Witness to Life Worth Living

Reflections on Miroslav Volf's Ethics of Embrace

Santrac

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498289351
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book is an exposition of the basic themes of the work of Miroslav Volf, the Yale ecumenical theologian who has written much about the ethics of embrace, life worth living and human flourishing, and my personal reflections on these themes. The volume is the first of its kind. So far there has been no attempt to systematize Volf's theology and ethics. However, the book is not just a simple description of Volf's work. It tries to merge into one single theological reflection Volf's two basic paradigms: the ethics of embrace and the concept of life worth living. It also demonstrates a unique approach from the perspective of the personal and spiritual reflections of the author who shares a worldview similar to Miroslav Volf's. The book is strengthened by many references to personal interviews and conversations with Miroslav Volf.

1

MIROSLAV VOLF’S PERSONAL AND THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND

No thinker creates his or her opus of writings in a spiritual and intellectual vacuum. Miroslav Volf’s personality and views materialized not in a void but within certain personal, historical, and ecclesiastical contexts. His personal and theological background shaped his approach to theology and his work in general, and his early life provided the conditions for his understanding of God, church and society at large.

In an extensive interview with me,1 Volf revealed that his father Dragutin was a Domobran during the Second World War. Domobrans (Croatian Home Defenders) were a Croat political organization that advocated Croatian independence from Yugoslavia, and became associated with the Ustasha regime later during the war. More precisely, Volf’s father was a socialist by persuasion and was conscripted when he turned 18, six months before the war ended. He was trained as a baker, and never actually went to the front. Later on he tried to desert to the Partisans (Communist fighters), and his life was spared, unlike his two comrades. He stayed for a while with the Serbian confectioner Dusanovic in Zagreb, Croatia (a boss who was very unkind before the war but generous as a protector after the war), and was then transferred to a labor camp in Slavonski Brod, Croatia, by walking for months in a death march in which about two thirds of those who started the march had been killed off before they ended it. Dragutin encountered God for the first time in that camp. His spiritual experience in the camp shaped his later beliefs and convictions. As a Pentecostal minister he later married Mira and the two of them, according to Volf, found each other in the context of deep love for God and their mutual striving to be faithful and to serve the church. Miroslav praises his parents’ commitment to Christ and their love for the church,2 which profoundly shaped Volf’s character. According to his own testimony, he would never have become a Christian or a student of theology without their inspiration.3

Another key person of influence in Volf’s early understanding of God was Milica Brankovic, his Serbian nanny, affectionately called Teta Milica (Aunt Milica), who looked after Miroslav in his early age. She became the “angel” of Volf’s childhood. Unfortunately, out of negligence she was involved in the tragic accidental death of five-year-old Daniel, Miroslav’s brother. Nevertheless, the image of the “angel” remained intact. Volf was ignorant about her role in this incident because his parents, through their forgiving spirit, for a long time covered up her inattentiveness as a cause of this tragedy. Their devotion to Christ was indeed unquestionable. This suffering, however, had a notable worth and a significant influence on young Miroslav.

Remembering his childhood Christian experience in Novi Sad, Serbia, Volf resented both the expectations of sainthood placed on him by the Pentecostal church folk (for whom he was the pastor’s mischievous son who ought to know better) and the blatant communist discrimination4 he encountered in school (where he was a gifted but despised son of “the enemy of the people”).5 Later on he also faced the opposition of the “traditional churches” because he belonged to a so-called sect.6

Therefore, both the loving atmosphere at home marred a bit by the tragedy of the lost brother, and the struggles in the ecclesiastic and social contexts shaped Volf’s developing spirituality. He reminisces about the formation of his understanding of God:

I was born into a faith—well, not actually born into it. My parents belonged to a religious community made up of what the great Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James called “twice born” people, born once of earthly parents, and the second time of the heavenly Spirit. They believed that all human beings required new birth because they’ve severed themselves from the Source of true life, and they were convinced that a religious community is a voluntary association (what Max Weber called a “sect”) that you join after you’ve been born the second time, not a “family” or a “culture” into which you are slotted just by arriving into this world (what Weber called a “church”).7

In a public interview done in association with the 2014 Payton Lectures8 Volf explained that his spiritual life was influenced by both the liberal Free Church and Catholic traditional piety. Even with powerful layers of Pentecostal experience and the genuine Christian devotion of his parents he experienced a teenage rebellion against the church tradition until he was surprised by the power of the Gospel at a large tent evangelistic meeting in Stockholm, Sweden. According to his own testimony, his faith journey was ambiguous. His immature faith was partially challenged by his reading of Bertrand Russell’s Wisdom of the West, which was very popular when Volf developed his dream of doing doctoral studies in both philosophy and theology. Later on he decided that the trajectory of his work would be to connect faith to broader life. Volf wanted to teach, preach, and pastor the church, but it was one thing to have a gift and another for people to receive it. Church people were not able to appropriate fully his approach to faith, and his dreams were severely undermined.9 In fact, Volf took courage and gave up some dreams. He obtained a doctorate in theology at Tübingen and became part of Roman Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue, but he struggled with the decision whether to stay in Croatia, a space that was not quite large enough to support his theological gifts and activities, or go to the USA to teach at Fuller and work primarily as an academic theologian.

His sensitivity to situations of God’s providential leading enabled him to respond and progress. One of these providential events was his talk with a Catholic Church official in Venice, Italy. This man was Raniero Cantalamessa, the Preacher to the Papal Household since 1980, and a splendid Christian. Volf finally decided as a young man that he would serve this power of the Gospel. Young Volf, therefore, embraced by God, made a firm decision to serve the Gospel of Christ for the common good and in the pursuit of life worth living.

More remarkable still was the way in which Miroslav Volf managed to integrate his personal experience and his spiritual background into his theological opus. His theological background is likewise diverse and rich. His conceptualizations of God and church were developed gradually,10 and they have never demonstrated the kind of superficiality or mediocrity that is found in some contemporary public theologians. The formative theologians of his early theological development included a group of ecumenical Croatian Catholics (Tomislav Sagi-Bunic, Josip Turcinovic, and others) and Serbian Orthodox theologians (like Atanasije Jevtic and Irinej Bulovic),11 and one of the key Protestant leaders in Croatia, Peter Kuzmic, who would become his brother-in-law. Throughout his doctoral studies Jürgen Moltmann, his mentor at Tübingen, and Karl Barth (historically and possibly ecumenically) were the key figures whose theology he absorbed and reconceptualized. Moltmann’s Crucified God12 and Serbian poet Aleksa Santic’s image of “Raspeti Bog” (crucified God)13 contributed to Volf’s understanding of the mystery of Trinitarian redemption more than anything else.14 It took considerable ingenuity to transform these particular rational...

Table of contents

• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• Chapter 1: MIROSLAV VOLF’S PERSONAL AND THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND
• Chapter 2: ETHICS OF EXCLUSION
• Chapter 3: ETHICS OF EMBRACE
• Chapter 4: ETHICS OF THE TESTIMONY (PUBLIC FAITH)
• Chapter 5: FAITH AND GLOBALIZATION
• EPILOGUE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY