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In the fall of 2013
an honorary degree was given to Janet
Dench, Director of the Canadian Council
for Refugees. At the same ceremony,
Miroslav Volf received an honorary
degree. His book Exclusion
and Embrace was mentioned. I was
intrigued because I had become uneasy
with the big role of victim’s statements
in the courts and the cries for
punishment. My Christian religious
tradition had given me a sense that
forgiving and restoration should be
uppermost, yet I am concerned about
justice too. I thought that Volf might
have something to say from his exposure
as a Croat Christian to the Balkan wars
in the early 90s. Volf
has things to say which deserve
repeating in his book: Miroslav Volf, Exclusion
and
Embrace: A Theological Exploration of
Identity, Otherness, and
Reconciliation, Abingdon Press,
Nashville 1996.
Volk's Introduction
talks about the centrality of the cross
to the Christian tradition and talks
about the self and the other. Cities
where differing communities had lived
together for centuries like Sarajevo
have seen atrocities and violence. Now
his country Croatia felt both
comfortingly “home” yet lacking without
signs of the “other.” Solutions to
the politics of difference can be
universalist, promoting universal
values, communitarian promoting
heterogeneity or postmodern promoting
individual autonomy. He favours
exploring the individual human agents at
the base, how they experience identity
and how they relate to each other.
Today's thinking is shaped by modernism
and post- modernism and Volf constantly
fits his thinking alongside modern and
postmodern writers. For him the cross is
central. He sees Christ’s suffering on
the cross representing also the
suffering of the poor and weak. But the
cross is also “self- donation for
enemies and their reception into the
eternal communion with God.” He states
that Trinitarian self-giving love must
root Christian reflection on social
issues. The scandal of the cross in a
world of violence is the agony of the
abandonment experienced. Embrace, Volk's
metaphor for “welcome one another,” must
precede any “truth about others” or
“construction of their justice.” While
the will to embrace has priority, “the
struggle against deception injustice and
violence” is assumed “indispensable.”
These themes all reappear.
Chapter I begins Part
One of the book with an exploration of
"Distance and Belonging." His sub-title
"Complicity" explores culture and
imperialism and how complicity is the
way of doing things [and thinking?] in
which we are embedded. He refers to the
church and imperialism. To avoid
complicity, the Christian needs distance
from her or his culture as well as
belonging to it. Volf's
thinking on "Departing …" looks at the
biblical story of Abraham responding to
a call to “go forth” from a point of
origin with a goal. The
section "Without Leaving" looks at the
apostle Paul’s solution to balancing
universalism and particularity. God must
be universal and include human equality
but without a particular genealogy. This
is through the particularity of the
suffering body of God’s Messiah. Faith
in Christ replaces a birth right to
belonging and all people have access to
the one God. Each culture retains its
own specificity. “Through
faith one must ‘depart’ from one’s
culture because the ultimate allegiance
is given to God and God’s Messiah who
transcends every culture.” “Christian
children of Abraham can depart their
culture without having to leave it …”
Distance from a culture must be a way of
living in it. The distance which comes
from allegiance to God and God’s future
creates space in us to receive the
other. It also entails a judgement
against evil in every culture which must
begin with the self and the self's own
culture. The struggle against falsehood
injustice and violence is impossible
without distance. This requires an
ecumenical personality and community. As
in the Barmen Declaration he suggests “…
to keep our allegiance to Jesus Christ
pure, we need to nurture commitment to
the multicultural community of Christian
churches.”
Chapter II introduces
Exclusion by way of the early 1990s
ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.
Societies who regard themselves as
inclusive usually have a history of
“barbaric
conquest, colonization and
enslavement of the nonEuropean other”
and it was carried out by “the good and
the just” the rational and the
civilized. He finds value in
differentiation with binding. The human
self is made by both taking in and
keeping out. The self is distinct yet
interdependent. Exclusion breaks the
binding component or fails to recognize
the distinctness of the other as
belonging to the pattern of human
interdependence. Without boundaries
there would be no discreet identities
and without discreet identities there
could be no relation to the other.
Judgement matters and can be
exclusionary. For Volf, a judgement
which names exclusion as an evil and
differentiation as a positive good is
not an act of exclusion but the
beginning of a struggle against
exclusion. To allow positive judgement,
the self can be re-centred. Here Volf
writes of St Paul who described his
former self as “crucified.” Volf prefers
to say the self is “de centred” so as to
be “re centred” in a new “de centred
centre” of self-giving love. This new
centre “is the doorkeeper deciding the
fate of otherness at the doorstep of the
self.”
Chapter 3 is entitled
Embrace. It takes “God’s Reception of
hostile humanity into divine communion”
as a model for how humans should relate
under: “repentance” “forgiveness”
“making space in oneself for the other”
and “healing of memory.” He begins with
reflection on “liberty.” Christian and
Hebrew scriptures use the optic of those
who suffer - the lens of injustice
endured by little people. That is the
lens of this chapter. The notion of
freedom from oppression of its victims
is the dominant notion, with a lesser
notion pointing to meaningless freedom
for those starving in abject poverty – a
freedom to be exploited or to be left to
starve. The twin categories oppression
and liberation are ill suited to bring
about reconciliation and peace to groups
of people and so should not be the
ultimate social goal. Love should be
above liberation to avoid “the tendency
to ideologize relations of social actors
and perpetuate their antagonisms.” Volf
says “adieu to grand narratives” of
emancipation – noting that postmodernity
is defined by incredulity in such
narratives as universal emancipation or
universal justice. There can be no final
reconciliation. Peace agreements fuel
new conflicts and disagreements. A
responsible theology should aim to
facilitate “nonfinal reconciliation in
the midst of the struggle against
oppression.” Although the Christian hope
for a final reconciliation in its grand
narrative remains for Volk, the final
reconcilitation is the work of “the
triune God”; it is a new beginning; “it
is not a self-enclosed ‘totality’.” Volf
advocates a “nonfinal reconcilitiation”
in which “the self, guided by the
narrative of the triune God, is ready to
receive the other into itself and
undertake a readjustment of its identity
based on the other’s alternity.”
Chapter 4 usefully
explores male and female in the terms
explored thus far and addresses an
aphorism from Nietzsche. Volf argues God
is “personal” and since persons are male
or female, from the “creaturely side” we
address God as male or female. Volf
notes that whereas in Genesis humanity
was created male and female, in
Galatians Christ has made all things new
and there is no longer male and female.
“Instead of setting up ideals of
femininity and masculinity, we should
root each in the sexed body and let the
social construction of gender play
itself out guided by the vision of the
identity of and relations between divine
persons [trinity].” In closing he
summarizes: humanity exists in a duality
of genders with equal dignity – they
both command they both obey they are
both full and both lacking; the
construction of gender identities goes
both ways – each needs the other for its
own creation and redemption; the
identity of each gender may not be
without the other – they are fashioned
and refashioned in relation to each
other; all of this is kept in motion by
self giving love. Volf moves on to part
II of his book.
Chapter 5 explores
Oppression and Justice. Volf shows that
a notion of what is justice is embedded
in a culture. When cultures clash the
notion of what is just clashes. He
explores the universalist notion of
justice; the postmodern view that
justice bears many names and the
communitarian view that justice is
placed in a tradition. The prophet Micah
viewed peace resting on justice
established by the God of all nations –
a perspective beyond a particular
cultural context and in the future.
Christians follow the notion from the one
God of all humanity to God’s universal
justice and peace. But Christians are
within particular cultures and cannot
claim to uphold God’s universal justice
and so must make judgements in “a
provisional way.” Volf dismisses Kant’s
justice based on pure reason as “laden
with historical and cultural
particularities” and turns to John Rawls
whose notion of liberal justice allows
Reasonable people to compromise using a
“veil of ignorance” construction. Yet
Rawls justice is only reasonable to
people in liberal democracies. The
cynic’s way to universal justice: take a
particular perspective on justice, deny
that it is particular, insist that
anybody with piety or smarts will agree
– and the job is done. The
postmodernists argue that any justice
which claims to be universal will be
oppressive. And because justice seeks to
be blind to differences between persons,
the law of justice falls short of
individuals. Volf accepts some truth in
this position. He accepts Nietzsche: all
judgements are incomplete premature
impure and therefore unfair. Volf
suggests the postmodern reasoning has
self-contradictions and turns to
particular cultural justice.
Chapter 6 looks at
Deception and Truth. In
Orwell’s 1984, the regime can re-tell
what happened. What happened matters to
Latin American families of the
disappeared and to those informed upon
in Communist Europe. It matters that
Auschwitz be remembered – to forget
would be an absolute injustice.
Christians remember the Last Supper. Yet
while memory matters, remembering can
perpetuate hatred. How we remember
matters. And differing people remember
differently. Specific
memories like numbers of people put in
concentration camps will differ and will
attract a wider narrative which will
then be disputed. A supposedly rational
and impartial methodological history
cannot be "correct." Christians will
rightly seek objective truth in history,
but recognise that ultimately only God
knows. To reconstruct the past as it
actually happened is impossible. He
cites Foucault on the issue of power
knowledge in which truth is “produced”
and induces effects of power. Each
society has its regime of truth … If
truth is “produced,” all that matters
are the mechanisms by which true and
false are separated. To produce truth
requires power or “multiple forms of
constraint.” Truth induces power. The
historian inevitably silences voices
which do not fit, excludes differences
and distorts particulars. Volf quotes
Nietzsche: I have done that says my
memory. I cannot have done that says my
pride. Eventually memory yields. Volf
finds Foucault’s response to power
unsatisfying and he suggests that the
relationship between power and truth in
the world of human affairs is best put
as “in order to know truly we need to
want to exercise power rightly.” This
take he follows to the end of the
chapter, turning first to his notion of
double vision. He suggests we view the
world from here and “there” – with one
foot outside ourselves. We cross a
social boundary into the world of the
other briefly, we take that back into
our world, react then repeat. We have to
act, often before any common language
has emerged. Why bother? Volk notes that
before seeking truth one has to want to
find it and he quotes the prophet
Ezekiel on people who have eyes to see
but do not see etc. The will to seek the
truth and stand back from ourselves is
built into the “master image” we have
built into our character – and he quotes
new testament -
the truth must be in you and, Ephesians,
live the truth in love. He goes on to
argue without the will to embrace there
can be no truth between people and no
peace. In
truth and community he suggests the
truth of the biblical tradition has
within it the notion that truth builds
community and deception destroys it and
he uses quotes from Jeremiah and Paul to
illustrate. Volf uses the Christian
account of Jesus before Pilate to
explore Truth against Power. In
renouncing the power of violence Jesus
uses the power of truth. The truth
matters more than my own self. The self
of the other matters more than my truth.
The quest for truth must not sanction
violence, “… authentic freedom is the
fruit of a double commitment to truth
and non-violence.”
Chapter VI, Violence
and Peace, is the last. It begins with a
reinforcement of the scripture account
of the pre-crucifixion trial of Jesus by
Pilate noting that the non-violent
kingdom which Jesus proclaimed was a
radical challenge to Caesar’s realm
where violence maintained peace. Volf
suspects we are more comfortable with
the victorious rider on the white horse
described in the Christian revelations
scripture. Christ returns for a final
judgement and establishing of God’s
realm. “We will believe in the crucified
but we want to march with the Rider.” In
our world of violence “our question
cannot be whether the reign … of God –
should replace the rule of Caesar.” … but
“how to live under the rule of Caesar in
the absence of the reign of truth and
justice.” He argues that the crucified
Christ and the Rider do not underwrite
violence, but they offer resources. In
Reason against Violence, Volf lays out
the rational method as an antidote to
violence citing Kant, Eliott and Kerr.
Yet the “civilizing process” of the
enlightenment is a myth and “… modernity
made the holocaust passible.” Warring
people Bellicose Gods looks at religion
and people of faith. Religion is at best
seen as a cultural resource, but Volf
says “religion is alive and well in
today’s world and so is violence.” He
looks at Kung and agrees that the
cruelest struggles have been legitimized
by religion. But disagrees with Kung
that agreement among religions per se
can resolve this. Rather he says: “…
without the principled assertion that it
is never appropriate to use religion to
give moral sanction to the use of
violence, religious images and religious
leaders will continue to be exploited by
politicians and generals engaged in
violence.” The section "Cosmic Terror"
explores the Christian scripture
"Revelation" ’s new Jerusalem - which
critics view as totalitarian, with no
place to hide and no higher court for
appeal. Critics also note that new
Jerusalem shines after an act of piety
which destroys the world – the
Christians will destroy the whole world
to get revenge against their enemies.
Volf turns to reflect on breaking the
cycle of the violence which forms a
backdrop throughout much of the
Christian scriptures from Christ’s birth
to death to his role as Rider on the
white horse in revelation which inflicts
violence. Volf argues first, the cross
breaks the cycle of violence and,
secondly lays
bare the mechanism of scapegoating.
Third, the cross is part of Jesus’
struggle for justice and truth. In this
wider context, the cross is not passive.
Active opposition to the kingdom of
deception and oppression is inseparable
from proclaiming the kingdom of God.
This opposition brought the cross and
gave meaning to his non-violence.
Fourth, the cross is the divine embrace
of the deceitful and the unjust. Yet
according to Volf one cannot act as if
sin was not there.”There can be no
redemption unless the truth about the
world is told and justice is done.”
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