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

by Miroslav Volf

Life in the twenty-first century presents a disturbing reality. Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way, has come to be defined as in and of itself evil. Miroslav Volf contends that if the healing word of the gospel is to be heard today, Christian theology must find ways of speaking that address the hatred of the other. Is there any hope of embracing our enemies? Of opening the door to reconciliation? Reaching back to the New Testament metaphor of salvation as reconciliation, Volf proposes the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion.

Increasingly we see that exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our (ever-narrowing) circle. In light of this, Christians must learn that salvation comes, not only as we are reconciled to God, and not only as we "learn to live with one another," but as we take the dangerous and costly step of opening ourselves to the other, of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God.

Volf won the 2002 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for the first edition of his book, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Abingdon, 1996). In that first edition, professor Volf, a Croatian by birth, analyzed the civil war and "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia, and he readily found other examples of cultural, ethnic, and racial conflict to illustrate his points. Since September 11, 2001, and the subsequent epidemic of terror and massive refugee suffering throughout the world, Volf revised Exclusion and Embrace to account for the evolving dynamics of inter-ethnic and international strife.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Christianity, Nonfiction, Christian, Faith, Philosophy

336 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1996

About the author

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and the founding director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. “One of the most celebrated theologians of our time,” (Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury), Volf is a leading expert on religion and conflict. His recent books include Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and Persisting Enmities, and Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation—winner of the 2002 Grawmeyer Award in Religion.

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Reviews

[Jeremy]

Tim Keller on this book:

Miroslav Volf wrote a book called Exclusion & Embrace, and he makes a case there that Christianity gives you the most non-oppressive basis for self-image and identity. In traditional cultures, you feel good about yourself if you are doing what your parents want. In Western cultures, you feel good about yourself if you are achieving and you went to Harvard and you got an M.B.A. and now you’re at Goldman Sachs and you're doing well.

But I can tell you this, I'll say as a pastor, at some point you are going to find that your identity is going to crush you, because it’s based on achievement or it's based on parental expectations. It is enslaving, it will crush you, you will identify with your work, and you will also look down your nose at people because your identity is based not only on performance but also on difference. It is based on the idea that I am better than other people who haven’t got what I've got.

So Christianity gives you a basis of identity that is based on the love of God, it is a gift, it is not something you earn. It is not something that goes up or down based on your performance. It is something you can actually experience. It is extraordinarily non-oppressive. It is extraordinarily different.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Volf's book needs to be read slowly for it is both profound and challenging. This book is a theology of reconciliation. Volf puts forth exclusion of the other as the problem (ch. 2). When we exclude others, keeping them at a distance, we are able to view ourselves as right and just and the other as evil and unjust. This often then leads to violence. The solution to this is to embrace, which does not pretend evil does not exist but seeks to model God's embrace of hostile humanity by embracing the other even in their wrongdoing (ch. 3). This embrace then is the model for how to deal with the clashing of justices in the real world (ch. 5). Embrace also informs how we understand truth as rather than assuming our own truth or hopelessly giving up the search for truth we seek to see the world from the view of the other which then helps us sharpen our own view of truth (ch. 6). Finally, he deals with the thorny issue of violence, arguing that the crucified Jesus of the Gospels and the Lamb riding to victory on a white horse of Revelation are two sides of the same coin (ch. 7). Precisely because evil exists in the world, and because people refuse the embrace of God, judgment by God is necessary. To those who wonder why God cannot simply save all, Volf points out that God forcing people into an embrace would itself be violence. This was my favorite chapter in the book. We Christians are to live nonviolently, taking up our crosses, and trusting God as the only one with the right to judge.

Overall, an amazing book. Highly recommended.

[Lucas Freitas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book and a must read for times like ours.

Volf sets out to write about identity formation through exclusion of others while his home country, Croatia, was ravaged by ethnic conflicts caused by the collapse of Yuguslavia. His perspective, then, is more bottom-up than top-down, and carries the weight of someone honestly trying to make sense of a heartbreaking situation in which they are involved in and affected by - if not directly, at least by implication.

His main thesis is that the opposite of exclusion, by which one's identity is formed in opposition to someone else, is embrace, a movement where two individuals open themselves to each other. For those familiar with theological terms, this movement is mirrored on the trinitarian concept of perichoresis.

However, in a world marred by sin, where most (all?) of us define ourselves as "not-them", the road is long before embrace can happen. And the bulk of the book becomes an exploration on the necessary conditions for embrace to happen. This includes naming evil, speaking the truth, and restoration, for there can be no embrace without justice, but also forgiveness, fostered by the perception that forgiving becomes the first act that is truly free.

Using trinitarian characteristics to refer to humans is a contentious endeavor, and Volf dedicates his appendixes to defend himself against those critics who resisted this move.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. He opens the chapters with an assessment of the issue through multiple lenses, and in these sections he demonstrates that he has read widely about the subjects. Volf then exegetes a biblical passage to buttress his argument. His exegesis is fair to the text and I found little to quibble against except the general observation that this approach easily slips into proof-texting.

That naming injustice and forgiveness shall come side-by-side is something that carries special importance nowadays. The slogan "No Justice, No Peace" leaves me wondering when will we have peace, since justice will prove itself elusive on this side of eternity. It takes a divine being to parse all guilt and to restore perfect justice, and Jesus teaches us to pray to God "forgive our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Mt 6:12), so restoration and forgiveness must walk hand-in-hand.

On the issue of repentance/forgiveness, I wish Volf had explored more the time element in them. Is it possible to forgive someone even before they repent? What about repentance that is not met with forgiveness? Is there a point in forgiving a dead person? He does a good job at intertwining both as necessary, but I believe his case would be stronger should he have explored these questions.

Finally, I agree with him that trinitarian concepts can be used to human relationships, though always with caution and in analogical, non-categorical ways. For if we don't, the only alternative would be to formulate everything in the negative, giving up all efforts to a via negativa type of approach that leaves us with little more than knowledge about who God is not. That God is not a chicken (though Jesus compares himself with one in Mt 23:37) I know...

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exclusion of the "other" who is different and the violence which can often arise from this has been part of the human story ever since Cain and Abel. This is especially troubling when the other who is different has perpetrated injustice against us or when peoples with radically differing perspectives live side by side. Is there any alternative to estrangement, discord, revenge and violence? Miroslav Volf thinks so.

How is this possible? The answer is in embrace, which Volf ultimately founds in the reconciling work of the cross of Christ--his outstretched arms being the first embrace. He speaks of the drama of embrace, act one of which is opening one's arms, which means of an openness of oneself to the other. Act two is waiting, which recognizes that embrace cannot be imposed without violence and must be reciprocal. Act three is closing the arms in which each makes space for the other while maintaining one's own self. Act four is opening the arms once again, which preserves the difference of the other. Volf movingly illustrates the nature of embrace in the parable of the prodigal.

Volf explores the intricacies of gender identity and relationships, the challenges of embrace in situations of oppression and injustice and violence. His engagement with post-modern writers teases out how efforts to fight oppression, injustice, and violence often simply perpetuate all three where the oppressed becomes the oppressor, that no one has a corner on justice and that violence begets violence. Only the open arms that offer forgiveness and by which one opens oneself to the other including seeing with the "double vision" that looks from the perspective of the other as well as one's own--only this can bring peace, reconciliation, and an escape from violence.

This is an incredibly rich book that deserves multiple readings and is vitally important for any of us engaging a diverse, multicultural world.

[Jonny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible. One of the best books I've ever read. Brilliantly researched, beautifully articulated, and deeply biblical, Volf's book addresses issues of identity, gender, justice, truth, and violence in an Orthodox but never cloying lens. Highly highly recommended.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense with insight, this book requires a slow read, and probably a number of rereads. Rather than attempt a summary I will instead embrace the work of other reviewers and provide links and then attach a few quotes from the book:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


Re how monotheism implies universality:

‘His main point, however, is well taken: the ultimate allegiance of those whose father is Abraham can be only to the God of "all families of the earth," not to any particular country, culture, or family with their local deities. The oneness of God implies God's universality, and universality entails transcendence with respect to any given culture.’
[p 30]


Re Jesus’ very atypical political message:

‘Truly surprising and new in Jesus's ministry, however, were neither the political overtones of his message nor the special interest he displayed toward "the poor." Such interest is precisely what we would expect from any half-witted political leader from the margins; to be a leader you need social power, to have social power you need a following, and to have a following you must take on the cause of the disgruntled, which in Jesus's case would have been the great majority at the bottom of the heap of society. But Jesus had no aspirations to political leadership and he did more, much more, than what we would expect of a politician. No doubt, he kindled hope in the hearts of the oppressed and demanded radical change of the oppressors, as any social reformer would. But he also built into the very core of his "platform" the message of God's unconditional love and the people's need for repentance. From the perspective of contemporary Western sensibilities, these two things together—divine love and human repentance—addressed to the victims represent the most surprising and, as political statements, the most outrageous and (at the same time) most hopeful aspects of Jesus's message.
What disturbs us, of course, is not the unconditional love, which we have come to expect, but the call to repentance.’
[p 112]


Re the message of The Prodigal Son:

‘Notice the categorical difference between how the Father and how the older brother interpret the prodigal's life in the "distant country." The older brother employs moral categories and constructs his brother's departure along the axis of "bad/good" behavior: the brother has "devoured your property with prostitutes.” The father, though keenly aware of the moral import of his younger son's behavior, employs relational categories and constructs his son's departure along the axis of "lost/found" and "alive (to him)/dead (to him)." Relationship is prior to moral rules; moral performance may do something to the relationship, but relationship is not grounded in moral performance. Hence the will to embrace is independent of the quality of behavior, though at the same time "repentance," "confession," and the "consequences of one's actions" all have their own proper place. The profound wisdom about the priority of the relationship, and not some sentimental insanity, explains the father's kind of "prodigality" to both of his sons.’
[p 171]

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really excellent work on violence, reconciliation, justice, oppression, and so forth, filtered through Volf's language of exclusion and embrace. He writes from the thick of it, having grown up Croatian in the former Yugoslavia. It is a challenge for a work of theology of this type to stand the test of time, and Volf's personal experience of exclusion and embrace gives his ideas an immediacy that has lasted for 20 years. Some of the atrocities that were immediate to him when writing Exclusion and Embrace in the 1990s were the Balkan conflict, the 1992 LA uprising (he lived in LA for a time), and various other tragedies around the world (genocide in Rwanda and the Sri Lankan civil war). Since this book was written, many more such atrocities have occurred, and Volf's words continue to speak truth into current situations.

He begins by quoting a question Jürgen Moltmann asked him at a conference: "'But can you embrace a četnik?' Serbian fighters called 'četnik' had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities. I had just argued that we ought to embrace our enemies as God has embraced us in Christ." (9) And thus the whole project of Exclusion and Embrace began. "Can I embrace a četnik--the ultimate other, so to speak, the evil other? What would justify the embrace? Where would I draw the strength for it? What would it do to my identity as a human being and as a Croat? It took me a while to answer, though I immediately knew what I wanted to say. 'No, I cannot--but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.' In a sense this book is the product of the struggle between the truth of my argument and the force of Moltmann's objection." (9)

I'm sure I will return to this book over and over again. It made excellent Advent reading, especially the section on Revelation and judgment. Exclusion and Embrace, I think, is best read at some distance from suffering, whether chronological or intellectual. (Volf argues for having some amount of distance from culture in order to think critically and well about it.) The arguments of
Exclusion and Embrace are too much for the one bearing the pain of being excluded, but might be immensely helpful to someone who has borne that pain and wants to move to a place of peace. Volf often focuses on remembering rightly and even forgetting (in an eschatological sense), so one could argue Exclusion and Embrace is written to those for whom violent exclusion is in the past. It's not that Volf has nothing to say to those currently in deep suffering; I just wouldn't thrust Exclusion and Embrace in the hands of someone currently in a war zone.

The whole project of Exclusion and Embrace reminded me of Corrie Ten Boom's story of embracing one of the concentration camp guards she met during her later ministry. She both wanted to embrace and forgive him, and desired to exclude him. When she did embrace him, she felt a flow of love between them. This reconciliation of oppressor and victim is a hard pill to swallow, but it is the most challenging and radical aspect of Christianity. "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us," Paul says in Romans 5, and for Volf, this is the embrace that ends exclusion. Romans 5:5 was a significant verse for Ten Boom in her ministry, and Romans 5:1-11 is important to Exclusion and Embrace.

The chapter on gender identity as an outworking of exclusion and embrace was helpful (and I quote from it below), but it also felt oddly out of place in the book. There were more typos in this chapter (in my edition) than in other chapters, leading me to think it may have been something of an afterthought, or at least less edited than the other chapters. Volf did not really touch on violence in relations between genders, though every other chapter deals with violence in some way, which makes it stand apart from the rest, and also fails to account for the sadly common element of gender-motivated violence. The chapter felt a bit like checking a box rather than providing a thorough, robust vision for gender in Volf's ideal of embrace. I have heard that the chapter was removed from subsequent editions of Exclusion and Embrace, and I hope that Volf has written better about this elsewhere, or ideally, edited a volume on the topic with many voices chiming in about it. Volf's idea of exclusion and embrace is a great conversation partner with gender studies, but I don't think he executed it to the best of his ability in this book.

"All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover him at their side. To claim the comfort of the Crucified while rejecting his way is to advocate not only cheap grace but a deceitful ideology." (24)

"For God to be the model of masculinity one must first project maleness onto God and then use the projection to legitimize certain allegedly specifically male characteristics and activities." (171)

"Should we not analyze the biblical statements about men and women, try to reconstruct biblical 'manhood' and 'womanhood,' and apply it in contemporary contexts? Without denying that we can learn much from men and women in the Bible, I propose that such an approach would be mistaken. Biblical 'womanhood' and 'manhood'--if there are such things at all, given the diversity of male and female characters and roles that we encounter in the Bible--are not divinely sanctioned models but culturally situated examples; they are accounts of the successes and failures of men and women to live out the demands of God on their lives within specific settings. This is not to say that the biblical construals of what men and women (of what men and women as men and women) should or should not do and be are wrong, but that they are of limited normative value in a different cultural context, since they are of necessity laden with specific cultural beliefs about gender identity and roles." (182)

"My proposal is that we locate normativity in the formal features of identity and the character of relations of divine persons. 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. What is normative is not some 'essence' of femininity and masculinity, but the procedures, modeled on the life of the triune God, through which men and women in specific cultural settings should negotiate their mutual relations and their constructions of femininity and masculinity." (182) [Note that Volf specifically speaks against locating visions for human relations in the Trinity in the way commonly done by groups like the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, or the "umbrella" analogy for the Trinity and human families. Rather, here he is speaking of divine self-giving love that is modeled by God toward us, rather than by us toward God.]

"It takes the struggle against depression and oppression to transform nonviolence from barren negativity into a creative possibility, from a quicksand into a foundation of a new world." (293)

[Carmen Imes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. So much to ponder.

[Wesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Miroslav Volf and I probably disagree on a good number of things. There were parts I found Pelagian and there appeared a James Martin-esque faux pas that included an embarrassingly bad reading of Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman (see p. 214).
However, it is important to read outside our echo chambers. On top of that, Volf is thoughtful and writes beautifully with concern for the problems facing us in our ever-divided, increasingly partisan world.

[Joshua Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book rocks, seriously loved it. while the book is filled with great insights, here's a few that stood out to me:

how do we reconcile the tension between God's identification with the oppressed and its ensuing demand for justice with God's embrace of the oppressor and call for forgiveness? Volf, personally coming from a context of genocide, is very vulnerable about the dramatic tension in attempting to reconcile himself with both the God who identifies with the suffering, exploited, abused and victimized and delivers the needy (thereby critiquing the powers of victimization and holding them to account) and the God who forgives the victimizers, perpetrators, oppressors and calls us not towards revenge or isolated neutrality but towards reconciliation.

whereas moltmann and similar theological movements have done the crucial work of reemphasizing recently lost emphases on God's solidarity with the poor, marginalized, and oppressed, Volf picks up the crucial theme of atonement for the perpetrator. volf places God's self-donation or self-giving love as the broader context under which God's solidarity with the oppressed and atonement for the perpetrator must be placed.

volf explores a theology of reconciliation in the face of the challenge of "otherness" in contemporary society, in which boundaries are often created in which we exclude the other in our collective identities.

"embrace" is employed as a metaphor (along the lines of the prodigal son story and in the context of Christ's embrace of our wretched humanity on the cross) to explore God's posture towards the offender, framing reconciliation for those who have been violated to have a posture of embrace towards those who have violated them. using trinitarian language, we must make space in ourselves for the other in whom are identities are constituted--both positively and negatively. for the victim, a posture of embrace thus entails repentance for what the sin has done to our own lives.

this could easily be misunderstood as "blaming the victim" and this is where i think volf's discussion is perhaps at its most powerful, still being able to call evil evil and call it to account, while nonetheless recognizing that there is a different kind of evil, even on a lesser scale, that victimization does to us and from which we need God's healing. the result of this healing will be the strength to have a posture of embrace towards those who have wounded us and a willingness towards reconciliation.

and yet for the offender to enter and receive the embrace offered calls for acknowledgement of the offense in repentance. the call to enter the kingdom and be reconciled to God comes first with the call to repent. God's all-embracing love requires nothing of us for it to be there but everything from us in order to enter it. there is no "cheap grace" here in which the offender is free to abuse again and again under the name of "love" and "reconciliation" which are more fluffy distortions of the self-sacrificial nature such words truly mean in their biblical framework.

given his backdrop from the genocide in the former yugoslavia his story lends such a powerful voice to address the issue of "otherness" and reconciliation in today's world. i also love that he goes "through" postmodern thought rather than "around" it, drawing meaningfully from its major thinkers' often brilliant insights but unintimidated to freely critique its destructive weaknesses.

i also loved the last chapter (7?) where he attempts to reconcile the Crucified Messiah with the Rider on the White Horse, how do we reconcile the vulnerable suffering Messiah revealing God in weakness, humility and identification with the outcast, marginalized and broken and embracing humanity in its wickedness and rebellion, with the Rider on a White Horse who comes with a sword to strike down the nations and treads in the bloody winepress of his wrath? Volf argues that God's violence is a "violence to end all violence" which is hope for the oppressed and victimized around the world who seek to embrace the oppressor to no avail; Volf lambasts the Western sentimentality which has shirked from affirming the justice of God's violence and claims (this was striking to me) to truly reclaim a non-violent proactive resistance to oppression and injustice in our world we actually need a stronger reclamation of God's justice, a "more violent" God (properly framed as a "violence to end all violence" in the context of his loving pursuit to restore his creation and set the world to rights from the hands of human brutality) as the grounding of God being powerful enough to redeem creation from humanity's sin and ground our hope.

overall this book really challenged me alot to wrestle with the question of reconciliation in our world and to have a broader view of God's all-embracing, self-giving love, not only for the victimized and oppressed, but for the unjust and oppressors--and of course the lines of both these categories run through all our own identities.

[Misael Galdámez · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars for content, 4 stars for the writing. Bro could use an editor, let me tell you.

I really enjoyed Volf's perspective on violence, exclusion, and the work of Jesus on the cross. He makes this point later in the book, but oftentimes, more liberal Christian thinkers take God's love and embrace to an end beyond scripture's warrant (at least in my opinion and Volf's). This book is a necessary counterpoint to those views, borne out of the Serb-Croat ethnic conflict of the 90s.

A few main points stood out for me. One is God's willingness to embrace those at odds with Him. The analysis of Cain and Abel resonates. Even when Cain had murdered Abel, God refused to cast him out entirely and did not let anyone kill Cain: "God did not abandon Cain to the cycle of exclusion that he himself has set in motion. Labeled by the mark of God, Cain belonged to God and was protected by God even as he settled away "from the presence of the Lord."" This unwillingness to exclude is what took Jesus to the cross. There, he not only forgives us but opens his arms to embrace us in communion.

There's also the idea of identity being rooted in the other and yet, without the collapse of distinction, whether this is about God's relation within the Trinity, one group's relationship to another, or the relationship between men and women. Identities don't exist without the other, and this is a point that Volf comes back to again and again.

Last, violence is not for human beings to take up. But our non-violence is rooted in the truth that "vengeance is the Lord's." And what's more, human non-violence does not necessarily correspond to God's non-violence or to an unwillingness to judge. There will come a day when all evil will be excluded, and that action of exclusion can be construed as violent. And yet, the lamb who suffered violence at the hands of others and broke cycles of violence will sit enthroned in the new world, a monument to and a rule legitimized by his suffering.

"The cross says that despite its manifest enmity toward God humanity belongs to God, God will not be God without humanity…The cross is the giving up of God's self in order not to give up on humanity; it is the consequence of God's desire to break the power of human enmity without violence and receive human beings into divine communion…Forgiveness is not the culmination…it is a passage leading to embrace."

[Joshua Brandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

May the Lord will we have the will to will embrace with the "other."

Volf's thesis is essentially that attaining "truth and justice in social settings [with others whom we've wronged or who've wronged us is] unavailable outside the will to give ourselves to them and embrace them (p. 364). We should do this forgiving (embracing) as, "at the core of the Christian faith lies the persuasion that the 'others' need not be perceived as innocent in order to be loved, but ought to be embraced even when they are perceived as wrongdoers. As I read it, the story of the cross is about God who desires to embrace precisely the “sons and daughters of hell” (p. 81).

He calls sin exclusion: "[T]he struggle against exclusion is beset with two major dangers. The first is that of generating new forms of exclusion by the very opposition to exclusionary practices: our 'moral' and 'civilizing' zeal causes us to erect new and oppressive boundaries as well as blinds us to the fact that we are doing so. The second danger arises from the attempt to escape the first. It consists in falling into the abyss of nonorder in which the struggle against exclusion implodes on itself because, in the absence of all boundaries, we are unable to name what is excluded or why it ought not to be excluded" (p. 57).

He does a good job of slicing through the inconsistencies of postmodern theories of, I suppose, non-violent cohabitation between others as well: In dialogue with Foucault, Volf posits, "[t]ruth, he claims, is produced, constructed, imposed; true is what passes for true [...] All cultural systems must then be equally true, and (apparently) all truth claims equally valid — the truths of the victims and the truths of the perpetrators [...] If truth is imposed, there can be no gain in knowledge, but there can be gain in power (pp. 238-39). Implication: those with power have rational impunity in exercising it however they fancy. And, again, in dialogue with Deleuze: "without a system of judgement, we would have no way of struggling against oppression and deception because we could not distinguish between the Butcher of Lyon and Mother Teresa. Whoever wants to replace the 'subject' of critical reflection with 'streams' of desire must affirm the world the way he or she finds it, with all its gruesome violence. The attempt to transcend judgment — whether it be judgment of reason or of religion — does not eliminate but enthrones violence" (p. 284). Implication: if everyone abides by their streams of desire, there's no way to condemn wrongdoing; it doesn't exist. Everything would then be permissible.

Therefore, Volf reasons, "without entrusting oneself to the God who judges justly, it will hardly be possible to follow the crucified Messiah and refuse to retaliate when abused. The certainty of God’s just judgment at the end of history is the presupposition for the renunciation of violence in the middle of it [...] the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance (pp. 298-99). Without this objective judgment, our only earthly recourse would be to attempt to implement our particularist rendition of judgment through power alone. This, however, breeds violence. Also, a "Christian theologian will insist that God’s violence, if it is to be worthy of God, who is love, must be an aspect of God’s love" (p. 298). What is meant by God's "violence" is God's judgment of all that which refuses to be made new by God's love, to be redeemed gloriously, to find its life by losing it. This is an aspect of God's love, for, in the new creation, God won't let hell continue to blackmail heaven, as Lewis would say. Postmoderns still call it violence, as it is essentially the antithesis to self-definition. It is a divine humbling of a creature's perceived autonomous will.

In the revised addition, Volf fleshes out what "embrace" looks like tangibly:
"Being wronged," he says, "does not exempt one from the obligation to follow Christ [...] the unconditionality of God’s love enacted in Christ implies the unconditionality of the will to embrace [...] The will to embrace precedes any “truth” about others and any construction of their “justice.” This will is absolutely indiscriminate and strictly immutable; it transcends the moral mapping of the social world into “good” and “evil” [...] The will to embrace is unconditional; the embrace itself is not [...] In addition to the transformation of the wrongdoer from a source of danger to a trustworthy, aspiring agent of love — in traditional theological vocabulary: a degree of sanctification — the two necessary conditions for the movement of embrace to end in an actual embrace are repentance and restitution. [...] Forgiveness [...] has the formal structure of gift giving: somebody gives a gift to somebody else. The first somebody is the wronged person; the second somebody is the wrongdoer; the “something” that the wronged gives to the wrongdoer is not counting his or her wrongdoing against the wrongdoer, which is to say that, after identifying and naming the wrongdoer as the person who has wronged him or her, the wronged gives the wrongdoer the gift of treating the wrongdoer as if as if he or she had not wronged him or her."

[continued]

"When one person gives a gift, the other has to receive it; otherwise, the gift gets stuck between the one who gives and the other who won’t receive it. The way we receive forgiveness is by repenting. To repent means to (1) say that we are sorry — and sorry [...] not that we have “been caught, sorry not merely that the other person has been wronged, but sorry that we have committed the wrongdoing” — to (2) actually be sorry, and to (3) commit ourselves to act otherwise in the future. These three things together — confession, contrition, and commitment to change — signal that the forgiver’s gift has been received [...] Repentance alone does not suffice, however; reparation is necessary as well. For I would not be who, in repenting, I claim to be, and who, in forgiving, the wronged person treats me to be, if I failed to want to repair the damage my wrongdoing has caused" (pp. 340-42).

This is a hefty but vital book which demands critical thought, rapt engagement, and very likely multiple re-readings.

[Ryan Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosophically dense, but extremely compelling theology. Volf, a Croatian national, wrote this book as his response to his internal struggle watching the Serbian genocide of the early 90s. How could he embrace those who were killing his people? But as a Christian, he must, mustn't he? Is God on the side of the poor and oppressed? Where is his justice, and what does it look like? Can we find empathy for our enemies?

These difficult questions permeate his exploration of exclusion (hate) and embrace (love). Volf grapples with the very difficult realities of subscribing to, and practicing, nonviolence in a world where doing so often means our own obliteration. Is that the inevitable end of a Christian? Maybe, but Volf shows us in profound fashion how the willingness to embrace even our enemies can lead to healing and reconciliation and maybe, just maybe, put an end to the perpetual cycles of violence that define this world.

[Porter Sprigg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so important. I have wrestled a lot with how to love my "enemy" whether that be the family member I'm angry at or the fellow citizen who is my political opposite. This book provides a powerful challenge to those who so quickly write off "the other." Volf compellingly argues that justice goes hand in hand with a desire to embrace our enemy, no matter how despicable their actions. We must also truly strive to see the justice and truth in their positions, even if from our position it seems like they have absolutely none. This is not easy pie-in-the-sky empathy. It's brutally difficult empathy. But as Christians who look to take up their crosses and obey Jesus, there is no other way. Read this book! The text itself is pretty dense but its message is nothing short of radical.

[Mitchell Springfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book like Kell from Good Burger.

“Uh huh, Uh huh, I know some of these words”

[Maya Casillas · Rating 4 out of 5]

How does one embrace the Other, face the perpetrator of evil, with openness and love, without dismissing and ignoring the pain, suffering, and righteous anger of the victim? This is another framing of Volf's central question, and I think the question is a good one. Volf presents a compelling and challengingly accurate argument against the perpetration of vengeance and hatred, painting an image of violence as an inherently reproductive process. Embracing the Other, of which he really means the perpetrators of terrible crimes, is the only redepmtive future possible in a creation still groaning for the ultimate redemption.

Terribly, I think he is right. Volf is deeply aware of all of the possible arguments against his thesis, from postmodern critiques of truth and justice to moral rejection of his conception of "embrace" that involves a process of willful "forgetting" of harms committed, and the ever present question of what about the victims themselves?

Volf does well to reject the category of "victim" itself, as well as the dichotomy of blamelessness versus blame, and I think he is right to do so. He is also incredibly aware of how his words could be used to silence victims of harm, force them to carry the burden of forgiveness and forgetting, and enabling the apathy of perpetrators. All of these he vehemently rejects. However, in doing so, his argument comes down to the necessity of the redemptive grace and love of Christ in healing and transforming hearts. Again, I do think he is right. And, really, he hasn't siloed his argument-- he means to write a theological resopnse to evil. THis takes with it the understandable limit that his argument cannot be reproduced or even truly presented outside of Christ-oriented circles, let alone a broader ethical approach. But with the crux of his argument resting on a kind of Christian individualism, he loses the chance to impress upon Christianity itself the necessity of responding to violence. True, he draws heavily from liberation theology, so perhaps he considered that aim to be already addressed. As a call to action, however, I found his argument unsatisfying, as much as, and maybe even because it was so personally challenging.

Can Volf's work convince one to accept the ticket? I do not think so. He expects justice, but not retributive justice, and I think he is right. He recognizes that no hell will atone for the boy torn to pieces by the dogs. He does not intend to address theodicy, and I perhaps most appreciated and respected his refusal to address the question itself. No human attempt will ever answer that question, he argues. Here is how to live, in the meantime.

[Tristan Sherwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, and possibly the most thorough and thoughtful treatment I’ve read on the topic of justice and reconciliation. Volf engages a myriad of sources from across the philosophical spectrum, and draws heavily on God’s embrace of the other on the cross of Christ.

The only downside, and this isn’t a criticism, is that someone needs to take this book and boil it down for a more general audience. This is an important book for the church, but I’m not sure it is accessible enough.

[Tanya Marlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dense and academic read, but a rewarding one. Volf explores what the cross means for his home country of Croatia, having emerged from the bitterness of the 90s civil war with Sarajevo. To oversimplify, Volf focuses on sin as ‘exclusion’ and reconciliation as ‘embrace’. His thesis is that the cross has a dual element for both victims and perpetrators of evil.

For victims of crime and suffering, the cross is a embrace - a message from God of solidarity. Christ identifies with victims of injustice and those who suffer. For perpetrators of suffering, it is not only a message of forgiveness, but of how costly forgiveness is - that it involves battle with dark powers; blood, pain and sorrow.

For perpetrators, the cross is not only something that they 'receive' - ie they don't simply 'benefit' from the blessings of forgiveness - but it's a call to live differently, and to pour out their life in repentance and sacrifice for others, as Jesus did. For the victims, it is at once a display of God’s loving identification with those who suffer, but also a call not to respond in a vengeful fashion, perpetuating a further cycle of exclusion, but to embrace and forgive, (whilst recognising the struggle to forgive evil).

What grounds this book is his real-life examples of those caught up in hideous war crimes - this is lived-out theology. I tend to struggle with academic theology books (with the exception of biblical studies), but I was glad to have persevered with this. An important book and timely book on the cross and the 'other' - highly recommended for lovers of theology.

[Joel Wentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of the most important and challenging theological texts I've read. Volf writes with passion and clarity, and a steadfast refusal to offer simple or cliche responses to the problems of identity, conflict, justice, oppression, forgiveness and reconciliation. The careful way he parses the difference between "exclusion" and "judgement," the ways exclusion feeds our refusal to forgive the "other," and the powerful meditation on the act of embrace (an act which must be done with complete openness and vulnerability, a willingness to change, and a refusal to subsume the other), are but a few of the most impactful elements of this book. Most chapters conclude with meditations on various biblical texts: the prodigal son, Cain and Abel, Jesus and Pilate, and while not an exegetical commentary, Volf brings powerful insights to the themes of exclusion and embrace in these well-worn narratives.

Another aspect that I so deeply appreciated about this book is the fact the Volf is deeply conversant with so many different philosophical-theological streams of thought. He engages with modernism, postmodernism, feminism, and both liberal and conservative theologians. He delicately brings out areas of resonance, as well as lucid critiques, of all the thinkers he mentions. The result is a comprehensive and compelling theological argument that is deeply, deeply relevant to the ways people are engaging the world today.

The act of reading this book will indelibly change you - much like the pure act of embrace that Volf is contending for in this work. More people need to wrestle with this text today. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

[Pat Semanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. This book was a gift and it will undoubtedly be a conversation partner and resource for me for a long long time. Volf leaves very few stones unturned in this discussion of reconciliation. Everytime I found myself thinking, "What about ____?" He often addressed my question in just a few pages. The book also feels both timely and timeless as a theological roadmap to reconciliation that can lead to it in most any culture. The downside (if it can be called a downside) is that it is a bit of a slog. But complex challenges almost always require complex books to address them. The challenge of the pastor/teacher is to read this and simplify the message while subtracting very little. I found this difficult because no single paragraph can be quoted without feeling the need to quote the 17 paragraphs before and after.

It is theologically and biblically rich (and even the places where I questioned Volf's theology did not detract from the value of the book). Obviously, I read it in a time when reconciliation is definitely needed, but I think it would have been as much of a gift even if we were in relatively peaceable times.

Finally, the bibliography is a great resource by itself. I found myself opening Goodreads regularly in order to add a new book to my "want to read" shelf.

[Sophia Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

100% of the good reviews I’ve read on this say to read it slowly, a luxury I could not afford in this season. Don’t listen to the audiobook, and certainly don’t listen to it on 1.7x speed 🫥 regardless, these ideas will sit with me for a long time, and they are rich and dynamic. I can see clearly that this work surely undergirded much of the wisdom that professors and writers and disciplers have impressed on me throughout the years. Dense and intricate, but a masterpiece!

I also can’t recommend writing a ten page paper on this book. Surely my prof is shooting himself in the foot assigning non-theology students this project. What the hell am I supposed to ADD to these ideas? What DIDNT Volf say??

[Paul, · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the big idea of the book, namely that sin can be pictured by exclusion and the proper response of Christians is the embrace. That being said, much of this book is so speculative, so derivative, so far removed from the text of the Bible that I am unsure of its truth or usefulness. Worth reading, but keep your thinking hat on.

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars - I particularly love the use of metaphor as metaphysics in this book. Not perfect, but a resonant book I think, and one was very meaningful for me at the time I read it

[cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many threads! From 1) a theology and concept of embrace across cultures-origins-rationalities while preserving the alterity of the other to 2) the meting out of justice in a world with rival justices to 3) the retelling of history that must accompany justice but does violence when it tends towards universals to 4) the importance of fluid selfhood in its quest towards truth to 5) the radical dissimilarity between divine justice and our own.

A well-researched read bursting to the brim with citations (I suppose it was literally written by a professor and that's probably 30% of his job). I find it so interesting that Volf, a Christian Protestant systematic theologian, brings in and demonstrates profound appreciation for Nietzsche while obviously not aligning on much of anything. It was also fun to get brief tours of various philosopher-theologians' thoughts (Foucault, MacIntyre, Deleuze, etc.). My favorite chapters were V) Oppression and Justice and VI) Deception and Truth, and I really can't tell you how many words I have highlighted because you'd consider it excessive.

Two things prevent this from being a 5-star. 1) Volf writes in a repetitive, wandering style that may be more suited for an auditory delivery, e.g. a lecture. 2) This book stops short at the abstract layer and holds no hint of practice or implementation. Volf does respond to this in the epilogue, calling himself an "impractical" theologian focused on the vision and will to embrace and not its how-tos, which are also equally as essential. I appreciate the self-awareness.

A whole journey, and an impeccably well-timed read for me.

Read for City Church book club.

Some quotations as always:

As Edward Said points out, all cultures are “hybrid... and encumbered, or entangled and overlapping with what used to be regarded as extraneous elements.” The distance from our own culture, which is born of the Spirit of the new creation, should loosen the grip of our culture on us and enable us to live with its necessary fluidity and affirm its inescapable hybridity. Other cultures are not a threat to the pristine purity of our cultural identity but a potential source of its enrichment. Inhabited by people who are courageous enough not simply to belong, intersecting and overlapping cultures can mutually contribute to the dynamic vitality of each.

In a profound reading of the Gospels in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche underscored the connection between the self-perceived “goodness” of Jesus’s enemies and their pursuit of his death; crucifixion was a deed of “the good and just,” not of the wicked, as we might have thought. “The good and just” could not understand Jesus because their spirit was “imprisoned in their good conscience” and they crucified him because they construed as evil his rejection of their notions of good. “The good and just,” insists Nietzsche, have to crucify the one who devises an alternative virtue because they already possess the knowledge of the good; they have to be hypocrites because, seeing themselves as good, they must impersonate the absence of evil. Like poisonous flies, “they sting” and they do so “in all innocence.” Exclusion can be as much a sin of “a good conscience” as it is of “an evil heart.” And Nietzsche’s warning that “whatever harm the world-calumniators may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm” may not be entirely out of place.

The account of creation as “separating-and-binding” rather than simply “separating” suggests that “identity” includes connection, difference, and heterogeneity. The human self is formed not through a simple rejection of the other—through a binary logic of opposition and negation—but through a complex process of “taking in” and “keeping out.” We are who we are not because we are separate from the others who are next to us but because we are both separate and connected, both distinct and related; the boundaries that mark our identities are both barriers and bridges.

To preserve the alterity of the other in the embrace it is essential to acquire the unusual ability not to understand the other. In an important essay “The Power of Not Understanding,” Z. D. Gurevitch has argued against the simple schema that posits a movement from “the inability to understand” to “the ability to understand.” This schema diverts attention from the fact that the initial “inability to understand” may be tacitly predicated on the desire to understand the other on the self’s own terms, within the framework of its own reflexivity, whereas the other may not be understandable within the self’s framework precisely on account of being the other. “The-inability-not-to-understand” may be, paradoxically, a hindrance to understanding. Hence Gurevitch argues that “the-ability-not-to-understand”—“the ability to recognize and behold the other (or the self) as an other”—is essential. In concrete encounters with the other, at “the moment of not understanding” the self understands that what there is to understand about the other can “only be addressed as a question.” The emergence of the other as a question right in the midst of an embrace represents a productive refusal to occultate the opacity of the other, a refusal that opens possibilities of new and better understanding: the self sees both itself and the other in a new light. Within the movement of embrace, the nonunderstanding, which seems like a defeat is in fact a small triumph—“yet this is not the triumph of the self, but of the other as other for the self.”

Do not rival traditions and rival communities of discourse give rise to rival justices? They do. MacIntyre believes, however, that traditions also provide resources for settling the disputes. Genuine intellectual encounter cannot take place in some generalized way among people who stand nowhere, as the Enlightenment thinkers assumed and much of modern culture takes for granted. For rational discussion to replace the sterile exchange of assertions and counter-assertions people must inhabit traditions. From within a tradition, they can then carry on rational debates not only with the fellow members of the same tradition but also with those who inhabit rival traditions.

Overlapping and changing social spaces account for a good deal of fragmentation in contemporary societies: we tolerate different rationalities in different milieus and live with partly inconsistent moral principles. But consider the consequence of eliminating fragmentation and incoherence. It would involve purging extraneous elements from traditions so as to make them pure, coherent. As MacIntyre well knows, this cannot happen simply through a change of beliefs.

There is a profound “injustice” about the God of the biblical traditions. It is called grace. As I argued in Chapter IV, in the story of the prodigal son

As James McClendon puts it, our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.
The New Testament writers put it this way: before you can search for and accept the truth, before you can unmask deceptions and ideologies, the truth must be “in you” (see John 8:45; 2 Cor 11:10). In a well-known passage in Ephesians, readers are warned not to be “tossed to and fro and blown about” by “people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming” (4:14). What anchor will keep them from being carried away by distortions of truth? They should alētheuein en agapē, says the writer (4:15). Commentators usually render this term “speaking the truth in love.” But the verb used in the original is not “to speak” but “to truth,” which in addition to speaking the truth may mean cherishing, maintaining, doing, or living the truth (see John 3:21). Since the notion of “deceitful scheming,” which functions as a contrast, denotes more than just speaking falsehood, alētheuein includes here both telling and living the truth. Speaking is only part of what we do with truth as we struggle against its distortions; living the truth is certainly equally important. Untruth holds captive both minds and lives and therefore cannot be overcome only with right thoughts and right words. It takes a truthful life to want to seek after the truth, to see the truth when confronted by it, and to say the truth out loud without fear.

Friedrich Nietzsche exaggerated when, in Twilight of the Idols, he wrote that “the will to a system is a lack of integrity,” but he was making an important point. I believe that human finitude, temporality, and fallibility, as well as God’s incomprehensibility, stand in tension with theology’s aspiration to comprehensive systematicity.

The main thesis of the book is that the will to embrace is:
prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity. The will to embrace precedes any “truth” about others and any construction of their “justice.” This will is absolutely indiscriminate and strictly immutable; it transcends the moral mapping of the social world into “good” and “evil.”

[Peter Kerry Powers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some years ago my wife, Shannon, occasionally wrote reviews of classic books for a publication for gifted high school students. Although I don't think there is an official genre know as the re-review, I think there probably ought to be. In a day and age when most people fail to read even one book a year, much less a relatively challenging and completely serious and comprehensive work of theology, perhaps we readers ought to take it as part of our role to reintroduce books from decades past to readers for whom they will be new, if not unheard of. It's in that spirit that I take a few minutes to write out some thoughts on Volf's Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, a book first published in 1996. Still in print and available 22 years later from Abingdon Press, I felt Volf's wrestling with questions of identity and the possibility of embrace spoke to our own period, if only because in the age of Trump we seem to be wrestling more starkly, and perhaps more helplessly, with the questions that drive Volf's reflections. Can we all just get along, much less embrace, in the face of random police shooting in the name of civil order, family separations in the name of national security, lethal white unity rallies with good people on all sides on all sides, and the general belief that we are so hopelessly separated by our different identities that empathy is beside the point and, in the words of Roxane Gay, we should all just stay in our lanes?

I would like to think a work of theology could solve all this; indeed, Volf indicates that it is the real work of theologians to be about the business of helping to form subjects who could bring about the world of embrace that he imagines. There is a generosity of vision in Volf's book that I find admirable, even compelling. His central concept of embrace is not a campfire Kumbaya version of hugging it out, but a compelling narrative of what it means, or at least ought to mean, to be a fully realized human being. For Volf, the notion of embrace is inherent in the mutual and overspilling love of the Trinity, as well as the fundamental character of God's engagement with human beings; the incarnation is a metaphysical embrace of humanness, and the cross is an appeal to be embraced in return. Human beings are only fully realized as human beings when we actually seek to give up our separateness and embrace others as we find them. As he puts it:

the most basic thought that it [the metaphor of embrace] seeks to express is important: the will to give ourselves to others and “welcome” them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity. The will to embrace precedes any “truth” about others and any construction of their “justice.” This will is absolutely indiscriminate and strictly immutable; it transcends the moral mapping of the social world into “good” and “evil”

It is unfortunate, of course, that we often experience our religion most fundamentally as an act of exclusion, whether in the practice of shunning, hellfire and brimstone preachers, or the simple and more mundane acts of making sure our church services and gatherings for fellowship feel comfortable for the already comfortable, and uncomfortable for the already discomfited or destitute. And so Volf's work is surely a challenge to the good and the just and the true among us. He notes with approval Nietzsche's reminder that the crucifixion was an act of the righteous:

Nietzsche underscored the connection between the self-perceived “goodness” of Jesus’ enemeies and their pursuit of his death; crucifixion was a deed of “the good and just,” not of the wicked, as we might have thought. “The good and just” could not understand Jesus because their spirit was “imprisoned in their good conscience” and they crucified him because they construed as evil his rejection of their notions of good (61)

At the same time, Volf's prescriptions sit only uncomfortably with current conceptions of justice and empowerment, not least because the proper goal of a world formed by the concept and practice of embrace is not freedom or self-realization, at least not as these terms have been typically thought of in both our modern and post-modern socialites. Volf's work asks us to imagine the ideal of embrace not as the coming together of two fundamentally separate individuals "hugging it out" when it comes to their differences, but rather as a complex dance in which we realize that we cannot be what we ought to be until we learn to genuinely love those that we have despised, and even more that we find it in in ourselves to love those who have despised us. As he puts it:

At the core of the Christian faith lies the persuasion that the “others” need not be perceived as innocent in order to be loved, but ought to be embraced even when they are perceived as wrongdoers. As I read it, the story of the cross is about God who desires to embrace precisely the “sons and daughters of hell.” (85).

This kind of call sounds strange to our age of tribalism, though perhaps no stranger than any age where we find it easy to love those like us, less easy to love those unlike us, and not possible at all to love those who do not love us. On the other hand, perhaps it is not so different from the famous proclamation from Martin Luther King, Jr. that "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Volf has a complicated, and I think useful, description of embrace as a fourfold process:

The four structural elements in the movement of embrace are opening the arms, waiting, closing the arms, and opening them again. For embrace to happen, all four must be there and they must follow one another on an unbroken timeline; stopping with the first two (opening the arms and waiting) would abort the embrace, and stopping with the third (closing the arms) would pervert it from an act of love to an act of oppression and, paradoxically, exclusion. The four elements are then the four essential steps of an integrated movement. (141)

This structure seems to me to both recognize and respect the integrity of others in their freedom. Embrace cannot be forced; nor is embrace is limitless. Nevertheless, in Volf's understanding, embrace is necessary to our full humanities, to forgiveness, and ultimately to justice and the task of creating the kind of society in which we might hope to live and flourish as human beings.
As I said at the outset, I think Volf's book is worth reading since it is eerily contemporary in its impulses and in its wrestling. We can learn from him even where we disagree. I do think that if the book were written now, he might have to ask harder questions about the relationship between justice and love, between embrace and power. It's very clear in Volf's work that he subordinates justice to love, saying that embrace has to shape the definition of justice, that embrace is "about love shaping the very content of justice." This is well and good, but it remains unclear that embrace is possible outside the possibility or at least the horizon of justice. From my own position situated within the matrices of power as a white male American middle class human being--all affording me pleasures and potentialities and possibilities that others do not possess in an unjust world--what does it mean for me to offer embrace in the absence of justice. Is it possible to expect embrace outside the quest or journey toward justice. Volf's book reflects on repentance as a part of this process, but I think he could use even more thinking here in the particular ways that repentance is properly not simply from the self and toward the other (ultimately God), but is also and must be a turning away from injustice and my participation in it and toward justice, away from a life in which embrace might be colored with the expectation of inevitable betrayal and toward a life mutuality that in some ways must accompany embrace. Although I think we would do well to wonder whether subordinating justice is any more appropriate as a Christian ethic than would be the subordinating of one person of the Trinity to another, I do think the Volf's wrestling is worth our reckoning with. It is surely the case that 20 years later we are no closer to the beloved community that embrace would supposedly make possible than we were when Volf wrote this very good and important book.

[Alan Rathbun · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for the faint of heart. It’s message is clear and good, but it is academic through and through. I’m thankful I read it on my Kindle because I had to look up the meaning of a word every 4 or 5 pages. I had previously read “Free of Charge” and “A Public Faith” and loved them. A friend and I decided to tackle this book and it was a long and slow read.
Having said that, it’s message is clearly articulated. The only way for us to overcome violence in this world is through trusting in The One who will overcome it before the next. When we do trust Him, we are empowered to live non-violent lives and to love and embrace our enemies and cling to truth.
If you want to wade into deep academic waters in a discussion about violence and non-violence, then dig and persevere through this book. If you want to wrestle with the concepts and grow in mercy and non-violence without the academic bent, then read “Free of Charge”.

[Jake Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally read this and I can say this is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I took extra long on it to re read certain portions and really capture what he was saying and was it so worth it. This just conceptualizes and gives language too so many things I have felt and I want much more. The elaboration on the topics like: Christ, the relationship of the trinity, the concept of double vision, loving the other, the prodigal son/cain and Abel, the nature of truth, and so much more made this such an experience. Wanted to understand every word because there is just so much here for the church today. Amazing.

[Jens Hieber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I heard Volf speak once, many years ago, and was impressed by his thoroughness, insight, and compassion. This book encompasses all those around a topic that I care deeply about. I find Volf's theology of embrace very compelling and incredibly hopeful.
"The will to give ourselves to others and 'welcome' them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity."

[Meredith Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve meant to read this forever & it’s worthy of the hype. Volf has quite a way with words and concepts. This will be a good book to re-read at some point. In the epilogue, he defends his social Trinitarian position with which I am tempted to disagree but after listening closely I think it’s mainly semantics.

[Katie Mangum]

I really have no idea how to evaluate this book. Filled with provoking, gorgeous, and some troubling explorations of Christian theology. Lots of beautiful nuggets (once you've waded through the academic speak, which is DENSE). Note to self to return in time to the chapter on violence.