Chapter Two, pages 64-72

Differentiation, Exclusion, Judgment


So we've agreed that exclusion is harmful and any kind of distinction drawn between people and cultures leads to exclusion. So everything goes, right? Wrong.

Volf immediately deals with this concern saying, "Vilify all boundaries, pronounce every discrete identity oppressive, put the tag 'exclusion' on every stable difference--and you will have aimless drifting instead of clear-sighted agency, haphazard activity instead of moral engagement and accountability and, in the long run, a torpor of death instead of a dance of freedom." His answer to this undesirable outcome are the practices of differentiation and judgment.

Differentiation is a term that helps us understand the lines that separate us naturally. Volf wants to take it one step further, though, so that differentiation focuses on both what separates us and what binds us together. He uses an illustration from Cornelius Plantinga in which God playfully creates us as separate beings, human, animal, and vegetable, while binding us together in systems of interdependence and relationship. Thus we are separate and bound, with both movements critical to our lives.

In answering criticism from some feminist theologians, Volf takes on the idea that separation equals exclusion and binding equals oppression. Volf argues that we cannot know who we are as individuals without knowing also the context in which we live. It is the relationships and realities that bind us, as well as the lines that separate us from others, that allow us to know our thoughts clearly, our feelings deeply, and interact fully with the world around us. In other words, without the other, there is no self.

Volf moves from defining differentiation to more fully defining exclusion. For him, exclusion is sin, and in the context of "binding-and-separating," sin is something that distorts the God-given interdependence of our existence. With this understanding, "exclusion can entail cutting of the bonds that connect, taking oneself out of the pattern of interdependence and placing oneself in a position of sovereign independence... Second, exclusion can entail erasure of separation, not recognizing the other as someone who in his or her otherness belongs to a pattern of interdependence."

Two illustrations of these movements of exclusion:

I believe that the "desert fathers" who removed themselves from humanity in order to live without any outside distractions committed the sin of exclusion by "cutting the bonds that connect." I do not believe that God intends us to be removed in such a way from God's good creation.

The second sin of exclusion can be seen when we travel to a culture that is strange to us. Instead of embracing the strangeness and seeking to learn and understand the differences, the sin of exclusion leads us to minimize those differences and instead to see all the similarities with our own culture, even when those similarities are almost non-existent.

The third movement of this section is judgment. If differentiation is God-given "separation-and-binding" and exclusion is the sin of breaking the ties that bind or binding together what should be separate, then judgment is the process of discerning what should be excluded because the inclusion would be entering into wrong binding and separating. This is the focus of the next section.

The Self and Its Center


Volf doesn't spend any time trying to defend the idea that the self has a center; it is something you will just have to accept. It's not hard for us to see his point, though, because without a center the self becomes a whirling dervish or a formless amoeba. So I think it's fair to move forward with this understanding.

This brings us to his question: what kind of center should we have? "Paul presumes a centered self, more precisely a wrongly centered self that needs to be de-centered by being nailed to the cross." The image we have for this as Christians is the death and resurrection of Christ, something we claim in our baptisms. In death, we are de-centered and in resurrection, we are re-centered in Christ. "The center of the self--a center that is both inside and outside--is the story of Jesus Christ, which has become the story of the self."

Since God is our creator, and God has created us in God's own image, we understand that our selves are meant to be reflections of that divine image. So when we are de-centered and re-centered, it is not a loss of self, but a re-alignment of our deepest self with God's deepest desires. "The new center opens the self up, makes it capable and willing to give itself for others and to receive others in itself."

It is from this "de-centered center" that we can begin to make judgments regarding exclusion and battle sinful exclusion where it occurs.