Divine Self-Pardon
There's a horror story I read in the news.
I was tempted to post this in Kerygmania, thinking about the passage where Jesus warns people to reconcile with the "sinned against" before they reach the judge. But then, he also says we're supposed to forgive as many times as it takes, when people sin against us. And these two passages are supposed to create a channel for honest communication and earnest repentance, as Paul says, we shouldn't "sin that grace may abound." I think these are all fairly common sense Christian teachings.
But the idea of an individual sinner declaring themself clean on the basis of their own "private chat with God" seems to veer into self-deification. And certainly his wife can function as a confessor of sorts, but she's also his dependent (depending on the relationship) and certainly has a bias in the situation, a direct investment in his character.
The whole idea of the man declaring himself confessed and absolved in public feels like a major abuse of Protestant theology. I was never one for priestly confessions, but it's making me realize why they were instituted in the first place! Taken a certain way, it seems to me that this man just declared himself God. Textbook patriarchy.
How can you just do that when your actions led directly to the death of another person? On the other hand, how can you reconcile with the one you "sinned against" when the person you sinned against is dead? Also the curio that he says "my faith is strong as ever" as if that's some kind of benchmark for his character. Does that ameliorate what he did? Is "faith" like a video game status bar that goes up and down based on some metric?“U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, admitted Wednesday to having an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide, after initially denying the allegation.
Speaking on conservative talk show host Joe Pags’ show the day after he was forced into a runoff in his primary, Gonzales called the affair a “mistake” and a “lapse in judgment.”
“I take full responsibility for those actions,” Gonzales said. “Since then, I have reconciled with my wife, Angel. I’ve asked God to forgive me, which he has. And my faith is as strong as ever.”
I was tempted to post this in Kerygmania, thinking about the passage where Jesus warns people to reconcile with the "sinned against" before they reach the judge. But then, he also says we're supposed to forgive as many times as it takes, when people sin against us. And these two passages are supposed to create a channel for honest communication and earnest repentance, as Paul says, we shouldn't "sin that grace may abound." I think these are all fairly common sense Christian teachings.
But the idea of an individual sinner declaring themself clean on the basis of their own "private chat with God" seems to veer into self-deification. And certainly his wife can function as a confessor of sorts, but she's also his dependent (depending on the relationship) and certainly has a bias in the situation, a direct investment in his character.
The whole idea of the man declaring himself confessed and absolved in public feels like a major abuse of Protestant theology. I was never one for priestly confessions, but it's making me realize why they were instituted in the first place! Taken a certain way, it seems to me that this man just declared himself God. Textbook patriarchy.
Comments
Our priest sometimes says something about people not accepting forgiveness or absolution even if it's been granted, as it were. I can relate to that too.
He has his faults, as do we all, but I find our priest a skilled confessor. It's not simply pronouncing the magic words.
We mustn't judge but there does sound like a sense of 'entitlement' in the words quoted from this fella.
It's all about him. My faith.
It sounds like a caricature of Protestant theology. Confessions Of A Justified Sinner and so on.
Or that bloke in the Robbie Burns poem, I forget the title.
I hasten to add that I wouldn't accuse the entire Protestant tradition of promoting cheap grace, nor would I deny that sacramental confession can also be abused.
I’m not trying to judge, just think what I would hope to do in the circumstances. I wouldn’t expect to be elected to public office though.
"Everything will be all right in the end, and if it's not all right, it's not the end."
Tony Gonzales seems to think that everything is all right, and maybe it is. Maybe this is the final chapter of a longer narrative many incarnations in the making. But there's no way for him to know for certain until he's back on the other side of the curtain and there's certainly the issue of the negative energies he has set in motion with his inamorata's family, which will have to be neutralized in some way or another.
It's a very sad story and I feel that he isn't finished living through the consequences he set in motion through his "lapse in judgment".
AFF
I think the voters will have a say on whether it is all right. He is being forced into a primary runoff. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/04/tony-gonzales-runoff-texas-gop-primary-00811372
That'd be more dignified, for sure. His assumption is he sinned against his wife, not the family of the person he had the affair with while he was the one with the professional power. That's some ugly.
This does get into the question of her role in this, and there are reasons people should keep a respectful silence in these things. Might be our cultural trend post MeToo of broadcasting private sins in hopes for justice. This could be a secular justice issue, which he might be trying to use Divine Grace to avoid.
And I could easily be persuaded that I was a sinner. That was straightforward. But if you don't really believe in sacramental authority like the Catholics do, then the "Words of Assurance" may feel more like a doctrinal statement than a mystical transformation or existential reality. We don't really believe in ontological sacraments. But "I screwed something up" is something deeper than religious teaching.
And so we reinforce Calvinist anxiety.
Not just Lutheran, I think.* Reading the story, the Cheap Grace heresy was my first thought. Bonhoeffer is really good on this. I'll try to find something relevant and helpful.
AFZ
*Happy to be corrected...
Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran. I also read him a lot in seminary.
The thing that strikes me is this, it is people claiming forgiveness without repentance. And as Bonhoeffer concludes here, grace cost Jesus everything, it is obscene for us to hold it so cheaply.
I have seen this kind of thing a lot in recent years in certain church circles. Most often with church leaders commanding abuse victims to forgive the unrepentant abusers when what such leaders should be doing of course, is proclaiming the need for the abusers to repent and show penitence, whilst also repenting themselves for their roles is allowing the abuse to take place.
I do believe God's grace is big enough, powerful enough and loved-filled enough to forgive anyone. But, but I do also believe that repentance is not optional and is necessary to access such grace. John Newton wrote beautifully in his most famous of hymns that it was grace that taught his heart to fear - before the following line that grace relieved those fears. It seems to me that too many seem to think that they can ignore the cost of their sin - on others and on Jesus and themselves. They skip the part about owning up to their failings and asking God for forgiveness and just live with a kind of spiritual arrogance that says 'God's got this covered, time to move on.'
I'll stop waffling now except to say that when David was confronted by the prophet Nathan about his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, there were two very notable things that followed. David did truly repent - you can read his prayer! And I do believe God forgave him but there were still real-life consequences of his sin.
AFZ
Yes.
On 'Calvinist anxiety', @Bullfrog the 39 Articles of the Church of England state that those doctrines thus labelled are meant to be for comfort and consolation rather than angst.
But human nature being what it is ...
It's a bit like 'Catholic guilt' or its equivalents in other Christian traditions - or Orthodox Awkwardness or Obscurantism. All our respective traditions can be prone to extremes.
And what @alienfromzog said.
I've not read much Bonhoeffer but have always thought he was spot on with his views on 'cheap grace'.
Which is why it's never cheap. It's costly because God relies on us as His agents. We pray to be forgiven in the same measure as we ourselves forgive. This is a kind of mobius loop - it's not God doing the forgiving, it's us. Maybe Gonzalez has forgiven himself but that's only one half of the equation. It's not up to God to forgive him now, it's up to his inamorata and she's not here to do it.
So as far as I can see, she and he are bound to another incarnation to live the rest of the story.
AFF
But the preacher/minister doesn’t speak words of absolution. She or he (and it doesn’t have to be a minister) speaks what is typically referred to as the Assurance of Pardon or the Declaration of Pardon, or just the Pardon.
If anxiety is being reinforced, it’s being done wrong. The confession is considered one of the chief moments of proclaiming the Gospel. As one liturgical scholar in the PC(USA) puts it, it should be a “grace sandwich.” By that, he means this:
The confession traditionally consists of three parts—the call to confession, the prayer and the pardon. The call to confession should announce the grace of God; something like this is common:
Similarly, the pardon announces that grace, in words like:
Note there is also a “go do better” in there.
As these particular words reflect, it has become very common to lead the confession from the font, in order to ground the confession and pardon in baptismal framework. It is also common for the leader to interact with the water—pouring it, lifting it and letting it fall back in the font, splashing it and/or sprinkling the congregation. It’s also common to sing a brief “Response to Pardon,” followed by the Peace.
FWIW.
Boy, did I learn that when I started preaching at my Presbyterian community. Not to worry. Lutherans often do it too.
And I went to a very nice church, I kind of blame myself for missing the point. It was a complicated situation, which also answers @Nick Tamen 's point. I don't want to shame my home church for my childhood misunderstanding. That said, I do recognize the tendency that Weber referred to in "Protestant Work Ethic" and have harbored a bit of a case of it.
My memory of exactly how this happened when I was a kid are somewhat hazy. And I had other reasons for carrying a guilt complex that are extra-theological and beyond the purview of this thread. Confession was always a pretty emotionally salient thing for me, and I think it was a good thing. I just always struggled more with mercy, which might be a good thing, to avoid ending up like the guy in the OP.
And totally get that, @Bullfrog.
Ya, probably not in good taste. But probably appropriate.