I know this book is supposed to be a minor phenomenon in the theological world, but I apparently can't see what for.

This is one of the best books ever. I want to start reading it again right now. It is very thick, full of theological intricacies. But underneath it all is a deep understanding of God and a very practical desire to breed reconciliation back into the world. If you would like to understand how to work with the modern and post-modern philosophies that dominate us in this era as a Christian, read this book. If you want to be a wise peacemaker and a better lover-of-enemies, rad this book. If you dare to have a believer's opinion about truth and about world politics, read this book.

I really wanted to like this one, and I can see why lots of people do (namely those people who decided this book deserved the "2002 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion") but it wasn't for me. I was hoping for a more personal story about the author's Croatian background and his thought on the conflict, but it was entirely abstract philosophy. I'm curious to see if I would like it better after reading Nietzche as that philosopher was counted on almost every page. I think my mind is elsewhere this semester as I'm studying in Jordan and it's hard to find long enough to absorb every word of this book (this is definitely a "sit with each sentence for an hour" kind of endeavor). I love the themes explored in this book and may return to it someday when I have the proper time to devote to it.

I'm counting this one as "read" even though I didn't read every chapter because I count short stories as books for my yearly goal and I read hundreds of pages for this, haha!

Excellent. One needs to spend time with this book. It has some astonishingly powerful passages that require multiple reviews to appreciate the depth of the reasoning and insight. It has sophisticated explanations for the inability of humans to achieve justice and why only God is qualified to mete it out.

“... [I]t takes the quiet of a suburban home - protected by police and military force! - for the birth of the thesis that human non-violence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind.” (Page 300).

In this book, Volf teaches that we should ignore passages of Scripture that teach on gender roles (182) and speaks about Jesus understanding “the key concept of his message-unbiased grace-in a new light (214)” after his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman. These two facts alone make this book easy to dismiss from the realm of Orthodox Christian teaching. Christ came to do the will of the Father, and most certainly did not learn more about his message from human encounters. You cannot undermine the authority of Scripture or the ministry of Christ and consider your doctrine sound.

This is a heavy yet hopeful book. I read another book by Volf titled, “Free of Charge,” and got a lot out of it. The topic of forgiveness in that book focuses more on a personal level. This book’s themes can be viewed globally through the eyes of victims and perpetrators of genocide, war, and ethnic divisions, however Volf reaches into the psyche of individuals because evil doesn’t originate outside of a person, but from within our impure hearts (Mark 7:15).

First Volf identifies many reasons people and groups exclude one another. Sometimes it’s the ugliness of bigotry that leads us to label another as an inferior being. Sometimes it’s that the “other” has nothing we want or need so we, “cross to the other side and pass by, minding our own business” (Luke 10:31 / Volf p.75). Other times it’s because we are satisfied with the current status quo and do not want to disrupt the balance. Or maybe we approach life with a “scarcity mindset” in which the resources we desire are perceived as limited (money, beauty, popularity, relationships, attention, etc) and we compete for our position. Another may be because we see a trait in someone else that we secretly loathe within ourselves and to shame the other is to deny the flaw in us. In the case of Jesus’ crucifixion, besides those who were purely after selfish gain, there were those who ordered his death because, in their spiritual blindness, they thought they were “doing the right thing.”

There are many motivations to exclude and it often takes a depth of soul-searching and honesty that few desire. Outside forces may pound against us and, in especially grievous experiences such as war, it is easier to say “We had no choice”, while all along ignoring the fact that this statement is an illusion since all we do is the result of choice.

An important warning Volf issues is that we must not remedy radical exclusion with radical inclusion. To do so would invoke chaos and make oppressors out of victims. The idea of victims becoming oppressors is one that has stuck with me since reading Gene Edwards’ allegorical story, “A Tale of Three Kings”. When one is raised out of the ashes of injustice, it is important to learn the lessons of the trials and to never reenact them on another. The cycle of violence must stop.

Volf quotes Toni Morrison’s book “Beloved,” in which she says of especially deep wounds and trauma that, “The future becomes a matter of keeping the past at bay.” And the question remains: How does healing, redemption, and restoration occur? Even if the suffering is no more, the sadness will remain because of “injustice that could not be undone” (Volf p. 135). And the truth is that we can only control our actions in seeking forgiveness and reconciliation. The answer, says Volf, is in forgetting.

He goes on to remind us of God’s divine forgetfulness of our sins through Jesus on the cross. He cites Genesis 41:51 in which Joseph said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.” Joseph saw the birth of a son as a way of God restoring his losses and reflects this through the child’s name: Manasseh which means “one who causes to be forgotten“ (Volf 139). In addition, an aspect of God’s coming (and already here) Kingdom is that there will be no more suffering or tears. The cycle of pain has to stop with Kingdom-minded people.

Volf uses the illustration of an embrace to show what reconciliation can look like:
1. Open arms: Show invitation and “desire for the other” and that I have “created space in myself for the other”.
2. Waiting: to move towards embracing the other can be seen as threatening or a way of imposing power.
3. Closing the arms: “In addition to reciprocity, a soft touch is necessary.”
4. Opening the arms again: If one keeps holding on, the cycle reverses and the victim becomes the oppressor (Volf 141-145)

There is so much more to this concept and I fear oversimplifying it! The embrace is a risk-filled endeavor, but a completely necessary one. “The indisputable human capacity to make covenants is only matched by their incontestable capacity to break them” (Volf p.153). And yet, that God has made a covenant with us serves as the example of what we who would be allegiant to Him must do for others: “…the repairing of the covenant even by those who have not broken it, and the refusal to let the covenant ever to be undone—these are the key features of a social covenant conceived in analogy to a Christian theology of the new covenant” (Volf p.156).

Exclusion and Embrace was one of the most challenging books I've read because it was so dense. Not a huge fan of philosophy and inexperienced with systematic theology, so this was a stretch for "fun reading." I agree with those who have listed this book as one of the most important theological works of the 20th century.

A stab at summarizing the book - Volf discusses exclusion primarily as the way in which humanity defines its sense of self. By declaring I am not like you, we define ourselves by what we are not, clustering around those who are like us and reviling those who are not. In the context of reconciliation and the gospel, Volf argues that embrace counters exclusion and manifests the Kingdom by both honoring unique separateness and distinct identity, embracing the other, and then releasing the other without the expectation that they become like us. This self/other dichotomy plays out with culture, gender, oppressed/oppressor - and Volf calls all to realize the impact of "otherizing" and to practice embrace just as Christ embraced humanity through the cross.

If you don't have time to read the whole book, I'd recommend book one (exclusion, embrace, and gender reconciliation). Book two gets into foundational pieces for justice work - how we can understand justice as what God does, not evaluate God based on our own sense of fairness or justice.

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.

Very Good book that deserves to be read again. A slow read but definitely worth it.

Five stars for deftly introducing the recent century and its major thought-currents (modernism, postmodernism, liberalism, socialism, etc.) to the reader. Great handling of issues, wonderful insights! The last 20 pages or so were a huge disappointment, though, on the Apocalypse and the wrath/violence of God: the unmentioned psychological factor was a gaping hole (e.g. as to the "self-immunization of evildoers" who resist redemption; also disregarding the universal and individual evolution of human consciousness), and the tendency toward a more literal and less allegorical approach to the Bible (re God's "anger" and being "political" and "patient") threw me for a loop. Also, why should we link God's violence to (a juridical) justice rather than to our necessary - internal and external - development that includes evildoers and the innocent alike?

Theologian Miroslav Volf's is also a Croatian whose theology and faith differed from that of the predominant religion of his culture. He thus writes from biblical text, strong rational argument, and experience.
The beginning chapters of Exclusion and Embrace are deep, but worth wading through as the remainder of the book clarifies and expands on the premises outlined at the beginning. Ultimately this book is about redeeming memory without removing boundary. Even so living out truth with integrity and strong character calls us to "break the cycle of violence by refusing to be caught up in the automatism of revenge...by trying to love [our] enemies [we] may end up hanging on a cross". But costly acts of "nonretaliation become a seed from which the fragile fruit of Pentecostal peace grows--a peace between people from different cultural spaces gatherined in one place who understand each other's language and share in each other's goods (Volf, p. 306).
This is theology and premise strongly antithetical to the global call of protectionism, a call to be the "disciples of the cruicified."
Quoting Wikipedia, as it speaks more clearly than I can, Volf's Exclusion and Embrace "deals with the challenges of reconciliation in contexts of persisting enmity in which no clear line can be drawn between victims and perpetrators and in which today's victims become tomorrow's perpetrators—conditions that arguably describe the majority of the world's conflicts. ...] Embrace is marked by two key stances: acting with generosity toward the perpetrator and maintaining porous boundaries of flexible identities. Even though it is a modality of grace, "embrace" does not stand in contrast to justice; it includes justice as a dimension of grace extended toward wrongdoers. "Embrace" also does not stand in contrast to boundary maintenance. On the contrary, it presumes that it is essential to maintain the self's boundaries (and therefore pass judgment), but suggests that these boundaries ought to be porous, so that the self, while not being obliterated, can make a journey with the other in reconciliation and mutual enrichment. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miroslav Volf.

I found this book very rich, not only in the macro of Christian theology as I expected, but surprisingly maybe even more so in the micro of my own relationships—especially around the concept of forgiveness. I loved the Biblical exegesis of stories like Cain and Abel! I listened on Audible, but think I would’ve gained far more by reading it because the topics are weighty and sometimes my brain couldn’t quite think it through to the depth I wanted before the narration continued on to the next point. May have to buy a paper copy and reread!