Volf does it again - "Soft Difference" - a postmodern evangelical take on the gospel and culture
Miroslav Volf has become one of my key mentors. He is becoming a truly great theologian. And I love almost everything he writes. This latest article speaks into a post on reconciliation that I made a few months back. Volf argues cogently that reconciliation must be preceded by exclusion for it to be meaningful. Forgiveness without redressing the demands of justice is meaningless. He stands against the tradition of liberal modernity which posits universal salvation and downplays the reality of evil. But he also questions hard-line fundamentalist (evanglical modern) presentations of the eschaton. In the attached article, he critiques Niebuhrs 5 positions on the gospel and culture and provides his own approach, based on a subtle reading of 1 Peter. He opposes what he calls hard difference which excludes without embracing but also critiques relativism which embraces without excluding. I loves the following passage:
"To be a Christian means to live one's own identity in the face of others in such a way that one joins inseparably the belief in the truth of one's own convictions with a respect for the convictions of others. The softness which should characterize the very being of Christians-I am tempted to call it "ontic gentleness"-must not be given up even when we are (from our own perspective) persuaded that others are either wrong or evil. To give up the softness of our difference would be to sacrifice our identity as followers of Jesus Christ."
I find it very hard to apply this passage...but I do want to become more gentle. What I like about this article is that Volf also cogently argues that while we are soft in our assertion of difference, we nevertheless must assert our difference.
To me this is slightly easier in the way I relate to the culture of the world. But what happens when you are engaging a distinctively different approach to Christian faith (seen by you as a compromise with worldly values), within your own church? How do we practically express soft difference? Do we express it by first taking a step back (excluding) before re-engaging (embracing) in a different way? Or do we simply embrace the difference and sort-of pretend it isn't there?
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Welcome back!
Welcome back Graham!
Haven't heard from you for a long time :-).
I haven't read Donald Bloesch, but maybe I should as it would help me read Volf better.
Can I push back a little though? You state "Surely it is our task not to exclude, but to live as reconciled, viewing God as having been reconciled to all and on that basis beseeching them to be reconciled to Him?"
The issue, of course, is how we, as Christians, think we should live now in light of what the New Creation will be like. I think you are saying that because (from a universalist point of view) we will all be reconciled with Christ in the New creation, we should live that way now. Pls correct me if I'm wrong!
I however agree with Volf (and exclude your position in the process) that some people will not be reconciled with God in the New Creation, and that the way we live now should reflect that. As we hold out the promise of reconciliation, we need to model what form that will take in the New Creation, and inevitably, as we affirm some ethics/lifestyles/beliefs as positive, its inevitable that other approaches will be downplayed.
Aha you say - another example of how bad theology ends up excluding people.
But my pushback is this: although you may believe that the view you hold (that it is not our task not to exclude, but to live as reconciled) is truly inclusive, in reality its just another modulation of exclusive thinking. Because it inherently excludes those who don't have your eschatology. ie Volf and I.
So here's my point: some form of violence is inevitable even in your approach to reconciliation: a violence towards one own identity and beliefs are required to live as reconciled now when in reality we aren't. I call it elephant in the room syndrome - a sense of inauthenticity, or pretense that we are reconciled and inclusive as a community when in reality we totally disagree! This is a point Volf makes very clearly in his essay:
"Whether it takes place gently or not, colonization is colonization. This is how Tzvetan
Todorov might react to the pursuit of mission through soft difference. "Is there not
already a violence in the conviction that one possesses the truth oneself, whereas this is
not the case for others," he asks rhetorically, commenting on the missionary efforts of
such a friend of the Indians as Las Casas.44 Instead of asserting the universal truth, one
should strive to make the otherness of others blossom. Yet even "heightening of the
other's differences" must be "guided by an emancipatory praxis that keeps the other
empowered to be other,"45 as Mark Taylor puts it. But when we ask what actually keeps
others empowered to be authentically themselves, judgments about truth and error,
freedom and slavery, darkness and light rush in. For unless you are willing to tolerate
everything except intolerance toward everything, any notion of "emancipative praxis that
keeps the other empowered to be other" involves often abstracting an authentic other
from a concrete other and then affirming your abstraction while condemning the
concrete other. You must abstract, for instance, from the fact that women are
circumcised in a given culture before you can affirm that culture. But when you affirm
the other in this way, you have not affirmed them, but your own construction of their
authentic identity, a construction which entails making judgments about truth and value.
And so we are back at proclaiming the truth that others do not possess. The difference is
that we now do it clandestinely, whereas 1 Peter would want us to do it openly."
A clandestine or secretive approach to difference within a Christian community is what I call "the elephant in the room scenario." A pretense of reconciliation when in reality none exists. In this sense, I worry that your perspective is actually an over-realised eschatology.
So I leave with a very pragmatic question: can you honestly say that you have ever been part of a community which has been able to not exclude anyone? Have you always been able to absorb consistently the habitual sins of individuals within your community, without at some point needing to see a transformation in their behaviour or needing to fall back on asking them to disconnect from fellowship?
If you have, then you have done better even than Jesus, who constantly challenged his disciples by affirming one thing to the exclusion of all others eg the necessity of his crucifixion, the necessity to reject material wealth, and the importance of drinking his blood. When they couldn't buy it, he let them walk.
Jesus calls people to reconciliation on his terms. Reconciliation with Christ results in counter-cultural behaviour which reflects the reality of the new creation. And that counter-cultural behaviour excludes many beliefs and practises which simply won't be in heaven. Beginning to model that now (however imperfectly) inevitably means making choices to exclude or include based on the character and model of Christ. Volf is honest about that, but also challenges us to softness and gentleness in the midst of those choices.
WOW
I struggled with some of the big words LOL.But what and amazing piece of writing what a blessing I felt as I read it .Softness seems such a great way "the method of our mission" if you like.But like you I find softness difficult and yet inside its somthing I long for.The ability to express that softness is a major barrier .Finding a place and people to talk to about it another barrier.But yet its something I long for and only ever touch now and then.
Yes its very good isn't it?
I know, its a great article isn't it? Very challenging. I need to go back and try and get my head around it better. I simultaneously felt affirmed and challenged.
Its so powerful because it speaks right into the heart of where we are at as Christians as we try and live in the world. It speaks into so many issues I am having to deal with.
The trick is to try and absorb the truth in the scripture of 1 Peter and live it and then find ways of bringing this down to earth for people in our churches and organisations.
Cutting edge stuff.
Gotta disagree, I'm afraid
Ah shucks, I hate being the only voice of dissent! ;-)
I've always liked Volf, as far as he goes. However, I find that in certain areas, where he could be making his most vital contribution, he invariably and inconsistently backs down from pursuing the fill implications of his own arguments, in favour of more conservative positions.
This first place I noticed this was in his writing on the atonement, but it is not limited to that. After all, to dismiss universal reconciliation - without the careful objectivity of someone like Donald Bloesch - is wholly unnecessary in the light of Scripture, theology and tradition. To then suggest that it involves a downplaying of evil reveals a glaring unfamiliarity with the doctrine's ablest defenders. (I'm left wondering if a more comprehensive doctrine of atonement would forbid anyone from conceiving that evil has been in some way down-played.)
I'm happy to say that reconciliation requires the experience of exclusion, as that is kind of assumed. However, I'm not at all sure that it requires us to be the excluders. This, it seems to me, is nothing less than defining ourselves against another, rather than letting ourselves be defined in Christ. It seems to me that that is the only basis upon which Christian identity can be formed.
Ironically, I'd say that Volf initially makes the case for a 'positive' basis of identity extremely well, but then moves away from this when he begins discussing 'Difference and Acculturation' and 'Soft Difference'.
I'm wonder what difference it would make if instead of 'Soft Difference' (which is inherently a 'negative' base of identity), we spoke of an eschatological difference. I don't mean in a Sheep or Goats way, but in the sense that we choose to live in the light of the future-transforming act of God in Christ.
Surely it is our task not to exclude, but to live as reconciled, viewing God as having been reconciled to all and on that basis beseeching them to be reconciled to Him?
Again, I think that Volf initially heads down this very same direction in Exclusion and Embrace, where he appears to perceive an eschatological inclusion that we are called to bring into the present, that we are all reconciled to God in Christ and that is the basis for reconciliation amongst people now.
(I also think it's nonsense to refer to Neibuhr's work as 'the most important book on the topic in the English-speaking world', but I'm just being picky now.)
Apart from that, I loved it! ;-)