Sunday, 8 March 2015

Exclusion and Embrace: Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation,
Miroslav Volf, Abingdon Press, 1996, page 70-71

Arguing that in order to make non-exclusionary judgements, the self needs to be decentred - that is, lose its selfishness - and recentred:

The centre of the self - a centre that is both inside and outside - is the story of Jesus Christ, which has become the story of the self.

Neatly preserving self-identify and self-worth, by receiving a new centre that transforms and reinforces what was before, Volf explains:

Re-centering entails no self-obliterating denial of the self that dissolves the self in Christ and therefire legitimises other such dissolutions in the 'father', the 'husband', the 'nation', the 'church' and the like. To the contrary, re-centering establishes the most proper and unassailable centre that allows the self to stand over against persons and institutions which may threaten to smother it.