Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Justice: A Theological Contribution to a More Peaceful Social Environment
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030601 |
| Author | Miroslav Volf |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
© Millennium: Journal of Int ernational Studies, 2000. ISSN 0305-8298 . Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 861-877
861
Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Justice:
A Theological Contribution to a More
Peaceful Social Environment
Miroslav Volf
It is not what the mainstream sociologists who follo wed in the footsteps of Karl
Marx, Max Web er, and Emil Durkheim were predi cting over the past centu ry or so,
but it happened. Instead of slowly withering away or lodging itself q uietly into the
privacy of worshipers’ hearts, religio n has emerged as an important player on the
national and i nternational scenes. It i s too early to tell ho w permanent th is
resurgence of religion will be. The processes of secu larisation may well continue,
though not so much in the older sense of the increasing loss of religious
observance, but in the newer sense of the diminishi ng influe nce of religio n in
contempora ry societie s. Be the fate of sec ularisation in contempora ry societies as i t
may, presently rel igion is well and alive on the publ ic scene, so much so that a
collectio n of essa ys with the ti tle Religion: The Missing Dimension of S tatecraft
can beco me obligatory reading for d iplomats in many co untries, Western and non-
Western, and that despite the fact that it bears al l the mark s of an initial effort to
push at the bou ndaries of a discipline.1
In th e public perception, the reassertion of religion a s a p olitical factor has not
been for the good. It seems that go ds have mainly t error on their mind, as the t itle
of Mark Jurgensmeyer’s book on the global rise of religious viol ence suggests.2 In
the Western cultural mili eu, the contemporary coupling of reli gion and violence
feeds most decisivel y on the memories o f the wars that plagued Europe from the
1560s to the 1650s in which religion was ‘the burning motivation, the one that
inspired fanatical devotion and the most vicious hatred’.3 It was these wars that
contribute d a g reat deal to the emergence of secul arising moderni ty. As Stephen
Toulmin has argu ed in Cosmopolis, mod ernity did not emerg e, as often claimed ,
This paper was origin ally given at the John F. Kennedy School of Govern ment, Harvard University, and
at the London School of Eco nomics and Political Sci ence. I want to thank audiences at both places for
their helpful comments. Sp ecial thanks is in place to my research assistant, Ivica Novakov ic.
1. Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1 994).
2. Mark Jurgensmeyer, Terror in the Mind o f God: The Glo bal Rise of Relig ious Violence (Berkeley,
CA: University of Californi a Press, 2000).
3. Robert Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 2. See also Ronald Asch, The Thirty Years War: The
Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618-48 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997 ).
Millennium
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simply as a resu lt of it s protagonists ’ end eavor to d ispel the d arkness of t radition
and superstiti on with the li ght o f philoso phical a nd sc ientific reason. It is not
accidental that Descartes ‘discovered’ the one correct metho d to acquire
knowledge in a time when ‘over muc h of the c ontinent…people had a fair chan ce
of hav ing their throats cut and their houses burned d own by strangers who merely
disliked the ir religion’.4 A ne w way of establ ishing truth ‘that was independent of,
and neu tral between, particul ar religious loyalti es’ seemed an attractive al ternative
to war fueled by dogmatic claims.5 As was the case with thei r En lightenment
forebears, many o f our contemporaries see in religion a pernicious social i ll that
needs to be treate d ra ther than a medicine from which cu re is expected. The
resurgence o f religion seems to go hand in hand with the resurgence of relig iously
legitimised vio lence. Hence it is necessary to weaken, neu tralise, or eliminate
religion as a facto r in public life.
In this essay I want to contest the claim t hat the Christian faith, as one of the
major world religions, p redominantly fosters violence, and to argue i nstead that it
should be seen as a contrib utor to more peac eful social environments. I will not
argue that the Christian faith was not and is not often empl oyed to foster vio lence.
Obviously, such an argument cann ot be pla usibly made; n ot only h ave Christians
committed atrocities and other l esser forms of violence but they have also drawn
on religio us beliefs to justify them.6 Neither will I argue that the Christi an faith has
been hi storically less associat ed with violence t han other major religions. I am not
at all sure that this is the case. Rather, I will argue that at least when it comes to
Christianit y, the c ure against religiousl y induced or legitimi sed violence is not le ss
religion, but , in a carefully quali fied sense, more religion . Put differently, the more
we reduce Christian fa ith to vague religiosity or co nceive of it as excl usively a
private a ffair of individua ls, the worse off we will be; and inv ersely, the more we
nurture it as an ongoing tradit ion that by its intrinsic content shapes behavior and
by the domain of its regulative reach touches p ublic sphere, t he better off we will
be. ‘Thick’ p ractice of the C hristian faith will help red uce violen ce and shape a
culture of peac e.
I will first offer so me general remarks on the relatio n between Christian faith and
violence, a nd then, in the mai n body of th e paper, attempt to show that at
Christianit y’s heart, a nd not just at i ts margins, lie impo rtant resources for creati ng
a cu lture of peace . Before I procee d, one commen t about the focus of my
exploratio n and two disclaimers are in place. First, the focus. I cannot offer he re a
perspective on th e entire complex of issues that relate to the reassertion o f relig ion
4. Steven Toulmin, Cosmopo lis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free Press, 19 90), 17.
5. Ibid., 70.
6. For a survey see Got tfried Maron, ‘Frieden und Krieg. Ein Blick in d ie Theologie und
Kirchengeschichte’, in Glau benskriege i n Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Peter Herrmann
(Goettingen: Vand enhoeck und Ruprecht, 1996). See also Karlh einz Deschner, Kriminal geschichte des
Christentums, 6 vols. (Reinb eck bei Hambu rg: Rohwolt, 1 986ff) and a response to his work, Hans R.
Seeliger, ed., Kriminalizierung des Christentums? Karlh einz Desch ners K irchengeschichte auf dem
Pruefstand (Freiburg im Breisgau : Herder, 1993).
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