Exclusion and Embrace – IV

Volf expounds the self-sacrifice involved in the new covenant, and so challenges our thinking on the way of seeking reconciliation in relationships.

"The 'blood' in which the new covenant was made is not simply the blood that holds up the threat of breaking the covenant or that portrays common belonging; it is the blood but of self-giving, even self-sacrifice. The one party has broken the covenant, and the other suffers the breach because it will not let the covenant be undone. If such suffering of the innocent party strikes us as unjust, in an important sense it is unjust. Yet the 'injustice' is precisely what it takes to renew the covenant. One of the biggest obstacles to repairing broken covenants is that they invariably entail deep disagreements over what constitutes a breach and who is responsible for it. Partly because of the desire to shirk the responsibilities that acceptance of guilt involves those who break the covenant do not (or will not) recognize that they have broken it. In a world of clashing perspectives and strenuous self-justifications, of crumbling commitments and strong animosities, covenants are kept and renewed because those who, from their perspective, have not broken the covenant are willing to do the hard work of repairing it. Such work is self-sacrificial; something of the individual or communal self dies in performing it. Yet the self by no means perishes, but is renewed in the truly communal self, fashioned in the image of the triune God who will not be without the other."*



*Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation. p155. Abingdon Press, Nashville (1996).