Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

by Miroslav Volf

Again, forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. Forgiveness is no mere discharge of a victim’s angry resentment and no mere assuaging of a perpetrator’s remorseful anguish, one that demands no change of the perpetrator and no righting of wrongs. On the contrary: every act of forgiveness enthrones justice; it draws attention to its violation precisely by offering to forego its claims (Welker 1994a, 246). Moreover, forgiveness provides a framework in which the quest for properly understood justice can be fruitfully pursued. “Only those who are in a state of truthfulness through the confession of their sin to Jesus are not ashamed to tell the truth wherever it must be told,” maintained Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship (Bonhoeffer 1963, 155). Only those who are forgiven and who are willing to forgive will be capable of relentlessly pursuing justice without falling into the temptation to pervert it into injustice, we could add.