Miroslav Volf Quotes

#1. In my opinion, I'm quite certain that Dr. Miroslav Volf most always means simply what he says and says exactly what he means and he no more speaks in 'code' than I do".

~R. Alan Woods [2012]

R. Alan Woods

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. By embracing the "outcast," Jesus underscored the "sinfulness" of the persons and systems that cast them out.

Miroslav Volf

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

Miroslav Volf

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. To affirm that God is God is to want to live in a particular way.

Miroslav Volf

#10. 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

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

Miroslav Volf

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. Honoring everyone contains the promise of possibility.

Miroslav Volf

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. God acts differently. God continues to give, refusing to make giving dependent on our receiving things rightly.

Miroslav Volf

#19. 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

#20. Prejudice is a form of untruthfulness, and untruthfulness is an insidious form of injustice.

Miroslav Volf

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

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

Miroslav Volf

#25. 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

#26. To remember a wrongdoing is to struggle against it.

Miroslav Volf

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. The goal of pursuit of justice must not simply be that justice happens but that reconciliation also happens.

Miroslav Volf

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

Miroslav Volf

#31. Theology is not only about understanding the world; it is about mending the world.

Miroslav Volf

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. There are no unforgivable sins.

Miroslav Volf

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. The true God gives so we can become joyful givers and not just self-absorbed receivers.

Miroslav Volf

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. 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

#50. God is the utterly loving giver. God doesn't just love. God is love.

Miroslav Volf

#51. 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

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

Miroslav Volf

#53. 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

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. Love properly understood is God - the font of all creation and the ultimate goal of all desires; God properly understood is love.

Miroslav Volf

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

Miroslav Volf

#59. 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

#60. If you take the 'love your enemy' out of Christianity, you've 'unChristianed' the Christian faith.

Miroslav Volf

#61. 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