Quotes from Miroslav Volf

Living toward a world in which these identities no longer divide, but living in a world fundamentally structured by them, Paul takes up and lays down various identities for the sake of the gospel. Though free, he has made himself a slave. For the sake of the gospel, he lives sometimes as one under the Jewish law, other times as one free from it—all while recognizing the truth of his situation as one no longer under "the law" but nevertheless under "Christ's law.

It's a thread in a tapestry.

Instead, it's a change in our response to the Question, and being true to the insight means being open to how it revises the whole.

Contrary to the assumptions of Western moral traditions, human beings are (1) not free in their actions but governed by necessity; (2) not transparent to themselves and others in their motivations, but opaque; (3) not similar to each other and therefore subject to the same moral code, but each different.

Everything else follows from this responsibility to those who have come before us. It is the root of flourishing humanity.

To remember a wrongdoing is to struggle against it.

Virtuous theologians work as God's stewards building God's home (1 Cor. 3:9), not masters building their own little empires.

the central question was how to remember rightly. And given my Christian sensibilities, my question from the start was, How should I remember abuse as a person committed to loving the wrongdoer and overcoming evil with good?

Karl Barth imagined the Christian theologian in the role of John the Baptist in the painting of Matthias Grünewald: he is standing to the side of the cross, holding the open Hebrew Scriptures in one hand and pointing with a finger of the other to the crucified Christ.67 A theologian ought to draw attention to the way of life and to the one who originally embodied it, not to the intellectual prowess, fertile imagination, or dazzling rhetoric of the theologian.

Second, as Luther stated, because God's love isn't caused by its object, it can love those who are not lovable, "sinners, evil persons, fools, and weaklings in order to make them righteous, good, wise, and strong". Luther concluded, "rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good".

Peace is the substance of life going well. Joy is the substance of life feeling as it should.

Theology is not only about understanding the world; it is about mending the world.