Sacred Threshold ::

VOLF Podcasts :.

Click here for the latest release of Miroslav Volf's dialogue at the Emergent Theological Conversation at Yale from early February.

The Cross :.

"Inscribed in the very heart of God's grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents."

            -- Miroslav Volf, Theology for a Way of Life in
                Practicing Theology: Beliefs and  Practices in Christian Life, 255

The two arms of the cross are receptivity and agency--one opened wide in space in vulnerability, the other grounded to the earth in availability.

Through the cross we receive Christ's life and work (receptivity) and are transformed to bring the same to the world (agency).

ETC Conversation Partners :.

Blogging ETC :.

If you are interested to see photos and read thoughts from other ETC (Emergent Theological Conversation) bloggers, click here.

Miroslav Volf :.

I have liked Miroslav Volf's work for awhile. Introduced to his book Exclusion and Embrace a number of years ago by a Bethel Seminary professor, I found myself attracted to Volf's theological thoughtfulness and call to vulnerability. Now with more of his books dotting my bookshelves, I did not know what I would experience as a conference goer to the Emergent Theological Conversation with him at Yale Divinity School. Finally to hear him in person, what would this encounter be like?

I was not disappointed--same theological thoughtfulness, same call to vulnerability.

Miroslav Wolf provides for the church what he names as a "theology for a way of life," an integrative theological approach to help us think and live the Gospel. I appreciate his emphasis on relationship--with God and each other as gathered communities. He constantly turns us towards the living into the Gospel within our churches, as a reflection of the nature and character of God. His voice ennobles and graciously illustratates Gospel.

One of my favorite moments of the conference was when Miroslav Volf combats our creaturely presumption of being able to "know" all things as God knows. "Human beings can only 'know' in limited ways," he instructs. "We cannot 'know' as God 'knows.' It's the difference between 'I hold' and 'I am held.'" 

Want to know more about the man? Read an article from the Christian Century (January 11, 2003) here.

Truly Free in Christ :.

"This is what if means to be God's creature--not to be a self-made, self-standing individual over against God, but to exist from God and through God. We are creatures precisely in that we live in God and God lives in us. We are sinful creatures when we fail to recognize this and live as if we were self-made, self-standing individuals. Being a new creature, redeemed from sin, is in this regard similar to being a creature as God originally created us to be. It's to live in Christ and to have Christ live in us. United with Christ, we live in God and God lives in us."

~~Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, 149

Free of Charge :.

Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf is a clear and compelling book on the redemptive and transformative activity of God's grace in the receptive heart through the spiritual practices of giving and forgiving. Unlike some other of Volf's books which are more academic in quality, Free of Charge is an accessible read for everyone who desires to be challenged and changed. Volf writes effortlessly, breathlessly building one thought on another, tearing down old images of God and futile religious effort with new understandings of faith, gratitude, hope and forgiveness.

Here is a little taste of what the pages contain within on the function of community in "crafting givers" of grace...

Finally, the Spirit counters our indolence by placing us with the community of Christ's body. Community helps craft us into good givers. It's in the community that the Spirit suffuses our giving with hope; we hope because we are in a community of hope. It's in the community that Spirit molds our character; we display a life of virtue because we live in a community that values and fosters virtue. And how does the Spirit energize and direct our talents? We allow the community's needs to lay claim on us, and we seek the community's wisdom to help us discern what we are good at. Finally, it is by the Spirit and through the waters of baptism that we die with Christ and rise to new life in him. We don't receive the Spirit's hope, the Spirit's fruit, the Spirit's gifts and Christ's life on our own as isolated individuals. They are ours and we are members of a community of giving, whether the community is a family, a circle of close friends, or a church.

...The relation between the life of the community and the gift giving of its members is not a direct one. Communities don't make givers. Givers are not made by humans at all. They are born--born of the Spirit through the good practices of communities. God's Spirit is the agent; people are the instruments. That's how it is in regard to giving gifts. And that's how it is in regard to crafting givers (Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, 120).

Volf on The Eucharist :.

Volf describes the Eucharist this way:

The Eucharist is the ritual time in which we celebrate this divine "making-space-for-us-and-inviting-us-in." Eating the bread and drinking the wine, we remember the body broken "for us" who were God's enemies, and the blood spilled to establish a "new covenant" with us who have broken the covenant (I Corinthians 11:24-25). We would most profoundly misunderstand the Eucharist, however, if we thought of it only as a sacrament of God's embrace of which we simply the fortunate beneficiaries. Inscribed on the very heart of God's grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into his agents; what happens to us must be done by us, having been embraced by God, we must make space for others in ourselves and invite them in--even our enemies. This is what we enact as we celebrate the Eucharist. In receiving Christ's broken body and spilled blood, we, in a sense, receive all those whom Christ received by suffering (Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 129).

The invitation of the Table is so much more than remembering and being thankful for the acts of God through Jesus in our lives. It is the place of also becoming full participants as Christ's body on earth with the wonder working embrace of God that transforms the world through forgiveness, reconciliation and release. We do ourselves--and our Lord--a disservice when we approach the Table unwilling to become more than we are. Is this not the heart of Christianity, to live transformed in Christ? Is this not the life into which we are called, to live with arms wide open, ready and willing to receive?

If we choose to acknowledge and then enter into even the tiny bit of willingness in our hearts as we come to the Table, the bread and cup can become for real sources of strength, consolation and healing for us. We too, as Christ, can choose to be broken and given for others. We too, as Christ, can become vessels of forgiveness for the life of the world. The mystery of the Gospel is hidden under and beneath such simple everyday actions of eating and drinking together. The invitation is to live into this sacred reality daily in God's strength.

Embracing Justice :.

As I slowly try to digest Miroslav Volf's thoughts on justice in his book Exclusion and Embrace, I am reminded how imperfect is my own construct of justice. Listen to his words:

"Justice is impossible in the order of calculating, equalizing, legalizing, and universalizing actions. If you want justice and nothing but justice you will inevitably get injustice. If you want justice without injustice, you must want love. A world of perfect justice is a world of love. It is a world with no "rules," in which everyone does what he or she pleases and all are pleased by what everyone does; a world of no "rights" because there are no wrongs from which to be protected; a world of no "legitimate entitlement," because everything is given and loved in their own appropriate way; a world in which "desert" plays no role because all actions stem from superabundant grace. In short a world of perfect justice would be a world of transcended justice, because it would be a world of perfect freedom and love (223)."

However, we do not live in a perfect world, so "we cannot dispense with an imperfect and essentially unjust justice (223)." So what are we to do?

Justice must be mitigated by the grace of embrace toward the other, Volf asserts. "The stability and universality of justice need to be kept flexible by mercy's sensitivity to the particularities of given situation (Walker 1994, 120)." "Without the will to embrace, justice is likely to be unjust (224)."

Justice must also take into consideration the litany of wrongs of the past. Without forgiveness, when "the causes have been removed," and without forgetfulness, when "the threat of repeated violation has disappeared," justice, motivated by love will be "impotent."

Volf continues:

"If our identities are shaped in interaction with others, and if we are called ultimately to belong together, then we need to shift the concept of justice away from an exclusive stress on making detached judgments and toward sustaining relationships, away from blind impartiality and toward sensibility for differences. And if we, the communal selves, are called into eternal communion with the triune God, then true justice will always be on the way to embrace--to a place where we belong together with our personal and cultural identities both preserved and transformed, but certainly enriched by each other (225)."

Exclusion and Embrace main thesis is one of embrace, an embrace which models the internal trinitarian relationship and the triune God's relationship with us. For Volf, everything centers on this stance, mitigated by nothing less than becoming like, transformed by, the God who embraces.

As I read, I feel an internal capacity inside of me stretched, sometimes unwillingly, to think and then act differently about my world and my interactions with others. Volf is a demanding teacher, never letting go, coming towards with yet another way of thinking about "embrace." When I think I "got it," he again deconstructs my well walled internal fortress to offer another way of constructing living out the Gospel's call to love.

May I be a good student.

Power of Repentance :.

"To repent means to resist the seductiveness of the sinful values and practices and to let the new order of God's reign be established in one's heart." ~~Miroslav Volf

In Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Miroslav Volf challenges and instructs his reader to reconstruct a new way of understanding about how we live out the Kingdom of God among us. Thoughtfully written, carefully executed, the book deconstructs conventional ways of understanding the relationships between oppression, victimization, justice, and reconciliation, while constructing new patterns of thought, inviting us to live in God-like "vulnerable love."

Confronting the usual divisions of victim and perpetrator, Volf pointedly calls for the repentance of both parties, calling into account the conventional division of victim and perpetrator--one being "good" and the other "bad"--which enables the continuing construct of patterns of sin through the generations. The goal is reconciliation between the factions which is only obtained through forgiveness and an extension of grace.

Never having experienced firsthand the deep enmity between warring parties of nations divided against itself as Volf has, I have experienced the political unrest of the divisions between husband and wife, child and parent, and church member and leader. There may not be literal guns being shot and blood being split, but hatred and deep rooted bitterness abounds, given voice behind closed conference doors. Stubborn spirits, wounded by untold numbers of inhumane interactions, in relationships that were created to exemplify the Creator's love, now are stuck in pointing fingers of blame and hurt, exposing a battlefield as bloody as in any armed conflict.

"From a distance, the world may appear neatly divided into guilty perpetrators and innocent victims. The closer we get, however, the more the line between the guilty and the innocent blurs and we see an intractable maze of small and large hatreds, dishonesties, manipulations, and brutalities, each reinforcing each other. The more attentive we are, the more accurate the portrait of the Apostle Paul paints of humanity--of "all" from which "no one" is exempt (Romans 3:9, 20)--strikes us."

So what is God's call to us? What is our response when we are embroiled in our own wall building selves?

The Answer comes to first to us and then asks us the same.

Vulnerable love. Forgiveness. Extension of grace.

Our only access is through repentance.

I have sinned. I have failed.

Father forgive me.

Transform my heart. Free me from my bonds.

This is the power of the Gospel in all its glory, to change everyone, bringing the possibility of reconciliation and peace for all.

Volf is clear, however, warning us this reconciliation is not the final reconciliation but an on-going reconciling action until the final, complete reconciliation at the end of the age. Let us not be deceived like the disciples. The Messianic age is not a political reign, but a real Kingdom, which comes to all who dares live into Gospel of repentance and vulnerable love.