Kerux: a portfolio of Calvin Theological Seminary - Volume 41.3 - 13 October 2006

Miroslav Volf on violence, memory, and reconciliation

by Daniel Hoard, Staff Writer

Is it wrong to have a theological hero?

About three years ago, I read the book Exclusion and Embrace by Miraslov Volf, Henry B. Wright professor of theology at Yale University Divinity School and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. All I could say was "wow." Volf was writing something that is soaked by the words of Jesus and layered with a dialogue of postmodern philosophy.

Needless to say, since that time, Volf has become a hero of mine. The core content of his writing revolves around the concepts of memory, violence and reconciliation. Volf, being from the former Yugoslavia, is versed in the tragedies that a violent world brings as well as the need for reconciliation that is presented in the Gospel.

Volf gave an address last Friday at the annual Christianity and Culture Conference at Michigan State University in Lansing. It was an exciting opportunity hear a lecture from my latest hero, and I didn't leave disappointed.

In his lecture, Volf asked the question, "How do we remember well as followers of Jesus Christ?" Do we remember in order to deepen the conflict, or do we just know the events and persons involved? Volf's answer may not have been something we all want to hear, but it is something we all need to hear.

In his lecture, Volf described the "memory of exodus and the passion of Jesus Christ as lenses through which all things should be remembered." Within a memory of the exodus, Volf spoke of a failed point in Israel's history. When God decreed the practice of the year of release, the Israelites were to remember their oppression in Egypt. Furthermore, Volf said, the Israelites were to model what God had done for them as liberators to the world, and were not to model the behavior of the Egyptian rulers. But Israel refused their own identity; they betrayed God and themselves by not living out the identity God had made for them. When they should have been a liberator as God was to them, they instead took on the identity of persecutors as the rulers of Egypt. "It's not enough to remember they were slaves," Volf said. "It must include God's redeeming works."

Volf said that we will treat others differently because of our own suffering. Memory can work in various ways, Volf said; we draw many of life's lessons from memory. He said that God's command to be just and merciful overrides the lessons of memory, which treat others poorly. Or, Volf asked, is it true that the only the reality concerning justice is the assumption of Nietzsche and Martin Luther that says to live is to be unjust?

He then moved on to the Passion, where he described a rabbinical ideal that sets up a need for the Passion to take place because God had to forgive the world before creating it, and then along comes Jesus, the Son of God. The common element here is that the Passion leads to the Lord's Supper and then we are ushered into the New Exodus.

In unpacking the importance of memory and the passion, Volf quoted from the works of Stan Metz, who was a student of Karl Rahner. Metz argued that the memory of Jesus Christ is at the center of the Passion. It must be understood that when Christ suffers, He is also suffering with those who suffer; this community of suffering necessitates a form of solidarity. More than just having solidarity in suffering, this means having solidarity in vindication and in resurrection. In this way, Metz said, we can safely declare that what will happen to Jesus will happen to us.

Metz also asserted the idea of future memory; namely, that there is a future memory of the passion, an anticipatory passion. This future memory embodies the connection between exodus and passion, where the people of God remember in hope.

Volf began to ask scandalous questions. He asked if Metz goes far enough with regard to liberation. Does this point to Christ within the journey, suffering, resurrection, and glory of God? Volf asserted that there is a connection between enmity and reconciliation. The connection is that love and the Gospel are brought both to victims and to their perpetrators. This is a scandalous assertion for us to accept.

Volf said he thinks the Apostle Paul to be one of the clearest examples of this need. Drawing from Paul, we see that perpetrators of violence need the opportunity for healing in reconciliation, because Paul himself was a perpetrator. It follows then that the Passion should be for all people, whereas the exodus was only for Israel.

But given this, how are the wrongdoers forgiven? Is it possible that through the practice of memory, the past colonizes the future? The past does not colonize the person who is going through suffering to continually suffer, but rather places them in a constructive future based in the suffering. This colonization should be refuted when God says we are the resurrected children of God who are in need of forgiveness.

The very meaning of a redeemed life takes place in the Passion, and this in turn helps victims and wrong doers reconcile in forgiveness and genuine repentance. All of this becomes real when we remember that repentance has already happened through reconciliation. We begin to remember ourselves through what we will be inside of reconciliation.

Volf forthcoming book, appropriately titled The End of Memory, discusses all of this at greater length. Volf imagines a world where the Gospel brings healing to relationships between God and His people, and where His people are restored through the powerful administration of the Good News.

Although some of what Volf says comes across as scandalous, it is just as scandalous as the message of Jesus that was preached by Christ and His disciples. It is a message that more of us on an intellectual and spiritual field need to process and be renewed by.

What if the Church, like Israel, fell from the identity that God had set up for them to be in relation to Himself and the world? Would we not be doing violence against God and ourselves?