by Miroslav Volf
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Product Description
Life at the end of the twentieth century presents us with 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
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Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Challenging, 2007-05-15
It is very challenging to explore what forgiveness means in the light of the deep realities faced so honestly here.
1 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
 Jamie, 2007-02-26
This book is a bunch of intellectual garbage. The author uses many big words and quotes prestigious thinkers, and yet doesn't actually say anything new or provacative. This book is definitely not worth reading.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Exclusion and Embrace, 2006-12-04
What a fantastic book Miroslav Volf wrote. This comes from his struggle to deal the effects of the war in his native land of Croatia. Prof Volf is right on when he makes the move to deal with ones willingness to embrace ones enemy just as God, in Christ, moved towards sinful humanity to embrace us. It can be somewhat of a difficult read, but it is worth it. I would recommend that every minister, theologian, and ministrial student read this book.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
The Cross, the Self, and the Other, 2006-06-03
Miroslav Volf has written a somewhat complex piece that in the end advocates non-violence in a world of violence. He writes as one who has been in the war zone of the Balkans and come out the other side. This book is important for what it has to say about justice, but more importantly love. Volf has had to deal personally with Serbian fighters who raped, pillaged, put in concentration camps, and murdered his fellow Croatians and he comes down in the end on the side of taking up your cross and following Jesus. Lest one think that he is a weak pacifist, he does come down theologically on the side of a God who judges, if even by violent means, and he calls on us, who wish to appeal to the Christ of the cross for our actions, to trust in the wrath of the Lamb and the one who sits upon the throne.
He discusses what it means to set boundaries and yet embrace the other. Every chapter is important in this book. Vof comes down on the side of love even over justice and he sincerely believes that love is right and that violence is wrong.
This book has already had a major impact on many and hopefully this will continue. In a time when preachers on television are advocating war and violence it is important that somehow the real message of Christianity would come out. Volf, Desmond Tutu, Walter Wink, L. Gregory Jones, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, N. T. Wright and others are showing the real way for Christians to be in the world and so this work is greatly appreciated.
This is not an easy read, as some other reviewers have pointed out. Volf engages many dialogue partners and the issues are at times technical and deeply philosophical, but as the spotlight reviewer put it, it is worth working through this book.
Volf does give high priority to all of scripture and some of the best sections in the book are when he works through such the Cain and Abel story, the prodigal son, and the book of Revelation.
I recommend this book for all theologians, preachers, and very serious bible students. Those outside the discipline of theology will have a harder time with the technicalities of the book, but it is worth the struggle. I recommend this book along with Desmond Tutu's book "No Future Without Forgiveness" to all of those Christian Zionist preachers out there who are misguided by the god of War and need to return to the Jesus of the cross.
Questions or Comments Contact me at darrengjohnson38@yahoo.com
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Creative Differentiation vs. Sinful Exclusion, 2006-05-06
As I read this book I was challenged to understand theological foundations and keys to understanding deeply rooted conflict among peoples around the world. That is why I recommend this book to you.
I have often pondered how we, the Christian Church, are to disciple nations. Some say it is done by winning a majority of souls in a nation, but the African nation of Malawi with 90% Christians is a dismal failure in terms justice, economic development, and overall of quality of life. Some say discipling a nation is all about quality of life and institutional reform, particularly reforms consistent with modern democracies.
What is Exlusion?
Exclusion is when we set ourselves apart from others for the purpose of defining our selves and justifying ourselves; we hope to purify ourselves. The difference between us has been healed when Jesus broke the wall of enmity. However, he did not erase the difference (p. 47). The need to restore "Identity" in individuals and whole cultures is a key message of this book. As Christians, we are called to depart from our culture and step into another. It is impossible to cross-cultures effectively if you do not know who you are. Volf encourages unity in diversity, "One body, many members" (p. 48), not a universal human identity. The bible says we are distinct in our diverse individualities and cultures. The cross of Christ is central. In the scandal of the cross, we find the promise of fellowship with the Crucified Christ. He explains that the core theme of the Gospels is "come and die". Our identity is "in His image".
However, this identity is not the end; it is a means to the end. Once crucified, we are called to engage the world that is broken. Therefore every social issue must be processed through reflection on the cross. (p. 25). Volf calls us to give up on modern hopes in order to see the only hope in self-giving love (p. 28). Volf defines "exclusion" as a powerful, contagious, and destructive evil.
What is Embrace?
"Embrace", he writes, is distancing ourselves from our own cultures to create space for the other (p. 30). We must both cultivate a distance from culture and at the same time belong to our culture (p. 37). "Solitarity", Volf writes, rightly underlines God's partiality to the `helpless'. However solidarity must include self-donation, self-giving. The story of the Good Samaritan illustrates the evil of exclusion in overt acts of violence as well as the non-actions of the disinterested. Truth and justice, Volf argues, are unavailable if we do not choose to embrace (p. 29). What is needed is "space" in our hearts to embrace our neighbors (p. 51). Other cultures are not a threat, but a potential source of enrichment. As we make some distance from our own culture, we actually express judgment against evil in every culture (p. 52).
Modernity will emphasize social arrangements, not social agents. Modernity shifts the "moral responsibility away from us individually and toward society. (p. 21). In ministering to the modernist and the postmodernist, we must insist upon trans-national, trans-ethnic, transcendental communities (p. 39). We must set our hearts on pilgrimage, from our own cultures and to the kingdom of God. Modern Christians tend to seek freedom, without the accompanied "binding" responsibility to a community (p. 42). We must depart our culture with a goal. To depart without a goal, like a nomad always leaving is post-modern. (p. 40) Postmodernity creates a climate in which evasion of moral responsibility is a way of life. Relationships have become "fragmentary" and "discontinuous". Our modern culture fosters "disengagement and commitment avoidance". (p. 21)
If what Volf says is true, then `calling' must remain the focus in my ministry. My ministry focus should, as Volf exhorts, "concentrate less on social arrangements and more on fostering the kind of social agents capable of envisioning and creating just, truthful, and peaceful societies, and on shaping a cultural climate in which such agents will thrive." (p. 21) What Volf makes clear is that exclusion is a sinful activity that ultimately reconfigures the creation in order to distinguish it from the creative activity of differentiation.
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