To Live a Christ-formed life...

...is to flourish as a human being, argues Miroslav Volf.

Worthy of Worship

"If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence—that God would not be worthy of worship…. The only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that violence is legitimate only it comes from God… My thesis that the practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many… in the West…. [But] it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human non-violence [results from the belief in] God’s refusal to judge. In a sun-scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die… [with] other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind." - Miroslav Volf

CPX interview Miroslav Volf

The folks at the Centre for Public Christianity have interviewed theologian Miroslav Volf. "A victim of intense and sustained interrogation by the government of then communist Yugoslavia, Volf's work focuses on forgiveness and reconciliation and remembering wrongs sustained in the past. He maintains that the Christian vision of the world entails the possibility of overcoming the past for both the victim and the perpetrator of wrongs." He is described by Rowan Williams as "one of the most celebrated theologians of our day". You can watch part one of the interview (on forgiveness) below:





Part I The Gift of Forgiveness

Part II Loving Enemies - dangerous and absurd

Part III - Justice, Christianity and Reconciliation

Part IV - Religion and Violence

Part V - Faith, Community and Identity

A spot of Volf

'In situations of conflict Christians often find themselves accomplices in war, rather than agents of peace. We find it difficult o distance ourselves from our selves and our own culture and so we echo its reigning opinions and mimic its practices. As we keep the vision of God's future alive, we need to reach out across the firing lines and join hands with our brothers and sisters on the other side. We need to let them pull us out of the enclosure of our own culture and its own peculiar set of prejudices so that we can read afresh the "one Word of God." In this way we might become once again the salt of the world ridden by strife.'

Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, p 54.

I like Volf's concept of ecumenical catholicity. Reading it in book club with some MTC students, some of whom thought Volf was arguing for holding hands with Hindu's and Jedi's, it was great for me to clarify his thesis: that the church needs to keep listening to other parts of the body (the church in other cultures) to make sure it doesn't turn the proclamation of 'Jesus Christ is Lord' into the Australian dream, or American democracy, or the German nationalism that Volf used as an example (that Barmen Declaration is ace).

Coming from a church culture that doesn't always receive top marks for listening to Christians who are 'different', particularly in light of the mess that our international network is in (which you can about here), we need to make sure that we keep listening to and engaging with our brothers and sisters around the globe. A declaration of independence from each other - to whom we belong in and through Jesus has done to us and for us (Bonhoeffer) - would be disastrous.

"Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind." 1 Peter 3.8