Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf revisited

 This month's theology reading group discussed Exclusion and Embrace: A theological exploration of identity, otherness, and reconciliation by Miroslav Volf. Wikipedia has a useful brief summary of the book.

I first read the book and discussed it in a group twelve years ago and wrote several blog posts about it. I have significantly benefited from re-reading it. Late in life, I now see the immense value of re-reading excellent books, particularly dense and profound ones. Over the past decade, I have built a greater knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of theology and philosophy, and how they engage (for better or worse) with modernism and postmodernism. This has increased my enjoyment and understanding of the book.

The book is impressive for both its scope and coherence. It covers a wide range of Biblical passages, events, histories, philosophies, and theologies. Furthermore, these topics and themes are woven together in a coherent whole. By his example, Volf makes a strong case that Christian theology should be public, for the sake of pluralistic societies and for the sake of the church.

Volf makes a convincing case for the following ideas.

Conflicts, small and large, are intertwined with questions of identity and otherness.

The natural outcome of an encounter with the "other", someone with a different identity to us, is exclusion. Discrimination, violence, and genocide are manifestations of the drive to exclude the other.

The counterpoint to exclusion is embrace, even embrace of enemies. There are many complexities to working out what such an embrace looks like. This requires grappling with issues of history, memory, truth, justice, peace, and forgiveness.

Evil exists. It must be grappled with politically, philosophically, and theologically. Both modernism and postmodernism have failed in their woeful inability to seriously engage with the concept of evil.

The Cross of Christ provides the template and resources to grapple, both intellectually and practically, with why and how, we need to move from exclusion to embrace.

In spite of the claims of modernity to the contrary, discussions of truth and justice can only be and should be conducted with reference to a specific tradition. [This reiterates the perspective of Alisdair MacIntyre.] There is no "view from nowhere", i.e, a perspective that is completely objective.

To grapple with conflicting identities, traditions, and perspectives we need to  practice "double vision" [taken from Thomas Nagel] whereby I acknowledge I have "the view from here" and work hard to engage with "the view from there". In different words, I endeavour to put myself in the shoes of the "other", even when I consider them morally repugnant or intellectually flawed.

For a Christian, nonviolence is the way to work towards peace. This is rooted in both the Cross, the Ressurection, and the hope of the Final Judgement. Evil not only exists but it will be punished, and in a just way. But, fallible humans are prone to deception and revenge. And so, that final judgement must rest with God, as Jesus embodied and Paul taught.