“The arms of the crucified are open”

A thought for Good Friday from Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian teaching at Yale, much of whose work has been on the theological basis for forgiveness and reconciliation:

At the heart of the cross is Christ’s stance of not letting the other remain an enemy and of creating space in himself for the offender to come in. Read as the culmination of the larger narrative of God’s dealing with humanity, the cross says that despite its manifest enmity toward God humanity belongs to God. “While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son,” writes the Apostle Paul (Romans 5:10). The cross is the giving up of God’s self in order not to give up on humanity: it is the consequence of God’s desire to break the power of human enmity without violence and receive human beings into divine communion. The goal of the cross is the dwelling of human beings “in the Spirit,” “in Christ,” and “in God.” Forgiveness is therefore not the culmination of Christ’s relation to the offending other; it is a passage leading to embrace. The arms of the crucified are open - a sign of a space in God’s self and an invitation for the enemy to come in.

(Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), p. 126)