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So Christ's death frames my remembering and reminds me of my own sinfulness and of the love of God toward a person who has injured me.

How do we remember without getting bitter?
In the present discussion about memory, we tend to emphasize remembering what has happened to us, what others have done to us, or if we are more virtuous, what we have done to others. But it's not about our actions and our sufferings. Now, I don't want to disregard our deeds and our sufferings, but in Exodus, the Israelites didn't just remember what they had suffered at the hands of the Egyptians. That was the backdrop to remember what God did for them. It's a hopeful memory of liberation, a memory of salvation. If you emulate that, then you can remember rightly.

How might right remembering affect church practice?
We have a ritual of remembrance, the Lord's Supper. We break bread and remember Christ's broken body. We drink from the cup and remember Christ's suffering and his spilled blood. If we remember Christ's suffering rightly, that liturgical act also can serve as a means of fostering reconciliation. I will celebrate the Lord's Supper by remembering myself as a sinner and not as a saint. I will celebrate the Lord's Supper by remembering my enemy not as this despicable person who has to be thrown into the pit of darkness, but as one for whom Christ has shed his blood. Therefore, I will be taken up into this action of Christ and hopefully emulate Christ in how I remember and treat the other person.

When can we forget the wrongs committed against us?
In a sense, forgetting is given to us as the gift of a healed relationship. It's a gift of the new world, which God gives us. Then we can not remember. And then our experience is like a person who is sitting in a concert hall and listening to a wonderful piece of music. Even though just two hours ago she was experiencing hell at her job, she's taken up into that music. It's not that she tried to forget so that she could be in the music; it's that the music took her out of the remembrance of the past. God gives us the gift of a healed self, healed relationships, and a reconstituted world, and then we can not remember.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The End of Memory is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

An excerpt, "An Obligation to Remember Eternally?" is available on our website.

More about Miroslav Volf is available from his faculty page at Yale, as well as a profile in Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.

ChristianBibleStudies.com has a new study on dealing with difficult memories that corresponds to Volf's article.

Christianity Today profiled Volf in 1999. Other CT articles by or about Volf and his books include:

The Church's Great Malfunctions | We should be our own fiercest critics, doing so out of the deep beauty and goodness of our faith. (November 10, 2006)

Free, but Not Easy | Why grace is so rare among Christians. (Books & Culture, June 1, 2006)

Kissing the Lizard | On memory and forgiveness. (Miroslav Volf, Books & Culture, March 1, 2004)

The Eighth Day of Creation | From a Russian Orthodox philosopher, a provocative alternative to modernity. (Miroslav Volf, Books & Culture, January 1, 2004)

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May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5