Miroslav Volf - For the Life of the World: Theology That Makes a Difference

Why Theology MattersTo Us

Though written in a style of an invitation, this book is a manifesto. Before we begin, we should to tell you, each in our own voice, why and how theology has come to matter to us, and then, together, we should sketch the main thesis of the book: academic theology ought to be, but today largely isnt, about what matters the mostthe true life in the presence of God. The failure of theology to attend to its purpose is a loss for the church and for the world, for theology is uniquely qualified to explore what matters the most. And this is a loss for theology itselffor theology will either refocus itself on what matters the most or gradually cease to matter at all.

Volf: I grew up in a place and at a time when we, a small group of teenagers who knew no better, thought that no intellectual endeavor could possibly matter more than doing theology. The time was the early 1970s. The place was Titos Yugoslavia and, for me specifically, a house in Novi Sad at the end of a dirt roadin fact, two small rooms that my father, a confectioner-turned-Pentecostal-minister, had built in its courtyard with his own hands. From its windows, through low-hanging branches of a cherry tree, I had a fine view of an electrical substation at the edge of a swamp.

A few years after I ceased to guiltily delight in the sound of the swamps large and unsuspecting toads exploding and then going belly up when hit by the stone from my slingshot, I started spending days and nights in one of these two makeshift rooms reading the Bible, C. S. Lewis, Plato, Bertrand Russell (yes, go figure!), and, later, Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Simone Weil, and Joseph Ratzingerand teaching myself English and Greek in the process. I was part of a small group of young theological enthusiasts. Except for its oldest and most zealous member, who had read the entire Bible, cover to cover, thirteen times in the first year of his faith journey, all of us were, roughly, halfway through high school.

For us, theology was about the unbreakable tie between human transcendent longing and our mundane strivings, about the power of Jesus Christ, the Word of God and the Lamb of God, which stood in irreconcilable contrast to the power of soldiers, ideologues, bureaucrats, and secret service agents; it was about the right of personsabout our right, too, of courseto determine the shape and the direction of their individual and social lives, rather than, like some wound-up tin soldiers, to simply march in unison to the drumbeat of a failing revolution. Theology was about a new world coming from God and in Gods way, a new social order whose creation and survival wouldnt demand thousands on thousands of dead as did the order in which we were bornmy own father having come a hairs breadth from becoming one of them. In short, theology was about the truth and beauty of human existence in a world of justice, peace, and joy. For us, no endeavor could matter more than doing good theologythough for me personally getting hold of a pair of US-made Levis bell-bottom jeans, Italian platform shoes, and a tight-fitting Indian gauze shirt wasnt far behind in importance.

As we spent our days and nights (yes, lots of long nights) reading and arguing about all matters theological, we had no idea that out in the wide world of Western academies, where we all wanted to study, theology was in a serious crisis.

Volf and Croasmun: Like disoriented and impoverished descendants of a monarch long deposed, some of us theologians live under a cloud of doom and futility, nostalgic for the glory and power of our ancestors but hopeless about the future. Theology had its time, but that time is no more. It would have been better, we think, had we given up long ago on the untimely endeavor and devoted our energies to more reputable academic pursuits or some more useful activity.

Others among us feel like impoverished but proud aristocrats, with fraying clothes and crumbling dwellings but a soaring sense of self-importance. We continue to do well what theologians have always donewhat we feel theologians have always donebut we do so with a big chip on our shoulders. If only other academics or the general public would recognize our greatness and pay attention to the fruits of our wisdom, ancient wisdom, Gods wisdom! If only some rich heiress would fall in love with us and return the proper luster to our clothes and dwellings!

Still other theologians, perhaps the majority of us, have acquired democratic sensibilities and settled into daily routines as knowledge producers employed by institutions that compete in global markets. We teach our courses and write reviews, scholarly articles, and an occasional book. We work hard to accomplish what it takes to get tenure (and nervously bite our nails through the process). We have a job, and we want to do it well: to add our own grain of intellectual sand to the vast metropolis of knowledge and to instruct students about a tradition that we arent sure is truly alive anymore.