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 ).

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 ).

Miroslav Volf cites a Roman Catholic bishop from Rwanda as saying, " The best cathechists, those who filled our churches on Sundays, were the first to go with machetes in their hands ".

In 1985 Volf became a member of the Pentecostal side of the official Roman Catholic and Pentecostal dialogue.

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.

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

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

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.

The theme of the dialogue for the five years that followed was communio, and, together with Peter Kuzmič, Volf wrote the first position paper.

The most controversial part of The End of Memory is Volf ’ s sustained theological argument, developed in dialogue with Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Søren Kierkegaard, that remembering wrongs suffered and committed, if done rightly, will ultimately result in non-remembrance of the wrongdoing.

For a number of years, Volf also participated in the Jewish-Christian dialogue.

In a dialogue with Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther, Volf develops his own method of assessing the issue and argues that Muslims and Christians do have a common God, even though each group understands God in different ways, at least in part.

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.

" Volf observes that "( although ) explicitly giving ultimate allegiance to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, many Christians in fact seem to have an overriding commitment to their respective cultures and ethnic groups.

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.

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 ).

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 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.

" 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.

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 ).

This intense ecumenical engagement led Volf to explore the relation between the church as a community and the Trinity, and this topic became the subject of his Habilitationschrift.

As an alternative, Volf proposes a non-hierarchical account of church as a community rooted in an egalitarian understanding of the Trinity ( since hierarchy is, in his judgment, unthinkable with regard to three equally divine persons ).

Interest in culture broadly construed and in theological interpretation remained a significant feature of Volf ’ s theological work from then on, as did his commitment to writing for the church and not just for the academy.

When Volf moved to the United States, he continued to write for church audiences.

), 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 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.

Many themes of Volf ’ s work so far came together in this course — the relation between faith and economics, faith and reconciliation ( and violence ), interfaith relations, faith and politics ( in particular, defense of democratic pluralism ), and so on.

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.

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.

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.

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 ).

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 ”).

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.

“ 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.

Volf ’ s main contribution to eschatology, partly triggered by making “ embrace ” an eschatological category, is his re-thinking of the “ Last Judgment .” In “ The Final Reconciliation ” Volf argued that the Last Judgment ought to be understood as the final reconciliation in which judgment is not eliminated but seen as an indispensable element of reconciliation, a portal into the world of love.

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.

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 ”).

The most obvious differences concern the Christian claim that God is Love and that God is the Holy Trinity ( though when it comes to the Trinity, Volf argues that Muslims objections seem directed at ideas that the great Christian teachers never actually affirmed ).

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