Forgiveness = forgiven-ness = having been forgiven by someone.
Usually, if you harm someone, you care about being forgiven by them. And surely that isn’t something they can just automatically be deemed to have done.
If you have wronged someone, and then fixed all that can be fixed and learned all that can be learned and sworn not to do the like again, then perhaps you’re entitled to claim forgiveness (just as after the initial wrong your victim might be entitled to claim compensation from you), but if in fact they don’t forgive you then you aren’t forgiven even if you are entitled to be forgiven (just as if you’d refused to compensate them then they wouldn’t in fact have been compensated despite their entitlement) and this seems like an important distinction.
There might be other entitles that could be known to have forgiven you “automatically” if you’ve done those things. Maybe every harm done hurts society-as-a-whole, and society-as-a-whole has somehow decided that anyone who fixes and learns and swears appropriately is forgiven. Maybe every harm done is an insult to the gods, and the gods have revealed an unchangeable divine commitment to forgive anyone who fixes and learns and swears appropriately. But that would be on top of, not instead of, whatever forgiving your actual victim might do or not do.
As Said observes in response to a related objection from Ben, arguably this is mostly a disagreement about words. If you say “they have forgiven me but don’t acknowledge it” and I say “they are obliged to forgive you but haven’t actually done it”, maybe there isn’t an actual difference in consequences. But I think “X has forgiven me” and “X is obliged to have forgiven me” suggest quite different states of affairs and one is nearer the truth than the other.
Forgiveness = forgiven-ness = having been forgiven by someone.
Usually, if you harm someone, you care about being forgiven by them. And surely that isn’t something they can just automatically be deemed to have done.
If you have wronged someone, and then fixed all that can be fixed and learned all that can be learned and sworn not to do the like again, then perhaps you’re entitled to claim forgiveness (just as after the initial wrong your victim might be entitled to claim compensation from you), but if in fact they don’t forgive you then you aren’t forgiven even if you are entitled to be forgiven (just as if you’d refused to compensate them then they wouldn’t in fact have been compensated despite their entitlement) and this seems like an important distinction.
There might be other entitles that could be known to have forgiven you “automatically” if you’ve done those things. Maybe every harm done hurts society-as-a-whole, and society-as-a-whole has somehow decided that anyone who fixes and learns and swears appropriately is forgiven. Maybe every harm done is an insult to the gods, and the gods have revealed an unchangeable divine commitment to forgive anyone who fixes and learns and swears appropriately. But that would be on top of, not instead of, whatever forgiving your actual victim might do or not do.
As Said observes in response to a related objection from Ben, arguably this is mostly a disagreement about words. If you say “they have forgiven me but don’t acknowledge it” and I say “they are obliged to forgive you but haven’t actually done it”, maybe there isn’t an actual difference in consequences. But I think “X has forgiven me” and “X is obliged to have forgiven me” suggest quite different states of affairs and one is nearer the truth than the other.