Volf - Captive To The Word Of God

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Volf (who)

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Croatian Protestant theologian.

Studied under Jürgen Moltmann at Tübingen

Professorship:
Evangelical Theo. Seminary, Osijek
Fuller Theol. Sem.
Yale Divinity School and Director of Yale Center for Faith and Culture

"The main thrust of his theology is to bring the reality and the shape of God's Trinitarian life and love to bear on multiple divisions in today's world—between denominations, faiths, and ethnic groups as well as between the realms of the sacred and the secular (in particular business, politics, and globalization processes)."

Emphasis in ecumenism, public theology, theology and culture, political theory, economic theory, and social justice

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Volf (influences)

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Peter Kuzmič (brother-in-law), Moltmann, Pannenberg, Barth, Ratzinger

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Volf (thesis)

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Theological interpretation of the Christian Scripture is essential for contemporary theological reflection.

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Volf (Enlightenment and interpretation)

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During the Enlightenment modern theologians viewed the Scripture as earthly, mundane, and solely historical, with no connection to the transcendent. Yet, the Bible remained for theologians a sacred book for religious communities, their connection to God (5).

After the enlightenment, theologians (e.g., Schleiermacher) relied less and less on Bible in theological construction.

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Volf (goals of theology)

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1) To orient “religious communities through critical and constructive engagement with their convictions, rituals, and practices”

2) “to shape how life is lived in the broader society . . . in the light of God’s purposes for the world” (9).

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Volf (Bible and culture)

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The extent to which Christian communities can positively affect culture is contingent upon the degree that they are Christian; and being Christian depends on how central a role the Bible plays in the life of the community.

Unfortunately, the historical-critical method and other methodologies of biblical neglect speak of the Bible’s waning importance, and by extension its inability to secure the Christian identity and to affect societies positively (9–12).

His convictions regarding the nature of the text free him to find meanings in more than the roots of words and the cultures in which they were spoken.

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Volf (Bible and Jesus Christ)

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The Bible is “the critical link to Jesus Christ as the site of God’s self-revelation” (10).

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Volf (convictions about interpretation)

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"I read the Bible as a sacred text and a witness to Jesus Christ; a site of God’s self-revelation; a text from the past through which God addresses all humanity and each human being today; a text that has an overarching unity yet is internally teeming with rich diversity; a text that encodes meanings and refracts them in multiple ways; a text we should approach with trust and critical judgment as well as engage with receptivity and imagination; a text that defines Christian identity yet speaks to people beyond the boundaries of Christian communities (39–40)."

For Volf these convictions recover the essential marriage of theology and the Bible, the interpretation of which enables Christian communities to influence society for good.

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Volf (theology and life)

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Theology is a way of life shaped by God's relation to the world. There is no such thing as impractical theology.

“The relation between beliefs and practices amounts to the claim that Christian beliefs do not express ‘pure knowledge’ but are intended to guide Christian practices by situating the practitioner within the overarching narrative of God’s dealings with humanity and by offering an account of his or her constitution [state of being] as an agent. Seen from within that way of life, beliefs describe the constitution [state of being] of agents of practices and offer normative direction for that way of life” (52).