Quotes from Miroslav Volf

Theology is in crisis, largely because it has lost its nerve and forgotten its purpose to help discern, articulate, and commend compelling visions of flourishing life in light of God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ.

Faith is an expression of the fact that we exist so that the infinite God can dwell in us and work through us for the well-being of the whole creation.

When people are kept in abject poverty and illiteracy while others grow rich and "develop their personalities" at the former's expense we speak of oppression; when structures and persons that perpetuate powerlessness are replaced by structures that allow people to stand on their own feet and have their own voice, we speak of liberation.2 Both

The cure against Christian violence is not less of the Christian faith, but, in a carefully qualified sense, more of the Christian faith. I don't mean, of course, that the cure against violence lies in increased religious zeal; blind religious zeal is part of the problem. Instead, it lies in stronger and more intelligent commitment to the Christian faith as faith.

A theological articulation can be fruitful in one place at one time but not at that same place at a different time or at a different place at the same time.

The principle cannot be denied: the fiercer the struggle against the injustice you suffer, the blinder you will be to the injustice you inflict.

Ritual observance without moral rectitude is worse than empty; it is a counterfeit religious coin with which a worshipper wishes to procure divine and human approval for behavior that deserves censure (see Isa. 58:3—7).

Love of enemies is a central moral conviction of the Christian faith; theologians who see their work as a mode of Christian life ought to love their intellectual "enemies": to respect them as human beings, even to seek their friendship, and certainly not to let a personal squabble rob them of a good and productive argument with them.

To give to God is to take from God's right hand and put that very thing back into God's left hand.

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

Christians should see Muslims, who give ultimate allegiance to God as the supreme good, as allies in resisting the tendency in contemporary culture to see mere pleasure, rather than justice and love, as the hallmark of the good life.

Many ministers are more the church's institutional managers than its theological guides; correspondingly, many read more management ("leadership") books than they do works of academic theology.