Remorse: A Christian Perspective

Remorse

A Christian Perspective

Anthony Bash

foreword by Martyn Percy

Remorse

A Christian Perspective

Copyright ©

2020

Anthony Bash. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-7234-7

hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-7235-4

ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-7236-1

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Bash, Anthony, author. | Percy, Martyn, foreword.

Title: Remorse : a Christian perspective / by Anthony Bash ; foreword by Martyn Percy.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2020 |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-7252-7234-7 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-7252-7235-4 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-7252-7236-1 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: Remorse | Guilt | Theology, Practical | Forgiveness—Biblical teaching

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bt790 b374 2020 (

print

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ebook

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Manufactured in the U.S.A.

09/29/20

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Chapter 1: Remorse

Chapter 2: Remorse and the Ancient Israelites

Chapter 3: Remorse in Greek Thought and Language

Chapter 4: Remorse and the New Testament

Chapter 5: Christian Remorse after the New Testament

Chapter 6: Remorse in Contemporary Understanding

Chapter 7: Remorse and Emotions

Chapter 8: Remorse and Moral Knowledge

Chapter 9: Remorse and Punishment

Chapter 10: Remorse: A Christian Perspective

Bibliography

To Melanie

Remorse: A Fragment

Of all the numerous ills that hurt our peace,

That press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish

Beyond comparison the worst are those

By our own folly, or our guilt brought on:

In ev’ry other circumstance, the mind

Has this to say, It was no deed of mine:

But, when to all the evil of misfortune

This sting is added, Blame thy foolish self!

Or worser far, the pangs of keen remorse,

The torturing, gnawing consciousness of guilt—

Of guilt, perhaps, when we’ve involved others,

The young, the innocent, who fondly lov’d us;

Nay more, that very love their cause of ruin!

O burning hell! in all thy store of torments

There’s not a keener lash!

Lives there a man so firm, who, while his heart

Feels all the bitter horrors of his crime,

Can reason down its agonizing throbs;

And, after proper purpose of amendment,

Can firmly force his jarring thoughts to peace?

O happy, happy, enviable man!

O glorious magnanimity of soul!

—Robert Burns

Foreword

The Very Revd Professor Martyn Percy,

Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.

The Samaritans is an organization founded in 1953 by the Reverend Chad Varah, who at the time was a young curate in the city and diocese of Lincoln. It is no exaggeration to say that the Samaritans—which is now international and counsels the lonely, the depressed, and the suicidal—grew out of a particular encounter that Varah had with shame and remorse. Cycling back to his clergy lodgings one day, he was greeted by the housekeeper at the door, who told him that his Rector was ill, so he would need, at the last minute, to take a funeral. He cycled off to the cemetery, cassock flapping in the breeze.

When Varah arrived at the cemetery gates, the funeral was about to start. At this point, he did not know the name of the deceased, but was curious about why the body was laid to rest in an unmarked plot, and in the part of the cemetery that was not consecrated for burial. He finished the funeral, and then began to ask some questions. Varah ascertained that he had just presided over the funeral of a girl, aged thirteen years, who had killed herself because she had begun menstruating. Mortified that the girl had to be buried in unconsecrated ground, with parts of the burial liturgy redacted as the death was a suicide, Varah felt his own remorse. The girl’s family was there too—and no less remorseful. Shame and guilt lay thick in the air, held together with the collective remorse of the mourners.

Varah’s response to his remorse, and the guilt and shame of the mourners, was constructive and imaginative. He became concerned about the state of sex education for teenagers in the city, and so started to work with young people, especially listening to those who were contemplating suicide. Varah’s Samaritan movement grew rapidly when he subsequently moved to London. Within ten years, the Samaritans was a sizable charity, offering a supportive and empathic listening service that is not political or religious.

I am writing this foreword to the very fine book by Anthony Bash in a week when I have learned that an old friend of mine from school days has taken his own life. His father is a bishop; his older brother a priest, and his sister married to a priest. My friend was married, with grown-up children. They were a clergy family through-and-through, deeply embedded in faith and love, and in the hope and grace of the gospel. And yet, and yet . . . .

My friend took his life after a prolonged period struggling with depression. The cycle of shame, remorse, and depression pulled him ever-downwards—though ultimately into the everlasting arms of God. The days when mourners were left with remorse from the stigma of family members who take their own lives are, thankfully, mostly gone. We now speak differently of these deaths. For we understand the power of remorse to cause deep damage to individuals and to families, communities, and nations.

It is only in recent times that we have begun to understand quite why so many German citizens took their own lives as the Second World War ended. For a few, it was their Nazi zeal, and not wanting to live in a world without their Fürher-leader, and where the Reich was destroyed. For many, however, it was their own multiple overwhelmings of shame and remorse that did for them. The raped; the silent witnesses and bystanders who had watched the trains trundling to the camps (and always leaving empty) but who had said nothing; those who had saved their own lives and betrayed others, only in order to save themselves. Indeed, many chose to symbolize that sense of being swamped by their individual and collective sins by drowning themselves and their children.¹

The Scriptures are full of remorseful characters, and they pepper the Old Testament and the New Testament with their biographies. Lives lived out of regret are painful to engage with, and the Scriptures give us plenty of insight into this, yet as part of the overall ecology of salvation.

The Gospels often chide the church for trying to act as a kind of Border Agency Police for heaven, and chide Christians for offering their well-meaning services to Jesus as self-appointed Immigration Control Officers for paradise. But Jesus is not impressed with these proposals to police his kingdom. Hence, the Gospels offer extreme cases of God saying, Let it be, or Let them come to me. The dying thief on the cross is an obvious example (Luke 23:32–43). The criminal could not have known Jesus for more than a few minutes, or even an hour. Yet on the cross, for the most minimal confession, the thief is promised paradise.

Had the disciples still been around to witness this exchange shortly before the death of Jesus, they must have wondered to themselves what was the point of giving up everything and forsaking all for the kingdom of God? Had they not been with Jesus for three years? Had they not abandoned their jobs? Had they not left behind their families, even leaving the dead unburied? Of course, they had. So how was it that Jesus is offering precisely the same, namely paradise—and no more and no less—to a man committed to a lifetime of violence and crime? It did not seem fair to them, somehow.

Fairness is something Jesus asks us all to reflect on. The younger son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32) is not treated fairly at all. He is treated with lavish generosity, and with absurd, abundant, unmerited grace. The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1–16) gives an equal portion of the rewards to those who are least deserving. God gives to those who are clearly quite hopeless the same—the identical amount—as those who toiled all day. The parable reminds Christians that salvation is not measured out in fractions. You cannot be half-saved. You cannot be half-baptized. You cannot be half-loved by God.

In all of this, we must remember that God’s love is broader and deeper than anything we can conceive of. God’s love is not rationed. In fact, it is so comprehensive as to be almost irrational. And so, we offer a church for all, because God’s kingdom is for all. The Scriptures are so beautifully frank. God lives in love (1 John 4:16): God is love. Everyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in them. So, I am delighted to commend this remarkable book by Anthony Bash because, as it takes us through the meanings of remorse, we find we are only moving onwards to deeper encounters with God’s abundant love.

I have known Anthony Bash for more than twenty-five years. In all that time, I have constantly marveled at and been grateful for his work on power, forgiveness, and reconciliation. He is a theologically tenacious and courageous scholar, yet careful and measured; always wise, and unfailingly pastoral. When invited to write this foreword, there could be no hesitation in accepting. Not least, as I know that Anthony writes out of his experience—the bank-balance of any writer—and that he does so out of a concern to wrestle with concepts and contexts that would defeat most of us. But not Anthony.

Remorse is not an easy subject to write on, to be sure. But it is ironic that it should be neglected in our world today, when shame, vilification, and regret are so amplified in our social media, and often with such tragic consequences.

1

. On this, see the fine study by Christian Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2009

).

Acknowledgments

This book has its origins from reading J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, first to my children when they were younger, and latterly also for my own pleasure. I noticed that in Rowling’s books there is next to nothing about forgiveness—a subject on which I have written for several years—but there is a great deal about remorse. Clearly, Rowling is interested in remorse. But what is remorse, and where is its place in the Judeo-Christian quartet of wrongdoing, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation? At first, I was not sure, and this book is the result of a long period of thought.

As I wrote this book, many people have shaped my thinking and given generously of their expertise. I thank Dr Anthony Atkinson, Dr Stephen B. Barton, Fr Andrew Downie, Professor John Gaskin, Dr Stephen Humphreys, Professor R. Walter L. Moberly, His Honour Judge Christopher Prince, Richard G. Rohlfing Jr, and Professor Peter J. Rhodes. They have read or talked to me about parts of earlier drafts of this book. Much of what I have written bears the imprint of Professor Geoffrey F. Scarre’s insightful comments and I warmly thank him. Dr Hugh Firth and David Sheard have helped me to think carefully about ways to articulate Christian ethics and morality in a contemporary setting. The Very Revd Professor Martyn Percy, a good friend for many years, generously wrote the Foreword. Hannah Bash, Simeon Bash, and Matthias Bash have each contributed to this book, either by reading or commenting on parts or by talking to me and honing my thinking. Matthias has especially helped with proofreading. Last of all, I thank my wife, Melanie. Her love and support enable me to think and write in ways that I would not (and could not) without her. This book is, of course, dedicated to her, with love and gratitude.

List of Abbreviations

ABD The Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. Edited by David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

BAGD Walter Bauer, Frederick W. Danker, W. F. Arndt, and F. W. Gingrich. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

BCP The Book of Common Prayer, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

BDB Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, 2005. Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford, Clarendon, 1907.

CW-CI Common Worship. Christian Initiation. London: Church House, 2006.

CW-SP Common Worship. Services and Prayers for the Church of England. London: Church House, 2000.

EE Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics

ESV Holy Bible. English Standard Version. Containing the Old and New Testaments. London: Collins, 2002.

LCL Loeb Classical Library

LSJ Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones. A Greek-English Lexicon, with a Revised Supplement. 9th ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

LXX Septuaginta. Id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes edidit Alfred Rahlfs, Duo Volumina in uno. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1979.

MED Middle English Dictionary. 1952–2001. Edited by Robert E. Lewis et al. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001–18.

MT Masoretic Text.

NE Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

NIDOTTE New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. Edited by Willem A. VanGemeren. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1997.

NIV Holy Bible. New International Version. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011.

NRSV Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) Anglicized. London: Collins, 1995.

OED Oxford English Dictionary. 20 vols. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.

Rhet. Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric

ST Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

Chapter 1

Remorse

Why a book on remorse? Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) wrote that being remorseful is part of what it means to be pure in heart. So wonderful a power is remorse, so sincere its friendship, he says, that to escape it entirely is the most terrible thing of all. He adds that remorse is a concerned guide, a sincere and faithful friend who protects from delusion.¹ He describes remorse as the guide that helps people to look back and, in his florid, traditional language, says that remorse calls man back from evil.² Both repentance and remorse are eternity’s emissaries; remorse and its call teach people to know the way and they lead to purity of heart.³ In contemporary language, remorse leads to the sort of virtue that is—or should be—characteristic of Christian discipleship and spirituality. It is a constituent of moral passion, that is, one of the essential features of genuinely moral behavior.⁴

Christian theology has a well-developed theology of remorse towards God about sin. So, when people do wrong, they may express to God their remorse about what they have done, because they believe that they have sinned against God. They may believe that if they wrong people, they also sin against God, and so should express remorse to God about the wrong they have done to such people. However, and as we shall see in this book, Christian theology has not often emphasized that it is important for wrongdoers in such situations also to express remorse to the people they have wronged. In other words, Christian theology appears to have an under­developed theology of interpersonal remorse.

Of course, many thoughtful, decent people put right the wrongs they have done to other people before or as part of the way they express remorse to God. In many traditional Christian liturgies, such a practice is implicit rather than enjoined. For example, the words of the Confessions in the Book of Common Prayer (1662) of the Church of England refer only to sin against God. True, those who come to receive Holy Communion must be in love and charity with their neighbors. In contrast, those who sin against God say the more severe words in one of the Confessions that they acknowledge and bewail their manifold sins and wickedness against God, with no words of confession about wrongs against neighbors, and no words commending remorse, repentance, and restitution for such wrongs. It is as if wrongs against other people are subordinated under the rubric of wrongs against God, with interpersonal wrongdoing seen as being in a subsidiary, and less grievous, category of wrongdoing. One of the aims of this book is to explore the reasons why such a theological approach to interpersonal remorse is under-developed.

Another deficiency this book attempts to address is lack of clarity about what interpersonal remorse is. The word remorse is often used loosely with words such as repentance and regret, as if the three words mean much the same when understood from different perspectives. As we will see, the words are related but have distinct meanings, and the differences, as well as the points of overlap, are important. In this book, we attempt to give a clear and precise description of interpersonal remorse, and we explore its nature and form as an emotion.⁵

Describing what interpersonal remorse is does not, of course, explain that to be remorseful and to behave appropriately as a result are virtuous. As we see in chapter 6, some think that remorse is pathological, a product of old-time religion,⁶ and something to be thrown off as psychologically unhelpful. We set out in this book cogent, compelling reasons why remorse can be virtuous.

Outside the Christian tradition, there is important work in the fields of philosophy, psychology, law, and some of the sciences (such as psychology, neurology, and evolutionary biology), for example, that directly or indirectly influences the way we can (and sometimes should) think about and understand interpersonal remorse. Much of this book is set in the context of and in critical dialogue with some of the findings in these areas of understanding. We will see that secular writers and thinkers on the whole have led and shaped contemporary work on remorse, with the church and Christian thinkers sometimes lagging behind and with the tradition of Christian thought (such as it is) on the topic being largely ignored.⁷ We will show that Christian theology does have a significant contribution to make to contemporary, secular discussion about interpersonal remorse.

We hope to offer in this book a carefully articulated ethic of interpersonal remorse by drawing on both secular and Christian traditions, by developing a theological rationale of interpersonal remorse, and by critically engaging with contemporary, secular discussion of remorse in the context of its scientific, philosophical, and jurisprudential settings. We show that the logic of the gospel commends interpersonal remorse as an appropriate ethic for those who have done wrong. It also commends particular behaviors, such as repentance and restitution, which can result from interpersonal remorse. We show that interpersonal remorse is a long-neglected virtue that is embedded in Judeo-Christian thought, though only in inchoate form. We also explore why interpersonal remorse has come of age only in the contemporary period.

Gordon Graham observes that [t]he intellectual position of Christianity in the modern world . . . is largely one of retreat because theologians and believers more generally have lost confidence in the relevance of Christian theology to the explanatory endeavors of intellectual enquiry.⁸ This book seeks to contribute to stemming what Graham calls the retreat through a vigorous, informed, and critical theological approach to ethics, as well as through demonstrating that Christian ethics, especially when articulated in some of the language and categories of modern discourse, can make a distinctive and important contribution to current debates. The result will be, I hope, not only deepened understanding for all people but also, for those within the Christian church, renewed motivation for vigorous, thoughtful, and practical Christian discipleship and spirituality.

Remorse, Regret, and Repentance

As I said above, the words remorse, regret, and repentance are often associated with one another. They can be said to lack sharp boundaries and [e]ach word can . . . be considered a label for a fuzzy set, defined as a class . . . in which there is a gradual but specifiable transition from membership to nonmembership.⁹ More generally, each in a list of remorse, regret, sadness, disappointment, shame, guilt, and sorrow, for example, may have aspects of any of the others in the list, even though they are all regarded as discrete emotions.

Remorseful people regret what they have done and often are also repentant. Remorse and regret are sometimes even used interchangeably. An obvious example of this are the words remorse quoted above in the extract from Kierkegaard’s writings: they are from a translation published in 2008¹⁰—and the same words are translated regret in a 1993 translation of the same work.¹¹ As we shall see, there are important differences between remorse and regret, and in the contemporary period it is inaccurate to treat the words as interchangeable.

The word regret in modern English is a hypernym for the varieties of ways that people feel, recognize, and acknowledge that they feel sad, disappointed, and even repentant about something. Remorse is a species (or variant)¹² of regret. According to the OED, remorse is deep regret or guilt for doing something morally wrong. As we would expect with emotions that are related to one another, remorse bears only some of the characteristics of regret; it also bears characteristics of other emotions that are outside the ambit of regret. In other words, remorse is not regret only and regret is not the same as remorse.¹³

Of course, in everyday speech the word remorse is sometimes used more loosely than the way it is defined in the OED, and throughout this book we refer to the varieties of ways the word can be understood and to examples of more popular usage. One egregious example is of Jeff Skilling, former Chief Executive of Enron Corporation, who was sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence for fraud. He said of himself, I can’t imagine more remorse but also said that day that he was innocent of every one of the charges against him.¹⁴ By almost any mainstream description of remorse, it is hard to see how one can be both remorseful and continue to assert that one is innocent of legal or moral wrongdoing.

Etymologically, the word remorse comes from the Latin verb remordere, which means to bite back or to sting again. The word is first used in English in the late-fourteenth century.¹⁵ Remordere can also mean to vex persistently, to gnaw, or to nag. The word regret comes from the Old French verb regreter, meaning to bewail (usually the dead). Of course, I am not saying that the etymology of these words tells us what they mean today; I am no more than pointing out that in their origins (and, as we shall see, in their meanings today, too) the words refer to different, but related, emotions.

The remainder of this chapter is a preliminary overview of remorse as a form of regret. It provides the framework for chapters 2 to 5 that trace the history and development of remorse. In chapters 6 to 9, we explore the nature of contemporary remorse, In the last chapter, chapter 10, we draw together our findings and look at remorse in its form as a distinctively Christian ethic.

Regret

Regret is used in a range of contexts and is a word with a wide spectrum of meaning.¹⁶ Robert C. Roberts regards regret as a relatively indeterminate, all-purpose emotion type.¹⁷ He defines regret as X (occurrence, nonoccurrence, action, omission, state of affairs), which is contrary to my concern(s), might have been otherwise.¹⁸ People do not always regret something for moral reasons,¹⁹ and it is possible to regret doing the right thing or something that is not a wrong,²⁰ such as when a parent regrets having to discipline a recalcitrant child. It is also possible to be satisfied with the state of affairs one has brought about but regret the process that one initiated to bring it about. As for whether regret should be well-founded, Roy Sorensen argues that it need not,²¹ but Cara Bagnoli argues that it should.²²

Regret has been classified in at least four ways. Agent regret is when one regrets one’s own part, however great it may be, in bringing about a state of affairs that one wishes were different. Bernard Williams points out that it is possible to regret the outcome of a correct moral choice.²³ We discuss in chapter 10 whether one can also be remorseful about such a choice. There are at least three other types of regret: spectator regret, character regret, and patient regret. Spectator regret is no more than when one observes and regrets a state of affairs that one has not caused or brought about.²⁴ Amélie Rorty additionally identifies character regret, that is, regret for defects of character.²⁵ Last, Geoffrey Scarre suggests there can be patient regret, that is, instances where I am wholly non-responsible for something unfortunate that happened to me.²⁶ As these types of regret are not regret about one’s wrongs, they cannot be remorse as well.

Regret is an elastic word and, in Rorty’s words, can range from passing light regret to dark and heavy regret. It can be no more than a wistful feeling, relatively low keyed in comparison with remorse or guilt.²⁷ This sort of regret is sometimes thought of as a restrained or polite word, intended to be little more than a social lubricant²⁸ the purpose of which is to keep oiled the wheels of civility and good manners,²⁹ such as when one declines a dinner invitation. Often, with the passing of time, such regret ceases to be either sharp or painful.

Rorty’s suggestion that regret can have such a wide range of meaning sometimes produces odd results. It would be clearer to use different words or phrases to describe each of dark and heavy regret about someone’s suffering, a deep sense of regret about having done wrong, and a relatively minor mishap, disappointment, or mistake. The words we choose should be appropriate to help differentiate the degree of the agent’s affect, the nature of the harm or wrong, and the proportionality of the response to the harm or wrong, even if the words also presuppose and include regret.³⁰

Perhaps surprisingly to the modern reader, the reaction of Herod to the death of John the Baptist, of which he was the unwilling (or, at least, unenthusiastic) agent, is akin to regret. Herod is said to have been grieved about having to order John’s death (Matt 14:9). Herod’s grief was regret that he had to keep a promise the outcome of which he feared would incite the people (Matt 14:5), not remorse about being the agent of John’s death.

Remorse

Remorse is more limited in scope than regret, and we explore it carefully in the rest of this book. At this point, we can say that remorse is a strong, reactive emotion. As we have seen, the OED limits remorse to being deep regret or guilt about one’s own wrongdoing.³¹ The OED also limits remorse to situations where people have done something morally wrong and so excludes social lapses, solecisms, or shortcomings. Central to the OED’s approach to remorse are guilt and morality, and acknowledgment of personal responsibility and so moral accountability for what one has done.³² One therefore cannot be remorseful, though one may regret, and even regret very much, that one has sold shares at a loss before the market rose, or that one missed a train and so is delayed for an important meeting, or that one interviewed badly for a new job. The OED definition also excludes being remorseful about what one might do, because one can only be remorseful about what one has done: a wrong one might do is no more than a contingency.³³ Irving Thalberg has said, "One cannot have remorse about one’s character, but only how one acts. Of course, the actions may be due to one’s character, but the remorse is for the results. . . . [I]t would be absurd to feel remorse prior to a misdeed."³⁴ In short, remorse involves recognizing and acknowledging—at least to oneself—that one has done wrong.

It is, of course, possible to be guilty but not feel a sense of guilt or remorse, for people may have cognitive knowledge that an act or omission is wrong but from their viewpoint disagree that the act or omission is wrong. They may think, as Mr. Bumble did when told that the law assumed his wife acted under his direction, that . . . the law is a[n] ass—a[n] idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor, and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.³⁵

Of course, one has to keep a sense of proportion when it comes to remorse. To speak of being remorseful because one forgot a lunch invitation with a friend whom one continues to see regularly is, I suggest, absurd, and suggests the neurosis of a self-absorbed, over-sensitive conscience. Raimond Gaita rightly calls such remorse corrupt and egocentric and says that regret would be a better way to describe how such a person feels.³⁶

We can illustrate many of the observations above about regret and remorse from seven examples of Bella, who hates her spouse Caroline.

1.Bella may have no more than occasional thoughts about living without Caroline. She may feel guilty about her passing thoughts. She may also feel ashamed of herself for having such thoughts because of where they might lead. However, she cannot properly say she is remorseful, because one can only feel remorseful about a wrong one has done: passing thoughts are just thoughts, not moral acts. In Thalberg’s words that I quoted above, there is no result of an action about which one could feel remorseful. Bella can properly say that she regrets the thoughts and is ashamed of them.

2.If Bella experiences more than passing thoughts about Caroline and chooses willfully and persistently to indulge in malevolent thoughts in a deliberate and focused way, and later deeply regrets the way she ruminated on them, we can say that her deep regret amounts to remorse if she believes that deliberately to feed malevolent thoughts is to do wrong. Here, again using Thalberg’s words, the result of the action is a misdeed, namely, nursing what is malign, even though the subject of what is malign are thoughts, not actions.³⁷ Jesus says much the same about nursing thoughts in Matt 5:28 of those who look with lustful intent. It is not the seeing that is sin. Rather, according to Jesus, the sin of looking with lustful intent is to keep looking. This element of continuity is indicated by a present tense that points to continuity of action.

3.Suppose Bella kills Caroline by poisoning a gin and tonic Bella gives Caroline to drink. If Bella later deeply regrets what she has done because she realizes it is wrong, she may say she is remorseful.

4.If Caroline drinks the poisoned gin and tonic and dies, Bella may think, as some murderers do of their victims, that she is well rid of Caroline and she may deeply regret what she sees as the folly of having entered into a relationship with Caroline. Can Bella say that she is remorseful about the relationship with Caroline, even if she is not remorseful about having murdered her? I think not, because (so far as we know) she did not do wrong in marrying Caroline but made a choice the outcome of which (an unhappy partnership) she deeply regrets. The thought I wish I’d never even met her, is deep regret, but not, in this instance, remorse.

5.If Bella is confronted with the fact that she had murdered Caroline (for example, if there were evidence incontrovertibly to point to her criminal guilt), the gravity and evil of what she has done may become apparent to her and she may be deeply remorseful. It is as if her viewpoint has changed from being glad of the end she brought about (to be rid of Caroline through murder) to regretting deeply the end and the means used.

6.Suppose Caroline did not consume the poisoned gin and tonic. If Bella later realizes the foolhardiness of what she had done (poisoning the gin and tonic and thereby attempting to kill Caroline), she may say she is remorseful about the intentions she attempted to carry out. Bella would be remorseful about how she had acted (as Thalberg suggests of remorse), even though (in this case) the intended outcome of her wrong actions (Caroline’s death) was not realized. Regret seems too anodyne a description of Bella’s likely emotions when she realizes how misguided she had been.

7.If Bella were tried and convicted of Caroline’s murder, and imprisoned for the offence, she may continue to be glad to be rid of Caroline but lament that she was in prison for having murdered her. She may be sorry and deeply regret that she has been found out. This is not remorse at all but a form of pathological self-pity that is without moral perspective.

We should also add for completeness that people may be selective about what they deeply regret when it comes to a series of related, wrongful actions. For example, Bella may not regret the end she brought about (to be rid of Caroline) but be remorseful about the means she used (premeditated murder by poisoning). The same may be true of David who committed adultery with Bathsheba and who engineered the death of her husband (2 Sam 12:1–14). Nathan confronted David with what he had done, and as a result, David’s moral outlook was restored and he was remorseful (2 Sam 12:13). But what was he remorseful about? He may have been remorseful because he had committed adultery and because he had engineered the death of Uriah in battle. Nevertheless, the fact that he remained married to Bathsheba (or at least did not separate from her)³⁸ suggests that David did not regret the end he brought about.

Words Akin to Remorse

People may express their deep regret or guilt for having done something morally wrong apart from by the word remorse.

In former times, people may have said they felt compunction, that is, according to the OED, a pricking or stinging of the conscience or heart; regret or uneasiness of mind consequent on sin or wrongdoing; remorse, contrition. The word compunction seems largely to have fallen out of modern use. We shall see in chapter 5 that compunction is the anglicized form of the Latin word compunctio, which means remorse. When the word compunction is used today, it usually means no more than a slight or passing regret for wrongdoing, or a feeling of regret for some slight offence. As the word now means little more than regret on the rare occasions when it is now used, we will not consider the word further in this book, and we will regard it as