1st review: I appreciated what I understood of this book. Unfortunately, much of it was beyond my comprehension. It was worth reading, but I wish I could have followed the author’s reasoning more closely.

2nd review: I decided this book is too important to set aside without trying harder to understand it. I read it again slowly and took notes. It was still many times beyond my comprehension, but worth the effort. The question of appropriate response/retaliation to violence done against our tribe is one that must be considered in this violent world.

Timely and timeless.

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.

This was a challenging read for me - way above my head in many ways, so I think I only skimmed the surface. But I really appreciate Volf's perspective, coming from a place of deep conflict and addressing these issues with compassion and also really seeking what God says about these things. Even though this was written in the 90s, it felt very relevant for the discussion in culture these days. We look to Jesus' example of embrace of both oppressor and oppressed, his call for all to repent of their sins, and the trust that He is the ultimate judge, not us. I wish I could summarize it better, but here's a quote from the last page...
"This is what Jesus Christ asks Christians to do. Assured of God's justice and undergirded by God's presence, they are to break the cycle of violence by refusing to be caught in the automatism of revenge. It cannot be denied that the prospects are good that by trying to love their enemies they may end up hanging on a cross. Yet often enough, the costly acts of nonretaliation become a seed from which the fragile fruit of Pentecostal peace grows--a peace between people from different cultural spaces gathered in one place who understand each other's languages and share in each others' goods."

A political theological treatise from the theologian, Miroslav Volf, does not fail to compel and challenge a few modern conceptions of self, liberalism, gender and violence to name a few concepts... His central thesis revolves around the otherness of individuals and how Jesus's coming has shown us the way to 'embrace' individuals back into themselves. It is beautifully argued and carefully-crafted to address some of the common concerns are with the conservative Christian response, which predominantly lie with the liberal, modernist, postmodernist and feminist (no specific wave, per se) movements.

You may or may not entirely agree with Volf on his argumentation, however, he does raise profound points for Christians and non-Christians alike where we both now inhabit a world clearly not at peace. This book is necessary reading for those with a deep desire to bring reconciliation become a reality in daily life. Volf's sensitivity to the milieu will help both challenge and equip you for engaging in heart-felt conversations with those you most love and wish to understand.

Highly recommended.

um dos melhores – e mais intensos e difíceis – livros de teologia que já li. o Volf tem uma erudição fantástica, e a maneira que ele reage com críticas pós-estruturalistas e faz suas críticas a elas é muito boa e interessante. a ideia da vontade de abraço como resposta cristã aos horrores do mundo é linda, mas o abraço só acontece depois da justiça e da verdade. perdão e justiça não são excludentes; na verdade, só existem juntos.

4.25 stars? Not really sure how to rate this.
I haven't read a lot of 'hard theology', by which I guess I mean theology primarily as theory. Volf dialogues with a lot of the heavy hitters of critical and social theory (Nietzsche, Foucault, etc.) and theologians like Jurgen Moltmann in a way I haven't seen often among theologians. That is, he is able to recognize and cogently synthesize what's good and useful to theology in Nietzsche and the French deconstructionists as well as ideas from his fellow systematic theologians. He's also able to critique their limitations and their misunderstandings or mistreatments of orthodox Christianity. He does it so well that this book sometimes reads like an apologetics for the critical theorist.

There are definitely some interesting ideas in here, but ultimately I'm not terribly interested in pure theory, neither as systematic theology nor as critical/social theory. (He jokingly refers to himself as an impractical theologian, as practical steps are above his pay grade.)

Theology in the worst sense of the word. Volf uses intentionally obscure language and engages in esoteric debates with postmodernists without giving any context or much explanation. The fact that he feels he needs to explain what his book is actually arguing in the 25 year anniversary afterword says it all.

I *think* Volf’s main point is that exclusion (on individual and community levels) is the heart of conflict and that embrace (personified by Jesus as an expression of God’s heart) is the answer to this conflict. He specifies that this embrace must be done independent of (or prior to) our enemies’ actions. He also grapples with competing standards of justice as they complicate the need to embrace. Doesn’t forgiveness/embrace mean justice is not really served? Volf talks extensively about some of these problems but I did not hear any clear answers. Maybe in the 50 year anniversary edition he’ll explain what they were?

This was an excellent book. Slow-going & theologically packed, but worth it. Appreciated the idea that in conflict, forgiveness is not the final end goal; embrace should follow.

It took me a long time to finish this book. Long enough that by the time I finished it I couldn’t quite remember how it had started. While often using language and engaging in philosophical ideas that stretched the limits of my comprehension, Volf offers, in application, a radically simple and Jesus Trinity centered ethic for engaging conflict and division in the world, specifically conflict rooted in identity (religious, ethnic, cultural, etc.). While written in the mid-90s, the revised edition was published in 2019 and the topic is just as important today as it was 30 years ago.

I will probably need to re-read this book to truly understand all that he is discussing, but at this juncture the things that I am coming away with are:
- A patient and systematic critique of identity politics as an end point, rather seeing our identity as a place of self-giving, with the cross as our example and also our hope.
- A radical idea about the necessity of forgetting as necessary for ultimate forgiveness (but that forgetting can't happen until justice has been performed).
- The Christian discipline of moving towards embrace of the other as modeled after the self-giving nature of the Trinity and empowered by the cross and resurrection.

For true Volf scholars and theologians I apologize for these not quite particular summaries but I did want to write them down somewhere until I have time to do a more thorough review.

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.

Logically sound, insightful, and thought provoking.

Volf creates a vision of a perfect form of embracing the other while rejecting the exclusion on the basis of Christian belief and values. Yet, at the same time he interjects just enough worldly logic to show he not Christians need to be totally naive.