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
Miroslav Volf quotes about
For many Americans, Osama bin Laden is the paradigmatic Muslim, an absurd conviction for anyone who has lived with Muslims.
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.
Naked need is the occasion for God's giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works.
Christians believe that there will be a Judgment Day at the end. And it is my belief that on that day justice will be done and there will be a reconciliation between those who have profoundly injured one another takes place.
For Christian faith not to be idle in the world, the work of doctors and garbage collectors, business executives and artists, stay-at-home moms or dads and scientists needs to be inserted into Gods story with the world. That story needs to provide the most basic rules by which the game in all these spheres is played.
Love properly understood is God—the font of all creation and the ultimate goal of all desires; God properly understood is love.
Rules help govern and steer a relationship along, so they're good things. But they become bad things when they become the narrow gate though which the relationship must always pass. When this happens, the rules become the basis for the relationship and, in a sense, become a substitute for the relationship.
If we can exit a relationship, pressure to reconcile lessens; if we must live with those who have wronged us, we are pushed to reconcile.
In good relationships, we are happy to grow as the other person becomes part of us and who we are.
Every word and every deed, every thought and every gesture, even the simple act of paying attention can be a gift and therefore an echo of God’s life in us.
If I say, 'I forgive you,' I have implicitly said you have done something wrong to me. But what forgiveness is at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender.
I do believe that Muslims and Christians and Jews pray to the same God. And yet they understand who God is in significantly different ways.
There is no space in which worship should not take place, no time when it should not occur, and no activity through which it should not happen.
Prejudice is a form of untruthfulness, and untruthfulness is an insidious form of injustice.