Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

by Miroslav Volf

published

November 1996 by Abingdon Press

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binding

Paperback, 336 pages

isbn

0687002826 (isbn13: 9780687002825)

description

Life at the end of the twentieth century presents us with a disturbing reality. Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way, has come to...more

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Josh rated it:

02/03/08

Read in December, 2007

this book rocks, seriously loved it. while the book is filled with great insights, here's a few that stood out to me:

how do we reconcile the tension between God's identification with the oppressed and its ensuing demand for justice with God's embrace of the oppressor and call for forgiveness? Volf, personally coming from a context of genocide, is very vulnerable about the dramatic tension in attempting to reconcile himself with both the God who identifies with the suffering, exploited, abu...more this book rocks, seriously loved it. while the book is filled with great insights, here's a few that stood out to me:

how do we reconcile the tension between God's identification with the oppressed and its ensuing demand for justice with God's embrace of the oppressor and call for forgiveness? Volf, personally coming from a context of genocide, is very vulnerable about the dramatic tension in attempting to reconcile himself with both the God who identifies with the suffering, exploited, abused and victimized and delivers the needy (thereby critiquing the powers of victimization and holding them to account) and the God who forgives the victimizers, perpetrators, oppressors and calls us not towards revenge or isolated neutrality but towards reconciliation.

whereas moltmann and similar theological movements have done the crucial work of reemphasizing recently lost emphases on God's solidarity with the poor, marginalized, and oppressed, Volf picks up the crucial theme of atonement for the perpetrator. volf places God's self-donation or self-giving love as the broader context under which God's solidarity with the oppressed and atonement for the perpetrator must be placed.

volf explores a theology of reconciliation in the face of the challenge of "otherness" in contemporary society, in which boundaries are often created in which we exclude the other in our collective identities.

"embrace" is employed as a metaphor (along the lines of the prodigal son story and in the context of Christ's embrace of our wretched humanity on the cross) to explore God's posture towards the offender, framing reconciliation for those who have been violated to have a posture of embrace towards those who have violated them. using trinitarian language, we must make space in ourselves for the other in whom are identities are constituted--both positively and negatively. for the victim, a posture of embrace thus entails repentance for what the sin has done to our own lives.

this could easily be misunderstood as "blaming the victim" and this is where i think volf's discussion is perhaps at its most powerful, still being able to call evil evil and call it to account, while nonetheless recognizing that there is a different kind of evil, even on a lesser scale, that victimization does to us and from which we need God's healing. the result of this healing will be the strength to have a posture of embrace towards those who have wounded us and a willingness towards reconciliation.

and yet for the offender to enter and receive the embrace offered calls for acknowledgement of the offense in repentance. the call to enter the kingdom and be reconciled to God comes first with the call to repent. God's all-embracing love requires nothing of us for it to be there but everything from us in order to enter it. there is no "cheap grace" here in which the offender is free to abuse again and again under the name of "love" and "reconciliation" which are more fluffy distortions of the self-sacrificial nature such words truly mean in their biblical framework.

given his backdrop from the genocide in the former yugoslavia his story lends such a powerful voice to address the issue of "otherness" and reconciliation in today's world. i also love that he goes "through" postmodern thought rather than "around" it, drawing meaningfully from its major thinkers' often brilliant insights but unintimidated to freely critique its destructive weaknesses.

i also loved the last chapter (7?) where he attempts to reconcile the Crucified Messiah with the Rider on the White Horse, how do we reconcile the vulnerable suffering Messiah revealing God in weakness, humility and identification with the outcast, marginalized and broken and embracing humanity in its wickedness and rebellion, with the Rider on a White Horse who comes with a sword to strike down the nations and treads in the bloody winepress of his wrath? Volf argues that God's violence is a "violence to end all violence" which is hope for the oppressed and victimized around the world who seek to embrace the oppressor to no avail; Volf lambasts the Western sentimentality which has shirked from affirming the justice of God's violence and claims (this was striking to me) to truly reclaim a non-violent proactive resistance to oppression and injustice in our world we actually need a stronger reclamation of God's justice, a "more violent" God (properly framed as a "violence to end all violence" in the context of his loving pursuit to restore his creation and set the world to rights from the hands of human brutality) as the grounding of God being powerful enough to redeem creation from humanity's sin and ground our hope.

overall this book really challenged me alot to wrestle with the question of reconciliation in our world and to have a broader view of God's all-embracing, self-giving love, not only for the victimized and oppressed, but for the unjust and oppressors--and of course the lines of both these categories run through all our own identities.
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Liz rated it:

07/07/08

Read in June, 2008

This was a tough one. It is very theological (if that's a word) and very deep. I did find, however, some great insight into forgivness. One of the items that Volf wrote of is: the need to understand the other point of view. We can't judge based only on our own point of view because we are biased towards our own opinion (of course) but if we try to look at both sides, ours and the side of the person with whom we are arguing, we will most likely find some sort of understanding and/or common groun...more

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