At the 10th session of the Second Synod of African Bishops which was just completed in Rome, Archbishop Jean-Pierre Tafunga, SDB, Coadjutor of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, made the following remark:

“In most African cultures, evil is conceived of as the consequence of a transgression of what is prescribed.”

These prescriptions can be of divine authority or that of government or ritual rules. The person who commits the evil is expected “to admit in all honesty to the evil committed.”

What Archbishop Tafunga describes here is the African understanding of its own traditions. He is not speaking of Christian understandings of the same issues. Confession is evidently made to a tribal head or traditional healer, sometimes before the community. The offender is then expected to “manifest his firm resolution to make reparation for the wrongdoing.” He must make restitution to the person against whom he committed the crime or to the family: “The reparation is made by paying the prescribed expenses, the damages and interest.” When this is accomplished, the person wronged can grant pardon. With this, the case is closed.

Finally, there is a “rite of reconciliation” that goes along with the pardon. This rite voids any further divine punishment. This rite happens in some “sacred place,” before the community and the person presiding over the community.

Why did Tafunga recount this tradition? He emphasized that human tradition in Africa did recognize evil and its need of individual and corporate reconciliation. The evil may have injured just one person – still it affected the community. Both the one injured and the community were to be reconciled to the one who committed the crime. But, when restitution was accomplished, the one originally offended also needed to forgive the one who acknowledged his wrongdoing.

In Plato, similar situations occur. In the “Gorgias”, we learn that the one who commits the crime eventually should want to be punished. The worst thing that we can do to him is not to punish him. Why? It is because punishment might encourage him to see the wrongness of his action. But if he is let go, no reason exists to acknowledge that what he did was wrong. Right order is not restored.

In the “Phaedo”, at the final judgment, the unrepentant man who has murdered someone is being punished everlastingly in the river of Hades. He goes round and round in the waters. The only way he can get out is if he is forgiven by the person whom he killed. If the man does not forgive him, his punishment continues. The Platonic point is that our crimes have everlasting import.

The African tradition and Greek philosophy thus have common concerns. Human beings can do evil things. If they do, their souls are in disorder in themselves until they restore right order. This restoration can only be accomplished by a mutual acknowledgement and forgiveness. The acknowledgement includes the element of justice. It restores what was due.

Aquinas asked whether, in addition to eternal, natural and human law, some intelligible reason for revelation might exist. One of the reasons he gave for this possibility was that civil or human law can only properly command our external acts.

That is, it can tell us not to kill, but it cannot directly reach to our own souls to instruct us to think and to will rightly about our deeds. Only the divine law can command that we do not even plan to do evil things. The origin of evil in the world was not so much the external acts themselves as the inner disorder of soul that plotted and conjured them up.

Why would an African archbishop at a Synod of the Roman Church, in which the forgiveness of sins is a sacrament, be content simply to recall the African tradition with no origin in Christianity?

No doubt the prelate wanted to point out that evil, punishment and forgiveness are issues of the human soul that arise in any culture or in any human life. The central point of Christianity in this sense is that Christ came so that we could rid ourselves of our sins. What revelation adds is not that these things did not concern us before, but simply what was the location or manner in which our wrongdoings could finally be put aside.

I have always been struck by the angry reaction of Callicles, the calculating shrewd politician in the “Gorgias”, when he heard that the criminal should want to be punished both for his own good and for the good of the community. One of the reasons we read ancient books and modern African archbishops is so that we do not avoid asking ourselves about fundamental issues like evil, punishment and forgiveness.

Fr. James Schall, S.J. is a professor of government. He can be reached at schalljgeorgetown.edu. As This Jesuit Sees It . appears every other Friday, with Fr. Schall, Fr. Maher and Fr. O’Brien alternating as writers.

Hijab Shah’s column Behind the Veil will not appear this week.

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