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

by Miroslav Volf

Finally, there is the risk of embrace. The risk follows both from nonsymmetricity and systematic underdetermination. I open my arms, make a movement of the self toward the other, the enemy, and do not know whether I will be misunderstood, despised, even violated or whether my action will be appreciated, supported, and reciprocated. I can become a savior or a victim—possibly both. Embrace is grace, and “grace is gamble, always” (Smedes 1984, 137).

Finally, we have obligations to our neighbors that are not invalidated by our neighbor’s failure to fulfill corresponding obligations to us; our relationships are not strictly reciprocal. If my neighbor breaks trust, I am not entitled to do the same, as I would be entitled not to pay her for a service she did not render. As the master metaphor for social relations, “contract” is deeply flawed because human beings are socially situated, their lives intertwined, and their interchange morally “encumbered.”

What the father did was to “re-order” the order! He inserted into the “must” of that order another “must” (v. 32)—the “must” of embracing the returning transgressor and making him a son again, rather than locking him out of fellowship!

Relationship is prior to moral rules; moral performance may do something to the relationship, but relationship is not grounded in moral performance.