Quotes from Miroslav Volf

Our theology is insufficiently Christian—and less revealing of the truth than it should be, if Christian claims are indeed true (as we believe them to be)—when we repeat in religious idiom normative stances that nontheologians advocate, often with better arguments and greater rhetorical power.

All men are in search of happiness. . . . This is the motive for men's every action, even those who are going to hang themselves.

The problem with Luther's account of the Christian faith and of theology is that he distinguishes too sharply between the "inner person" and the "outer person

What is needed is a biblically rooted,30 patristically guided,31 ecclesially located, and publicly engaged theology, done in critical conversation with the sciences and the various disciplines of the humanities, at the center of which is the question of the flourishing life.

This is why we believe in Jesus Christ—to help us see that we are not what we ought to be and to help us become what we ought to be.

requires going beyond the controversies that occasioned the letters to identify claims undergirding Paul's theology that are so fundamental either for Paul or for both Paul and his audience that they are assumed and therefore referenced merely obliquely and relatively rarely.

To change the world, we need an "I have a dream" speech, not an "I have a complaint" speech.

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

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners

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.

To exaggerate a bit: academic theology today is composed of specialists in an unrespected discipline who write for fellow specialists about topics that interest hardly anyone else.

Christian faith is therefore a "prophetic" faith that seeks to mend the world. An idle or redundant faith—a faith that does not seek to mend the world—is a seriously malfunctioning faith