Volf on forgiveness

Here’s an interview with theologian Miroslav Volf, whose new book was just published (via Connexions). Volf has some interesting things to say about forgiveness:

You speak of forgiveness in a way that I found novel and intriguing. You describe a forgiveness that is unconditional, and as such it is never offered – it must simply be given. And yet you state that someone can refuse to be forgiven: “Without repentance, the forgivers will keep forgiving but the offenders will remain unforgiven, in that they are untouched by that forgiveness.” (p.183) If someone can refuse forgiveness and remain unforgiven, are we not back to an offered, or conditional forgiveness?

My giving is not conditional, but their receiving, obviously, is. That is the consequence of conceiving forgiveness not simply as an individual affair (though that’s what it is also), but as a social affair.

Related to the question above – If God has indeed forgiven all of humanity, which you state or imply several times throughout the book, but He still punishes those who refuse this forgiveness, then can we really say that God has forgiven them? Do the scriptures bear out the distinction that you draw between forgiving and being forgiven?

Well, Christ died for all, did he not? So God gave. But we often don’t receive. The gift is stuck somewhere between the giver who has given and recipient who has not received. That seems to me a good way to keep together the unconditionality of God’s grace and the actuality of human refusal – both of which Scriptures emphasize.