How do you rate a book you barely understand (I guess you give it a 4)? This was a technically challenging read and I struggled at times to comprehend whole pages of text. However, there was a lot I did understand and found much of that challenging in a different sense.

I was hoping that there would be more connections between the subject matter and Volf's Croatian heritage. However I was pleasantly surprised by the unexpected and nuanced discussions regarding gender roles (male/female) and God's judgment.

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”.

Miroslav Volf is a very thought provoking theologian. His works are not a quick read, but full of wisdom and information for reflection. This is my favorite of his books, and, although I rarely re-read books, this one is also on my read again list. I am sure I will get even more from it on the second go around.

This was an audiobook that I will definitely revisit on paper. It’s absolutely phenomenal—and I do recommend the “updated” edition that has a long epilogue revisiting a few key points from a perspective many years later.

It’s a foundational theological and philosophical treatment of issues of identity—religious, cultural, ethnic, etc. It offers a framework for the maximally important topics of identity, individuality, and belonging, inter-religious dialogue, the nature of sin and harm, victimization and victimhood, and reconciliation, violence and political justice.

There are so many good things to point out about how he addresses these topics, but I’ll just stick with two:
1. He takes philosophy, both Christian and otherwise, very seriously, especially the critical strand of continental thought—Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze, etc. He clearly inhabits their insights while also transcending their limitations.
2. His solutions to these deep social/anthropological questions emerge from an equally deep Christian theology. Christians, including me often give lip service to the idea that the Trinity and the Incarnation are somehow “at the heart of reality,” without grasping why that is true. But Volf does the work, and does it very fruitfully.

I’ve been blessed with good theology books this year!

I first read this 20 years ago and i think this second edition is more relevant today than ever. Volf is smart, honest and very challenging.

This book was incredibly frustrating for me. On one hand, Professor Volf's thesis about how we must be willing to truly live out the Gospel by loving and showing compassion toward all people, regardless of difference or how much they may have harmed us, is vital to the ability of Christians to demonstrate the character of the Messiah to all. Furthermore, Volf is clearly a compassionate, highly intelligent, and educated author who creates his work with sincere faith.

But on the other, this book is so full of references and uses of the work of other authors that it was a challenge to weed through the citations to get to the author's own conclusions. This was compounded for me by the fact that nearly all of the cited authors, with whom I was familiar from my graduate work, are already extremely difficult to read and understand on their own. I was far more interested in Volf's conclusions on these issues, which pop off the page in their brilliance and insight.

I understand that this is intended to have a more academic audience, but I feel like the topics it focuses on are so important that readers would benefit from a version that is accessible to a more general audience, especially given Volf's background of growing up in Croatia and how the country's conflicts play a role in each chapter. I'm new to his work and if a book like this exists already, I would certainly like to know about it.

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...

I just finished "Exclusion and Embrace," by Miroslav Volf.

This seems to be a book written in the liberation and Moltmannian tradition. Also, from just the beginning this seems to be a theme taken up by Oden in "Hope for the Oppressors," which is summed up not in the abstract or intellectual but in the praxis is "how do I love someone who is truly my enemy?"

"The tension between the message of the cross and the world of violence presented itself to me as a conflict between the desire to follow the Crucified and the disinclination either simply to watch others be crucified or let myself be nailed to the cross," p 10.

"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," p 24.

As I have found true of Moltmann, and now Volf, read into the second chapter before you drop it. And maybe this is true of most highly academic works, but chapter one in every Moltmann book, and this Volf work (for the most part), really stinks. Usually what chapter one is laying down is well over my head: philosophical approaches and presuppositions etc. I remember when I got to Trinity and Kingdom's chapter two, it lit up. Likewise this book got a lot of life in chapter two. His analysis of inclusion and exclusion is very good.

I found interesting that when many try to reduce sin to its most basic element like lack of love or pride, Volf said that it was exclusion. Even more interesting he says that exclusion in religious circles is seen as a virtue, and yet it--posits Volf--is the totality of sin. Interested to see where he goes with this.

"By embracing the 'outcast', Jesus underscores the 'sinfulness' of the persons and the system that cast them out," p 72.

This section on exclusion is fascinating. One thing that crossed my mind during this was quickly "this is the right side of politics," but after a moment of reflection "and the left." One can be excluded by one on the right because they are foreign or the wrong religion. Opposite, or no, political affliction. But one can be excluded by the left for another host of "sins." Drive a V8. Dont buy into any number of scientific or quasi scientific theories? Opposite, or no, political affliction? (Yes: affliction, not affiliation; though I believe it is curable.) The Powers thrive on this tribal exclusionism.

"[Because they have been blinded by an evil spirit] is part of the answer. The other more important part is that evil is capable not only of creating the illusion of well-being, but of shaping reality in such a way that the lie about 'well-being' appears as plain verity. Much of the power of evil lies in the pervasive truth it tells about the warped well-being it creates," p 89.

Volf does some very interesting work on victim/oppressor/bystander. In my words only: we should zoom out and when dealing with guilt (not jurisprudence) and say in this one instant X was an oppressor but from a wider view he was a victim first. The Y was the victim here but from a wider perspective she was also an oppressor. Z did nothing and by so doing the bystander was an oppressor. He does chase this back to original sin much more coherently than Augustine and the Reformers. Rather than it being a "stuff" past to the child naturally or a "deficit" metaphysically inherited by the child, this seems to posit that through experience we are victims and then oppressors.

"[F]orgiveness breaks the power of the remembered past and transcends the claims of the affirmed justice and so makes the spiral of vengeance grind to a halt," p 121.

"When God sets out to embrace the enemy, the result is the cross. On the cross the dancing circle [perichoresis] of self-giving and mutually indwelling did one persons opens up for the enemy; in the agony of the passion the [perichoretic] movement stops for a brief moment and a fissure appears so that sinful humanity can join in (see Jn. 17:21)," p 129.

Volf's coverage of "embrace" is quite beautiful. He looks at this from many different angles, this reciprocal affirmation of others. But the closing lines of the embrace chapter are quite awesome. In speaking about the dynamic in the family of the Prodigal:

"Flexable order? Changing identities? The world of fixed rule and stable identities is the world of the [Prodigal's] older brother. The father destabilizes this world--and draws the sons anger upon Himself. The fathers most basic commitment is not to rules and given identities but to his sons whose lives are too complex to be regulated by fixed rules and whose identities are too dynamic to be defined once and for all. Yet he does not give up the rules and the order. Guided by indestructible love which makes space in the self for others in their alterity [the state of being different; otherness], which invites the others who have transgressed to return, which creates hospitable conditions for their confession, and rejoices over their presence, the father keeps reconfiguring the order without destroying it so as to maintain it as an order of embrace rather than exclusion," p 165.

Much of part 2 of this book is heavy lifting, good but heavy. Volf's insight in comparison of Babal to Pentecost is good. I agree that Pentecost undoes Babal, but I find it interesting that he sees the problem as not so much with language as much as the more crucial "confusion." Babal confused their language, Pentecost made them not confused. The central figure in Babal was the tower, the central figure at Pente ost was the Spirit. More in line with the topic matter: once the church was unconfused they were unified until chapter 6 when there was issue with the Greek Christian's not getting part of the central funds--needs not being met within the church. The church chose wise, Spirit filled Greek members to be the source of distribution. This is placing trust in God and then the injured peoples to distribute among all. In other language the victims were given the reins to distribute to the victims and (roughly) oppressors. Good insights.

"In a very profound sense the kind of rule Jesus advocates can not be fought for and taken hold of by violence," p 267.

His last chapter on violence and peace is really off to a great start.

"We will believe in the Curcified, but we want to march with the Rider [on the white horse from the Revelation]," p 276.

How true. It seems many have a fluid theology, one dynamic enough to let them be violent when they want. I see this as the Joshua tension (Jesus means Joshua). If you are wronged you invoke the Joshua that sacked Jericho. If its Christmastime you feel warm and fuzzy with the Lord Joshua (Jesus) in a manger. If you are wronged on Christmastime you really have a problem. Fully bowing to the Crucified One doesnt leave the Jerico option open to you.

"The cross of Christ should teach us that the only alternative to violence is self-giving love, willingness to absorb violence in order to embrace the Other in the knowledge that truth and justice have been, and will be, upheld by God," p 295.

"There are people who trust in the infectious power of nonviolence: sooner or later it will be crowned with success," p 296.

This was a quite good book, though academic and dense.

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.

Will most probably be coming back to this one for years to come.

The chapter on the prodigals son is the most beautiful exploration of that classic story told by Jesus.

That chapter alone earns this five stars.

But the whole book is amazing! Both academically profound and yet beautiful enough to make you not only want to treat his words as an intellectual thought experiment but live them.

Anyone who wrestles with forgiveness, reconciliation and belonging… this book is what you need.

This is a beautiful, generous and thorough book. The idea of embrace as the alternative to exclusion is important rather than the inadequacy of tolerance. Volf's background of the Serbian-Croation conflict and the hatred and atrocities that were part of that provides a deep understanding of exclusion at its extreme. This understanding and the beauty of forgiveness and understanding that he demonstrates provides a framework for the work we need to undertake to move from exclusion to embrace.