Miroslav Volf Quotes & Sayings

All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover him at their side. To claim the comfort of the Crucified while rejecting his way is to advocate not only cheap grace but a deceitful ideology. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

If evangelism isn't an expression of love of neighbor, it isn't Christian evangelizing. And love of neighbor includes not only what I say to the neighbor but how I say that. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

For any victim, particularly us Americans, it is difficult to see ourselves through the eyes of our offender. But for any victim it is the most salutary thing to do. — Miroslav Volf

G. K. Chesterton famously quipped that "those who marry the spirit of the age will find themselves widows in the next. — Miroslav Volf

When people are kept in abject poverty and illiteracy while others grow rich and "develop their personalities" at the former's expense we speak of oppression; when structures and persons that perpetuate powerlessness are replaced by structures that allow people to stand on their own feet and have their own voice, we speak of liberation.2 Both — Miroslav Volf

If it is true that the dual command of love is the common ground of the two faiths, the consequences are momentous. We no longer have to say, "The deeper your faith, the more you will be at odds with others!" To the contrary, we must say, "The deeper your faith, the more you will live in harmony with others!" A deep faith no longer leads to clashes; it fosters peaceful coexistence. — Miroslav Volf

Whatever the reasons, when forgiveness happens it is always a miracle of grace. The obstacles in its way are immense — Miroslav Volf

The principle cannot be denied: the fiercer the struggle against the injustice you suffer, the blinder you will be to the injustice you inflict. We tend to translate the presumed wrongness of our enemies into an unfaltering conviction of our own rightness. — Miroslav Volf

Naked need is the occasion for God's giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

Out of 3,500 students in my high school, I was the only openly professing Christian kid. Obviously there were challenges. 'Only old and stupid people believe.' — Miroslav Volf

Love properly understood is God - the font of all creation and the ultimate goal of all desires; God properly understood is love. — Miroslav Volf

If no one remembers a misdeed or names it publically, it remains invisible. To the observer, its victim is not a victim and its perpetrator is not a perpetrator; both are misperceived because the suffering of the one and the violence of the other go unseen. A double injustice occurs-the first when the original deed is done and the second when it disappears. — Miroslav Volf

To live in sync with who we truly are means to recognize that we are dependent on God for our very breath and are graced with many good things; it means to be grateful to the giver and attentive to the purpose for which the gifts are given. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

Prejudice is a form of untruthfulness, and untruthfulness is an insidious form of injustice. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

The cure against Christian violence is not less of the Christian faith, but, in a carefully qualified sense, more of the Christian faith. I don't mean, of course, that the cure against violence lies in increased religious zeal; blind religious zeal is part of the problem. Instead, it lies in stronger and more intelligent commitment to the Christian faith as faith. — Miroslav Volf

...first we should not seek to derive the content of gender identity by mirroring God, because any femininity or masculinity we may find in God was projected onto God; second the content of gender identity is rooted in the sexed body ('nature') and forged by the history of social interaction between persons with such sexed bodies ('culture'). — Miroslav Volf

To affirm that God is God is to want to live in a particular way. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

Christianity and Islam are today the most numerous and fastest growing religions globally. Together they encompass more than half of humanity. Consequence: both are here to stay. — Miroslav Volf

We know it is good to receive, and we have been blessed by receiving not only as children, but also as adults. Yet Jesus taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), and part of growing up is learning the art of giving. If we fail to learn this art, we will live unfulfilled lives, and in the end, chains of bondage will replace the bonds that keep our communities together. If we just keep taking or even trading, we will squander ourselves. If we give, we will regain ourselves as fulfilled individuals and flourishing communities. — Miroslav Volf

Sometimes when I observe contemporary U.S. culture, with its hard fronts and nasty culture wars, I have a strange sense that I've seen something like it before - in the Communist and semitotalitarian state in which I grew up. The issues and positions are very different, but the spirit is strangely familiar. In all public discussion, there was a party line that people had to toe; if you diverged, you were deemed disloyal and suspected of betraying the cause. I sense a similar spirit today among both progressives and conservatives in the United States when it comes to many hot-button issues, including Islam. — Miroslav Volf

Faith is the way we as receivers relate appropriately to God as the giver. It is empty hands held open for God to fill. — Miroslav Volf

Impartiality of the state toward all religions. The only adequate option open to Muslims and Christians as citizens of the same state is to advocate the impartiality of the state toward all religions; no religion is preferred by the state, and all religions are impartially supported. This allows Christians and Muslims to be faithful to two fundamental impulses of monotheism simultaneously - to (1) honor the conviction that God is the God of all people and (2) obey God's command to act justly and practice neighborly love toward all people. — Miroslav Volf

For Christians, faith is a precious good, the most valuable personal and social resource. When it is left untapped, the common good suffers - not just the particular interests of Christians. — Miroslav Volf

In the final analysis, the only available options are either to reject the cross and with it the core of the Christian faith or to take up one's cross, follow the Crucified-and be scandalized ever anew by the challenge. — Miroslav Volf

Some of the worst violence in the world today between estranged religious and ethnic groups happens not on the battlefields. It happens smack in the middle of living rooms and between people who share a lot, who have a lot in common. — Miroslav Volf

If others neither have goods we want nor can perform services we need, we make sure that they are at a safe distance and close ourselves off from them so that their emaciated and tortured bodies can make no inordinate claims on us. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

Through my memory of the Passion, God can "purify" my memory of wrongs suffered because my identity stems neither from the wrongdoing done to me, which would require the perpetual accusation of my wrongdoer, nor from my own (false) innocence, which would lead me to (illegitimate) self-justification. — Miroslav Volf

To give to God is to take from God's right hand and put that very thing back into God's left hand. — Miroslav Volf

If forgiveness does take place it will be but an echo of the forgiveness granted by the just and loving God-- the only forgiveness that ultimately matters, because, though we must forgive, in a very real sense no one can either forgive or retain sins 'but God alone. — Miroslav Volf

Theology is not only about understanding the world; it is about mending the world. — Miroslav Volf

God's gifts aim at making us into generous givers, not just fortunate receivers. God gives so that we, in human measure, can be givers too. — Miroslav Volf

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 God's story with the world. That story needs to provide the most basic rules by which the game in all these spheres is played. — Miroslav Volf

Imagine now a different scene. Aaron and the Israelites are patiently and faithfully waiting for Moses to return. Finally, they see him coming down. But rather than tablets of stone, he carries the golden calf. And then they hear him speak: "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt" (Exod. 32:4). The prophet himself would have now engaged in idolatric substitution. He ascended the mountain to meet with God, but he has returned with an idol. Impossible? It happens every day, and to the best of ordinary prophets, even if it does not happen in such a crass way: the prophets may carry down from the mountain the tablets of stone, but at least some of the writing on them can be traced to the golden calf rather than to the true God of Israel. — Miroslav Volf

The significance of the crucifixion is not only what God does for us; consistently throughout the New Testament the crucifixion is portrayed as the pattern that we are to follow. It is a model of social behavior toward the other as well as a statement about what God has done for us. — Miroslav Volf

We lead our lives well when we love God with our whole being and when we love neighbors as we (properly) love ourselves. — Miroslav Volf

The central question was how to remember rightly. And given my Christian sensibilities, my question from the start was, How should I remember abuse as a person committed to loving the wrongdoer and overcoming evil with good? — Miroslav Volf

Second, as Luther stated, because God's love isn't caused by its object, it can love those who are not lovable, "sinners, evil persons, fools, and weaklings in order to make them righteous, good, wise, and strong". Luther concluded, "rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good". — Miroslav Volf

If you take the 'love your enemy' out of Christianity, you've 'unChristianed' the Christian faith. — Miroslav Volf

Some Jews and Muslims accuse Christians of being idolatrous for believing in the Trinity. My response to both groups is that they fundamentally misunderstand the Christian understanding of the Trinity. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

Absolute hospitality would in no way amount to the absence of violence. To the contrary, it would enthrone violence precisely under the guise of nonviolence because it would leave the violators unchanged and the consequences of violence unremedied. — Miroslav Volf

Notice that, in making ourselves available, we are not doing God any favors. We give ourselves for God's use to benefit creation, not to benefit God. — Miroslav Volf

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of
humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one
can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without
overcoming this double exclusion - without transposing the enemy from the
sphere of the monstrous ... into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from
the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When
one knows [as the cross demonstrates] that the torturer will not eternally
triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person's humanity and
imitate God's love for him. And when one knows [as the cross demonstrates]
that God's love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of
God's justice and so rediscover one's own sinfulness. — Miroslav Volf

In his early text, somewhat cumbersomely titled 'Towards a Critique of Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT,' the young Karl Marx famously noted that religion - the Christian faith, he meant primarily - is 'the opiate of the people.' It's a drug, and it's a 'downer' or 'depressant' insulating people from the pain of oppressive social realities and consoling them with a dream world of heavenly bliss. Alternatively, religion can function as an 'upper,' a 'stimulant' energizing people for the tasks at hand - a function of religion Marx failed to grasp. — Miroslav Volf

There is no more effective way to radicalize American Muslim youth than for political leaders to make public displays of prejudice against all Muslims. Suspicion will undermine their sense of identification with America and alienate some from both the culture and from politics. — Miroslav Volf

There are no unforgivable sins. — Miroslav Volf

God is the utterly loving giver. God doesn't just love. God is love. — Miroslav Volf

Christ came to transform us from never enough people - to more than enough people; that through his poverty we may become rich. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

God acts differently. God continues to give, refusing to make giving dependent on our receiving things rightly. — Miroslav Volf

Because there is one God, all people are related to that one God on equal terms. The central command of that one God is to love neighbors - to treat others as we would like them to treat us, as expressed in the Golden Rule. We cannot claim any rights for ourselves and our group that we are not willing to give to others. Whether as a stance of the heart or as outward practice, religion cannot be coerced.[217] — Miroslav Volf

We will not "forget" so as to be able to rejoice; we will rejoice and therefore let those memories (of wrongs suffered) slip out of our minds! — Miroslav Volf

Engagement is not a matter of either speaking or doing; not a matter of either offering a compelling intellectual vision or embodying a set of alternative practices; not a matter of either merely making manifest the richness and depth of interior life or merely working to change the institutions of society; not a matter of either only displaying alternative politics as gathered in Eucharistic celebrations or merely working for change as the dispersed people of God. It is all these things and more. The whole person in all aspects of her life is engaged in fostering human flourishing and serving the common good. — Miroslav Volf

In good relationships, we are happy to grow as the other person becomes part of us and who we are. — Miroslav Volf

Evil has insinuated itself into our very souls and rules over us from the very citadel erected to guard us against it. — Miroslav Volf

I think evangelicals would do better if they concentrated less on bolstering the formal authority of the Scripture - which I certainly would want to affirm - and more on displaying how biblical texts can shape lives in salutary ways, how they are fruitful texts, how they are texts one can live according to. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

Contrary to the assumptions of Western moral traditions, human beings are (1) not free in their actions but governed by necessity; (2) not transparent to themselves and others in their motivations, but opaque; (3) not similar to each other and therefore subject to the same moral code, but each different. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

The sufferings of Christ on the cross are not just his sufferings; they are "the sufferings of the poor and weak, which Jesus shares in his own body and in his own soul, in solidarity with them" (Moltmann 1992, 130). And since God was in Christ, "through his passion Christ brings into the passion history of this world the eternal fellowship of God and divine justice and righteousness that creates life" (131). On the cross, Christ both "identifies God with the victims of violence" and identifies "the victims with God, so that they are put under God's protection and with him are given the rights of which they have been deprived — Miroslav Volf

To remember a wrongdoing is to struggle against it. — Miroslav Volf

This is a book about worshiping the true God and letting the true God act in us. It tells us as plainly as possible that the true God is a God who cannot stop giving and forgiving, and that our knowledge of this true God is utterly bound up with our willingness to receive from the hand of God the liberty to give and forgive. — Miroslav Volf

To live with integrity, it is important to know what's right and what's wrong, to be educated morally. However, merely KNOWING is not enough. Virtuous character matters more than moral knowledge. The reason is simple: like the self-confessing apostle Paul in Romans 7, most of those who do wrong know what's right but find themselves irresistibly attracted to its opposite. Faith idles when character shrivels — Miroslav Volf

The true God gives so we can become joyful givers and not just self-absorbed receivers. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

I don't think we need to agree with anyone in order to love the person. The command for Christians to love the other person, to be benevolent and beneficent toward them, is independent of what the other believes. — Miroslav Volf

In the minds of most people, Christianity is supposed to be about love of God and neighbor (even though it is true that at the heart of Christianity does not lie human love at all, but God's love for humanity24 — Miroslav Volf

To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned. After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life. — Miroslav Volf

When we forget that, we unwittingly reduce God's ways to our ways and God's thoughts to our thoughts. Our hearts become factories of idols in which we fashion and refashion God to fit our needs and desires. — Miroslav Volf

The crucial question, therefore, is not how to accomplish the final reconciliation. That messianic problem ought not to be taken out of God's hands. The only thing worse than the failure of some modern grand narratives of emancipation would have been their success! Merely by trying to accomplish the messianic task, the have already done too much of the work of the antichrist. In demasking anti-messianic projects that offer universal salvation, Lyotard helps us ask the right kind of question, which is not how to achieve the final reconciliation, but what resources we need to live in peace in the absence of the final reconciliation. — Miroslav Volf

For many Americans, Osama bin Laden is the paradigmatic Muslim, an absurd conviction for anyone who has lived with Muslims. — Miroslav Volf

Slowly and imperceptibly, the one true God begins acquiring the features of the gods of this world. For instance, our God simply gratifies our desires rather than reshaping them in accordance with the beauty of God's own character. Our God then kills enemies rather than dying on their behalf as God did in Jesus Christ. — Miroslav Volf

If somebody postulates the existence of more than one god, I would have to say we don't worship the same god. If somebody says that God is basically one with the world, I would also have to say we don't worship the same god. — Miroslav Volf

By embracing the "outcast," Jesus underscored the "sinfulness" of the persons and systems that cast them out. — Miroslav Volf

Muslims and Christians can work together to depose dictators and assert the power of the people. We've seen it happen on the Tahrir Square in Cairo during the 2011 revolution in Egypt, with devout Muslims and Coptic Christians protesting side by side. — Miroslav Volf

Some theologians claim that all God's desires culminate in a single desire: to assert and to maintain God's own glory. On its own, the idea of a glory-seeking God seems to say that God, far from being only a giver, is the ultimate receiver. As the great twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth disapprovingly put it, such a God would be "in holy self-seeking ... preoccupied with Himself"10. In creating and redeeming, such a God would give, but only in order to get glory; the whole creation would be a means to this end. In Luther's terms, here we would have a God demonstrating human rather than divine love. — Miroslav Volf

Honoring everyone contains the promise of possibility. — Miroslav Volf

She loved him for his own sake, and therefore she would rather have suffered his absence if he flourished than to have enjoyed his presence if he languished; her sorrow over his avoidable languishing would overshadow her delight in his presence. For a lover, it is more blessed to give than to receive, even when giving pierces the lover's heart. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf

The goal of pursuit of justice must not simply be that justice happens but that reconciliation also happens. — Miroslav Volf

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. — Miroslav Volf