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Miroslav Volf: Religious commitment that promotes peace, not violence
On September 11, 2001, Yale theology prof Miroslav Volf addressed an annual international prayer breakfast at the United Nations. His theme was reconciliation, particularly how the heart of Christian tradition offers ways to promote peace in the world.
“I pray that God will grant you wisdom to find creative ways to practice embrace in our world shot through with violence,” he concluded—unaware that just blocks away, the Twin Towers had imploded.
You might dismiss Miroslav Volf as an ivory tower theologian who doesn’t understand the relationship between religion and violence. In fact, he often says, he writes to make sense of his own experiences with war, injustice, and suffering.
Volf is convinced that the way to cure religiously induced and rationalized violence isn’t to minimize religious commitment. The cure is for Christians to reclaim the faith’s original content—grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, justice—and live as agents of peace.
Living in war zones
Volf grew up in the former Yugoslavia. His dad was tortured in a concentration camp and became a pacifist preacher in the Holiness Pentecostal tradition. Identifying themselves as forgiven children of God made the Volfs seem alien among most neighbors, who saw themselves as communist or Croatian Catholic or Bosnian Muslim or Serbian Orthodox.
Miroslav Volf was a baby when a soldier playfully put his older brother, Daniel Volf, on a horse-drawn bread wagon. The five-year-old leaned sideways…and his head was crushed between a gate post and the wagon.
Miroslav recalls feeling humiliated when communist teachers asked about his dad’s occupation. In college, communists in one town beat up Volf and others for playing in a Christian band. His masters degree from Fuller Theological Seminary in California made him suspect when Volf was conscripted into Yugoslavian military service.
“My room was bugged. For three months, all my conversations were recorded. Then for another three or four months, I was interrogated and threatened that I would be sent to prison for eight years because I had said this or that against our great communist country,” he says.
When ethnic and religious tensions exploded into war, Volf was teaching at Evangelical Theological Seminary in his Croatian hometown, Osijek. The entire seminary had to go into exile. Powerless, they watched as TV broadcasts showed their homes being destroyed.
Embracing the other
Volf wrote Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation after lecturing in Germany at a conference about Christianity and social upheaval.
“It was the winter of 1993. For months now the notorious Serbian fighters calledcetnik had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities. I had just argued that we ought to embrace our enemies as God has embraced us in Christ,” Volf writes in the preface to Exclusion and Embrace.
After the lecture, Jürgen Moltmann, who had supervised Volf’s dissertation, asked, “But can you embrace a cetnik?”
Volf was taken aback. Where could he find the strength to embrace someone who, to a Croat (or Bosnian Muslim) was the ultimate evil “other”? He writes that he wanted to answer, “No, I cannot—but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”
His book explains that the ultimate goal of human life is a community of love in the embrace of the Triune God. Just as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have distinct identities yet live in unity, people who become new creations in Christ retain their identities—and make space for others.
Too often, though, in “keeping the faith pure,” religious bodies exclude people. Jesus condemned Pharisees who falsely named certain behaviors “sinful” or “unclean” so they could dominate and exclude “in the name of God whose love knows no boundaries.”
Volf says genuine Christian reflection on social issues starts with Christ’s death, which he explains as the narrative of the love of the divine Trinity turned toward a sinful world. This love embraces justice for the oppressed and the Crucified’s gift of forgiveness to perpetrators.
He admits it’s often hard for him to reach out to Serbs, just as a Serb friend grieves over crimes committed against her people. Volf says that no matter what someone has done to you, you must be willing to begin the process of making your enemy your friend.
Practicing what he calls “double vision” lets you see a situation through your eyes…and through your enemy’s eyes. For true reconciliation, though, you’ll have to name the way your enemy injured you, your enemy must acknowledge that injury—and then you agree not to count it against him or her.
Volf says that victims may need to repent of not following Christ’s command to love and pray for their persecutors. Else they may themselves become perpetrators.
Forgiving as God does
In Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, Volf explains, “Just as the Three are the One because they mutually indwell each other, so we are one with the Divine One because Christ lives in us and through us.”
But while “the Three reciprocally give and receive as equals, we only receive from God; we are given our very being, are freed from sin, and will be glorified.” Faith, gratitude, availability, and participation are ways of loving God—not gifts to God. We can, however, give to others because “enabled by the Spirit, we have embraced the gift-giving Christ.”
Christ came not just to reconcile individuals with God but also to break down barriers, work through our different gifts, and build us into one body, the church. Our giving the gift of forgiveness is excruciatingly difficult yet essential for us to live humanly in this world.
When young Daniel Volf died, his parents chose not to press charges. The soldier felt so guilty that he was hospitalized. “My father, with a wound in his heart that would never quite heal, went to visit him, to comfort the one whose carelessness had caused him so much grief, and tell him that my mother and he forgave him,” Volf writes. After the soldier’s discharge, Dragutin Volf traveled two days to talk with him about God’s love and forgiveness.
Decades later, Miroslav Volf learned another part of the tragedy. Daniel wandered down to the soldiers because the nanny—a saintly Christian woman whom Miroslav adored till her death—hadn’t kept close tabs on Daniel. By not blaming her in front of their remaining two children, the Volfs didn’t taint their youngsters’ love for “Aunt Milica.”
It’s hard to forgive someone who’s unintentionally wounded you. It’s even harder when hate fueled the wrong. Volf tells of Ivo Markovic, a Francisan monk from Bosnia. Bosnian Muslims massacred 21 men from Šusanj, his home village. Nine of those men, all feeble seniors, were his relatives.
Three years later, Father Markovic visited Šusanj. A fierce rifle-toting Muslim woman had commandeered his brother’s house. “Go away, or I’ll shoot,” she warned. Gently but firmly, the monk replied, “No, you won’t shoot me. You’ll make a cup of coffee for me.”
Volf writes, “And they, deadly enemies, began to talk as they partook in the ancient ritual of hospitality: drinking coffee together. She told him of her loneliness, of the home she had lost, of the son who never returned from the battlefield…. He, the victim, came to her asking for her hospitality in his brother’s home, which she unrightly possessed.”
Father Markovic showed willingness to begin the process of embracing the enemy. Whether the two would ever navigate “the difficult terrain of forgiveness,” Volf took hope in the monk’s ability to step out of himself and attend to the needs of “the other.”
He says expecting too much too soon gets in the way of what’s possible. Even small steps toward reconciliation make a difference, especially in relations between nations.
How Ordinary Christians Practice Forgiveness and Reconciliation
Reading and discussing Miroslav Volf’s books, especially Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation and Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, sparks soul searching and debate.
You might wonder how a reconciliation focus would change council meetings or congregational conflicts. How would Volf’s ideas about perpetrators and victims affect corporate worship prayers of confession or for forgiveness?
And what about Volf’s contention that criminal justice systems should pass judgment by naming the crime…yet incarcerate only to protect the innocent population or reform the criminal, not to punish and exact retribution? After all, Volf explains, Christ died for every human and paid the penalty of sin for each one.
Read on to see how Christians around the world are trying to follow the path of peace.
The fruit of forgiveness
Psychologists say that forgiving releases you from the wrongdoer’s power over you. But forgiveness goes beyond yourself, says Tom E. Ward Jr., a teaching pastor at Eastpoint Community Church in Newark, Delaware.
He describes Free of Charge as “the catalyst the Spirit of God used to shatter intense interpersonal hostility and soul sickening resentment.” After more than six months of unforgiveness, he “experienced a deep and painful awareness that God was not with me in the same way he had been with me before.
“The hardness of my heart repelled God’s gracious advances. My soul dried up. My spirit soured. God fell silent. I was lost. And I knew why,” Ward says.
He read Free of Charge during Lent, attracted by this back cover caption: “We are at our human best when we give and forgive.”
Ward knew that not being at his human best was a problem affecting others. “I have been created to call people to become their human best in Jesus Christ. The unforgiveness that dominated my interior life was compromising my vocation as a minister of the gospel. It was as if nothing I was saying or doing was true because of the darkness that enveloped me.
“Volf’s biblically-saturated prose pierced the hard shell that had formed around my cold heart. I cried out to God for help. To forgive the person who had trampled me became essential in a way that I had never before known or experienced,” he says.
Ward has since given away copies of the book, recommended it in sermons, and shared his experience with people in similar situations.
Being willing
In Exclusion and Embrace, Volf gives many examples of how being willing to embrace the enemy is often the only thing that starts victim and perpetrator on the road to justice and reconciliation.
Through The Chosun Journal, Edward Kim raises awareness and funds to advocate for human rights in North Korea. He’s immersed in justice struggles, yet, as a U.S. citizen, hasn’t experienced the abuses that North Koreans have.
“Only victims can forgive. I haven’t experienced the abuse that North Koreans have. Christ’s example and command to preach on forgiveness and reconciliation forces me to choose whether I will try and be faithful in this task.
“It’s difficult preaching forgiveness to victims who have been terribly and unjustly hurt, without sounding unsympathetic or unjust myself. It’s difficult believing that being faithful to Christ’s word is necessary and enough,” he says.
Kim has a law degree and is completing an MDiv. He plans to get a PhD in systematic theology and then “train and raise up ministers of the Word in mission countries.”
Tom LoVan gets to know victims and perpetrators as he ministers among many Southeast Asian groups. “To Southeast Asians who grew up with animism or Theravada Buddhism, forgiveness is a new idea. With a lot of Southeast Asians, if you do wrong to others, they never forgive you. But when people become Christians and learn how to forgive others, it feels good. They find peace in themselves,” says LoVan, associate pastor of Morningside Lutheran Church in Sioux City, Iowa.
He says that the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killed many people. Some have no remorse. Low-level soldiers who followed orders are more likely to express guilt. “Many Khmer Rouge have become Christians. They say, ‘Other people do not forgive us. Christians will forgive us,’ ” LoVan says.
Of course, it takes time for victims of Pol Pot’s regime to decide whether and how to forgive and whether to trust Khmer Rouge conversions.
Yet Miroslav Volf, writing in Christian Century, says that Cambodian victims’ willingness to forgive is an amazing and underreported story of grace.
Whose domain?
Volf never says that offenses should be ignored or disregarded. He says that we should blame, by which he means naming and explaining the offense. But we should not retaliate with violence.
The reason for nonretaliation is not “because God doesn’t judge.” Only someone living in a “quiet suburban home” could give such toothless advice to victims. Instead Volf proposes this thesis in Exclusion and Embrace: “The practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance.”
In a recent World Magazine interview, he explained, “Love without wrath on account of harm inflicted on the beloved is mere sentimentality. That’s why God is wrathful in the face of human sin.”
And in his Free of Charge postlude, basically a conversation with a skeptic friend, Volf states, “I believe that you can protest against the evil in the world only if you believe in a good God. Otherwise the protest doesn’t make sense. I protest with God against God.”
In the spirit of Volf’s plea for more dialogue among people who differ, John T. Henry agrees with Volf that “nonviolent Christian response, ‘the costly acts of nonretaliation,’ is the ‘seed from which the fragile fruit of Pentecostal peace grows.’ ”
However, Henry asks whether Volf has “extended the domain of the Church and Christian witness to that of the domain of civil societies.” His question rises from visiting dozens of countries with Youth with a Missionand studying global leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Henry notes that the Church of the East grew rapidly before the seventh century, pioneering the first university prototype (in Iraq) and first school of medicine and theology (in what is now southern Turkey). Its influence extended to central Asia. But, Henry says, practicing “the nonviolence that Volf prescribes for us today…resulted in the virtual elimination of Christian witness in the East as the violent practices of Islam spread across Asia and North Africa.”
By contrast, eighth-century Christians in France held firm against the violent expansion of Islam, “meeting them on the battlefield, sword against sword.”
When “the other” won’t reconcile
Mike Blyth, a missionary doctor at Evangel Hospital in Jos, Nigeria, recalls reading Exclusion and Embraceand thinking, “This is fantastic, a strong case for forgiveness and reconciliation by someone who has lived with the problem firsthand.”
Christian-Muslim tensions have increased since Blyth came to Nigeria 15 years ago. He’s keenly aware of a September 2001 event that most Americans missed. “On September 9, 2001, major violence broke out in Jos between Christians and Muslims. The rioting and killing continued for six days until the military restored order. Nearly everyone in Jos was directly affected and knew someone who had been injured or killed,” he says.
The September riots shocked and saddened missionaries. Blyth knew of several instances where Muslims had protected Christians or vice versa. Yet he reports that the churches, in general, “took a militant posture and did nothing to condemn violence. On a group level, distrust is high. There is little desire on either side for reconciliation or even (in the case of Christians) evangelism of Muslims; they are indeed ‘the other.’ ”
Blyth dreams of editing Exclusion and Embrace into a nonacademic version more accessible to those training to be pastors. Meanwhile, September 2001 forced Nigerians and U.S. citizens to reconsider balancing defense and reconciliation.
“The question is acute where ‘the other’ continues to kill and destroy or where civil order has deteriorated and there is no longer a credible authority to enforce law,” Blyth says. As far as he knows, only the local Mennonite Central Committee is nudging pastors to talk about peace with Muslims
Learn More
“We welcome grant applications that apply these ideas to worship and congregational life,” says Betty Grit, who manages the Worship Renewal Grants Program at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.
Watch this 3-minute clip of Miroslav Volf on how his parents forgave those responsible for their son Daniel’s death.
Volf’s 9/11 address on Christianity’s peace promoting potential is further developed in extensive Religion & Ethics and Speaking of Faith interviews. His essay “Christianity and Violence” notes that the media would rather cover violence by religious adherents than peacemaking by faithful people such as Katarina Kruhonja, a Croatian Catholic doctor who won an Alternative Nobel Peace Prize.
Hear Volf speak on giving and forgiving at The January Series, January 18, 2007, at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His earlier Calvin speeches on truth, memory, and healing are archived here.
Volf urges Christians to become “a counterculture for the common good,” which includes learning from other faiths and rethinking criminal justice and incarceration.
Download free discussion guides on praying for mercy and justice or starting interfaith dialogue. Get tips on including confession in worship and preaching forgiveness.
Watch and discuss a Mennonite Central Committee DVD about Africans who decided to make peace across tribal and religious lines. MCC peacemaking in Nigeria includes diffusing Christian-Muslim violence in Josafter published cartoons of Muhammed, the Islamic prophet, inflamed tempers.
Browse related stories about dialogue across denominations, hope for a new heaven and earth, Laotian churches, peace and justice in worship, and prison congregations.
Start a Discussion
Talk about reconciliation and justice.
- How might praying and preaching about giving and forgiving heal relationships in your congregation, community, or denomination? Who must you—as an individual, committee, or congregation—talk with next?
- If your church has a social justice committee, what issues do you focus on? How do these emphases fit within Volf’s categories of exclusion and embrace?
- What do you think of Volf’s ideas that Christians should engage in interfaith dialogue or work toward a criminal justice system that focuses on restorative justice instead of retribution?
- May Christians ever challenge government policies? If so, which issues do your church members protest? How do these concerns fit within Volf’s framework of using double vision to make space for and attend to the needs of “the other”?
Share Your Wisdom
What is the best way you’ve found to address and talk about reconciliation and justice?
- Did you join with people from another culture or faith to discuss each other’s ultimate hopes and purposes in life? If so, did you find a book, film, or other resource that helped break down barriers and build trust?
- Have you reached out to people in your church or community who’ve been deeply impacted by violence? What resulted from your willingness to hear their stories and pray with them?
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