Abstract
Forgiveness has been understood as a coping strategy against a transgression, according to the proposals of forgiveness based on the theory of stress and coping of Lazarus and Folkman (1986). A systematic review of the literature was performed to give an account of the conceptual and theoretical development of this perspective of forgiveness. The forgiveness complexity model, which is based on coping complexity model of Hudson (2016), is presented as a way of explaining forgiveness and unforgiveness considering the aspects that precede it, the processes involved, the influencing factors, and the effects at the individual, interpersonal and social levels.
