Embracing the ‘other’ in love, truth and grace - interview with Miroslav Volf - part 1

Today an excerpt from Part 1 of a two-part interview. The subject of the interview is Miroslav Volf. The interviewer is Gordon Preece. 

“…Gordon Preece: In Exclusion and Embrace, you paraphrased Paul in Rom. 12 about leaving vengeance to God. You contrast a university common room setting of abstract academic debate of this issue with the actual genocidal situation taking place, when you were giving the lectures in the Balkans. How does this work out in relation to people who have endured horrendous wrongs?


Miroslav Volf: People who have endured horrendous wrongs want the injustice against them met, and they want the perpetrators of that injustice stopped, they don’t want it to happen to others, and they don’t want it to happen again to them. They want, ultimately, for the victimiser not to triumph over them, and I think that’s the role of God’s judgement, and that’s also the role of leaving vengeance to God. Exactly how God avenges the wrong, we may debate, but a setting in which a moral order which has been disturbed profoundly by violation of somebody’s rights by oppression is reasserted and re-established, that kind of transformative judging and redeeming action of God, is fundamental if there is to be hope for a world of love. 

So, judgement and the vengeance of God, and therefore from our side, fear of God, are fundamental in bringing about a world of love. I wouldn’t want it otherwise. I wouldn’t want anything [evil] that’s crawling on the face of the planet now to find its way back to ruin that world of love. So the transformative, purifying judgement of God is a condition of the world of love. In a small way we each experience that when we embrace faith, and when we are given a new birth in baptism we die, and we are raised again as new persons. Each repentance is a form of incarnation of that final judgement, turning away from sin to do righteousness…”

You can read the all of part 1 of the interview here. 

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[Paul]

Part 2 via link below

http://www.ethos.org.au/Online-Articles/Engage-Mail/malforming-and-reforming-faith-part-2

Paul