Jeffrey Vanke poses in his letter ("Kilson Must Tell Us When It Is Time For Forgiveness," February 21) a searching query which if either Vanke or Martin Kilson could provide an intellectually satisfactory answer to, both of us would warrant the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in science and economics. Jeffrey Vanke's searching query is this: When, following purposely cruel and evil violations of one people's humanity by another people (such as the violation of Blacks' humanity by White American slavocracy and the genocidal violation of Jewish humanity by the 20th century German Nazi state), does the complex process of Christian forgiveness of the perpetrators of such evil commence?

As I thought I made clear in my essay ("Gomes' Confederate Memorial Proposal Succeeds in Forgiveness But Fails in Reciprocity," February 12), I don't quite have an answer to this query, though Jeffrey Vanke seems to have read my essay as if I was offering a firm answer. What I was presenting was a way of searching for an answer. For this, to my mind, was the major flaw in Rev. Peter Gomes' formulations: he merely asserts an answer or solution---ex cathedra--without showing us the interplay of moral and operational steps. In Professor Gomes' view, it ought to be self-evident that the time has arrived (more than one century) for lifting the moral burden of blame and responsibility for several centuries of cruel violations of Blacks' humanity.

In opposition to Professor Gomes, I argued that the Christian forgiveness process in the form of a formal Harvard memorialization of White Harvard sons who fought under the flag of the Confederacy to sustain American slavocracy--which is to say, to sustain tht violation of Blacks' humanity--should not commence in our era. And, pointing to the indispensible centrality of the interplay of moral and operational steps to Christian forgiveness, I argued further that if such a forgiveness process should evere commence, it must be preceded by viable evidence of a redeeming process executed by White Southerners in particular and White America in general.

In opposition to my perspective, Jeffrey Vanke accepts no moral responsibility for a viable redeeming process on the part of White Southerners and White America. For Jeffrey Vanke, White Southerners need offer no obligatory evidence (moral and behavioral evidence) that today's White South is worthy of a major Christian forgiveness thrust toward it by Harvard University and by African-Americans. Why? Jeffrey Vanke's reasoning is banal--namely, because the institutionalizing perpetrators of slavocracy and White supremacy are dead. So withholding Christian forgiveness is foul and unfair. For Jeffrey Vanke, it should be as readily forthcoming as the opening of the gate to the MBTA subway with the insertion of a coin in the turnstile....

Indeed, Jeffrey Vanke is even arrogant about his belief that Christian forgiveness should ensue without obligatory evidence that the perpetrators of cruel inhumanity have undertaken a viable redeeming process--an arrogance with a neo-White supremacist tilt to it, I daresay. This arrogance rejects the slightest reflection upon the principle of a reciprocity imperative--a principle Jeffrey Vanke dismisses with a certain sneering and mocking tone no less.

And with regard to Germans' violation of Jews' humanity that I consider analogous to White slavocracy's violation of Blacks' humanity, Jeffery Vanke is equally shallow, though with a pseudo-veneer of reflectiveness. Witness Jeffrey Vanke's comments like--"I am sorry for slavery like I am sorry for the Holocaust (no family connections there)," and like--"...the Holocaust was very foreign to this Southerner [Jeffrey Vanke] who knew no Jews until age 12."

Anyway, certain issues as generic to the character of the human condition as the one Jeffrey Vanke and I are debating--the issue of under what circumstances can perpetrators of massive cruelty and evil toward other human beings be considered morally restored to the humanitarian side of the Christian value system and community--can very well remain issues we disagree on. Such serious and awesome intellectual matters do not require a final answer, Mr. Vanke. I do, however, grant Jeffrey Vanke his morally vacuous formulation--his intellectual right to it--when he observes that "I do have a choice....There is no 'reciprocity imperative,' at least concerning slavery." To each his own...Mr. Vanke. --Martin Kilson   Thomson Professor of Government