expiation of guilt

"Expiation of guilt or some such concept.

If, as happens to us all, I had eaten badly, the act of recording my misdeeds was an expiation of guilt, as well as a clear message to retrench the next day.

The resulting "Ordinary People"-style expiation of guilt is so affectingly performed by Ms. Forbes and Mr. Thomas that the rest of the story, a blunt and rather prosaic Christian allegory, feels like a redundant epilogue.

He met the strangely portentous gazes of the statues in the shadowy niches along the walls-Saints, Apostles, the Blessed Virgin, Christ-and he realized that the primary purpose of religion was the expiation of guilt, to provide people with forgiveness for being less than they were meant to be.

Some believe that the Old and New Testaments have differing opinions on the expiation of guilt because the Old Testaments were subject to the Age of Law and the New Testaments replace the Age of Law with the now current Age of Grace.