Quotes from Miroslav Volf

The goal of pursuit of justice must not simply be that justice happens but that reconciliation also happens.

The difference between justice and forgiveness: To be just is to condemn the fault and, because of the fault, to condemn the doer as well. To forgive is to condemn the fault but to spare the doer. That's what the forgiving God does.

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.

Whatever the reasons, when forgiveness happens it is always a miracle of grace. The obstacles in its way are immense

To live with integrity, it is important to know what's right and what's wrong, to be educated morally. However, merely KNOWING is not enough. Virtuous character matters more than moral knowledge. The reason is simple: like the self-confessing apostle Paul in Romans 7, most of those who do wrong know what's right but find themselves irresistibly attracted to its opposite. Faith idles when character shrivels

The principle cannot be denied: the fiercer the struggle against the injustice you suffer, the blinder you will be to the injustice you inflict. We tend to translate the presumed wrongness of our enemies into an unfaltering conviction of our own rightness.

Faith is the way we as receivers relate appropriately to God as the giver. It is empty hands held open for God to fill.

Christ has not come with a blueprint for political arrangements; many kinds of political arrangements are compatible with the Christian faith, from monarchy to democracy. But in a pluralistic context, Christ's command "in everything do to others as you would have them do to you" (Matt. 7:12) entails that Christians grant to other religious communities the same religious and political freedoms that they claim for themselves.

In the minds of most people, Christianity is supposed to be about love of God and neighbor (even though it is true that at the heart of Christianity does not lie human love at all, but God's love for humanity24

She loved him for his own sake, and therefore she would rather have suffered his absence if he flourished than to have enjoyed his presence if he languished; her sorrow over his avoidable languishing would overshadow her delight in his presence. For a lover, it is more blessed to give than to receive, even when giving pierces the lover's heart.

the true God gives so we can become joyful givers and not just self-absorbed receivers.

Love properly understood is God—the font of all creation and the ultimate goal of all desires; God properly understood is love.