Redeeming the past

I take up Richard Swinburne's point, in his Responsibility and Atonement , Ch. 5, that although the past cannot be changed, wrongdoers may change its significance by ‘disowning’ their actions through atonement, just as their victims may do so through forgiveness. I argue that the point can and should be pressed much more strongly than it is by Swinburne within the terms of his own discussion; and that it has a much wider significance, transcending that discussion, for there is a constant interplay between events, human actions, and our retrospective assessment of the past. Finally, I look tentatively at the question in an eschatological perspective.