Review:
Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace.
Interview by Brad Jersak
Dr. Miroslav Volf is considered by some, including this writer,
to be among the top handful of living theologians: Jurgen Moltmann,
Josef Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Archbishop of Cantebury Rowan Williams,
and perhaps your favorite Eastern Orthodox teacher (mine is Archbishop
Lazar Puhalo) are among his peers.
Dr. Volf has written the [Anglican] Archbishop’s official 2006 Lent Book, entitled Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace.
The book is a thorough and accessible treatment of Christian grace,
specifically the theology and practice of giving as God gives and
forgiving as God forgives. In the former case, Volf steers us through
the pitfalls of treating God as either a negotiator or a Santa Claus.
In the latter, he helps us avoid treating God as either an implacable
judge or doting grandparent. Rather, we find that God is a giver whose
generosity obligates us to give, and a forgiver whose kindness we are
to extend to the world.
What impresses me, but no longer
surprises me, is that Volf’s theology is both grounded and proven by
the reality of human experience. Just as his book Exclusion and Embrace withstood the furnace of the war in the former Yugoslavia, Free of Charge
shows us what giving and forgiving look like in the real world. How
does giving work when a single mother must give her child up for
adoption to a barren couple? Does forgiveness really work when one’s
toddler is killed through the neglect or carelessness of another? Dr.
Volf tackles these difficult questions not as an ivory tower theorist
but through dramatic firsthand testimony. The result reminds me of
Psalm 12:6 where we read that the Word of the Lord is pure, like silver
refined in the fire seven times. In Free of Charge, I believe
we’ve heard a true word from the Lord. As has happened before with
Volf, I felt like I might be reading the last word on the topic, but of
course, I’m sure this book will serve to stimulate further creative
reflection.
On the other hand, what really surprised me was the author’s
use of Martin Luther in presenting his case. Of course, Luther is most
famous for his revelation of God’s grace, but I must confess to being
personally turned off by Luther due to his part in creating schism, his
vicious treatment of the Anabaptists, and so on. Yet Dr. Volf redeems
some of Luther’s best work for the broader church. He seemed to be
leading me to forgive Luther for the sake of the very grace that Luther
had rediscovered. In any case, we’re presented with some real gems from
Luther’s works along the way, which is much appreciated. Recently, I
had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Volf. Here follows the
conversation:
Clarion:
I was introduced to you when a mentor of mine rebuked me for being
involved in a journal on justice and spirituality without having first
read Exclusion and Embrace. Along those lines, I’d like to ask you for a basic definition of justice.
Dr. Volf: Justice is a tough concept to define, because
it depends on many factors. One can almost write a history of justice.
I work in the book Free of Charge with, roughly, a “balancing
scales” account of justice, which says, if I borrow $50 from you, I owe
you $50, and perhaps a little more since I borrowed it. So the idea of
rough equivalence describes this concept of justice.
Clarion: In our journal, we explore the relationship of spirituality and justice. Could you speak to that a bit?
Dr. Volf: My sense is that your journal operates with
a broader concept of justice that is about righteousness, the right
kind of living. That broader notion of justice is important too, even
if I don’t think that one should disregard the narrower definition,
which is properly part of the broader concept of justice. For this
broader concept of justice—of living rightly—obviously the question of
spirituality is essential. I would roughly describe spirituality as a
discipline that helps us be in sync with who God is in order to act in
sync with how God acts. This is essential to the work of justice. It
even includes the notion of an intellectual spiritual struggle against
intellectually justifying to one’s self a way of life that is not
properly, Christianly responsible. That intellectual struggle is an
important aspect of spiritual nourishment and support for the life of
justice and living rightly in the world.
Clarion: Free of Charge was such a thorough work on
giving and forgiving that I found you anticipated many of my questions.
It did get me thinking about how to bring grace and forgiveness from
the personal level to the level of foreign policy. You’ve rooted many
of your thoughts in your life experience of former Yugoslavia,
including the call to reconciliation. How do you see forgiveness,
reconciliation, and peacemaking work at the national and international
level? I’m thinking of places like the Middle East as well.
Dr. Volf: On one level, it begins with an internal
purity of one’s own soul as a social agent in all kinds of social
relationships in which we find ourselves, whether they’re personal or
political. The purity, the rightness, and the righteousness of one’s
own soul is very significant for the question of political justice and
forgiveness at the political level. Imagine a situation where a
political leader who is far-sighted and wants to push for an agenda of
forgiveness. If, in the culture as a whole, forgiveness is a foreign
concept, he will be like a general whose soldiers do not obey. There
has to be a resonance in the culture for the right political
initiatives to succeed.
That being said, that is more emphasizing the purity of the
soul and the significance of the status of forgiveness among individual
actors. Now the question of forgiveness is also significant politically
at the level of relationship between the state and other states or
between the state and its individual citizens. But then at the level of
the state, there are only analogues to the processes of forgiveness,
which have their most proper home in the life of individuals. So
something analogous to forgiveness can happen at the level of
relationship between states and the relationship between ethnic groups
and so forth. We have to keep in mind both the differences (that there
are collectivities that are acting) and similarities in the process.
The way I think about it is the way Karl Barth roughly
described it: concentric circles with the Lordship of Christ in the
center, Christian community in the next circle, and civic community in
the broader circle. There is a relationship of analogy, not of
identity, in terms of how these various spheres relate to one another.
The relationship between Christ and the individual is slightly
different from the relationship of individuals within the church or
between the church and the civic community… and yet there are
analogues and similarities between them and across these three.
Clarion: With your use of Luther in the book, I suppose you
will get a response from his fans and detractors. I confess to being
personally jaded because of Luther’s role in dividing the Western
church and in his treatment of the Anabaptists. Yet it felt like you
were retrieving and redeeming Luther for the broader Body of Christ—and
calling me to forgive him using his own terms.
Dr. Volf: Yes, Luther is one of those heroes with
many warts. His treatment of Jews is infamous—it was terrible. And his
relationship to the larger catholic church was also problematic. I
affirm Luther in a certain segment of his thought. But when you look at
that segment of his thought—which I think is the throbbing heart of his
thought—you discover an extraordinary spiritual sensitivity and an
extraordinarily reflective mind about the character of the Christian
faith. The heart of Luther’s thought is as good as anything in
the Christian tradition.
Clarion: Reading your atonement theology really helped me.
Having done my thesis on penal substitution and subsequently having a
change of heart through dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox tradition, I
found your emphasis on union very helpful. For example, God was in
Christ, reconciling the world to himself versus the Father punishing
the Son. Also, we died with Christ rather than he died instead of us.
Can you say more about union?
Dr. Volf: Yes. To me, the whole idea of union with
Christ is a central one. I get it from Luther, and more importantly, I
get it from Paul. Union is central to Paul and central to Luther,
especially if you read his commentary on Galatians. You’ll find it all
over the place in that fine text. The Finnish Luther interpreters have
highlighted this. I find their work most interesting even if it is, in
some regards, partially one-sided. If we don’t think simply of Christ
as somehow outside of us, but rather, Christ dwelling in us or us being
taken up in Christ, so that the relationship with God is a much more
intimate one, I think we have a much richer picture of what it means to
be a Christian. Indeed, I think possibilities open up for us to think
in plausible ways about giving a gift, otherwise a theoretically
difficult concept even if it seems to be an ubiquitous practice. So the
whole quandary about how it is possible to give a gift becomes resolved
for me on account of God’s presence in us and God’s giving through us.
Dr. Miroslav Volf teaches theology at Yale.