Miroslav Volf

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Miroslav Volf, Yale Theological Conversation , Yale Divinity School , February 2006

Miroslav Volf (born September 25, 1956 in Osijek , Yugoslavia, today Croatia ) is an influential Croatian evangelical , Anglican theologian, known for his work within systematic theology . Based on his experiences in the Croatian war , he developed a theology of forgiveness and non-violence . He currently holds the Henry B. Wright Professorship in Systematic Theology at Yale University and is the director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture , which he founded.

Life

Childhood and youth

Volf was born in Osijek, Croatia, and grew up in communist Serbia as the son of a pastor in a Pentecostal church . According to his own statement, the family lived in simple circumstances and his parents experienced political pressure from the Yugoslav government because of their Christian faith. Volf describes his family in retrospect as part of a minority (the Pentecostal Church), which in turn belonged to a minority (the Church in Yugoslavia).

In interviews, Volf describes his parents as strongly religious people, whose lives were characterized by integrity, devotional faith and the pursuit of a godly life, although they lived in adverse political and social circumstances. He reports that his family experienced a lot of injustice; u. a. Volf's brother died at the age of 5 as a result of the negligence of a soldier in the Yugoslav army. According to Volf, his parents found the strength in their faith to forgive the soldier. The experiences of his parents and their dealings with them, as well as their religiosity, were an important influence for Volf according to his own statement. He attributes his own interest in the Christian faith to the fact that he grew up with role models who exemplified an authentic Christianity for him. In particular, the attitude and practice of forgiveness, which he got to know from his parents, influenced his own concept of forgiveness, which he later worked on as a theologian.

According to his own statement, Volf himself experienced his school days as an outsider, since he was the only professing Christian at his school. As a teenager he was strongly influenced by his future brother-in-law Peter Kuzmić , a leading Eastern European evangelical theologian who, among other things, founded the Evangelical-theological seminary in Osijek, where Volf later did his bachelor's degree.

academic career

Volf graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Evangelical Theological Faculty in Osijek (Croatia) in 1977 with the distinction summa cum laude . A year later he completed a master’s degree at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California , also awarded summa cum laude.

From 1979 to 1991 he taught at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, first as a lecturer and later as a professor of systematic theology . From 1984 to 1989 he was also the editor of a Christian magazine. In 1986 he was awarded the title of Doctor of Theology by the University of Tübingen , his doctoral supervisor is Jürgen Moltmann . He also received the award summa cum laude for his doctoral thesis. From 1991 he taught systematic theology as an associate professor at Fuller Theological Seminary , where he had already obtained his master's degree. In 1994 he completed his habilitation under Jürgen Moltmann at the University of Tübingen (without distinction). In 1997 he became professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary . In 1998 he received the Henry B. Wright Professorship in Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut , which he still holds today. In 2003 he founded the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at the Yale Divinity School , of which he is still director today.

Volf is also involved in ecumenical and interreligious discussions in order to face theological and social challenges of the present. In 2015 he was the main speaker at the Study Days of the Institute for Ecumenical Studies at the University of Friborg and the Study Center for Faith and Society.

Own experiences with war and violence

Between his Master of Arts in 1979 and his doctorate at the university in 1986, Volf did military service in Yugoslavia, where he was exposed to heavy pressure due to his Christian faith and his studies abroad. He reports in interviews that he was considered a spy and was observed for months and interrogated under severe psychological pressure. He processed these experiences theologically in his book The End of Memory: Mistreatment, Memory, Reconciliation.

1991 - Volf taught at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek - the entire seminar had to flee Osijek due to the Yugoslav wars and came to a remote rectory in Slovenia , where Volf lived in a room with his wife and six students while they were watching military attacks on television Osijek pursued. Volf himself was not one of the conflicting parties within the population, which split into Catholic-Croatian and Serbian-Orthodox during the war, as he belonged to a traditionally pacifist free church. However, he experienced how his students and his personal environment split into Serbs and Croats as a result of the war.

These ethnic conflicts, the experiences of war, violence and injustice shape Volf's theology to this day. He cites his personal experiences and the attempt to deal with his own desire for retribution as the reason for his theological discussion of issues such as injustice, violence and forgiveness. He learned from his early idols (v. A. By his parents), he later in his theological work to forgive the will to embrace ( wants to embrace calls).

theology

Volf understands theology as the articulation of a way of life. That is why his theological writing always has a sense of the unity of systematic theology and biblical interpretation, of dogmatics and ethics and of church theology (e.g. Karl Barth and later Stanley Hauerwas ) and political or public theology (e.g. Jürgen Moltmann and David Tracy ). His contributions to theology concern current affairs: he writes e.g. B. on human work, the nature of the Christian community, the problem of otherness, violence and reconciliation, the question of memory and the public role of faith. But in all of his writings he attempted to assert the entirety of Christian beliefs for the subjects under discussion.

Christian Faith and Economy

The first phase of Volf's academic work began with his dissertation and lasted until the 1980s. At that time he was concerned with the relationship between Christian faith and the economy, in particular with the nature and purpose of everyday human work. In his dissertation, published as Future of Work, Work of the Future: The Marxian Concept of Work and Its Theological Valuation (1988), he made both a theological contribution to a critical evaluation of Marx's philosophy and an epistemological contribution to Marxism itself (especially to Influence of Feuerbach on Marx's theory of economic alienation and on the affinities between the ideas of the late Fichte and Marx's conceptualization of communist society).

The dissertation formulates an alternative theology of work, which is based on ecclesiology and eschatology instead of the doctrine of creation or salvation and is thus related to the Third Person of the Trinity. Volf breaks with the long tradition of Protestant thinking about work as a "vocation" (both Luther and Calvin as well as Puritans and later theologians, including Karl Barth) and proposes "charisma" as the central theological category with the help of which human work is to be understood. This school of thought provides a theological representation of work in contemporary societies where people have various types of work and a variety of services in the Church throughout their lives.

As a result of his scholarly work on Faith and Economics, Volf was also a lead author of the Oxford Declaration on Faith and Economics (1990), which was presented at a conference in 1990 before a wide range of Christian theologians, philosophers, ethicists, economists, development workers and Political scholars ( Justice, Spirit and Creation. The Oxford Declaration on Faith and Economics , eds. Herman Sauter and Miroslav Volf, 1992; Christianity and Economics in the Post-Cold War Era: The Oxford Declaration and Beyond , ed. H. Schlossberg, 1994).

Trinity and fellowship

In 1985 Volf became a member of the Pentecostal side of the official Roman Catholic and Pentecostal dialogue, then on the subject of communion . Together with Peter Kuzmič, Volf wrote the first position paper. In the last year of the dialogue (in 1989) he wrote the joint final document ("Perspectives on Koinonia") together with Hervé Legrand, then professor at the Institut Catholique in Paris. This intensive ecumenical commitment was one of the triggers that Volf began to theologically examine the relationship between the Church as a community and the Trinity and made it the subject of his habilitation thesis.

The habilitation was published in 1996 under the title Trinity and Community: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology . In it, Volf tries to show that a free church ecclesiology is a theologically legitimate form of ecclesiology (a statement that is contested by both the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox side) by referring to the originally rather individualistic ecclesiology of the free churches, which is based entirely on the rulership of Christ concentrated, expanded to include a more robust communal character. With Volf, this communal aspect is tied back to the communal nature of God - and thus to the Trinity. Volf criticizes his interlocutors Joseph Ratzinger (Catholic) and Johannes Zizioulas (Orthodox bishop) for establishing the communal character of the church in hierarchical trinitarian relationships. Volf's alternative suggestion is a non-hierarchical representation of the church as a community based entirely on an egalitarian understanding of the Trinity.

In parallel to these internal ecclesiological questions on the horizon of ecumenical concerns, Volf examined the nature of the presence and engagement of the Church in the world. In a series of essays he develops a theory about the presence of the church in the world as "soft" and "inner" difference - on the one hand in contrast to the "hard" difference between typically separatist (often Anabaptist) and transformational (often Reformed) positions, for others in contrast to the "weakened difference" of those who tend to identify church and culture (often Catholic and Orthodox positions). He took up and developed this position in A Public Faith (2011). He sums it up as follows: "Christian identity in a particular culture is always a complex and flexible network of small and large refusals, divergences, subversions and more or less radical and comprehensive alternative proposals, surrounded by the acceptance of many cultural factors. There is none the possibility of referring to a particular culture as a whole or even to its dominant thrust; there are just numerous ways of accepting, transforming or replacing different aspects of a particular culture from within ".

From exclusion to embrace ( Exclusion and Embrace )

Volf is best known for his work Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996; second revised edition 2019), published in German as From Exclusion to Embrace: Reconciling Action as an Expression of Christian Identity (2013) , for which he won the Grawemeyer Prize for Religion in 2002. The book goes back to a lecture given in Berlin in 1993, in which Volf was invited to reflect theologically on the Yugoslav wars that were raging in his home country and characterized by ethnic cleansing.

Exclusion and Embrace addresses the challenges of reconciliation in contexts of persistent hostility, where no clear line can be drawn between victims and perpetrators and where today's victims become tomorrow's perpetrators. The metaphor of the "embrace" proposed by Volf as an alternative to "liberation" is the central category of the book. It is characterized by two key positions: acting generously towards the perpetrator and maintaining permeable boundaries of flexible identities. Although it is a modality of grace, embrace is not opposed to justice; on the contrary: embrace presupposes truth and justice. Hugging is not the opposite of maintaining boundaries, but rather assumes that the boundaries of the self must be maintained, but should at the same time be permeable. Only then can the self - without being extinguished - embark on a journey of reconciliation and mutual enrichment with the other. The father in the story of the prodigal son is an example of this attitude for Volf. But above all, this attitude is illustrated by Christ's death on the cross for the wicked. Christ's death on the cross is thus an opening of the arms of God. The solidarity with the victims, which is at the center of the theology of the cross of his teacher Jürgen Moltmanns, is moved out of the center in this guiding metaphor; For Volf, however, it remains a central aspect of the embrace of humanity by God.

For Volf, the practice of embracing is ultimately rooted in God's trinitarian nature. The trinitarian foundations of his proposal fall back on his program of the social doctrine of truth, which both postulates a correspondence between God's trinitarian nature and human relationships, and underpins the ineradicable limits of such correspondence. Because man is not God and is not sinless, the human embrace must always be an eschatological category. In his essay "The Final Reconciliation: Reflections on a Social Dimension of the Eschatological Transition" (2008), Volf argues that the Last Judgment should be understood as the final reconciliation in which the judgment is not eliminated, but as an indispensable element of the Reconciliation is inscribed as a portal into the world of love.

Private

Volf grew up as a member of the Pentecostal Evangelical Church of Croatia. In the United States, he first joined the Presbyterian Church and is now a member of the Episcopal Church . He was married to Judith Gundry, with whom he adopted two sons. He is married to Jessica for the second time, with whom he has a biological daughter Mira.

Works

Best known is his book Exclusion and Embrace (German: From Exclusion to Embrace ), in which he deals with topics such as exclusion, violence, forgiveness and reconciliation from a Christian perspective. Fundamental for Volf is God's covenant with mankind and an updated interpretation of Jesus' parable of the prodigal son , in which the merciful Father approaches both sons, spreads his hands and wants to embrace them. Exclusion and Embrace was named one of the 100 Best Religious Books of the 20th Century by Christianity Today .

German:

  • Growing together. Globalization needs religion , Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2017, ISBN 978-3-579-08679-8
  • Believing publicly in a pluralistic society , Marburg: Francke, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86827-538-4
  • For free. Giving and forgiving in a merciless culture , Giessen: Brunnen, 2012, ISBN 978-3-7655-1185-1
  • From exclusion to embrace. Reconciling action as an expression of Christian identity , Marburg: Francke, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86827-355-7
  • Theology on the way into the third millennium , Gütersloh: Christian Kaiser, 1996
  • Trinity and fellowship. An ecumenical ecclesiology , Mainz / Neukirchen-Vluyn: Grünewald / Neukirchener, 1996
  • We are the Church! : An ecumenical study of the church as a community ,
  • Righteousness, spirit and creation. The Oxford Declaration on the Question of Faith and the Economy , (Ed. With Hermann Sautter ) Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 1992
  • Future of work - work of the future. The concept of work in Karl Marx and its theological evaluation , Munich / Mainz: Christian Kaiser, 1988

English:

  • For the Life of the World: Theology That Makes a Difference , with Matthew Croasmun, Brazos Press, 2018
  • Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World , Yale University Press, 2016
  • Allah: A Christian Response New York: HarperCollins, 2011
  • A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011
  • The End of Memory: Mistreatment, Memory, Reconciliation , 2006
  • Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace New York: Zondervan, 2005
  • After Our Likeness: The Church As The Image Of The Trinity Grand Rapids: Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1998
  • A Passion for God's Reign. Theology, Christian Learning, and the Christian Self (ed.) Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998
  • A Spacious Heart. Essays on Identity and Belonging (with Judith M. Gundry-Volf) Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 1997
  • The Future of Theology. Essays in Honor of Jürgen Moltmann (ed. With T. Kucharz and C. Krieg) Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996
  • Exclusion and Embrace. A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation Nashville: Abingdon, 1996
  • Work in the Spirit. Toward a Theology of Work New York: Oxford University Press, 1991

Croatian:

  • I Znam da sunce ne boji se tame. Teoloske meditacije o Santicevu vjerskom pjesnistvu ("The Sun Is Not Afraid of the Darkness." Theological Meditations on the Poetry of Aleksa Santic) Osijek: Izvori, 1986

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Volf in an interview with Phil Vischer.
  2. ↑ a b c d Volf in an interview with Karl Faase.
  3. ↑ a b c Volf in an interview with Krista Tippett.
  4. ^ Volf on divinity.yale.edu
  5. ↑ Faith and Society
  6. ^ Fritz Imhof: Discover new ways. Idea June 3, 2015, pages 14-15
  7. ^ Miroslav Volf: Contextual Theologian Reflection. Patheos blog
personal data
SURNAME Volf, Miroslav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Croatian evangelical theologian and professor of systematic theology in Yale
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Osijek , Croatia