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

by Miroslav Volf

demasking anti-messianic projects that offer universal salvation, Lyotard helps us ask the right kind of question, which is not how to achieve the final reconciliation, but what resources we need to live in peace in the absence of the final reconciliation.

An opiate for the masses?

nonfinal reconciliation in the midst of the struggle against oppression

For Christian faith to give up the hope for the final reconciliation—for a reconciliation that can neither be surpassed nor undone—would mean to give itself up. Everything depends, however, on how we understand the final reconciliation and its implication for life in a world of enmity. I will offer here only three brief disclaimers. First, the final reconciliation is not a work of human beings but of the triune God. Second, it is not an apocalyptic end of the world but the eschatological new beginning of this world (Moltmann 1996b, 11ff.). Third, the final reconciliation is not a self-enclosed “totality” because it rests on a God who is nothing but a perfect love. The hope for such “nontotalitarian” final reconciliation is the backdrop against which Christians engage in the struggle for peace under the conditions of enmity and oppression.

the character of the triune God, I will advocate here the struggle for a nonfinal reconciliation based on a vision of reconciliation that cannot be undone.

will therefore explore what it takes to struggle for nonfinal reconciliation by readjusting dynamic identities under the condition of pervasive inequality and manifest evil.

though we would insist that he should have spared the unfortunate and challenged the mighty.

Repentance implies not merely a recognition that one has made a bad mistake, but that one has sinned. Jesus stated explicitly that he came “to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mark 2:17) and the evangelists report that he was engaged in the practice of “forgiving sins” (Mark 2:5).

Does he not have anything more comforting and constructive to say to “the poor” than to insult them by calling them sinners? How different is he from the “ascetic priest” of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, who makes himself into a healer “of the sick flock” by poisoning their minds with the belief that they are to blame for their woes? (Nietzsche 1956, 262ff.) Would not the proper first step in healing this flock have been a resounding message that the flock has been made sick?

religious mechanisms which produced sinners where there were none. His rejection of the laws of purity (Mark 7:1–23), for instance, “cuts to the heart of the sectarian classification into the righteous and sinner” (Dunn 1992, 75). Symbolic boundaries drawn by false religious beliefs that ascribe sinfulness to what is innocent must come down, Jesus insisted. Moreover, he showed an extraordinary sensibility to the fact that people suffer not only because they commit sin but also because sin is committed against them. His programmatic sermon, for instance, mentions explicitly “captives” who need to be released (because they were wrongly incarcerated) and “oppressed” who need to be let go (because they were treated unjustly). He did not add to the sufferers’ misery by burdening them with blame for their own suffering. To take up Nietzsche’s terminology, Jesus was no cunning “ascetic priest” who exploited the misfortunes of others, but a prophet who denounced oppression and its ideological legitimations (cf. Matthew 23). In a limited but important sense, the gospel Jesus proclaimed was good news for “the sinned-against” (Fung 1980, 85ff.).

but the victims of oppression themselves. It will not do to divide Jesus’ listeners neatly into two groups and claim that for the oppressed repentance means new hope whereas for the oppressors it means radical change. Nothing suggests such a categorizing of people in Jesus’ ministry, though different people ought to repent of different kinds of sins. The truly revolutionary character of Jesus’ proclamation lies precisely in the connection between the hope he gives to the oppressed and the radical change he requires of them. Though some sins have been imputed to them, other sins of theirs were real; though they suffered at the sinful hand of others, they also committed sins of their own. It is above all to them that he offered divine forgiveness. Significantly enough, it is also they, not the self-righteous members of the establishment, that responded to his offer. For as a rule, the kingdom of God enters the world through the back door of servants’ shacks, not through the main gate of the masters’ mansions.

Why does the call to repentance include the oppressed (in addition to the oppressors who are incomparably greater transgressors)? Why the talk of their sin and forgiveness? Because little “Jihads” along with their mothers and fathers need not only material and psychological help, but release from the understandable but nonetheless inhumane hatred in which their hearts are held captive. Put more generally and more theologically, victims need to repent because social change that corresponds to the vision of God’s reign—God’s new world—cannot take place without a change of their heart and behavior. Granted, many a false prophet used the message of repentance to stabilize the order of oppression: “the religion of the sinful soul” served to divert attention from “the economics of dirty deals” and “politics of ruthless power.” We would be unwise, however, to let this outrageous misuse blind us to the extraordinary social significance of the victim’s repentance. If it did, in our own way we would be guilty of the same sin the false prophets are guilty of—we would perpetuate the old order of oppression while self-righteously declaring ourselves the vanguard of the new order of liberty. Let me elaborate on what may be called “the politics of the pure heart.”

To Volf, repentance of the oppresed is that sin of hatred and loathing of the vicious oppressor

appears here as a failure to live the life of discipleship as described in the Sermon on the Mount (Gnilka 1993, 212). This is not the place to give a full-fledged account of Jesus’ implicit theology of sin.

his teaching on wealth and violence. Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and wealth,” and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 6:24 and 5:44).

The social impact of envy and enmity, singly and in combination, is to reinforce the dominant values and practices that cause and perpetuate oppression in the first place. Envy and enmity keep the disprivileged and weak chained to the dominant order—even when they succeed in toppling it! All too often, of course, they do not want to topple the dominant order; as Bauman says; they “demand the reshuffling of cards, not another game. They do not blame the game, only the stronger hand of the adversary” (216).

The dominant values and practices can be transformed only if their hold on the hearts of those who suffer under them is broken. This is where repentance comes in. To repent means to resist the seductiveness of the sinful values and practices and to let the new order of God’s reign be established in one’s heart.8 For a victim to repent means not to allow the oppressors to determine the terms under which social conflict is carried out, the values around which the conflict is raging, and the means by which it is fought.

If anything, along with most victims she may need help in learning how to resist the tendency to blame herself. But she and many other victims—most of us when we are victims—need to repent of what the perpetrators do to our soul. Victims need to repent of the fact that all too often they mimic the behavior of the oppressors, let themselves be shaped in the mirror image of the enemy. They need to repent also of the desire to excuse their own reactive behavior either by claiming that they are not responsible for it or that such reactions are a necessary condition of liberation. Without repentance for these sins, the full human dignity of victims will not be restored and needed social change will not take place.

Have not “the Serbs . . . taught” the Muslim woman to hate, as she put it? In an important sense, they did; the kind of violence and disgrace she has suffered creates hate. And yet even under the onslaught of extreme brutality, an inner realm of freedom to shape one’s self must be defended as a sanctuary of a person’s humanity.

prevent hate from springing to life, for their own sake they can and must refuse to give it nourishment and strive to weed it out. If victims do not repent today they will become perpetrators tomorrow who, in their self-deceit, will seek to exculpate their misdeeds on account of their own victimization (Lamb 1996, 54).

it is simply “bad family values” that keep the poor enslaved to poverty (as though economic and political structures had nothing to do with the cycle of poverty) or that in helping the poor we ought to distinguish between the worthy, who ought to be helped, and the unworthy, who ought not to be (as though people need to deserve their own survival by the quality of their character). Rather, talk about the need for the victim’s repentance has to do with creation of the kind of social agents that are shaped by the values of God’s kingdom and therefore capable of participating in the project of authentic social transformation.

both on the part of the oppressors and the oppressed—at

Jesus combines a deep commitment to seeing “the oppressed go free” with an acute awareness that the oppressed—that we!—need repentance, a radical reorientation of basic attitudes and actions in response to God’s coming salvation. “Blessed are the poor” and “Blessed are the pure” belong inseparably together (Matthew 5:3, 8). Without a “politics of the pure heart” every politics of liberation will trip over its own feet—the son who was named “Jihad” will infuse another mother with a hatred so pure that she too will inscribe “revenge” into the very identity of her offspring

most confessions come as a mixture of repentance, self-defense, and even some lust for revenge

have sinned in my thoughts, in my words, and in my deeds,” as the Book of Common Prayer puts it.

“Forgive them not, Father, for they knew what they did!”

Our cool sense of justice sends the same message: the perpetrator deserves unforgiveness; it would be unjust to forgive.

As Lewis Smedes puts it in Forgive and Forget, forgiveness is an outrage “against straight-line dues-payin...

If perpetrators were repentant, forgiveness would come more easily. But too often they are not. And so both victim and perpetrator are imprisoned in the automatism of mutual exclusion, unable to forgive or r...

Forgiveness is also the only way out of the predicament of partiality, I would add. A genuinely free act which “does not merely re-act” (216), forgiveness breaks the power of the remembered past and transcends the claims of the affirmed justice and so makes the spiral of vengeance grind to a halt. This is the social import of forgiveness.

The principle “If anyone hits you, hit back! If anyone takes your coat, burn down his house!” seemed the only way to survive (Theissen 1987, 88); Lamech’s kind of revenge, which returns seventy seven blows for every one received, seemed, paradoxically, the only way to root out injustice (Genesis 4:23–24). Turning Lamech’s logic on its head, however, Jesus demanded his followers not simply to forego revenge, but to forgive as Many times as Lamech sought to avenge himself (Matthew 18:21). The injustice of oppression must be fought with the creative “injustice” of forgiveness, not with the aping injustice of revenge.

With this prayer of Christ the universal religion of revenge is overcome and the universal law of retaliation is annulled. In the name of the Crucified, from now on only forgiveness holds sway. Christianity that has the right to appeal to him is a religion of reconciliation. To forgive those who have wronged one is an act of highest sovereignty and great inner freedom. In forgiving and reconciling, the victims are superior to the perpetrators and free themselves from compulsion to evil deeds. (Moltmann 1995a, 29)

Forgiveness is no mere discharge of a victim’s angry resentment and no mere assuaging of a perpetrator’s remorseful anguish, one that demands no change of the perpetrator and no righting of wrongs. On the contrary: every act of forgiveness enthrones justice; it draws attention to its violation precisely by offering to forego its claims (Welker 1994a, 246).

“Only those who are in a state of truthfulness through the confession of their sin to Jesus are not ashamed to tell the truth wherever it must be told,”

Only those who are forgiven and who are willing to forgive will be capable of relentlessly pursuing justice without falling into the temptation to pervert it into injustice, we could add.

They are prayers. And everybody except moderns for whom God does not matter knows that the primary addressee of prayers is God. Whatever else these Psalms might have done to those who listened (and I do not doubt that they functioned at that level too), they brought the puzzlement and rage of the oppressed over injustice into the presence of the God of justice who is the God of the oppressed (Miller 1994, 106ff.).

the presence of God our rage over injustice may give way to forgiveness, which in turn will make the search for justice for all possible (see Chapter V). If forgiveness does take place it will be but an echo of the forgiveness granted by the just and loving God—the only forgiveness that ultimately matters, because, though we must forgive, in a very real sense no one can either forgive or retain sins “but God alone” (Mark

Forgiveness is the boundary between exclusion and embrace.

Much more than just the absence of hostility sustained by the absence of contact, peace is communion between former enemies. Beyond offering forgiveness, Christ’s passion aims at restoring such communion—even with the enemies who persistently refuse to be reconciled.

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.

The only adequate response to suffering is action.

If both “non-sense” and “sense” are unacceptable as noetic stances, could then the only way to “solve” the problem of past suffering be the nontheoretical act of nonremembering,

“Why?” “Why me?” and “Why my beloved child?” To deal with these persisting questions he suggests that we do the “work of mourning” (Ricoeur 1985, 646–48).

Even after the work of mourning is done the questions will remain if the memory remains.

Passing through the stages of mourning, we must ultimately reach the stage of nonremem...

Only nonremembering can end the lament over suffering which no thought can think away and no action undo.24

we do, the question will no longer be how dare God forget, but how can God, without forgetting the victims, help heal their memories.

does—provided we do not forget that, as long as the Messiah has not come in glory, for the sake of the victims, we must keep alive the memory of their suffering; we must know it, we must remember it, and we must say it out loud for all to hear

ultimately, forgetting the suffering is better than remembering it, because wholeness is better than brokenness, the communion of love better than the distance of suspicion, harmony better than disharmony.

In fact, the invitation is always conditional in this limited sense—dirty shoes must stay outside!—only that friends, being friends, tend to fulfill the conditions.

Similarly, I must keep the boundaries of my own self firm, offer resistance, otherwise I will be engaged in a self-destructive act of abnegation.

“One step more” toward the neighbor, and the first step—maybe even the second and the third—toward the enemy! As a metaphor, embrace implies that the self and the other belong together in their mutual alterity. For the self shaped by the cross of Christ and the life of the triune God, however, embrace includes not just the other who is a friend but also the other who is the enemy.