First off, I appreciate your bringing a Jewish POV to the discussion.

For my part, my Catholic example was overly simplistic – I didn’t make any distinction between mundane transgressions (e.g. “I deleted my brother’s Call of Duty save on purpose.”) and very serious ones (e.g. “I killed three people while robbing a pharmacy.”), and if we’re talking in the general sense we need to be mindful of that.

However, the wording that James used in framing his question and the followups suggested (to me) a direct linkage between forgiveness in the divine sense and societal debt, which is why I tried to point out that they’re two distinctly different concepts that don’t necessarily track with each other. (I don’t want to read too much intent into James’ wording, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he wasn’t trying to draw out discussion along those lines.)

Turning to the Force. I’m sure we could discuss the nature of the Force for months, and at the end of that time we would have accomplished little save having discussed the nature of a not-very-well-thought-out fictional concept. My take from the films was that the Force was sort of like fire – you can heat a room with it, or you can burn down the house. People on the light side used it certain ways, and people on the dark side used it in different, generally more sinister ways. I see your point, though, and I’m certainly willing to acknowledge that if I looked at the broader canon my opinion might change significantly.

Your last comment is a very intriguing one. The fact that he appears at the end of RoTJ as a Force Ghost suggests that he’s “right” with the light side, whatever that happens to mean. (ObPedanticPoint – Luke presumably had no clue what a pre-Vader Anakin looked like, so replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen should have led to a WTF? look from Luke.) One could reasonably claim that Vader’s actions were calculated to position his son for the role of Emperor should the final battle go to the Empire. I’m gonna stick with my “Force Ghost implies repentance” approach for the subject at hand.

Note that James’ original phrasing of the question doesn’t presuppose that Vader actually repents – rather it asks if he repents then should he be forgiven?

I’m not sure that the Force is completely neutral. It seems that there really is a dark side and a light side and how they are used has direct moral components. The dark side allows one to use force lightning for example, but the light side does not. (And I know you don’t want to go farther afield in the canon but this idea is explicitly confirmed in some of the games which have specific powers which are either light or dark). In that regard, there is a moral component, it just has the moral element somehow wrapped up in the physical laws of the universe. In that regard, it is similar to how “good” and “evil” are quasi-physical concepts in most versions of D&D. There is a problem that such views of morality are at best ridiculous and naive, but that doesn’t make the Force not have a moral component.

I have a more serious problem: I am utterly unconvinced that Darth Vader repented in any meaningful way. As far as we can tell, his final actions were for one purpose: To protect his biological offspring. We haven’t seem him with real regret, or try to save someone whom he doesn’t have an emotional connection to. He’s just acting out of his Darwininan impulses. I don’t see that as reasonable repentance. Indeed, if we include the prequels as canon as you suggest then the situation is even worse: He fell to the dark side primarily because he put his own emotional connections over the good of the whole. His final actions aren’t any different: He still lets his personal loyalty to family members dictate his actions.