Shame is not a recovery of agency, merely a symptom of its loss, and can even stand in the way of recovery if its painfulness so dominates the practical horizon that any further view is blocked. If renewal is to be given us, we must look for it beyond shame. That was the highly personal discovery of Martin Luther, which so unsettled the medieval synthesis of penitence and restoration. A step that goes beyond shame will not flow from self-contempt, but only from the intervention of God to remake our lives, and that intervention is not proportioned to shame in recognition of some would-be
...more
