innocent might be in wanting to take the debt upon himself for the other.

The difficulties with the idea of vicarious suffering come in this case from a particular view of humanity, namely, from the axiom of the nonrepresentability of the subject: as long as the subject sets the standard for his own responsibility, guilt, too, remains his alone and cannot be taken away by anything or anyone. “Guilt is always one’s own, because it is attached to the ego, and no one can give anyone else his ego (G. Friedrich).” Continue reading Stellvertretung

Only those who acknowledge their guilt can be forgiven. Oppressors must acknowledge that they are oppressors. Otherwise they cannot receive forgiveness. Knowledge of guilt is the beginning of change. Forgiveness conquers injustice at its roots and leads the oppressor to become a comrade, the enemy to become a brother or sister. 

— Carlos Mesters, Die Botschaft des leidenden Volkes

“[Guilt is] not a transmissible liability which can be made over to somebody else, in the manner of a financial debt (where it is all the same to the creditor whether the debtor himself pays up, or somebody else for him), but the most personal of all liabilities, namely a debt of sins which only the culprit, not the innocent, can bear, however magnanimous the innocent might be in wanting to take the debt upon himself for the other.”

—Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

The purpose of [the] author’s exegesis of Old Testament scripture… is to establish the finality of the gospel by contrast with all that went before it (more particularly, by contrast with the Levitical cultus), as the way of perfection, the way which alone leads men to God without any barrier or interruption of access. He establishes the finality of Christianity by establishing the supremacy of Christ, in his person and in his work.

—F.F. Bruce 

The heart of man is his worst part before it is regenerated, and the best afterward; it is the seat of principles, and the fountain of actions. The eye of God is, and the eye of the Christian ought to be principally fixed upon it. The greatest difficulty in conversion, is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God. Here lies the very force and stress of religion; here is that which makes the way to life a narrow way, and the gate of heaven a strait gate. 

—John Flavel