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

by Miroslav Volf

Such nonexclusionary judgments passed by persons willing to embrace the other are what is needed to fight exclusion successfully.

“able to work out their private salvations, create their private self-images, reweave their webs of belief and desire in the light of whatever new people and books they happen to encounter” (85). I reject exclusion because the prophets, evangelists, and apostles tell me that this is a wrong way to treat human beings, any human being, anywhere, and I am persuaded to have good reasons to believe them.

Through this convoluted process the center of the self is always reproducing itself, sometimes by asserting itself over against the other (a stereotypically male self), at other times by cleaving too closely to the other (a stereotypically female self), sometimes pulled by the lure of throbbing and restless pleasures, at other times pushed by the rule of a rigid and implacable law.

argued that Paul locates the unity of the church not in the disincarnate transcendence of a pure and universal spirit, but in the scandalous particularity of the suffering body of God’s Messiah.

in self-giving love made possible by and patterned on the suffering Messiah.

“sensuality”

“violence”

“Exclusion”

Instead, he was the bringer of “grace,” who not only scandalously included “anyone” in the fellowship of “open commensality” (Crossan 1991, 261–64; Crossan 1994, 66–70), but made the “intolerant” demand of repentance and the “condescending” offer of forgiveness (Mark 1:15; 2:15–17).

mission of re-making impure people into pure people aimed at tearing down the barriers created by wrongdoing in the name of God, the redeemer and restorer of life, whose love knows no boundaries. By the double strategy of re-naming and re-making Jesus condemned the world of exclusion—a world in which the innocent are labeled evil and driven out and a world in which the guilty are not sought out and brought into the communion.

knowledge. We demonize and bestialize not because we do not know better, but because we refuse to know what is manifest and choose to know what serves our interests.

masters of exclusion will rewrite the histories and fabricate injuries in order to manufacture hatreds.

because we desire what others have. More

Ronald Takaki points out that the demonization and deportation of the indigenous population in North America “occurred within the economic context of competition over land” (Takaki

do we want to control everything alone instead of sharing our possessions and power, and making space for others in a common household? Why do others strike us as “dirt” rather than “ornament”? Why cannot we accept our shadows so as to be able to embrace others instead of projecting our own unwanted evil onto them? Ultimately, no answer to these questions is available, just as no answer is available to the question about the origin of evil. From the outset, the answer was lost in the intractable labyrinth of the “the heart’s desire that stiffens the will against all competing considerations” (Plantinga 1995, 62).

When confronted with the wrongdoing committed, perpetrators either respond with outright denial (“I didn’t do it!”) or offer excuses, such as insisting on the impossibility of having done otherwise (“I couldn’t help it!”), or explaining away the evil of what they have done (“She asked for it!”). At times apologies even transmute perpetrators into victims (Vetlesen 1994, 256): it is the perpetrator who is defending himself and protecting his vital interests against the clever, cruel, and malicious aggressor (“He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing”; “I am a sheep in wolf’s clothing”).

Once the war started and the right conditions were maintained, an uncontrollable chain reaction was under way.9 These were mostly decent people, as decent as most of us tend to be. Many did not, strictly speaking, choose to plunder and burn, rape and torture, or secretly enjoy these. A dormant beast in them was awakened from its uneasy slumber. And not only in them. The motives of those who set to fight against the brutal aggressors were self-defense and justice. The beast in others, however, enraged the beast in them. The moral barriers holding it in check broke down and it went after revenge. In resisting evil, they were trapped by evil. In “After the Catastrophe,” written right after World War Two, Carl Gustav Jung wrote, “It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts” (Jung 1964a, 198). Evil engenders evil, and like pyroclastic debris from the mouth of a volcano, it erupts out of aggressor and victim alike.

How does the system work? Consider first what might be called the “background cacophony of evil.” It permeates institutions, communities, nations, whole epochs, and it is sustained, as Marjorie Suchocki puts it, by “a multiply nuanced and mirrored and repeated intentionality of purpose that exercises its corporate influence” (Suchocki 1995, 122). This is the low-intensity evil of the way “things work” or the way “things simply are,” the exclusionary vapors of institutional or communal cultures under which many suffer but for which no one is responsible and about which all complain but no one can target. This all-pervasive low-intensity evil rejuvenates itself by engendering belief in its own immortality and imposes itself by generating a sense of its own ineluctability.

are picked up, orchestrated into a bellicose musical, and played up. “Historians”—national, communal, or personal interpreters of the past—trumpet the double theme of the former glory and past victimization; “economists” join in with the accounts of present exploitation and great economic potentials; “political scientists” add the theme of the growing imbalance of power, of steadily giving ground, of losing control over what is rightfully ours; “cultural anthropologists” bring in the dangers of the loss of identity and extol the singular value of our personal or cultural gifts, capable of genuinely enriching the outside world; “politicians” pick up all four themes and weave them into a high-pitched aria about the threats to vital interests posed by the other who is therefore the very incarnation of evil; finally the “priests” enter in a solemn procession and accompany all this with a soothing background chant that offers to any whose consciences may have been bothered the assurance that God is on our side and that our enemy is the enemy of God and therefore an adversary of everything that is true, good, and beautiful.

As this bellicose musical with reinforcing themes is broadcast through the media, resonances are created with the background cacophony of evil that permeates the culture of a community, and the community finds itself singing the music and marching to its tune. To refuse to sing and march, to protest the madness of the spectacle, appears irrational and irresponsible, naive and cowardly, treacherous toward one’s own and dangerously sentimental toward the evil enemy. The stage for “ethnic cleansing” and similar “eruptions” of evil—personal as well as communal—is set. The first shot only needs to be fired, and the chain reaction will start.

Faith in oneself is generated by the tales of historical glory and plausible explanations of past failures; hope in the future is born, a future in which we will no longer suffer injustice and discrimination, a future underwritten by the unfailing promises of our god. “Faith” and “hope” mobilize energies and we start performing economic miracles and doing major cultural accomplishments. A sense of belonging and of being somebody in the world replaces aimless drifting and self-denigration. Undeniably, a veritable renaissance—national, communal, or personal—is under way! Yet all this indisputable good is created by and channeled toward an inhumane and godless project! In the bosom of this manifest well-being there is an unrecognized corruption!

has been often pointed out that the power of evil rests on the power of “imperial speaking,” the power by which evildoers seek to create an illusion that “all is well” (Aukerman 1993, 53) when in fact all is anything but well; ruin is about to take place (cf. Jeremiah 6:13–15; Ezekiel 13:8–16). But why do people believe the evildoers, we may wonder?

Why this discrepancy between feeling well and being sick? Why are we such docile, even enthusiastic captives to the system of exclusion? Why is there so little need for surveillance and force? Why are the subtle disciplinary mechanisms so effective, to use a phrase of Michel Foucault (Blanchot 1987, 38; Foucault 1979)? Because our very selves have been shaped by the climate of evil in which we live. Evil has insinuated itself into our very souls and rules over us from the very citadel erected to guard us against it.

deepest tragedy in the face of evil is, however, that too often, contrary to the fictive Seneca of Steven Lukes’s The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat, we “want to want what we want” precisely when what we want is evil (Lukes 1995, 238).

We are ensnared by evil not only with full consent, but without a thought of dissent and without a sigh for deliverance. With the inner workings of our will in its hold, evil can dispense with force and rule by lure. And so, paradoxically, we feel free only in the prison house of unrecognized evil.

Even if evil vapors of cultures can enter the self and even if the structures—institutions, communities, nations—are more sinful than the individuals that comprise them (Niebuhr 1960), the system needs persons to make it “breathe” with the spirit of evil. If people acquiesce, it is not because they are forced to acquiesce, but because there is something in the texture of their selves that resonates with the logic of exclusion.

In his Systematic Theology Wolfhart Pannenberg has suggested looking for the root of sin in the desire for identity—the instinctive will to be oneself—that is written into the very structure of our selves (Pannenberg 1991, 2:260f.). Though essentially healthy, the will to be oneself carries within it the germ of its own illness. Pannenberg describes the germ as the tendency of the self “in fact [to] become the infinite basis and reference point for all objects, thus usurping the place of God” (261).

In an environment of scarce goods inhabited by a plurality of actors whose lives are intertwined, the assertiveness of one confronts the assertiveness of the other, and therefore the one becomes a perceived or real threat to the other. Mostly, the threat is not so much to the life of the other as to her boundaries and therefore also to her inner organization of the self (Härle 1995, 469f.). This is the point at which the healthy assertiveness of the self often slides into violence toward the other.

a result, a tension between the self and the other is built into the very desire for identity: the other over against whom I must assert myself is the same other who must remain part of myself if I am to be myself.

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,

Hence it is not so much sin as it is an evil that cries for remedy. The exclusion of the self from the will to be oneself not only damages the self, but makes the slippage into exclusion on the part of the other and therefore further damaging of the self so much easier.

Ultimately, the hope for a new exodus lies exactly where the hope of the first exodus was: in the “strong wind” of God (Exodus 14:21). Central to the Christian faith is the belief that the Spirit of the crucified Messiah is capable of creating the promised land out of the very territory the Pharaoh has beleaguered. The Spirit enters the citadel of the self, de-centers the self by fashioning it in the image of the self-giving Christ, and frees its will so it can resist the power of exclusion in the power of the Spirit of embrace. It is in the citadel of the fragile self that the new world of embrace is first created (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is by this seemingly powerless power of the Spirit—the Spirit who blows even outside the walls of the church—that selves are freed from powerlessness in order to fight the system of exclusion everywhere—in the structures, in the culture, and in the self.

Since human work is threatened with failure, since value tags are inescapably placed on differences, and since recognition can be given or withheld by the ultimate judge, the self will engage in a struggle as it seeks to maintain its identity and attempt to assert itself at the expense of the other.

the story, the hope lies in God and God’s insertion into Cain’s affairs. God’s insertion before the wrongdoing—“Why are you angry?” (v. 6)—was ineffective; Cain turned away from God. The insertion did, however, underscore that though Cain may have had “good reasons” he had no right to be angry. After the wrongdoing, God’s second insertion—“Where is your brother Abel?” (v. 9)—did not seem to achieve much either; it elicited only self-justifying denial. But again, God’s question made clear that life in community means sharing a common social space and taking responsibility for the other. God’s third insertion was an angry word of judgment—“What have you done?” (v. 10). Here we learn why God kept asking Cain questions. Yahweh, the God who hears the groans of the oppressed, saw the murder coming and warned against it; God, who attends to the harassed and brutalized, heard the innocent blood crying out and judged the perpetrator.

We leave Cain protected in primal history; on Good Friday we will find him redeemed. Cain, the one who acted out the exact opposite of an embrace, whose body went “forth totally against the other body in an intention to . . . kill it” (Gurevitch 1990, 199), will be drawn near and embraced by the Crucified. Will the embrace of the Crucified heal Cain of envy, hatred, and the desire to kill? In de Unamuno’s “Abel Sanchez” Joaquín Monegro tells his wife Antonia, a saint, that she could not cure him because he did not love her (de Unamuno 1956, 175). In a sense, the same can be said of every Cain: the embrace of the Crucified will not heal him if he does not learn to love the one who embraced him. Cain, the anti-type who “murdered his brother,” will be healed by Christ, the type “who laid down his life for us,” only if he sets out to walk in Christ’s footsteps (cf. 1 John 3:11-17).

If there is will, courage, and imagination the stark polarity can be overcome.

Those caught in the vortex of mutual exclusion can resist its pull, rediscover their common belonging, even fall into each other’s arms.

People with conflicting interests, clashing perspectives, and differing cultures can avoid sliding into the cycle of escalating violence and instead maintain bo...

What can freedom to be my own master and pursue my interests mean, asks this tradition, if I can find no job to keep me and my family from starvation?

What can freedom to develop my personality mean, if I have to work from dawn to dusk until the last drop of strength is squeezed out of me?

The freedom either to be exploited or left alone to d...

Hence socialist thinkers declared the liberal notion ...

Freedom can therefore never mean simply the absence of external interference with the individual’s will to do or not to do what she or he wants, as the Hobbsian tradition claims; freedom is actual power to live life with dignity, to be the artisan of one’s own destiny. When people are kept in abject poverty and illiteracy while others grow rich and “develop their personalities” at the former’s expense we speak of oppression; when structures and persons that perpetuate powerlessness are replaced by structures that allow people to stand on their own feet and have their own voice, we speak of liberation.

The iron gates of social dungeons must be shattered; slaves must become their own masters. Every social project built around the notion of freedom tends therefore to operate with the stable pair of “oppression” and “liberation.” Oppression is the negativity, liberation its negation, freedom the resulting positivity.

If we organize our moral engagement around the categories of “oppression/liberation” we will need clear narratives of blame and innocence.

either to withdraw from engagement in moral disgust (and thereby giving tacit support to the stronger party), or to impose clear-cut moral narratives with moral partisanship (and therefore sharing in the ideological self-deception of the one party).

Does it not betray an ideological blindness because it fails to entertain the idea that when the victims become liberators it is they, and not only the oppressors, who might need to change? E. M. Cioran, this “aristocrat of doubt,” perceptively noted the perverse fact that the great persecutors are often “recruited among the martyrs not quite beheaded” (Cioran 1990, 4).

The categories “oppression/liberation” seem ill-suited to bring about reconciliation and sustain peace between people and people groups. Though the categories themselves are indispensable, we must resist making “oppressed/oppressor” the overarching schema by which to align our social engagement. As a consequence, we need to reject “freedom” as the ultimate social goal (Hauerwas 1991, 50ff.).

abolished? The father of Latin American Liberation Theology, Gustavo Gutiérrez, was right to insist that love, not freedom is ultimate. The “deepest root of all servitude,” he stressed in the “Introduction” to the revised edition of his Theology of Liberation, “is the breaking of friendship with God and with other human beings, and therefore cannot be eradicated except by the unmerited redemptive love of the Lord whom we receive by faith and in communion with one another” (Gutiérrez 1988, xxxviii; Wolterstorff 1983, 51ff.). Similarly, for the grandfather of all liberation theologies, Jürgen Moltmann, the ultimate goal of human beings is not the “kingdom of freedom.” Rather, the kingdom of freedom is a process toward the kingdom of God, which is the kingdom of love. As he argued in The Trinity and the Kingdom, the freedom of the triune God is neither simply the absence of interference nor self-control but “vulnerable love” (Moltmann 1981, 56). It is no different with authentic human freedom. It consists in being a friend of God and partaking in the glory of the triune God who is nothing but pure love (219ff.). To make love tower over freedom does not mean abandoning the project of liberation, however. The Holy One of Israel, the God of Jesus Christ, is on the side of the downtrodden and poor, a God who listens to the sighs of the voiceless and the cries of the powerless, a God who liberates. But to insist on the primacy of love over freedom means to transform the project of...

As we listen to the call to recognize the autonomy of heterogeneity we hear the back door squeaking open and what Lyotard has driven out through the front door rushing back in. Is he not peddling something that looks very much like the Enlightenment’s grand narrative of freedom under the label of nonuniversal justice?