Miroslav Volf is the Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture and Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School. He was born in Croatia, and studied at Evangelical-Theological, Osijek, Fuller Theological Seminary and received his doctoral degree from the University of Tübingen, where he studied under Jürgen Moltmann.
As “a member of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. and the Evangelical Church in Croatia, Professor Volf was involved in international ecumenical dialogues (for instance, with the Vatican Council for Promotion of Christian Unity) and interfaith dialogues (most recently in Christian-Muslim dialogue).” His recent books include Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and Persisting Enmities (2009), Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection (2010), and Allah: A Christian Response (2011). His Exclusion and Embrace. A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996) was selected as one of the top one hundred books of the twentieth century by Christianity Today and received the 2002 Grawemeyer Award.
Book Basics
Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection is a collection of six of Volf’s essays written over the last sixteen years that show this systematic theologian’s understanding of the role of the Bible for Christians in the twenty-first century. The only essay written for this text is the first: “Reading the Bible Theologically,” which explains how Volf engages Scripture in the other essays and in general. He describes the essays as “theological readings of biblical texts” (p.4) that are not dependent on a single method, but rather build upon the “return of biblical scholars to the theological reading of the Scriptures, and the return of systematic theologians to sustained engagement with the scriptural texts” (p.14) with “hermeneutic of respect” (p.34) that balances its “historicality” (p.16) with an understanding that the text speaks today (p.18).
Rather than crafting a new method or defending an existing method of engaging Scripture, readers from many theological perspectives will be enriched through an encounter with a non-methodological dependent exploration of multiple texts. Thoughtful and thought provoking, this theologically moderate and modern text is an invitation to experience Volf’s work while also using it to refine one’s own way of engaging the biblical text.
So What?
Volf presents his five previously published essays as his “framework” for reading the Bible and his “lens” for interpreting it. All Christians should seek to establish the role of Scripture, engage the biblical texts, and find contemporary meaning that helps give shape to their living. Have you sought to do so? If so, how would you explain your current perspective to someone else?
Miroslav Volf. Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010. ISBN: 9780802865908.