Book Reviews: Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace by Miroslav Volf, and The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Timothy Keller
Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan 2005. 247 pages. $10.39
The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams commissioned Volf to prepare this volume as the Archbishop’s Lenten study book for 2006. Now six years later, once again in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary, Free of Charge is an apropos examination into the simple but profound calling and task of giving and forgiving, particularly as Christians journey to the Cross and Easter’s tomb. This is an excellent book to study and reflect upon for Easter, reminding us of the Good News of the God as Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit who freely and continually gives and forgives. When our prevailing culture inculcates values of individualism, independence, success, and the fulfillment of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” at one’s expense and the expense of others and of the broader community, Volf interjects a needed word of grace: grace for ourselves, grace for our neighbor–all given by the grace of God.
Volf, a Lutheran Croat who teaches theology at Yale, brings not only his characteristic acumen at penetrating Christian doctrine with insight, profundity, and humility, but in this volume, he weaves his personal testimony of how giving and forgiving have called forth from him and his family a deep sense of the abiding and abounding grace of God. The chapter headings of the two parts of giving and forgiving express from the outset Volf’s recognition of both God’s ideal call and vision for us, and the difficulty in living out being generous, free giving, and forgiving. Such chapter titles include: “God the Giver,” “How Should We Give?”; “How Can We Give?”; “God the Forgiver,” “How Should We Forgive?”; “How Can We Forgive?”
True to the Lutheran emphasis of simul iustus et peccator, (at the same time just and sinful) Volk readily and rightly acknowledges the reality of our sinful and redeemed condition in Christ, yet with the real-life difficulty of doing and wanting to do good but always confronted with the taint and temptation of actions and motives gone awry.
From the opening pages where he reflects upon his family’s adoption of his eldest son Nathanael from the birth mother and the excruciating pain mixed with joy of receiving Nathanael, a prayer answered for he and his wife, but with the knowledge that the birth mother would not see Nathanael again, Volf beholds, “But giving is difficult. . . .Giving is also a fine art.” (17)
In the first half of the book, Volf examines the dynamic of giving by examining, first, from Natalie Davies’ work, the three basic modes how human beings relate to one another: taking, getting, giving. Volf locates the “how,” the “what,” and the “why” of giving on God–who God is through and through, what God does again and again; the triune God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who proactively and intentionally gives. God made humans to give, God gives to humans to enjoy blessings and delight in both the blessings and in God as the source of the gifts, and God uses humans as “channels” for the gifts to be given to neighbors to assist those in need and to, likewise, to enable others to delight in God. In so doing, we give, not identical to how God gives nor why God gives, but we imitate God. Even though our hidden motives in giving are more often than not tainted with impure agendas and thoughts, we are, nevertheless called to give. Three key sins: selfishness, pride, and sloth threaten and, in fact, stifle a free spirit of giving. We withhold ourselves and the gifts God has giving given because of our need to possess, because of our sense of superiority, because we feel our giving won’t make a difference.
Connected to giving is the regard to receiving; how do we receive what God gives? The responses of faith and gratitude enable the proper and honorable reception of gifts. Faith affirms that God has given gifts as gifts; gratitude receives the gifts well. Faith is depicted as the open hand that embraces what is freely given, gratitude expresses honor and delight towards our Creator. The giving-receiving relationship is modeled after the persons of the triune God, who, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, continually and perfectly give and receive in loving community; thus our giving and receiving are modeled, grounded, derived, and patterned after the triune God.
What enables us to give anyway is the indwelling Spirit of God, who unites us to Jesus Christ, who places us in community to encourage us to give and see beyond our individual existence, and who puts forth a larger, eschatological vision of what God intends for all humanity. Thus, it is God who gives through us.
In the interlude leading to the second half of the book on forgiveness, Volf recounts his own parents’ difficult but decisive act to give forgiveness to the soldier who was responsible for the death of their eldest son (Volf’s eldest brother, Daniel, who was a toddler at the time), and what the act of forgiveness did in lifting the burden of guilt from the soldier.
As with the section on giving, the second half of the book on forgiving is grounded in God. Militating against cultural notions of God as either God the grand negotiator or God as the doting Santa Claus grandfather figure (i.e. the two extremes of God as the implacable judge or God as the easy-going deity), Volf combs Scripture and sees that God as Jesus Christ is neither; God is the loving God who has decided from the very start to forgive, and sends Jesus Christ as the tangible proof and the One who would effect that forgiving love in history. God is also One who is righteously angry at evil, who defeats evil, and who perfectly shows what forgiveness involves: forgiveness rightfully confronts and condemns an offense done against God and neighbor (but even an offense against another human being is ultimately an affront against God the creator) but expresses that the offended party will not reckon that offense any longer. Volf reaches for the ideal in calling for one to forget, as a sign of complete forgiveness, that, like God, forgiveness enables one to no longer hold the offense but to allow the memory of the transgression is to be wiped clean. Here I pondered whether such idealism is not only unrealistic but even called for, as, for instance, the very wounds and scars of the crucifixion remained with the risen Christ; likewise, the wounds and scars we sustain in our hearts from an offense committed may remain, though healed, but as a visible mark of what was done.
Volf re-tells others accounts of those who survived the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, the Communist takeover of Cuba, and the consequences of families separated, people terrorized or killed, involving ethnic, religious, and ideological agendas. These anecdotes depict not only the difficulty of those who have journeyed the valley of forgiveness and have come out either giving forgiveness or remaining with their anger. With forgiveness comes repentance, restitution, restoration, and reconciliation. But even then, our act of forgiveness is derivative of God’s act of decisive forgiveness in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. For those who are not Christian, Volf exhorts that forgiveness and the kind of forgiveness he discusses is not just for or done by Christians for Christ is the Lord of all, whether acknowledged or not. In fact, many non-Christians forgive much easier and more faithfully than do Christians.
The book concludes with a Postlude, wherein Volf narrates a fictional conversation between himself and a skeptic. Volf creatively anticipates a skeptic’s critique but genuine inquiry into the giving-forgiving vision in the book, and Volf’s consequent responses and invitation to the skeptic to live the life envisioned. Thus, the act of giving-forgiving is not so much about first believing in God or the doctrines of the Christian faith and then acting; rather giving-forgiving is about doing just that: freely give and freely forgive as God has done so again and again. And by the act of giving and forgiving, we enable and allow the Spirit of Christ to live out of, in, and through our lives to bless others, and, in so doing, delight in the One who gives God’s self for us all.
Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008. 155 pages. $11.20
Renowned urban pastor Timothy Keller of New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church provides refreshing new insights on a familiar story, the commonly dubbed “Parable of the Prodigal Son” of Luke 15:11-32. From the title and at the outset, Keller corrects the emphasis on whose prodigiousness (defined in the preface as “recklessly extravagant/having spent everything”) is at stake. The conventional title placed the spotlight on the younger son who returned contritely and penitently to his awaiting father; Keller sees that it is the father, and, thus, God, who is prodigious with his love.
Keller sees the story more as a Parable of the Two Lost Sons, proposing that both sons are lost in themselves. Both sons use their father to seek the upper hand, to gain what they believe is rightfully theirs–the family inheritance. Both sons are glimpses into two conflicting, and, at times, allied, tendencies of the human heart: the younger son who epitomizes the soul who wants to be completely free from rules, laws, cultural, and societal binds and who embarks on a journey of self-discovery matched by an equal if not surpassing sense of brazen self-determination; then the elder son who depicts the heart which follows the rules, who plays the game well and expects his just rewards for doing so, and who expects others to follow lest negligence or outright defiance leave one in the cold as a deserved consequence for choices made. In both instances, there is a deep lostness to be pitied and to be empathized for both sons portray the human heart and our common plight. Both sons seek control over the paterfamilias, hoping that their respective sonships will gain for themselves their inheritance, the family honor, and the land. Here Keller sees in the younger son’s squandering and in the older son’s arrogant refusal to attend the celebratory banquet for his brother as the human proclivity to sin. Keller astutely asserts that sin is not so much about breaking laws or missing the mark; rather sin is about breaking the heart of the father. The grievous sin that both sons committed, and which all of our hearts are guilty of time and again is we do not delight in the life and love of God.
What we find in these two sons is what Keller diagnoses as our longing and aching for home. We are searching for home, and, instead, placate ourselves by living like these two sons. We are spiritual exiles, traveling from place to place, seeking aimlessly for significance, meaning, identity, and belongingness.
Keller gracefully presents the Gospel in two ways. First, through what he calls the true older brother; second, through the father himself. As the younger brother receives his inheritance and leaves the family homestead, the responsibilities of the family and the majority of the inheritance falls upon the older son. The older son becomes, in effect, the paterfamilias in function, but not yet in name. As such, if the older son truly loved his younger brother as his own, if he truly delighted in his relationship with his sibling, he would have pursued his brother, sent out a search-and-rescue team, or at least talked some sense into him. The older son does neither. The older son is slighted when the father clothes the returning son with the fine robe, rings, and sandals–all symbols of the family honor and name, all of which were held in reserve for the older brother; the father lavishes the older brother’s inheritance on the younger son. The first aspect of the good news is that even as we don’t want to be one another’s keeper (we are the older sibling to each other), Jesus Christ becomes for us the true older brother, the sibling in the family who does pursue us, who does rescue us, who does share with us the riches of the father.
Second, the good news is in the father’s posture and action towards both sons. The father extends prodigal love towards both: embracing the returning son, not holding his transgression over his head, but lavishing love and honor upon him culminating in a celebratory banquet. Towards the older son, the father comes to him, pleads to him, seeks reconciliation between his two sons, and even when the older son rudely ignores the invitation to the banquet, the father lovingly asserts, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” We belong to God through and through.
Keller concludes with a liturgical reminder. Referring to Isak Dinesen’s Babette’s Feast, and citing Kierkegaard, who influenced Dinesen, Keller notes that it is at the communal feasting that both the “aesthetic” (sensual) and the “ethical” (law-keeping) come together. Therefore, it is with us as the people of God: we are invited to the Lord’s banquet where we celebrate with our true brother, with one another, where our aesthetic and ethical selves come together, where we share what has been given, where we find we are co-heirs with Christ of the prodigal God’s riches.
What we have in Keller’s book is a fine, succinct exposition of the Gospel. It speaks to human hearts that seek to gain advantage over one another and over God for our own aggrandizement. Although this parable is used in Lent 4/Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary, pastors, preachers, and, in fact, any person, in and outside of church, will find in The Prodigal God a call to confess, repent, and embrace the lavish love of God for all seasons.
