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

by Miroslav Volf

The separation necessary to constitute and maintain a dynamic identity of the self in relation to the other slides into exclusion that seeks to affirm identity at the expense of the other. The power of sin from without—the system of exclusion—thrives on both the power and the powerlessness from within, the irresistible power of the will to be oneself and the powerlessness to resist the slippage into exclusion of the other. The desire for identity could also explain why so many people let themselves be sinned against so passively—why they let themselves be excluded. It is not simply because they may lack a sufficiently strong will to be themselves, but because one can satisfy the will to be oneself by surrendering to the other. Their problem is not so much exclusion of the other from their will to be oneself, but a paradoxical exclusion of their own self from the will to be oneself—what feminist theologians call “diffusion of the self” (Saiving 1979,