ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by explaining that African theories of reconciliation tend to reject the idea that justice includes punishment, and instead tend to favour public disavowals and apologies. With Metz, it suggests that while these are indeed required in order to undertake reconciliation, so too is a constructive punishment that compensates the victim and reforms the character of the wrongdoer. This idea fits with Metz’s Moral Relational Theory in focusing on respecting our capacity to engage in friendliness. Not only do these ideas have an African pedigree, but they serve as a foundation for explaining why the Relational Theory of the Atonement plausibly includes punishment. Finally, though forgiveness might not be a necessary condition for reconciliation, an ideal form of it would indeed include forgiveness. Since the Atonement is ideal, it does not need to adjudicate the debate over whether forgiveness and reconciliation are entirely distinct concepts or depend upon each other or that one is a subspecies of the other, etc. It successfully shows how constructive punishment can be part of the Relational Theory of the Atonement. Whether this punishment can plausibly be construed as constructive is a question to be taken up later.
