It is unclear what the relationship is between God and forgiveness, and the connection between that and the possibility of forgiveness between persons.

Other approaches to forgiveness claim that there is an important connection between forgiving and punishment. The Oxford English Dictionary includes “pardon” in its definition of ‘forgive’, and Hobbes drew a connection between forgiving and the facility to pardon in his sixth Law of Nature: “A sixth law of Nature is this, ‘that, upon caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that, repenting, desire it’” ([1651] 1969). Remarking on this law, Bernard Gert writes, “This virtue, which Hobbes calls having the facility to pardon, one can also call being forgiving” (...