Miroslav Volf
Miroslav Volf
Miroslav Volfis a Croatian Protestant theologian and public intellectual who has been touted as "one of the most celebrated theologians of our day." Volf currently serves as the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale University. Volf previously taught at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in his native Osijek, Croatiaand Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California...
NationalityCroatian
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth25 September 1956
CountryCroatia
Christ's indwelling presence has freed us from exclusive orientation toward ourselves and opened us up in two directions: toward God, to receive the good things in faith, and toward our neighbor, to pass them on in love.
Because the Christian God is not a lonely God, but rather a communion of three persons, faith leads human beings into the divine communion. One cannot, however, have a self-enclosed communion with the Triune God- a "foursome," as it were-- for the Christian God is not a private deity. Communion with this God is at once also communion with those others who have entrusted themselves in faith to the same God. Hence one and the same act of faith places a person into a new relationship both with God and with all others who stand in communion with God.
If we don't learn to live with one another we will not live. We will either love each other as neighbors or we won't be. I believe that it is an insult to me as a Christian to say that I cannot love as neighbor somebody who thinks differently than I do.
God is the utterly loving giver. God doesn't just love. God is love.
Christ came to transform us from never enough people - to more than enough people; that through his poverty we may become rich.
After my engagement with Muslim friends, I pray more than I used to pray. My prayer life has been enriched by my encounter with some Muslims, encouraged by their devotion and also enriched by the ways in which they pray. Have I compromised in this way at all? No, to the contrary, I've gone deeper in my faith and I think my love for God has been deepened and made more intelligent in a sense, more rich by that very encounter.
The difference between justice and forgiveness: To be just is to condemn the fault and, because of the fault, to condemn the doer as well. To forgive is to condemn the fault but to spare the doer. That's what the forgiving God does.