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
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.
Does a person have a right to change his or her own religion? This is a fundamental human right, just like a right to freedom of speech.
In good relationships, we are happy to grow as the other person becomes part of us and who we are.
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.
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 a way, fraud in business is no different from infidelity in marriage or plagiarism in scholarly work. Even people committed to high moral standards succumb.
Naked need is the occasion for God's giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works.
Love properly understood is God—the font of all creation and the ultimate goal of all desires; God properly understood is love.
We lead our lives well when we love God with our whole being and when we love neighbors as we (properly) love ourselves.
For many Americans, Osama bin Laden is the paradigmatic Muslim, an absurd conviction for anyone who has lived with Muslims.
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.
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.