[Textcritic]

The shocking news of Jan Joosten's sentencing has occupied my world in recent days.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...d-abuse-images

"An Oxford University theology professor and former pastor who downloaded 28,000 child abuse images and videos has been sentenced to a year in prison and placed on the sex offender register in France.

"Jan Joosten, 61, who holds the prestigious regius professorship of Hebrew at Oxford, was suspended by the university’s Faculty of Oriental Studies and Christ Church college on Monday night. He is considered one of the most distinguished biblical scholars of his generation.

"The academic, who lives in the Bas-Rhin region of France, was sentenced by a court in the city of Saverne last week over possession of about 27,000 images and 1,000 videos after he admitted the facts of the case, Agence France-Presse reported."

The news of this hits very close to home, because I have met Jan Joosten; I have friends who have worked very closely with him, and have been mentored by him. Joosten was involved with the Museum of the Bible's annual Oxford Logos student conferences, in which I have also participated in the past. It is also a harrowing story for me because of how well acquainted I am also with the several voices who have provided responses in the past several days. Just this AM, I received the following email notice from the editor of an academic journal for which I have written and reviewed articles:

Statement from the Editorial Team of DSD:

"We the editorial team of Dead Sea Discoveries were horrified to learn this week of the conviction and sentencing of Jan Joosten for possession of child pornography. We wish to publicly express, first and foremost, our sorrow and anger at the suffering and trauma Prof. Joosten’s actions have caused to the children exploited in these images and videos. We also express sadness for the students and colleagues whose trust he has betrayed. Prof. Joosten has been removed from the DSD editorial board, effective 23 June 2020. His removal reflects our conviction that our scholarship cannot be divorced from the larger contexts of our lives and actions, and that we as scholars have a responsibility to speak forcefully for justice, equality, and safety for all persons."

The last sentence is the most important one, because it reflects a serious problem in our own culture at large, but perhaps one that infects the Christian church in a more significant way. A friend of mine shared with me a fantastic article in Religion Dispatches by Stephen Young which demonstrates what I am getting at:

Love the Scholarship but Hate the Scholar's Sin?: "Himpathy" for an Academic Pedophile Enables a Culture of Abuse

Originally Posted by Stephen Young

"In her excellent book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, the philosopher Kate Manne coined the term Himpathy, which she defined as 'the excessive sympathy sometimes shown toward male perpetrators of sexual violence.' This tendency stems 'largely from capacities and qualities of which we’re rarely critical: such as sympathy, empathy, trust in one’s friends … their naïve deployment will tend to further privilege those already unjustly privileged over others.'

"Himpathy is powerful. It performs a double social magic: erasing the voices of those who suffer at the hands of men while also reinforcing the power of men. We call this vortex of violence patriarchy...

"The concept of Himpathy can help us think about a story unfolding right now. Jan Joosten, a senior biblical scholar at Oxford University who holds one of the most prestigious professorships in the field, was just sentenced to a year in prison...

"But, as in so many instances of men in positions of power who are outed as abusers, the story doesn’t end there. The story should end with patriarchy because that’s where the pervasive phenomenon of men abusing others begins. It’s where the violence and exploitation is nurtured, made invisible, and transformed into the normal everyone else just has to live with.

"What does Joosten have to do with patriarchy? As news of his child-rape porn began to spread through the social-media ether, a predictable but still horrifying expression of Himpathy began to percolate."

Young goes on to document a shockingly high number of sympathetic reactions on Twitter and in social media to Joosten's conviction and sentencing, and what hits home the hardest is how well I know some of these people, and how alarming and outrageous it is to see their tactic for defense.

He then goes on to show how these reactions are borne of something I have long suspected since leaving the Church: that a culture of forgiveness and redemption may actually be a poisonous enabler for the continuity of deplorable behaviour and abuse:

Originally Posted by Stephen Young

"This is the magic of Himpathy. In the case of Joosten, it mixes with traditional Christian conventions that we don’t often think of as channels of power: the instinct not to 'judge' (at least powerful men), to identify with 'sinners' (again, when they’re powerful men), to deploy narratives about the chaos wrought by abandoning conservative gender norms, and especially to love the 'sinner' (scholarship) and hate the 'sin' (bad thing a scholar did). But we must think critically about the politics of these dispositions."

Romans 3:22–26 says:

there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

I used to champion the idea that God's grace was sufficient to remove all sin, and that his forgiveness was total and exhaustive: that there was nothing so terrible that anyone could ever do to disqualify them from God's love, provided their own repentance. I was relentlessly prodded about the virtues of total forgiveness—parables of the widows of savagely martyred missionaries who forgave their murderers were often repeated to lionise this behaviour. "It doesn't matter what anyone has done to offend me; if Jesus can forgive them, then I should too."

Is this virtuous behaviour? or is it more accurately a caricature of genuine empathy that denigrates the beauty of true compassion?

In one of the responses I read—this one from a close colleague of one of my one most beloved mentors—the stinging reality of the stakes in retribution and forgiveness came to roost:

"I don't abandon my friends, even when they've done heinous wrong. I don't condone Jan's actions, and his loss of status and employment is richly deserved. But I don't modify my compassion to fit someone else's opinion."

Forgiveness is tricky. The cheap kind is available to everyone and can used to gloss over any abominable act. That's the kind that is attributed too God for those who follow Christ. But I am coming around to thinking that the best sort of forgiveness is the kind that is more virtually unobtainable. It is not always deserved, and to extend it for coverage of every sin is to invalidate it altogether. This may actually be one of the most dangerous aspects of Christian theology because of how it threatens to empower tyrants and enable abuse.

There are some sins that are unforgivable.
There are some people who are beyond redemption.
In contravention to my Christian upbringing, my forgiveness is something that is not so easily obtained.