What is the distinctively Christian form of existence in the social world of oppression, injustice, and violence? According to Fuller Seminary theologian Miroslav Volf, it is willingness to embrace the other. Like the father of the Prodigal Son, the Christian ought always to seek reconciliation with the repentant and returning transgressor no matter who he or she is and no matter what wrongs he or she has committed. Volf is not interested in setting forth a new program for social life—Christian or otherwise. In this important new work, Volf seeks rather to explore the inner logic and deep grammar of the biblical narrative and Christian tradition to find the single nonnegotiable and unalterable Christian stance toward fellow humans.
A native of Croatia, Volf grew up in what was then Yugoslavia and undertook his advanced theological training in Germany. Although now living and working in the United States as assistant professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, he reflects on crucial questions of human social existence out of his experience of conflict in the Balkan countries. Throughout the essay, Volf returns to his own existential dilemma both as a reflective human being and as a Christian: What stance to take toward persons who have perpetrated unspeakably evil acts of terror and violence against his own people?
Exclusion and Embrace:
A Theological Exploration
of Identity, Otherness,
and Reconciliation
By Miroslav Volf
Abingdon
336 pp.; $19.95, paper
In the background of his reflections lie many sources: Volf’s cultural identity and experience; the theologies of his mentor, Jürgen Moltmann; a broad and deep acquaintance with modern and postmodern philosophies; and, of course, the broad Christian theological tradition that forms his tradition-community and shapes his identity as a believer and scholar. One source, however, stands out above all others: the biblical narrative and especially the gospel of the crucified God at its heart. That is the “norming norm” to which Volf appeals above all other standards and criteria or tests for truth. Yet, even a cursory reading of Exclusion and Embrace would be sufficient to convince anyone that the author is not a fundamentalist. Commitment to the ultimate truth of the gospel and to the authority of the scriptural witness in no way blinds him to his own fallibility or to the inevitable distortions, biases, and corrigibility of all human thought—including past and present Christian doctrinal formulations and reflections. For Volf, the constructive task of theology is always unfinished, and the Christian ought always to be suspicious of systems of thought—even ones that wear the label “Christian.”
Exclusion and Embrace is not a another systematic theology or theological or doctrinal monograph. It is not a volume of theological anthropology, nor even another tome of theological ethics. It is what the subtitle implies—an “exploration” of human personhood that is situated in the postmodern theological and philosophical context. Another way of describing the book is as a sustained theological-philosophical reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son for Christians in conflict situations today. Its central question is “How should we then live—or incline our heart—in a world of terrible wrongs?” It is not so much a set of behaviors or prescriptions for action that Volf seeks to set forth as an attitude of the heart. The story of the father of the Prodigal Son and the symbol of the crucified God compel a Christian attitude of self-donation that wills to embrace by reaching out and making space within oneself for the other no matter what he or she has done.
Chapter 3, “Embrace,” forms the true heart of Volf’s volume. Even within that single chapter stands a “canon within the canon,” a section headed “The Open Arms of the Father.” It is a moving and highly challenging exegesis of the “profound and singularly fecund story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15: 11-32)” that Volf confesses originally triggered the idea for a theology of embrace. Reflecting on the response of the older brother to the prodigal’s return and father’s embrace, Volf concludes, “Obsession with the rules—not bad rules, but salutary rules!–encourages self-righteousness and the demonization of others.” Volf draws from this paradigmatic story of Jesus the moral that all “order” and individual identity must remain flexible without being thrown out entirely. At the heart of God’s posture toward the world is desire for relationship, not rules and rigid moral categories.
To be blunt about it, many Christian thinkers will be greatly challenged by Volf’s interpretation of God’s divine order for identities and relationships and distressed by his implicit doctrine of God. Volf’s God not only forgives past transgressions when he embraces evildoers. He also forgets what they have done! “God remembers iniquities just to forget them after they have been named as iniquities and forgiven.” Guardians of traditional interpretations of divine attributes may question the adequacy of Volf’s understanding of divine omniscience at this point.
He acknowledges another set of concerns with his radical interpretation when he anticipates the objection, “But how dare God forget, we may protest! … No redeemed future is imaginable in which perpetrators—even judged and transformed perpetrators!–are dressed in white robes.” Are we for the sake of reconciled relationships to forget when we forgive those who have carried out the most horrible crimes against humanity? Volf’s answer is a highly qualified yes. He calls on victims not only to forgive—as Corrie Ten Boom did when confronted after World War II with a repentant prison guard responsible for cruelty to her sister and herself—but also to forget the actions as God does or will do. He qualifies this forgetfulness by insisting that it must be “right forgetting,” by which he means not sweeping evil under a rug. The memory of the injustice must not be enshrined and revisited so that it dominates personal identity and relationship. But Volf leaves room for a kind of accountability after reconciliation. Exactly how this works is left unclear.
Up to a certain point in Exclusion and Embrace one is tempted to think Volf is falling into an almost sentimental notion of reconciliation similar to the utopian illusions of many of the liberal Protestant “social gospelers” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (pre-Niebuhrian Christian social thought). In part 2, however, Volf turns to the difficult task of bringing back into the picture justice and divine anger against oppression, violence, and injustice. Much of what he says in the final 200 pages of the book is completely consistent with Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Christian realism.” Love and justice must go together until the eschaton. The God who is always willing to embrace also loses patience (it turns out) and exercises terror toward those who knowingly and consciously resist the open arms of the crucified Messiah. In a statement reminiscent of the best of Niebuhr, Volf says, “A ‘nice’ God is a figment of liberal imagination, a projection onto the sky of the inability to give up cherished illusions about goodness, freedom, and the rationality of social actors.”
While conservative guardians of tradition will be pleased, no doubt, with Volf’s final tip of his hat to the holy terror of God toward unrepentant evildoers (God’s “wrath”), they will be dismayed by his enthusiastic refusal to condemn universalism. In spite of the threat of God’s wrathful and even violent judgment at the end of history, Volf hopes for a “universal nonrefusal” without counting on it. “Hence the possibility of the final condemnation.” His final word on the subject is “I am not a universalist, but God may be.” Christian realists of all theological stripes will be displeased with Volf’s strong rejection of all human use of violence. He is a pacifist with regard to human action without denying God the right to wreak violent vengeance on unrepentant doers of evil.
Exclusion and Embrace is long on general theological-ethical reflection about basic attitudes and stances and very short on specific advice for those caught in concrete dilemmas. Unconditional pacifism is one of the few examples of Volf’s clear directives or moral imperatives. Even there he acknowledges the inevitability, if not rightness, of exceptions. No one should turn to this book looking for a guide to casuistry. Instead, it should be read by those seeking guidance toward developing a distinctively Christian (Cross-centered) ethical stance in conflict situations large and small. Even then, such readers will have to decide how best to translate the stance of “willingness to embrace” into specific action.
Roger E. Olson is professor of theology at Bethel College and Seminary (Minn.) and editor of the Christian Scholar’s Review.
Copyright(c) 1997 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Books & Culture Magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail bceditor@booksandculture.com.
Nov/Dec 1997, Vol. 3, No. 6, Page 32
