The article reads Genesis 2.7 and 3.19 and Romans 5.12 with an integral ecological perspective informed by indigenous wisdom to suggest that the association of humankind with dust can be a positive theological point of reflection.
This article examines the conditional and unconditional models of forgiveness in Christian ethics, suggesting that the binary rests on an inadequate modern gift theory. The unconditional model, shaped by modern notions of the ‘pure gift’, risks overlooking the moral necessity of repentance, while the conditional model risks reducing forgiveness to a transaction. Drawing on Douglas Davies’s theological application of the inalienable gift and John Barclay’s Pauline theology of the unconditioned (but not unconditional) gift of grace, the article proposes understanding Christian forgiveness as an unconditioned inalienable gift . This framework preserves forgiveness’s priority while affirming its relational demands, offering a nuanced, pastorally responsible alternative to the unconditional–conditional binary.
