Since at least Kant, Western theology has been hesitant to talk about salvation in terms of payment, debt, restitution. This helps create and reinforce the separation of public and private, of inner and outer: “We have divided the theological confession of sin. We have invented two parallel worlds, one in which the language of guilt describes our own private emotional state, the other in which the language of credit and debt describes the external world but is not thought to impact our own inner being.”

“Forgive our debts” is a continual assault on this illegitimate dualism, an act of confession that not only seeks reconciliation of God and man but of public and private, inner and outer.