Mercy

In The Broken Heart, Bruce C. Hafen builds a rehabilitative theology of mercy. The book’s load-bearing claim is that “the doctrines of mercy and repentance are rehabilitative, not retributive, in nature” — the Savior asks for repentance not merely to be compensated for paying a debt to justice, but as a way of inducing the process of development that makes one’s nature divine. Mercy is what allows the Atonement to “compensate” for human limitation “after all we can do.”

Hafen distinguishes the unconditional parts of the Atonement (resurrection, payment for Adam’s transgression) — the “free gifts of unmerited divine grace” — from the conditional part, where mercy is applied to personal sins only through repentance. Crucially, “the eternal law of mercy allowed the Savior to make that compensation fully through the great ‘at-one-ment.’” The book warns that constant emphasis on the availability of forgiveness can be counterproductive, suggesting wrongly that one can “live it up now and repent easily later.” Mercy here is paired with justice as a law of balance that must be satisfied, and with the broken heart as the disposition that makes rehabilitation possible.

Context: In Latter-day Saint (and broader Christian) theology, mercy is the divine attribute by which justice’s demands are satisfied through the Atonement of Christ, conditioned on repentance — often discussed in tension with the demands of justice.

Where this appears

• The Broken Heart — core term; “eternal law of mercy” and “doctrines of mercy and repentance are rehabilitative, not retributive” anchor Hafen’s theology of the Atonement.