The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World, 2nd ed.

by Miroslav Volf

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2021

Overview

Winner of the 2007 Christianity Today Book Award in Christianity and Culture.

How should we remember atrocities? Should we ever forgive abusers? Can we not hope for final reconciliation, even if it means redeemed victims and perpetrators spending eternity together?

We live in an age which insists that past wrongs—genocides, terrorist attacks, bald personal injustices—should never be forgotten. But Miroslav Volf here proposes the radical idea that letting go of such memories—after a certain point and under certain conditions—may actually be a gift of grace we should embrace. Volf’s personal stories of persecution and interrogation frame his search for theological resources to make memories a wellspring of healing rather than a source of deepening pain and animosity. Controversial, thoughtful, and incisively reasoned, The End of Memory begins a conversation that we avoid to our great detriment.

This second edition includes an appendix on the memories of perpetrators as well as victims, a response to his critics, and a recent James K. A. Smith interview with Volf about the nature and function of memory in the Christian life.

Key Features

• Proposes that letting go of past wrongs may actually be a gift of grace
• Addresses common questions about hope, forgiveness, and memory
• Includes personal stories of persecution and interrogation

Contents

Part One: Remember!

• Memory of Interrogations
• Memory: Shield and Sword

Part Two: How Should We Remember?

• Speaking Truth, Practicing Grace
• Wounded Self, Healed Memories
• Frameworks of Memories
• Memory, the Exodus, and the Passion

Part Three: How Long Should We Remember?

• River of Memory, River of Forgetting
• Defenders of Forgetting
• Redemption: Harmonizing and Driving Out
• Rapt in Goodness
• Postscript: An Imagined Reconciliation
• On Memories of Perpetrators and Victims
• Afterword
• Epilogue: Fifteen Years Later
• Interview with James K. A. Smith

Top Highlights

“We are not just shaped by memories; we ourselves shape the memories that shape us.” (Page 25)

“The words sum up a theme that runs like a bright thread through Wiesel’s work: the saving power of remembering suffered wrongs. As he himself put it, faith in the saving power of memory—faith that it will heal the individuals involved and help rid the world of violence—is his central ‘obsession.’” (Page 19)

“To remember wrongly wrongs suffered and perpetrated is to disfigure one’s soul” (Page xi)

“God will expose the truth about wrongs, condemn each evil deed, and redeem both the repentant perpetrators and their victims, thus reconciling them to God and to each other.” (Page 44)

“Christ’s death pointed beyond the struggle for retributive justice for victims to the wonder of transforming grace for perpetrators and reconciliation of the two.” (Page 111)

Praise for the Print Edition

Existentially charged and disciplined, learned and readable, sophisticated and accessible, orthodox and open.

—Reviews in Religion and Theology

The End of Memory is a book that had to be written. From many quarters in present-day society comes the cry, ‘Remember the wrongs done to you.’ Miroslav Volf agrees with that cry but cogently argues that remembering wrongs can be done wrongly. With great learning and deep humane wisdom he reflects on how we can rightly remember the wrongs done to us. In all of Volf’s writing, theology illuminates life and life illuminates theology. Here this two-way illumination is at its very brightest.

—Nicholas Wolterstorff, author of Lament for a Son

In this hauntingly autobiographical narrative, Miroslav Volf examines afresh the problems of abuse, memory, and reconciliation, and he concludes that memory, as such, cannot be adjusted to relieve our hurts. But forgetting, rightly understood, provides a healing balm. This is a book of profundity and wisdom, endowed with the authenticity of considerable personal suffering.

—Sarah Coakley, University of Cambridge

Product Details

• Title: The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World, 2nd ed.
• Author: Miroslav Volf
• Edition: Second Edition
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Logos Release Date: 2020
• Pages: 296
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Memory › Religious aspects--Christianity; Reconciliation › Religious aspects--Christianity
• ISBNs: 9780802878670, 0802878679
• Resource ID: LLS:NDMMRYRMMBR2NDD
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T01:45:35Z

About Miroslav Volf

Miroslav Volf is Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School. He is also the Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He is a member of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. as well as the Evangelical Church in Croatia.

(From Theopedia.com. Freely redistributable under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)