" According to Volf, " what is particularly disturbing about the complicity of the church is that Rwanda is without doubt one of Africa ’ s most evangelized nations.

), Volf has, through his work, forged a theology that has earned him the designation “ a theologian of the bridge .” The main thrust of his theology is to bring the reality and the shape of God ’ s Trinitarian life and love to bear on multiple divisions in today ’ s world — between denominations, faiths, and ethnic groups as well as between the realms of the sacred and the secular ( in particular business, politics, and globalization processes ).

As Volf later recalled about his childhood, he did not have the luxury of “ entertaining faith merely as a set of propositions that you do or don ’ t assent to .” In school, especially in his early teens, the faith of his parents and their community was a heavy burden ; Volf ’ s sense of being different from his peers and from the larger culture around him caused him “ almost unbearable shame ” and he rebelled against faith.

In their own time and under their own constrains, each of them lived the kind of “ theology ” that Volf seeks to explicate and make plausible for diverse peoples living in today ’ s globalized world.

Among the earliest influences on Volf ’ s intellectual development was Peter Kuzmič, a brilliant intellectual and educator and his brother-in-law.

The first present Kuzmič gave the 15-year-old Volf was Bertrand Russell ’ s Wisdom of the West, an accessible history of Western philosophy ( with a discernible anti-Christian bent ).

Under Kuzmič ’ s guidance Volf undertook an intensive regimen of theological reading ( beginning with religious thinkers like C. S. Lewis and then continuing on to major 20th century theologians, such as Karl Barth, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Joseph Ratzinger ).

From the start, Volf ’ s theological thinking developed in dialogue with philosophy.

Volf studied philosophy and classical Greek at the University of Zagreb and theology at Zagreb ’ s Evangelical-Theological Seminary.

The Habilitation was on “ Trinity and Communion ,” a topic stimulated by Volf ’ s long standing involvement in the official dialogue between the Vatican ’ s Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the international Pentecostal movement.

Also, while doing a Croatian translation of Martin Luther ’ s Freedom of the Christian, Volf discovered the young Luther, who from then on shaped his thought in major ways ( as discernible most clearly in his book Free of Charge ).

The systematic contours of Volf ’ s theology are most clearly visible in Free of Charge.

In this work, the central themes of Volf ’ s work that receive more in depth treatment in other texts — God as unconditional love, the Trinitarian nature of God, creation as gift, Christ ’ s death on he cross for the ungodly, justification by faith and communal nature of Christian life, love of enemy and care for the downtrodden, reconciliation and forgiveness, and hope for a world of love — come together into a unity.

Because it contains frequent reflections on concrete experiences, the book makes visible that Volf ’ s theology both grows out of and leads to a life of faith.

The first phase of Volf ’ s academic work began with his dissertation and continued through the eighties.

Working groups from various parts of the world sent papers to Volf ’ s desk, and the text he prepared on the basis of those papers was discussed, amended, and finally adopted at a conference in 1990 by a wide array of Christian leaders, theologians, philosophers, ethicists, economists, development practitioners, and political scientists ( Gerechtigkeit, Geist und Schöpfung.

Volf ’ s position is not, however, that hierarchical forms of ecclesiology are illegitimate.

Parallel with pursuing these internal ecclesiological issues in light of ecumenical concerns, Volf explored the nature of the church ’ s presence and engagement in the world — partly to connect his “ charismatic ” understanding of mundane work ( Work in the Spirit ) with his “ charismatic ” understanding of the church ( After Our Likeness ).

Central to Volf ’ s theology of the cross is Christ ’ s death as an “ inclusive substitute ” for the ungodly, which is to say Christ ’ s dying for them and making space “ in God ” for them.

As a result of his academic work on faith and economics, Volf took on the task as the main drafter of the Oxford Declaration on Faith and Economics ( 1990 ).

Volf examines the question of whether Christianity fosters violence, and has identified four main arguments that it does: that religion by its nature is violent, which occurs when people try to act as " soldiers of God "; that monotheism entails violence, because a claim of universal truth divides people into " us versus them "; that creation, as in the Book of Genesis, is an act of violence ; and that the intervention of a " new creation ", as in the Second Coming, generates violence.

In the process of writing the dissertation, Volf formulated an alternative theology of work, primarily situated in ecclesiology and eschatology, rather than in the doctrine of creation or of salvation, and associated with the Third, rather than the First or Second person of the Trinity.

Raised in a home marked by a deep and articulate faith, Volf was formed in a Christianity that represented a form of life foreign to the dominant culture around him.

Since Volf considers theology to be an articulation of a way of life, his theological writing is marked by a sense of the unity between systematic theology and biblical interpretation, between dogmatics and ethics, and between what is called “ church theology ” ( e. g., Karl Barth and, later, Stanley Hauerwas ) and “ political / public theology ” ( e. g., Jürgen Moltmann and David Tracy ).

Volf seeks to both show that a Free church ecclesiology is a theologically legitimate form of ecclesiology ( a proposition denied by both Roman Catholic and Orthodox official teaching ) and to give that typically individualistic ecclesiology focused on the Lordship of Christ a more robustly communal character by tying it to the communal nature of God.

The book grew out of a lecture Volf gave in Berlin in 1993, in which his task was to reflect theologically about the war, marked by ethnic cleansing, that was raging in his home country at the time.

The evocative “ embrace ” is the central category of the book, and Volf proposed it as an alternative to “ liberation ” ( a category favored by a variety of liberation theologies ).

Since 2004 Volf has taken part in the Building Bridges Seminar, a yearly gathering of Muslim and Christian scholars chaired until 2012 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

Along with the staff at the Center for Faith and Culture ( Joseph Cumming and Andrew Saperstein ), Volf drafted Yale Divinity School ’ s response (“ Yale Response ”), which was endorsed by over 300 prominent Christian leaders ( including some of the world ’ s most respected evangelical figures such as John Stott and Rick Warren ).

Positively, Volf argues against two extremes: against a complete separation of faith from public life, a kind of secularist exclusion of religion from public realm ( and sectarian self-isolation ), and against a complete saturation of public life by one dominant religion, a kind of religious totalitarianism.

It is edited by John Wilson, and notable recent contributors include Mark Noll, Lauren Winner, Alan Jacobs, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Miroslav Volf.

Miroslav Volf ( born September 25, 1956 ) is a Croatian Protestant theologian, intellectual, and public speaker, and “ one of the most celebrated theologians of our day .” Having received two advanced degrees under the famed German theologian Jürgen Moltmann ( Dr. theol.

Volf breaks with the long tradition of Protestant thinking about work as “ vocation ” ( both Luther and Calvin, as well as Puritans and later theologians, including Karl Barth, advocated it ), and proposes “ charisma ” as the central theological category with the help of which human work is to be understood.

Volf takes Joseph Ratzinger ( Catholic, current Pope Benedict XVI ) and John Zizioulas ( Orthodox, and a bishop ) as his dialogue partners, and critiques their anchoring of the communal and hierarchical nature of the church in hierarchical Trinitarian relations ( both thinkers gives primacy to the “ One ,” though each does this in a different way ).

Volf sees the father in the story of the prodigal son as an exemplar of this stance ( the father forgave and accepted the change in his identity as “ the-father-of-the-prodigal ”).

“ Solidarity with victims ,” central to his teacher Jürgen Moltmann ’ s “ theology of the cross ,” though dislodged from the center in Volf ’ s proposal, still remains a key aspect of God ’ s embrace of humanity.

For Volf, the practice of “ embrace ” is ultimately rooted in God ’ s Trinitarian nature — in God ’ s love, which is unconditional because it is the very being of God, and in the mutual indwelling of the divine persons ( whose boundaries are therefore reciprocally porous ).

Volf has brought his theology of embrace to bear on how people of different faiths relate to each other.

As Volf sees it, in Allah as well as in his engagement with Islam more broadly, he is applying to interfaith relations the kind of generous engagement with the other that his theology of embrace recommends.

Memories concerned merely with the truth of what happened and oriented exclusively toward justice often become untruthful and unjust memories ; the “ shield ” of memory then morphs into a “ sword ,” as can be seen in many parts of the world, including the region in which Volf grew up.

Volf ’ s theological work is predicated on the conviction that “ private ” and “ public ” spheres cannot be separated, though they must be distinguished.

From 2008-2011 Volf taught a course on “ Faith and Globalization ” with ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, an interdisciplinary course for students from all parts of Yale University.

The goal corresponds to Volf ’ s abiding interest in “ theological ideas with legs .” For the most part, various activities of the Center, housed in discrete “ Programs ” and “ Initiatives ,” have mirrored Volf ’ s own long standing theological interests (“ God and Human Flourishing ,” “ Ethics and Spirituality in the Workplace ,” “ Reconciliation Program ,” “ Adolescent Faith and Flourishing ,” “ Faith and Globalization ”).