Includes bibliographies. / God's wrath results in divine acts of vengeance in favour of the powerless and the oppressed. This manifestation of anger is devoid of hatred and malice, for in the first epistle of John, love is equated with God in such a way that it is the personification of the divine Being (1 John 4:7-12). God's grace, forming the nexus between compassion and wrath, renders any suggestion of a contradiction in the divine nature untenable. Human vengeance is, however, an ambiguous concept. It emanates from human anger, which often includes hatred and malice. Nevertheless, this cannot simply be dismissed as a destructive force, as it can be a valid form of resistance. The crucial theological-ethical question arises: Can the wrath of God's children (human vengeance) legitimately reflect divine anger? The first part of the thesis deals with the historical content of God's wrathful children, focusing on the history of struggle in South Africa. The age-old history of injustices perpetrated against black people has generated a deep-seated anger, a dangerous socio-political rage that cannot be ignored. The central question is: How should black people handle their anger theologically? Given the multi-religious and -cultural South African context this issue needs addressing at an ecumenical level, while taking interfaith perspective into account. The Zealots of first-century Palestine, the late-medieval reformer Thomas Muntzer, and the African-American activist Malcolm X, wrestled with the interplay between faith and vengeance. Case studies of these revolutionaries are dealt with in the second part of the thesis, and assistance is sought from their experiences in clarifying our own theological formulation. The final part of the thesis argues that post-apartheid South Africa requires a comprehensive, inter-faith 'ethic of vengeance' to curb destructive black political rage.

Psychology and religiousness/spirituality continue to be perceived as incongruent and incompatible, often resulting in a disconnection and suboptimal level of collaboration between the two fields to the detriment of healthcare. Nevertheless, forgiveness, or an absence of ill will, is a construct central to both mainstream world religion/spirituality and the field of psychology. Understanding and recognizing the construct of forgiveness and its mutually central application can foster increased collaboration between the fields. As a result, individually and collectively, the two fields will be better able to expand and further develop their many shared principles in the service of better healthcare.

Purpose: Forgiveness is associated with a variety of health-related outcomes; however much of this work has been in the context of forgiveness of others, direct associations and otherwise healthy samples. This study examined associations involving multiple dimensions of forgiveness, including indirect effects through health behavior, among outpatients receiving physical therapy. Methods: Participants from southern Appalachia (n=141) completed cross-sectional self-report measures of forgiveness, lifetime religiousness, health behavior, health status and pain. Mediation analysis was employed to examine the direct and indirect relationships between forgiveness and health. Results: Forgiveness of self was associated with: (i) overall health status, physical health status and current pain in an indirect-only fashion and (ii) mental health status and chronic pain in a direct-only fashion. Feeling forgiven by God was associated with health-related social functioning in a direct-only fashion. Forgiveness of others was not associated with the health-related outcomes. Conclusions: Forgiveness of self appears to be the most important to health, yet the most difficult to achieve. Religious culture may influence whether feeling forgiven by God is also important. Forgiveness-based intervention may be useful in the context of rehabilitation, in general, and physical therapy, in particular.

Violence is a serious health concern on and around college campuses in the United States. While spirituality is associated with health-related issues, little is known regarding its association with aggression among college students. Cross-sectional associations between forgiveness and aggression were examined among college students in Southern Appalachia (n = 494; ♀ = 74%; M age = 22). Using multiple regression analyses and independent of demographic variables and religiousness, forgiveness of self and forgiveness of others but not feeling forgiven by God, were associated with lower levels of a variety of forms of aggression, with mostly medium effect sizes.

Despite empirical associations with many health-related outcomes and its fundamental place in Alcoholics Anonymous, the scientific study of forgiveness in addiction and recovery has only recently begun. Evidence derives from naturalistic studies and, when used, a short follow-up interval. It is time to expand the empirical study of the salutary forgiveness-alcohol association to include intervention-based research with sufficient follow-up intervals. Understanding the basic and nuanced effect of forgiveness among people with alcohol and other drug problems, though not a panacea, will inform the development of more refined and efficient treatment strategies for individuals struggling with alcoholism and addiction.

While forgiveness appears to be directly associated with treatment outcomes for alcohol problems, it may have indirect effects through mental health symptoms. We examined multiple dimensions of forgiveness: of self (ForSelf), of others (ForOthers), and by God (ByGod). Both ForSelf and ForOthers were strongly related to mental health at baseline (N = 157), whereas at 6 months, ForSelf was strongly related to mental health (N = 126). Longitudinally, baseline ForOthers predicted 6-month mental health symptoms. Forgiving oneself and others has implications for the mental health of alcoholics entering treatment.

Studies on forgiveness and its relationship to substance abuse have consistently found salutary associations between the two, yet empirical investigation of variables that may serve as mediating factors in this relationship is in need of more attention. With recent models positing psychological distress as a key component of the forgiveness-substance abuse association, constructs such as psychache, depression, and hopelessness may be likely candidates as mediators of this relationship. As such, cross-sectional, self-report data from 577 undergraduate students was used to perform multiple mediation analyses on the relationship of three dimensions of forgiveness (i.e., of self, of others, of uncontrollable situations) with two substance use outcomes (i.e., problematic alcohol use and problematic drug use), as mediated by psychache, depressive symptoms, and hopelessness. Results indicated that forgiveness of self and forgiveness of uncontrollable situations were associated with lower levels of psychological distress and fewer substance use problems, whereas forgiveness of others was associated with greater levels of psychological distress and more substance use problems. Psychache and depressive symptoms, but not hopelessness, played a role in the forgiveness–substance use problems association. Implications of these findings are discussed, particularly in the context of the self-medication hypothesis.

Introduction: Alcohol misuse is a major public health concern, resulting in an estimated 88,000 deaths annually in the U.S. Negative religious coping (NRC) is a known risk factor for alcohol misuse; yet, research has not examined potential protective factors that might weaken this linkage. Forgiveness and humility are commonly-studied spiritual factors linked to positive health-related outcomes, but they have not been explored in the context of NRC and alcohol misuse. In our study, we assessed the potential protective role of forgiveness and humility in the association between NRC and alcohol misuse, among religious believers and non-believers. Methods: Participants in this IRB-approved study were recruited online via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and self-identified as religious believers (n = 146) or non-believers (n = 120). After providing informed consent, participants completed self-report surveys including the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), Brief RCOPE, Heartland Forgiveness Scale (Forgiveness of Others), and a single item measure of humility. Results: At the bivariate level, for religious non-believers, humility was positively associated with forgiveness (r = .27, p < .01) and negatively associated with NRC (r = -.20, p < .05) and AUDIT scores (r = -.17, p < .05). Forgiveness was negatively associated with NRC (r = -.18, p < .05) and NRC was positively associated with AUDIT scores (r = .28, p < .01). For religious believers, humility was positively associated with forgiveness (r = .25, p < .01) and negatively associated with AUDIT scores (r = -.17, p < .05). Forgiveness was negatively associated with NRC (r = -.29, p < .01) and AUDIT scores (r = -.20, p < .01) and NRC was positively associated with AUDIT scores (r = -.22, p < .01). At the multivariate level, for religious believers, forgiveness moderated the relation between NRC and AUDIT scores (R2Δ = .04, p = .01), but humility did not. For religious non-believers, humility moderated the relation between NRC and AUDIT scores (R2Δ = .07, p < .01, but forgiveness did not. Conclusions: Negative religious coping is a significant risk factor for alcohol misuse among religious believers and non-believers. In the context of NRC, positive psychological constructs may provide a novel approach to reducing alcohol misuse. Forgiveness of others was protective against alcohol use problems for religious believers engaging in NRC, whereas humility was protective for religious non-believers. As a tenet of most religions, forgiveness of others may be particularly significant for religious believers in resolving NRC, of which a feature is feeling abandoned by other religious believers. For non-believers, NRC may manifest as questioning the existence of God, and humility may promote a sense of comfort in their uncertainty. Positive psychology interventions such as forgiveness therapy or the PROVE humility intervention may be effective interventions for alcohol misuse, in the context of NRC.

A recent trend in the study of forgiveness is to look at forgiveness outside of traditional victim-perpetrator dyads. One way of going beyond these dyads is to look at third-party forgiveness. A recent advance in the study of relationship valence is to look at the amount of positivity and negativity in a relationship as on independent scales rather than on two ends of the same spectrum. This allows for categorization of relationships that are high in both positivity and negativity—ambivalent relationships. This study attempts to combine these two recent advances. I hypothesized that participants would have more difficulty forgiving offenders with whom they had ambivalent relationships, that participants would be more forgiving when they were personally offended compared to when they were a third-party to an offense committed against a friend, and that participants would be more forgiving of a perpetrator when an offense was committed against an ambivalent relation than when the same offense was committed against a positive relation. Strong support was obtained for the first hypothesis, but little support for the second and third hypotheses. The implications of these results are discussed and possible directions for future research are recommended.

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