At a time when criminal justice systems appear to be in a permanent state of crisis, leading scholars from criminology and theology come together to challenge criminal justice orthodoxy by questioning the dominance of retributive punishment. This timely and unique contribution considers alternatives that draw on Christian ideas of hope, mercy and restoration. Promoting cross-disciplinary learning, the book will be of interest to academics and students of criminology, socio-legal studies, legal philosophy, public theology and religious studies, as well as practitioners and policy makers.

This book discusses the Christian doctrine of sin in relation to sexual abuse of children and the Holocaust, allowing these pathological situations to illuminate and question our understanding of sin. Taking seriously the explanatory power of secular discourses for analyzing and regulating therapeutic action in relation to such situations, the book asks whether the theological language of sin can offer further illumination by speaking of God and the world together. The book is unusual in discussing the Holocaust in relation to Christian doctrine.

This book tests the explanatory and descriptive power of the doctrine of sin in relation to two concrete situations: sexual abuse of children and the holocaust. Taking seriously the explanatory power of secular discourses for analysing and regulating therapeutic action in relation to such situations, the book asks whether the theological language of sin can offer further illumination by speaking of God and the world together. Through its discussion of abuse and the holocaust, an engagement with Augustine, original sin and feminism, a fresh and sometimes surprising perspective is offered, both on the theology of sin and on the pathologies under consideration. The understanding of sin that emerges is centred on joyful worship of the trinitarian God. This essay is more systematic and more theological than most practical, pastoral or applied theology and more practical and concrete than most systematic or constructive theology. It is a genuinely concrete, systematic theology.

In this collection of essays theologians debate forgiveness first as a theological concept, looking at Christology and atonement, ecclesiology, the liturgical mediation of forgiveness and the relationship between divine and human forgiving. Forgiveness is also considered in relation to shame, sin and guilt. Then forgiveness is discussed and applied to practical contemporary situations, as the contributors engage with the secular disciplines on the subject. There are specific situations in both the public and private spheres where forgiveness is both urgent and problematic, for example, in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and in the context of child abuse.