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

by Miroslav Volf

The transcendence of violence . . . culminates in its being expelled from the normal horizon of things” (207). “The only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves” is to insist that violence is legitimate “only when it comes from God” (206).10 The “theologization” of violence is a pre-condition for the politics of nonviolence.

My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West.