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David McMillan

Seek Peace and Pursue It
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Blessed are the Arrogant
Steve Stockman

What is the Orange Order?
Brian Kennaway

Covenanters and the Orange Order
Norris Wilson

Book Review
Stephen Williams

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BOOK REVIEW

Exclusion & Embrace
A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation
Miroslav VoIf
Nashville: Abingdon Press 1996

The very title of this book announces its relevance to a Northern Ireland, not to mention a wider, readership. Miroslav VoIf is a native of Croatia, now teaching theology at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, so his credentials for tackling this theme are certainly not found wanting. Nor does the execution of the project disappoint. This volume is rich, deep, sobering and imaginative. Situated in a world of pain, it does not indulge in sterile or self-absorbed misery, nor encourage flight to the realms of impassible abstraction through the escape hatch of theology. Let our first word be a word of commendation.

'Exclusion' and 'embrace' proffer the alternatives with which we are presented when we indwell a world of confrontation, conflict and violence. These very terms indicate VoIf's resolution to root the problem in the area of human relationships. We are not primarily about social arrangements. We are not so much about 'agreement' and 'disagreement', or even 'right' and 'wrong', as about self' and the 'other'. The cross can never offer us an authentic vertical Christianity if its horizontal significance is denied. That significance is spelled out in terms of a Christianity not of exclusion, but of embrace. After an initial chapter emphasizing the multicultural reality of the body of Christ, the locus of our primary belonging as Christians, the first part of the book analyzes respectively the two themes in the title. Exclusion stems from a self wrongly centred on itself. Such centring also establishes an excluded other. Embrace stems from a self crucified with Christ, now re-centred in a spirit of reconciliation with the other. The chapter on embrace is the longest, and perhaps the most important, in the book, and VoIf's determination to impress on us its importance is shown especially in his analysis of the phenomenon of embrace as a metaphor for the dynamics of reconciled relationships. Its foundation is God's embracing self-giving.

Part Two proceeds to examine three areas. A chapter on 'Oppression and Justice', alert to the problem of varied notions and traditions of justice, proposes the transcendence of love over justice, without blunting the demands of the latter. The argument that follows, on 'Deception and Truth', culminates in proclaiming the significance of Jesus' claim - 'I am the Truth' - in the face of one of its great antitheses, the celebration of power. In his final chapter, the author turns to the question of 'Violence and Peace', reconciling the nonviolent way of the Crucified with the divine prerogative to don the robe of the White Rider of Revelation. Divine 'violence' against evil can be explained only by the fact that it is God, and God alone, who has the right to it, and that God exercises it only when nothing else will rid creation of violent evil. VoIf's concluding thesis could, I think, be stated thus: embrace is God's last word; if there is exclusion, it is a self-exclusion.

This is an essay of considerable theological power, but it is not directed principally at theologians. It aspires to engage nontheological moderns and postmoderns, and intellectuals at that. Herein we meet two problems for a readership in Northern Ireland, problems obviously not peculiar to such a readership. The first can be simply stated. Most Christians will find much of the book difficult, yet its message about how, as Christians, we should think, is vital. The second must be stated more tentatively. The running dialogue with postmodernists and feminists may be exhilarating, but runs the risk of toppling over into the realm of exchange of ideas, grave and sombre as these ideas are. Theologians are apt to forget just how strenuous are the demands they place upon themselves in attempting to engage painful existential realities in the idiom of sophisticated intellectual analysis. It is to the author's credit that it is occasionally, and not constantly, that the reader feels the pull away from attending to these realities in the direction of attending to the relatively abstract conceptualities. Certainly the book ends as it begins, concentrating the mind on the warp of violence. There is an urgent need to translate and to communicate its insights to those who will not be its readers... but only after internalizing its message for oneself.

None of this implies that the content is uncontroversial. Even theological fundamentals need scrutiny. VoIf glosses 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' in terms of 'My God, my God, why did my radical obedience to your way lead to the pain and disgrace of the cross? The ultimate scandal of the cross is the all too frequent failure of self-donation to bear positive fruit...' (p.27). This is clearly contestable, even allowing for the need to amplify our perspectives on the cross, as the author does, and for the fact that he is not aiming at a complete theology of the cross. Further, the book is somewhat marred by a chapter on 'Gender Identity' at the close of Part One. Its stated rationale can not conceal the fact that, at least in this form, it throws our attention off the scene of war and conflict hitherto before our eyes. Certainly one could in principle integrate the particular theme of gender into the primary discussion. As it is, the chapter forces us to seek some more clarification on what that primary theme is, and puts some pressure on the coherence of its outworking. The preoccupation with the roots of physical conflict and the general interest in engaging feminists are here allied uneasily. Further, some of us will worry about the nature of the theological foundations that are revealed in the blunt (though contextualized) disregard of Pauline 'subordinationism', on the ground that it is just 'culturally conditioned' (p.183).

Whatever its defects, Exclusion and Embrace is the mightily impressive contribution of an excellent mind. Does not Northern Ireland need a theology of the cross? We have heard much of the cross erected on this earth for the sake of our justification and the everlasting security of the saved. But we do not, in fact, understand it, if we do not grasp it as a cross which is for the sake of horizontal reconciliation and the inclusive embrace of the other. Miroslav VoIf has trenchantly taught us this. We are most grateful to him.

Stephen Williams is currently Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological College, Belfast. He was formerly Professor of Theology at United Theological College, Aberystywyth.