In a recent Essential Community course, students were asked to engage contentious issues such as religion, race, gender, and war. These writings are the fruit of their hard yet unfinished work.

My dad always wanted a son. He dreamed of raising someone just like himself to teach the family business and play ice hockey with on the pond. This was never a mystery to my sister and I since it was something he would talk about in passing on a regular basis. He was disappointed to never get the boy he dreamed of, he was disappointed by my sex. I would strive throughout my life to live up to the gendered child he always wanted.

Week by week and hour by hour each person lives out a personal version of the nature/nurture debate surrounding the issue of gender. Except for a very small percentage of people, individuals are born one of two biological sexes, either male or female. However, a persons’ individual sense of gender is something which develops over time. So what is it that ultimately sets one’s gender identity? Biology is a strong predictor, but the influence of culture and family, the communities we grow in, cannot be neglected. Personal experience has shaped and been shaped by the power of gender and, as a result, it is essential that we look closely at the ways our experiences of gender have in turn shaped the way in which we live in community. In exploring the power of gender, personal experience speaks as forcefully as the literature on the subject, both wrestling with the question: What aspects of gender are innate and what are learned in community? Predominate literature speaks to the tension that arises from dividing ourselves according to distinct gender roles whereas personal experiences reflect the reality that there are a myriad of ways to live out our two genders. It is essential to life in community that we see one another as more than a biologically determined sex and understand that gender expression is always under construction.

The main body of literature on gender identity divides the historical ideas into two opposing schools of thought which become helpful cornerstones of reference when wrestling with this topic.

Essentialism encapsulates the “nature” side of the nature/nurture question of gender; it houses the conviction that we are born into the world gendered– with distinct cores as men and women. The essentialist argument is made that our gender identity is determined by our biological reality. Originally, essentialism was an ancient way of classifying things by their intrinsic, unchanging qualities. Specifically,

These essences were considered the fundamental and indispensable properties of persons or objects and thus constituted their most basic or core identity….immune to historical forces; they inhere in an object naturally and cannot be attributed to culture or convention. Essential properties are thus universal.

When applied to the idea of gender, the assertion is that there is a unique essence shared by all women and a unique essence shared by all men, each with an unchanging core, an essentially different male essence and female essence, regardless of time, place, age or environment.

Essentialism is prevalent in our world today with a variety of perspectives focusing on distinct differences between men and women. Some essentialists use highly specific descriptors, such as ‘women are nurturing and men are strong.’ Others affirm an intuitive belief in gender differences without naming the essentials so specifically, statements like ‘men tend to be more rational, women more emotional.’ Still others might articulate gender essentials as life themes stating, “every man wants a battle to fight, every women has a deep desire to be beautiful.” This viewpoint is still strongly supported by much of the research done today. “Anyone reading the daily paper realizes that the claim of innate differences between the sexes is not limited to the past; it continues today in research projects on heart disease, talking styles, stress levels, voting patterns, and child-rearing practices.” Essentialists continue to reevaluate their understanding of each gender’s core; yet the core of the essentialist’s belief is that those differences evidenced between men and women are ordained by nature. Whether by biological or divine design our construction as different sexes is the basis for our construction of two distinct genders.

In contrast, constructivism encapsulates the “nurture” side of the nature/nurture question of gender; it houses the conviction that gender is the effect of cultural and societal forces, pressures applied to the “space of possibility” within each person.

Being a woman or a man is therefore not the expression of a natural predisposition or a biological fact; gender identities are better understood as ‘performances’ in which one puts on the ‘drag’ of culturally generated gender/sex/body assumptions and thus enacts (or is enacted by) socially inscribed roles and positions.

Thus, constructivism focuses on the role of community in nurturing us into gendered women and men. It focuses on a process which grapples to explain how girls are taught to be girls and boys are taught to be boys; from the time a doctor announces their sex and parents decorate a nursery in pink or blue. Constructivists pay close attention to different ways that men and women are taught to become men and women, focusing on cultural symbols, words, beliefs, attitudes and actions.

“Strong constructivists” believe that the self of each person is an open space rather than a core of predetermined characteristic and that even identities such as race, ethnicity and age are fictional cultural assumptions. Gender is seen as the flow of influences and forces in and on a person, without any aspect of female or male considered “set” or inherent. Constructivist thinking continues today to a variety of degrees. Much of the literature supporting this viewpoint was published during the feminist movement which sought to breakdown divides between sexes. Ultimately constructivist view gender as being a constant flux of converging forces and influences, preordained by neither biology nor divinity and containing no universality outside the constraints placed by society.

And so we enter into this wrestling dialogue about gender as a community. For this group of Mars Hill Graduate School students gender has been fostered by a murky mixture of biology and society. Unable to distinguish what has been determined by our sex and what has been influenced by our communities and our desires to fit in. The first trait proclaimed about each of us was our sex. A doctor told our parents which category to put us in, male or female and from that moment on we have been treated a certain way. This fundamental distinction has also been a starting point for almost every interaction in life. Even though as we grow older our categories may broaden, upon meeting a person for the first time one of the first things deduced is whether they are man or woman and after that, what type of man or woman they are. Are they a masculine female or a feminine male? How do we know what forces in society, even before we emerge from the womb, are at work in developing our gender identity? No one can assuredly say what defines us as masculine or feminine. So we ask the question, is there any way to distinguish those aspects of our gender which have been formed by biology and those aspects which have been informed by society?

The following is a mosaic of snapshots from our journeys through the development of our gender identities. Our sex was proclaimed at birth, but for each one of us, our gender has continued to develop as we live our lives in community with others. Our gender carries with it certain conceptions and expectations; these stories are a few examples of how we have attempted to live into our authentic selves in the midst of the gender struggle.

On being taught to be girls and boys:

From my first breath…

I have been determined to be able to do anything that the boys could do. I played with all the boys in the neighborhood and kept up to speed with them as best I could. I figured if I could do everything the boys did, I could somehow fulfill my dads wishes to have a son. This was exhausting.

Then as a teenager I became involved in an evangelical high school ministry. I started to see only men up front speaking, and the women who were pretty and nice and shy seemed to be lifted up as “Godly”. At the time I enjoyed the structure that was presented to me. Instead of trying to be anything and everything possible, I had a set of behaviors that I could follow that I knew would best please my audience. I felt freedom in this structure and decided to try to squeeze my outgoing lively behavior, into one of those quiet gentle spirits that all good Christian girls should be.

From my first breath…

My family called me a girl and girl was all I was called. Their concept of “girl” determined how they interacted with me rather than my own unique embodiment of the word. Being a girl meant to those around me that I liked to cook and to clean up after men. Being a girl also meant that I would not want to express anger or be prone to violence, because girls are docile and meek.

As a child, I learned that people with vaginas clean up after people with penises. My brother and father left their dirty dishes and soiled napkins around the house and it was up to “me and mom” to clean up what they left behind. It was understood as “unkind” to ask people with penises to wash their own dishes or even to place them in the dishwasher. So having a vagina meant I would help mom in the kitchen and like it and that I would never “have” to feel or express anger. I “got” to make my brother’s lunches for him and any anger felt over that was unfeminine and unbecoming of a Christian young lady.

From my first breath…

When I was in middle school, the whole sixth grade class went on a field trip to a mountain lodge for the weekend. At one point on the bus ride there, a group of boys I considered friends were gathered in a tight circle whispering. When I poked my head in, the kid next to me told me that Matt had a Penthouse. The other boys started giggling and looked to my face for my reaction. I forced out a laugh too, and I could tell that whatever this Penthouse thing was a big deal, so I added an exuberant, “NO WAY!” One of the boys saw through my uncomfortable forced reaction and rightly responded, “I bet you don’t even know what a Penthouse is!” In that moment I felt the shame, but later in the weekend when I found out what a Penthouse was, I felt a much deeper shame and confusion. I did not entirely understand what I saw, but what I did understand is that, as a boy, I was supposed to like it.

From my first breath…

I was taught that if I wore tight clothing boys would be unable to help themselves. It was my responsibility to cover myself up, minimize my curves and plan ahead to keep my boyfriends out of trouble.

Nobody noticed that I wore only baggy pants and my dad’s flannel shirts; most of my girlfriends dressed like that. I hung out with the kids who thought prom was a joke and losing your virginity on prom night was even more laughable. I covered my desire in lots of ways. But I’m not sure it helped.

Even on my frumpiest days, even when I assured him my mom was in her car, on her way to pick me up, I gave in to the pressure from hormones, peers, and a need for affection or pride. I sat on his bed and when he gave me the chance, I kissed back. Was I a tease? Or was I just being a girl? I began to think the two were synonymous.

From my first breath…

My friend stumbled over his words as he tried to explain his thoughts. “What if women are mysterious, even to God, and part of the beauty of men not understanding women, is the fact that God might not, and on earth as Jesus, God was a man.” You could hear the collective sharp intake as 112 first year Mars Hill students waited for the fall out of the comment.  A few women in the class responded with frustrated angst over continually being othered and subjugated within the church community.  I looked around searching, willing the other men in the room to raise their hands. This was a perfect opportunity for someone in the majority to speak on behalf of the marginalized, to align themselves, to vocally be an ally. As I looked around I realized that none of the other men in the room were going to speak up. I tentatively raised my hand, “I think it is important to hear from ah, um, a man, on this issue.”

…the air of this world has been harsh.

Fredrich Beuchner aptly wrote: “I am my face, and I am not. A strange and confusing business. Beneath the face there are many layers of self, and the deepest layers are for the most part hidden from us.” Our biological sex is part of who we are, and yet, it does not encapsulate the whole of who we are. We are the contours of individual faces and the cadence of unique life stories. We are aware of the mystery and complexity that teems beneath the surface of our skin. We are torn between wanting to be seen as gendered men and women, with the ability to align ourselves within our respective sex and yet simultaneously desire to be seen as the unique individuals we are.

On a personal striving to be better at boy-ness and girl-ness:

As I struggle for breath…

I stumbled over proclaiming myself a man, not because I don’t have the proper parts or because anyone, upon meeting me, would mistake me for a woman.  I hesitated because as the only out gay man in a room with over 50 other men I wasn’t sure how they would respond to me as the spokesperson for our gender.  I thought it was possible I was the least “manly” male in the room. I dance ballet, I over-spend on jeans, art and haircuts and I have more desire to watch the Academy Awards then the Super Bowl. Was I the appropriate man to vocally become an ally for these women? Wouldn’t it be better if a bearded, beer drinking, flannel wearing MAN spoke up? In spite of my own self criticism, and at the risk of being ridiculed as in so many other childhood moments, I did speak, “as a man it is important for us to speak with and alongside women.  We must not put women on unsustainable pedestals, to remove them so far from ourselves, and then also to remove them from God.  Our genderless God, who encompasses and surpasses all that is male and female, must understand us all.”

As I struggle for breath…

My sex came with a certain notion over my gender and that gender with a responsibility to the opposite sex, as if the two were in a power struggle and I would lose the battle if I didn’t take control of the situation at any cost.

When I was 18 I left home and as my roommates noticed my dating patterns and the clothes hanging in the closet they began to put the pieces together. They began to ask why I never wore makeup or curled my eyelashes. They wondered aloud why all my underwear was boring white cotton, why I never bought pants that “fit” on our shopping trips. When I explained to them that I was never very girlish, that I wasn’t sure how to be, they saw right through me. Their response was to give me a makeover, straighten my hair and tell me that the woman in the mirror was not the enemy. I was scared to death that I would be raped on the train as I rode into the city to visit my boyfriend.

As I struggle for breath…

A few years after I graduated I moved back to my college town and into a house with six other guys. One of the traditions of that group of guys was to drink 40 oz beers on a ridge overlooking a reservoir. I hated beer, but I wanted to share in the comradry of the stories told and experiences created in drinking an alcoholic beverage with friends, so I settled on Boone’s Farm flavored wine, which tastes like Kool-Aid, as my beverage of choice. As a result, my distinction from the rest of the group was always mentioned, but since it was done in a jovial spirit and allowed me to participate in the laughter, I rather enjoyed my uniqueness. But, there was always the liquor store to contend with, and on one such visit the clerk condescendingly asked me if I’d like a bag for my Boone’s Farm flavored wine. After I said I didn’t, he quickly countered with ‘you should,’ which I translated to mean, ‘you should’ cover that despicable drink because ‘you should’ be embarrassed to be drinking it. But really I felt him saying, ‘you should’ be a man.’ Now, I drink beer.

As I struggle for breath…

I will never forget the time my brother had one of his meltdowns right before we were out the door and off to school. I was in fifth or sixth grade and he was in junior high. I was just beginning to develop breasts. He was angry about something and hurled a full bottle of hairspray at me before storming down the stairs. I crumbled under the searing of where the hairspray bottle had hit. My breast throbbed sharply, wailing silently for my gendered self who had been hurt as a developing woman by a developing man.

In the moment he threw that bottle, my brother was not thinking of me as a girl, with developing breasts that were very tender. He was unaware that trauma to young breasts causes emotional as well as physical pain. My brother forgot my anatomy in that moment. He forgot my gender. He remembered his own anger.

Mom sharply directed us out the door. “He hit me with the hairspray bottle,” I stammered, my eyes welling with tears and shame at the vulnerability of my female body to pain and disregard; I clutched my chest as I stooped for my backpack., “You kids,” came her annoyed response. She neglected her daughter’s embodied femaleness even as she normed her son’s volatility.

As I struggle for breath…

I decided to apply for a job with this ministry. The state that I applied for only hired men and, openly admitted that women were not fit for the job as we should not be speaking in front of crowds. I applied out of state and moved hours away in order to be hired. It was when I experienced this dynamic that I realized the harm done in assuming someone’s genitals are the determinant of who she should be and what she is capable of. The comfort I once felt in being told how to live out my gender, now became a confining characteristic that did not allow me to freely live into who I was.

The “problem” is that I in fact was really good at that job. I had ideas and wanted them to be heard about. I wanted to speak in front of crowds and I cared about the individuals as well. I was a strong woman. This was something that many did not know what to do with. And neither did I. In a culture where women are not supposed to have a voice- I could not figure out how to be silent while at the same time I allowed myself to feel for those I spoke up towards. Thus began my balancing act between what I felt was “manly” (having a voice) and “womanly” (being tender). As a woman who had something to say, I immediately felt that I was “too much;” something was wrong with me.

Never in my thought process about my voice did I come to think that something could be wrong with the societal expectation put on me. Instead I took on the shame of being a women and having a voice. I had strength and emotions and I didn’t know where I fit.

… our lungs grow weary.

We have experienced having our gender both invalidated and pigeon-holed to the point where gender became the totalizing summation of how we were seen. In both extremes, the wholeness of the individual is lost. In order to reach self acceptance one must eventually set aside some of the gender ideas touted by society and the gender presumptions pressed by community and claim one’s own gender identity.

On self acceptance and the rest of the world:

I learn to breath…

I am a woman with strength and tenderness. I like football and I like to knit; I like cooking and I don’t like to clean; I have things to say and I care a lot about how my words are received. Do these characteristics make me masculine or feminine? Neither. They make me exactly me– a woman and me as more than just what your idea of a woman is.

I learn to breath…

“You and I, we are woman warriors; we belong to the same tribe,” my friend uttered to me, her eyes shining and her voice deep. It was one of those moments. My heart resonated with her words. “Yes, we are.” My pride and joy and “damn-straight!” showed up in tears. We saw ourselves as women and as warriors, reveling in the femininity that we exude and are, a femininity that includes: bravery, brashness and the willingness to be bloodied for the sake of what is good and glorious as well as the wetness of tears and the desire to be held and the affinity to nurture… femininity that encompasses breasts and battles, fury and acne, sorrow and romance, shame and love. In that holy moment between us, my friend and I were viscerally bonded in the sharing of our gender, feeling the expanse of femininity through us and between us as intentional, meaningful and pivotal. We were God’s anointed woman-warriors, basking in the glow of all that identity might mean and in the warmth of the fire in our bellies.

I learn to breath…

In my first therapy session a few years back, my therapist concluded our session by calling me an “emotional vault” and one of “the most emotionally closed off people she had ever met.” I responded by saying, “maybe I’m just waiting for a girl with the right combination to come along.” About four months later, I met that woman. As the dam broke and the emotional life I had locked up for so long spilled onto this woman, she held me with grace. It was apparent to me that somewhere along the line I learned that it wasn’t safe to share my emotions. Recently my mother shared with me her thoughts about what had happened with me during my teenage years. As I became more emotionally distant and isolated, she didn’t know what to do, and the only advice that my dad could give her was, “just leave him alone, he’ll be fine, you just don’t understand men.” With those words, my father gave me his inheritance of what it means to be an emotionally distant man. But years later, as my cache of feelings from years of silence began to flow out of me, this woman saw what I couldn’t bear to see. She saw me as acceptable. Acceptable as the emotionally vulnerable man I am.

I learn to breath…

In community with other women, I learned that my gender expression isn’t dangerous in itself, nor is it easily covered up.

Trading in lipstick and mascara would not save my boyfriends the trouble of make-out sessions that went too far. Needlessly, I gave myself away—not to the men, mind you, but for their sake. I thought my self-denial was a donation on behalf of the men in my community when what they needed was authenticity. It never occurred to me that the power to protect was not to be found in paring down my identity.

I was sure I could protect everyone by denying myself but instead I lost myself.

Apparently my community was unwilling to see my gender-instilled identity given up so foolishly. They taught me that the face in the mirror was not the enemy, nor was the enemy something I could hide under baggy pants. Fear was the enemy. I was afraid of my desires and the desires of those who cared most deeply for me. I was unwilling to give my feminine self to the men who loved me because I was sure they could not or would not give back. I imagined even the best of them—the one I married—into a man with violent desires and I refused to forgive those desires.

According to Volf, this is the very heart of the scandal that we are called to when we are called to take up the cross. “The ultimate scandal of the cross is the all too frequent failure of self-donation to bear positive fruit: you give yourself for the other—and violence does not stop but destroys you; you sacrifice your life—and stabilize the power of the perpetrator. …When violence strikes, the very act of self-donation becomes a cry before the dark face of God.” My community urged me to find a way to show myself, they knew authenticity would be a move toward reconciliation.

I am far from reconciled to the men in my life. They are complex and I approach their masculinity with trepidation. But I no longer hide as well as I once did. I stay with the hope that we are not all defined by uncontrollable genitalia and frightening desires but by our willingness to see and be seen.

I learn to breath…

The class listened quietly and thoughtfully as I rambled on about the equality of the genders and embracing our differences while not letting them become divisive. The next time we met I rose my hand and spoke again (yes, I am one of those). This time I made a very simple statement surmising a point the professor was making which was eluding many people.  The class applauded, loudly and unexpectedly.  As we were leaving class a friend, the same one who had made the sexist ramblings, said it wasn’t about that days comment, but last week’s proclamation of my own masculinity.

In this day and age we have idealized gender into such narrow categories we struggle to claim our own gender, let alone to see one another’s fully. And yet can we not assume that God does see us fully as men and women in all the beautiful array those labels can embrace?  Whether wearing the appropriate make-up or excelling at the appropriate recreational sports God must see and understand us fully, both as gendered beings and as unique individuals.

…and our souls find rest.

These are examples of our own struggles surrounding our gender identities. The questions of gender have peppered our lives and have flared as we have come together as a group to discuss the topic. Does our sex, as male or female determine our gender? It seems evident that this is a huge part of it, yet biology alone does not answer what makes us men and women. Biology and culture have become entangled to such a degree that separation of the two is improbable. So where does that leave us as men and women?

The stories could not have been formulated into words without each person entering the story of their gender. To bring the power gender plays in our lives to our own and each others’ awareness. Society has consciously and unconsciously negotiated to give more power to one sex over the other and the power gained by being closely aligned with the ideals of each gender. Gender identity has facilitated the negotiation of power between the sexes for thousands of years. Yet, when one sex speaks to the exclusion of the other sexes’ voice, power becomes abused. As we struggle to hold the tension between biology and the cultural conditioning within community, we must confront the power differentials resulting from gender identity. It allows for humility, the confessing of fears, hopes, hurts and dreams, all of which tend to solidify and sanctify communication channels between otherwise isolated individuals.

The stories of our group and of each of our lives, as men and women, reveal both the desire for power and the suffering endured by the delineation of power along gender lines. They articulate our need for self acceptance, where we internally embrace and bear the breadth and complexity of our own gender without self-contempt, judgment, denial or projection onto others. They also highlight the need for interpersonal reconciliation: reconciliation between us as a community of people where we embrace and bear the complexity, breadth and mystery of what it means to be gendered beings. Individuals over and against divisions of “us and them,” “liberal and conservative,” “wrong and right,” instead, opting for categories like “we and we,” “hope and fear,” “joy and shame.” Thus, our creative and strategic use of language is the key to reconciliation around gender. Through it, our differentiated experiences of being gendered can become a communal canopy of experience under which we find refuge in the company of each other.

We’ve also found how closely connected forgiveness is to the theme of reconciliation. Journeying into what it means to be a male or a female, internally and interpersonally, demands tenderness toward yourself and others. Paramount to thinking and discussing gender is grace for yourself: for all the parts of your womanhood or manhood that scare, confuse and annoy you, for lashing out in fear at opinions in conflict with your own, for being wedded to your own ideas, for squelching the fullness of your own gender. Imperative to this work is also grace for others who are willing to join in dialogue with you. Dialoguing requires the recognition that just as you are human, they too are human, prone to believe in and hold to their own ideas as strongly as you do yours. Each is as fearful of the unknown and reticent to feel powerlessness and shame as are you and as pure in their desire to be loved and whole as do you.

Without a doubt, we have found that discussing the nature of gender is a messy and sometimes bloody business. Yet in the mess, we subvert the age old “us and them” with “we and we,” daring to bear all the anger, fear, frustration and fatigue of the process in the company of each other.

We hope community will help hold that tension rather than make it more difficult. Out of fear, we often neuter or archetype one another in order to escape curiosity. Can community empower us to breathe the fullness of our true gendered selves?

Before any real healing or reconciliation can take place, genuine dialogue between the sexes and among each other needs to take place. But community cannot be a goal set forth to be obtained, but rather will only arise when people learn to really listen to one another again. The multiplicity of viewpoints across gender lines “provides the material for ever-recurring dialogues, because each person brings something quite concrete and unique into the communal relationship.” Genuine reconciliation will only occur when individuals are willing to listen to one another. In order to forgive and find peace with each other, “people with self-enclosed identities need to open themselves for one another and give themselves to one another, yet without loss of the self or domination of the other.” Only when standing in the differences can men and women see that our “gender identities are essentially related and therefore the specific wholeness of each can be achieved only through the relation to the other, a relation that neither neutralizes nor synthesizes the two, but negotiates the identity of each by adjusting it to the identity of the other.”

We are all gendered beings, male and female, masculine and feminine. Born into a sex and socialized as a gender, each of us has had to grapple with our own gender identity to clumsily portray some synthesis of thought. Simply put, the issue is complex, and varied, and ripe with opportunities to wound. It is only by encountering one another with grace, and attempting to see one another fully that we can truly honor ourselves and truly honor the people around us.

Bibliography

Beuchner, Fredrich. “Confusion of Face,” in The Hungering Dark. New York, NY: Harper Collins: 1969. 19.
Eldredge, John and Stasi. 2005. Captivating. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books. 16-17.
Jones, Serene. 2000. Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. 33.
Kaschack, First name. Year. Title. City, State: Publisher. Page.
Kramer, Kenneth P. Martin Buber’s I and Thou: Practicing Living Dialogue. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2004.
Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996.
Serene Jones. 2000. Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of
Grace. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. 25.
Ibid.
John and Stasi Eldredge. 2005. Captivating. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books. 16-17.
Serene Jones. 2000. Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace.
Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. 27.
Ibid. 32.
Serene Jones. 2000. Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of
Grace. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. 33.
Ibid.
Fredrich Beuchner. Confusion of Face. 1980. In The Search. City, State: Publisher. 19.
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 26.
Kenneth P. Kramer, Martin Buber’s I and Thou: Practicing Living Dialogue. (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2004), 77.
Kenneth P. Kramer, Martin Buber’s I and Thou: Practicing Living Dialogue. (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2004), 91.
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 176.
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 186.