In this work, Volf continues the project begun in “Exclusion and Embrace” and “Free of Charge,” which is to offer a theological account of the idea of Christian forgiveness as it relates to contemporary culture. His specific goal in this work is to discuss the place of the memory of wrongs in the context of forgiveness. Perhaps the simplest way to summarize the argument is as an explanation and defense of the old saw, “forgive and forget,” as an accurate picture of Christian forgiveness.
For Volf, the problem to be solved is the fact that, if it means anything, the Cross of Christ means that BOTH victims AND perpetrators can find forgiveness and reconciliation…not just with God, but with one another. This, of course, requires that the wrongs that exist between them must be “done away with.” Volf sets himself to explain, in detail, how this process works in a way that does not violate morality (by gutting the action of its “wrongness”) or justice (by letting the action go unpunished). As one would expect, theologically and ethically, this is a rather involved question.
One move that Volf makes at the beginning is to ground the whole discussion in traumatizing experience he had in the Yugoslavian army of being interrogated by a captain in the security service (known throughout the book as “Captain G”) for anti-Communist sympathies. The accusations were eventually dropped, but the wounds from that experience remained. This book, then, is not some sterile “thought experiment” but a sort of testimony to the way in which Volf has worked through his own status as victim to come to forgive and reconcile with his victimizer. Volf’s honesty about his own struggles provides the work some very necessary “groundedness” to make the discussion relatable and the argument compelling.
Two interrelated points about forgiveness/reconciliation seem to ground the entire work:
1) That forgiveness requires, first of all, full admission of the wrong action on the part of the perpetrator. “Forgive & forget” is often a code-phrase for repression of painful memories which is the precise OPPOSITE of what Christian forgiveness requires. For forgiveness and reconciliation to occur, evil must be fully exposed to light.
2) That forgiveness is a lengthy process that cannot be fully completed until the Final Reconciliation (Volf’s term for the end of human history that encompasses both the “Last Judgment” so popular in Christian eschatology and Volf’s proposed “Final Embrace”).
Within that broad framework, Volf makes a number of other significant points about the forgotten aspects of forgiveness such as, for example, the victim’s tendency to elide their own shortcomings/wrongdoings in their attempt to vilify the perpetrator or the perpetrator’s tendency to avoid confessing the evil of their actions by contextualization. All in all, Volf demonstrates the multitude of ways in which human sinfulness can “derail” the conciliatory process and how the Cross of Christ, when fully understood disallows these shortcuts.
There were a couple elements that caught me by surprise. One was Volf’s approach to the question of “universalism.” Fair warning: there’s a better than fair chance Volf is a universalist. But he attempts to artfully dodge the question by referencing Hans Urs von Balthasar’s “Dare We Hope that All Men Be Saved?” I could wish he would have staked out that ground more clearly, even if, in the end, I would have been forced to disagree with his conclusion. Another surprise was the way in which he demonstrated how the contemporary focus on the need for permanence of memory related to Modernity’s “anthropological” shift. In brief: if identity is found “within” (provided by an individualized sense of purpose) rather than “without” (provided by the communities with which one is associated), then memory becomes identity’s essence—to forget a wrong, then, is to become a “shrunken self” (Volf’s phrase). But the claim of Christianity is that our identity is not found within US but within CHRIST…which is what makes it possible to forgive—and ultimately forget—evils and wrongs.
Volf, as always is remarkably clear, remarkably well- and widely-read, and remarkably practical while not sacrificing theological depth or logical rigor. It is a work both inspiring and convicting, challenging us with a grand vision of the hope of reconciliation that must once again grasp our hearts, if we are to truly see the coming of God’s Kingdom in this broken and violent world. ( )