Quotes from Miroslav Volf

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Because there is one God, all people are related to that one God on equal terms. The central command of that one God is to love neighbors—to treat others as we would like them to treat us, as expressed in the Golden Rule. We cannot claim any rights for ourselves and our group that we are not willing to give to others. Whether as a stance of the heart or as outward practice, religion cannot be coerced.[217]

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.

We also give up on the quest for truth when we marshal all forces—in exegesis and history as well as in philosophical, moral, and practical theology—to "discover" and corroborate predetermined dogmatic stances.

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

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.

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.