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Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian 
Philosophers 
Volume 41 Issue 1 Article 7 
1-1-2025 
Cristian F. Mihut, Gracious Foregiveness: A Theological Retrieval 
Andrew Torrance 
University of St. Andrews, abt3@st-andrews.ac.uk 
Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy 
Recommended Citation 
Torrance, Andrew (2025) "Cristian F. Mihut, Gracious Foregiveness: A Theological Retrieval," Faith and 
Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 41: Iss. 1, Article 7. 
DOI: 10.37977/faithphil.2025.41.1.7 
Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol41/iss1/7 
This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and 
creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian 
Philosophers by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. 
pp.143–146 FAITH AND PHILOSOPHY Vol. 41 No. 1 January 2025
doi: 10.37977/faithphil.2025.41.1.7
All rights reserved
BOOK REVIEWS
Gracious Forgiveness: A Theological Retrieval, by Cristian F. Mihut. Oxford 
University Press, 2023. Pp. viii +198. $90 (hardcover).
ANDREW TORRANCE, University of St. Andrews
It is rare to find a book that weaves together theology, philosophy, and 
biblical scholarship so seamlessly. But this is precisely what Cristian F. 
 Mihut achieves in Gracious Forgiveness: A Theological Retrieval, bringing 
these disciplines together to offer a constructive theological account of for-
giveness in his superb contribution to the Oxford Studies in Analytic Theol-
ogy. The main problem with this book for me, as a reviewer, is that I found 
myself struggling to come up with any constructive pushback. The couple 
of times when I found something to challenge or question, my concerns 
were addressed a few pages later. While I could say something about how 
I might have approached this book differently, such comments would be 
self-indulgent, and I’m not even sure my approach would be better. So this 
review can only be positive and will be given to highlighting the valuable 
arguments this book makes, which I hope will be taken seriously by the 
world of theology and also Christian philosophy.
Before offering an overview of the book, let me begin with a brief note 
about its overall structure. A potential strength of this book is that, al-
though it holds together well as a coherent whole, it also works well as a 
collection of essays. This is especially helpful when setting readings for a 
class on forgiveness, for students who may not read the whole but stand 
to benefit enormously from a number of the points that individual chap-
ters make (a point to which I can testify from experience). But now, let me 
turn to offer an overview of the book.
Chapter one begins by introducing the concept of healing as a valu-
able way to frame theological reflection on the nature of forgiveness. For 
 Mihut, this concept helps to convey that forgiveness is ultimately de-
fined by God’s gracious commitment to the restoration (or healing) of 
 sinners—a commitment that precedes repentance even crossing a sinner’s 
mind.  Mihut contends convincingly that the Bible gives us an account of 
God who “is, quintessentially, a healer-forgiver” (3). God fulfills this role 
by bearing the sins of the world and its consequences, thereby separating 
Faith and Philosophy144
the sinner from the sin. In response, we are called to reflect God’s for-
giveness into the world by mirroring this approach to offenders, thereby 
“shar[ing] in the godly task of healing the world through forgiveness” (3).
With the focus of the book set out in chapter one, chapter two turns 
to the Hebrew Bible to present a concrete picture of God as a gracious 
 healer-forgiver. In particular, it highlights some ways in which the  Hebrew 
Bible consistently presents an account of divine forgiveness that serves 
to separate sinners from the burden of sin through God’s bearing, and 
thereby neutralizing, the consequences of sin. Mihut also draws attention 
to how God actively communicates God’s forgiveness to sinners through 
images and rituals. In this way, sinners become immersed in the experi-
ence of God delivering them from the burden of their sinfulness, thereby 
generating a feeling of gratitude to God.
In chapter three, Mihut looks to the New Testament to think about di-
vine forgiveness Christologically. Building on his account of divine for-
giveness as burden-bearing, he focuses specifically on how Christ brings 
healing to sinners by bearing their burdens. Christ does this by (1) inau-
gurating a new humanity, delivered and healed from sin, and he achieves 
this by (2) coming to be with us amid our sin-sick world, as the divine 
bearer of sin. In so doing, Jesus also reveals a specific calling to forgiveness 
(and the disposition of forgivingness) for those who follow him. That is, 
we are called to participate in and experience Christ’s work of forgiveness 
by imaginatively immersing ourselves in the theological narratives that 
are revealed in and through him. By learning forgivingness from Christ, 
victims are given eyes to see offenders as always worthy of healing in a 
way that constantly motivates victims to seek the restoration of offenders, 
undeterred by any base desire for retaliation.
Chapter four asks whether a fundamentally retributive or restorative 
view of justice aligns better with the theological narrative of scripture. 
Drawing on several biblical narratives, he argues convincingly that a 
“communicative-restorative view” provides us with a better framework 
for a theology of forgiveness. What makes it communicative, for Mihut, is 
that the retributive elements of divine justice serve to communicate divine 
justice by (1) acknowledging the seriousness of the harm done to victims 
while also (2) communicating the need for offenders to take responsibility 
for their actions and turn their life around. What makes it restorative is 
that rather than focusing on a proportionate payback for sin, it ultimately 
aims at the good of the offender, at healing them from the sin that sick-
ens, burdens, and pollutes them, thereby reconciling them with God and 
others. And, finally, what makes this just is that it is defined by the divine 
justice that is committed to making all things right.
Mihut refers to chapter five as being, in “several respects . . . the cen-
terpiece of the project” (12). Following Robert C. Roberts, he develops an 
account of forgivingness as a habituated form of attention that prioritizes 
an offender’s need for restoration—treating the offender primarily as 
someone in need of healing rather than castigation. When this sensibility 
BOOk ReviewS 145
is understood theologically, for Mihut, it is to be construed as one that 
is maintained irrespective of an offender’s (un)willingness to repent. 
Indeed, it motivates the forgiver to seek the restoration of the offender 
pre-emptively out of hope for their moral transformation, even if the of-
fender remains resistant to this. The underpinning theological reason for 
this view is that, while we are still sinners, God, in Christ, shows us un-
merited grace. In response, we are called to participate in a theological 
narrative of renewal wherein our lives also express a gracious curative 
forgivingness, which “is predicated on the motivational and normative 
priority of standing for the good of the perpetrators” (127). We learn forgiving-
ness by forming a friendship with Christ through immersing ourselves in 
and being shaped by the Christological narrative(s) revealed in scripture.
The final chapter of the book in some respects seems like an add-on to 
the rest of the book, which otherwise works well together as a coherent 
whole. Yet there is no question that this chapter adds a crucial dimen-
sion to the book by asking whether we should recommend curative for-
giveness to those living under oppression. In response, Mihut questions 
whether virtuous anger might be a more appropriate response to those 
who participate in and perpetuate evil in the world. To think through this 
possibility, Mihut asks what we can learn from some biblical accounts of 
God’s anger. While the discussion is multifaceted, the core point ends up 
being that God’s anger is continuously revealed as an accompaniment to 
the suffering of the oppressed and an affirmation of their own rage. Ac-
cordingly, for Mihut, we are called to reflect God’s anger in alignment 
with the stories of how God stands alongside the oppressed. What we 
learn from these stories is that God’s anger does not bend towards malice 
and resentment but is a part of the larger theological story of renewal. 
As such, virtuous anger must ally with curative forgiveness such that, in 
our own lives, our anger motivates us to seek to deliver wrongdoers from 
bondage to their unrighteous ways, both for the sake of their victims and 
also for the sake of themselves.
Beyond the final chapter, we are treated to a short appendix on how 
we should think about the place of divine retributivism in the Book of 
Lamentations.
As I indicated at the beginning of the review, I found it extremely diffi-
cult to find something constructive to say since I found myself so content 
and firmly in agreement with what I read. So let me end by commenting 
on something that I especially appreciated about this book. A danger that 
constantly faces the task of analytic moral theology is that a theological 
view ends up being defended according to criteria that are alien to the 
theological narrative(s) we find in scripture. That is, there is a danger 
that God’s moral approach ends up being evaluated according to more 
general (and often more modern and Western) ethical, social, or perhaps 
psychological criteria—as though God were to be judged as a character 
in a fundamentally human story about the world. Indeed, this is such a 
common danger that I kept expecting to encounter such an approach in 
Faith and Philosophy146
pp.146–150 FAITH AND PHILOSOPHY Vol. 41 No. 1 January 2025
doi: 10.37977/faithphil.2025.41.1.8
All rights reserved
this book. But Mihut consistently avoids this pitfall. The reason I think 
he is so successful on this front is that his project is firmly grounded in 
theological criteria which Mihut unabashedly recognizes as being funda-
mental to how we make sense of the world. For him, the moral picture 
that God’s revelation paints of the world, to which scripture testifies, is 
the very best picture simply because it is God’s picture. And the simple 
reason that Mihut’s picture should be so inviting (for Christians at least) 
is that it so beautifully resonates with how humans experience the world 
as creatures of God and followers of Christ. As such, this book is a model 
of faith seeking understanding, which I hope many other readers will be 
inspired to follow.
God, the Good, and the Spiritual Turn in epistemology, by Roberto Di Ceglie. 
Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. vii + 235. $99.99 (hardcover).
JONATHAN FUQUA, Conception Seminary College
Why are philosophical debates about religion so inconclusive? Debates 
about God’s existence, the problem of evil, religious pluralism, and other 
such matters have been going on for literally millennia, with no end in sight. 
Is there anything we can do to make these debates more fruitful? Roberto 
Di Ceglie, a philosophy professor at the Pontifical Lateran University (in 
Rome), has an answer to the fruitfulness question: we can make a spiritual 
turn (ST) in epistemology. This is something everyone should do anyway, he 
thinks—especially Christians; but such a turn would also, in his view, make 
our debates more fruitful by helping us to reach partial conclusiveness on 
some of the seemingly interminable questions that we’re still debating.
In order to understand Di Ceglie’s proposal for a spiritual  epistemology, 
we have to begin with the alternative, which comes to us largely from 
Locke and which dominates the contwemporary discussion: mere epis-
temology (ME). ME is the view that “one should always prefer beliefs 
supported by more evidence to beliefs supported by less evidence” (4). 
According to ME, “no commitment to one’s beliefs should .  .  . prevent 
one from changing one’s mind if the available evidence requires this” (2). 
This sounds a lot like evidentialism, but—curiously—Di Ceglie doesn’t re-
ally discuss ME as a version of evidentialism, say of the sort defended by 
Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. This is one example of a rather odd but 
serious lacuna that characterizes the book: it is long on applied epistemol-
ogy and short on regular epistemology. In any case, ME’s practitioners, 


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