Divine Forgiveness and Interpersonal Forgiveness: Which Comes First?

Do people forgive others' transgressions because they have experienced God's forgiveness or do they engage in earthly forgiveness in the service of seeking God's forgiveness? Absent systematic research on divine forgiveness, two longitudinal studies were conducted to investigate the potential direction of effects between interpersonal and divine forgiveness. Study 1 (n = 447) found that divine forgiveness predicted interpersonal forgiveness 7 weeks later, but the reverse was not the case. These findings could not be attributed to religiosity which was used as a covariate. Study 2 (n = 256) probed a potential boundary condition for these findings by using a longer interval (14 weeks) and examined whether relations between the types of forgiveness reflected socially desirable responding. The same pattern of results was replicated; divine forgiveness predicted later interpersonal forgiveness but not vice versa. Factors known to increase interpersonal forgiveness are identified that may account for the temporal precedence of divine forgiveness.