Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation
By Miroslav Volf
Abingdon Press, Nashville. 336 pages. £12.99.
Orders to: Alban Books, 79 Park Street, Bristol BS1 5PF (0117 927 7750).
If I had to recommend only three books for 1998, I am quite sure this would be one of them. Miroslav Volf is one of the most brilliant evangelical minds in the world today who writes with poetry, passion and great depth.
Jurgen Moltmann says: 'This book is a major contribution to political theology today.' And Lewis Smedes describes it as: 'A stunningly brilliant analysis of the toughest Christian challenge of our time.' It is a 'must' read for Christians in any leadership and for all who think deeply about our divided world, from Northern Ireland to former Yugoslavia and beyond.
Christians in conflict
Our world is as full of conflict as ever. In over 50 hotspots around the globe, violence has taken root between people who share the same terrain but differ in ethnicity, race, language or religion. As old tribal hatreds resurface and civilisational loyalties form new power-blocks, human rights watchers warn us that containing the abuses committed in the name of ethnic or religious groups will be our foremost challenge in the years to come.
Miroslav Volf perceives that the problem of ethnic and other conflicts is 'part of a larger problem of identity and otherness' (p.10). He determines to go beyond the various social arrangements proposed as solutions to this problem and to explore 'what kind of selves we need to be in order to live in harmony with others' (p.21).
Christ crucified is the controlling insight and power of his thinking on this matter from the start of the book. He recognises the act of solidarity with the victims as being an essential part of Christ's suffering, but sees beyond that to the central element of atonement for the perpetrators, self-donation for the enemies: 'I want to spell out the social significance of the theme of divine self-giving: as God does not abandon the godless to their evil but gives the divine self for them in order to receive them into divine communion through atonement, so also should we' (p.23).
Distance
This demands a major revolution in our thinking and acting even as Christians. Like Abraham, we are called to 'go forth' from many of the ties that bind us. Here follow five arresting and original pages on Abraham's story and us: 'To be a child of Abraham and Sarah and to respond to the call of their God means to make an exodus, to start a voyage, become a stranger' (p.39).
Faced with the new tribalism which is dividing our communities, Christians must cultivate 'the proper relation between distance from the culture and belonging to it' (p.37): 'Christians can never be first of all Asians, Americans, Croatians, Russians or Tutsis, and then Christians. As the call of Jesus' first disciples illustrates, 'the nets' (economy) and 'the father' (family) must be left behind (Mark 1.16-20). Departure is part and parcel of Christian identity.' (p.40).
This does not mean that Christians are to be culturally colourless, much less culturally neutralised. The cross is the self-giving of the one for the many. What is demolished by its power is not the difference between cultures but their enmity (Ephesians 2.14). The power of the gospel is not a holy violence which reduces us to sameness, but a redeeming power which sanctifies our distinctiveness as cultures and our individuality as persons, cleansing our corruptions and opening us to each other: 'Both distance and belonging are essential. Belonging without distance destroys . . . but distance without belonging isolates . . . Distance from a culture must never degenerate into flight from that culture but must be a way of living in a culture' (p.50).
Exclusion . . .
In our fallen world, many cultures and communities cultivate an exclusivism that demonises those who are excluded, reinforcing prejudices with lies, half-truths, selective memory (history) and even religion. Culture and tradition become the tool of pride and violence; loyalty to the culture overrules every other loyalty.
Western culture has become increasingly 'inclusive', but so much so that its inclusiveness can itself become an oppressive force levelling all boundaries and neutralising all other powers and influences. The answer to exclusion is not the inclusion of post-modern thought, but the ability to differentiate and make 'non-exclusionary judgments' (p.65).
His study of exclusion (p.57-98) is born of painful experience and profound Christian reflection. (In one of his brilliant asides, Volf shows his readers that the biblical story of Cain and Abel describes perfectly the anatomy, dynamics and power of exclusion (pp.92-98).
Exclusion cuts the bonds of our connectedness by creation and our interdependence. It treats the other person either as an enemy which must be pushed away or as a non-entity that can be disregarded. But the remedy does not lie in the 'non-judgmentalism' of the relativist or the post-modernist, but in the recognition of timeless values and ethical absolutes made with humility and applied with self-giving love, love in the spirit of 'the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me'.
. . . and embrace
After a searching analysis of exclusion in its various forms and methods (p.57-98), Miroslav Volf then turns to a study of 'embrace' (p.99-165). The central thesis of this section is that 'God's reception of hostile humanity into divine communion is a model for how human beings should relate to the others' (p.100).
This can only be followed if the innocent victim stands alongside the victimiser as a fellow-sinner and acts in response not to the other's cruelty and injustice but to the values of God's kingdom as preached by Jesus Christ. Only this can break the cycle of outrage and revenge in former Yugoslavia or anywhere else: 'If victims do not repent today, they will become perpetrators tomorrow' (p.117). 'Repentance helps us to forgive and forgiveness is a genuinely free act, which does not merely react but 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' (p.121). It is the victory of Jesus over Lamech! (Genesis 4.23-24).
The supreme model
The supreme act and model of forgiveness is Jesus' cry for the forgiveness of his torturers: 'Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.' (Luke 23.34). Volf comments: '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.' (p.126). The two dimensions of the passion of Christ are self-giving and other-receiving love. These are the chief dimensions of the Trinitarian life of God where each Person lives eternally in self-giving and other-receiving love.
The marvel is that God should make space in himself for humanity which has become his enemy! In one of his many vivid and touching expressions, Miroslav writes: 'On the cross, the dancing circle of self-giving and mutually indwelling divine persons opens up for the enemy; in the agony of the passion, the movement stops for a brief moment and a fissure appears so that sinful humanity can join in (see John 17.21)' (p.129). He therefore concludes: 'Having been embraced by God, we must make space in ourselves and invite them in - even our enemies.'
The final act of forgiveness is 'a certain kind of forgetting' which leaves the victims willing to forget and able to remember rightly (p.132).
In this spirit, the forgiver waits, ready, willing and able, if the other chooses, to receive the enemy as a friend and to let them go in peace; but ready too for misunderstanding and rejection, for 'grace is gamble, always' (p.147).
Thy kingdom come
So far, I have given a smattering of only half of this brilliant and penetrating study. Part 2 contains three chapters: 'Oppression and Justice', 'Deception and Truth', 'Violence and Peace', chapters written by a Croatian Christian who has heard the conflicting cries and curses of Serb and Moslem and Croatian, their mutual recriminations against each other and against the West, and who knows how partial are human judgments and how provisional is human justice. He calls for the 'double-vision' which can see through the other's eyes, as well as one's own, standing within one's own tradition and learning from other traditions, 'in the hope that competing justices may become converging justices and eventually issue in agreement' (p.213). He knows too that only as God's kingdom comes will men and women have the power to embrace those whom fear and hatred have excluded - or to enter the space, as perpetrators, that the victims have made in themselves.
