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The title of his most recent book—Exclusion & Embrace: The Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Abingdon)—sounds like the scholarly work that it is. But for Croatian-born Miroslav Volf, this academic exploration of who we and our enemies are to each other was driven by a personal quest. As a young man in Communist Yugoslavia, Volf saw firsthand the ethnic frictions that turned bloody after the breakup of the country. "An important factor in the war," he says, "was the drive for pure identities—hence the term 'ethnic cleansing.' Persons belonging to the other ethnic group would be swept away like dirt so that one could have a 'clean' ethnic house. Since we live in a world that is inhabited by many groups, the desire for pure identities leads inescapably to violence and bloodshed." He began searching for a resolution to the tension that existed in him between the "natural instinct to fight for your rights" and the teaching of his Pentecostal parents "that the enemy is there to be loved."

His quest took the form of theological reflection—which soon caught the notice of the academic world. This month, Volf, 42, begins a new position as Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School, following seven years of teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary. He maintains ties to his homeland by serving as visiting professor of systematic theology on the Evangelical Theological Faculty in Osijek, Croatia, his alma mater. After studying at Osijek, Volf attended Fuller Seminary and the University of Tubingen, where he received his doctoral and postdoctoral degrees under Jurgen Moltmann. He talked with CT about the impact the story of the Prodigal has made on his thinking.

You say the story of the Prodigal Son teaches us a "theology of embrace." What do you mean by that?
After the war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, I started thinking about the whole issue of relationship between cultures and between individuals who are part of cultures. How should I relate to my friends and my fellow Christians who are Serb, and who find themselves on the other side of the barricades? Right about that time I was asked to write a paper addressing the upheavals in Eastern Europe from a theological perspective. I asked myself, How am I going to relate to those who have injured me and my country?

I tried to apply liberation theology to the situation, which says we need to fight first for justice and liberation and then we can get reconciliation. It didn't work. Both parties saw themselves as oppressed, and both saw themselves as engaged in the struggle for liberation. So the main categories of liberation theology, oppression and liberation, serve to justify the struggle rather than lead to peace. Then it occurred to me that one of the best portrayals of what lies at the core of Christian faith is this amazing story of the Prodigal, which I read as an expression of what God did for us on the cross. Suddenly those open arms of the father became for me the picture of who God is, how God had acted toward sinful humanity. And not only how God acted toward humanity, but how we ought to act toward those who have sinned against us.

How did that lead you away from a liberation-theology paradigm?
I started thinking about the implications of the Prodigal story for how we relate to one another in situations of conflict, of enmity, of wrongdoing, of suffering. At the center of Christian faith lies not so much liberation, but the embrace of the wrongdoer. That was where the idea of a "theology of embrace" was born. It is simply the Prodigal's father not giving up his relationship with his son—in spite of the wrongdoing of the younger son. When that son returns, the father runs toward him without having heard a single word from that son. He shows his son grace and acceptance because he was and he is and he remained his son even through the wrongdoing. That is what we see on the cross.

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October 26 1998, Vol. 42, No. 12