Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Cost of Forgiveness. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the reclamation of a Christian vision and practice -- Therapeutic forgiveness. The Church's psychological captivity in Western culture -- Forgiveness eclipsed. Is violence the master of us all? -- Characterizing the God who forgives. The triune God and Christian life -- Forgiveness, repentance, and the judgment of grace. The word that transfigures us in the spirit -- Practicing forgiveness. Trinitarian community and the hope for a new humanity -- The craft of forgiveness. Traditions, parables, and making and remaking responsible human life -- Loving enemies. Living with others in the absence of reconciliation -- Is this a story to pass on? Forgiveness, holiness, and the politics of memory.

"Jones offers this spiritually wounded society a profound lesson in healing, not by reiter ating the therapeutic nostrums of a narcissistic generation but by challenging that gener ation both to recognize its own sins and to accept the forgiveness it merits. Drawing on a rich array of theological sources, from the Bible to Bonhoeffer, Jones redescribes sin as a distorted form of human relation and redescribes forgiveness as reconciliation-the dis ciplined activity through which humans take responsibility, once again, for each other. Through its transformative engagements with human character, social history, and the divine presence in our midst, Jones's text embodies its own lessons in forgiveness."