Exclusion and Embrace

Ok so I am still reading Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace, I have to admit that it is a hard slog. To say this book is written by an academic for academics is an understatement. Each sentence almost needs to be read multiple times. It's a theological book, but it's not the Bible that I have next to me while I read it, no, it's a dictionary. So it is a tough read, real tough, but I also have another confession...

...I love this book. Admittedly it is a hard read, as I've already mentioned, but what Volf says when you wrap your head around it is amazing. For this blog entry I have put together a few excerpts that sum up this particular chapter's theses.

Take your time to read it, and soak it in.

"Pristine purity is irretrievable; it can be re-gained neither by going back to the beginnings, nor by plunging into the depths, nor by leaping forward into the future. Every person's heart is blemished with sin; every ideal and project is infected with corruption; every ascription of guilt and innocence saddled with noninnocence."

"Solidarity in sin [we all are equally noninnocent] underscores that no salvation can be expected from an approach that rests fundamentally on the moral assignment of blame and innocence."

"Under the conditions of persuasive noninnocence, the work of reconciliation should proceed under the assumption that, though the behavior of a person may be judged as deplorable, even demonic, no one should ever be excluded from the will to embrace, because, at the deepest level, the relationship to others does not rest on their moral performance and therefore cannot be undone by the lack of it."

"Elaine Pagel concluded 'The Origin of Satan' with the claim that "within Christian tradition" there is the struggle "between the profoundly human view that 'otherness' is evil and the words of Jesus that reconciliation is divine" (Pagel 1995, 184). I do not wish to dispute this claim, at least not with respect to the Christian tradition as a whole. I want to suggest, however, that instead of locating a fault-line between the claim that some people are "children of hell" (Matthew 23:15) and the demand to "love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) as Pagel does (see xvii and 182f.), it is more fruitful to ask why the claim and the demand surface together in one and the same Gospel and why similar statements co-exist throughout the New Testament." 

"The answer, I hope, would be that 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." "Since all have sinned," argued Apostle Paul, "they are now justified by his [God's] grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ" (Romans 3:23-24). Reflection on social issues rooted in the cross of Christ will have to explore what this interdependence of the "universality of sin" and the "primacy of grace" may mean when taken out of the realm of "salvation" into the realm where we-many of us "children of hell"-fight and wage wars against each other."

My response as I read this is WOW! The call to love and embrace despite the 'others' sin against us. Our relationships do not depend on our moral performance, because in reality we are all sinners (universality of sin), and therefore our relationships cannot be broken because of a lack of it. None of us are innocent and therefore our relationships can't focus on one person noninnocence over anothers. Therefore I wonder if our relationships to each other have to be viewed in light of the cross. That while we were all sinners Christ died for us. Again, WOW! What are your thoughts and reflections?