Dr. Miroslav Volf: Key Issues in the Christianity/Islam Debate

Wednesday March 02, 2011

Dr. Miroslav Volf
Organization: Yale Divinity School
Denomination: Not available

From Allah by Miroslav Volf

Here is a small sampler of what you'll find in my book:

Christians and Muslims worship one and the same God, the only God. They understand God's character partly differently, but the object of their worship is the same. I reject the idea that Muslims worship a different God than do Jews and Christians.
What the Qur'an denies about God as the Holy Trinity has been denied by every great teacher of the church in the past and ought to be denied by every orthodox Christian today. I reject the idea that Muslim monotheism is incompatible with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Both Muslims and Christians, in their normative traditions, describe God as loving and just, even if there are differences in how they understand God's love and justice. I reject the idea that the God of the Qur'an stands as a fierce and violent deity in opposition to the God of Jesus Christ, who is sheer love.
The God Muslims worship and the God Christians worship-the one and only God-commands that we love our neighbors, even though it is true that the meaning of love of neighbor differs partly in Christianity and Islam. I reject the idea that Islam is a religion of life-constricting laws, whereas Christianity is a religion of life-affirming love.
Because they worship the same and similarly understood God, Christians and Muslims have a sufficiently robust moral framework to pursue the common good together. I reject the idea that Muslim and Christian "civilizations" are bound to clash.
Christians should see Muslims, who give ultimate allegiance to God as the supreme good, as allies in resisting the tendency in contemporary culture to see mere pleasure, rather than justice and love, as the hallmark of the good life. I reject the association of freedom to do what one pleases with Christianity and blind submission to the iron law of God with Islam.
What matters is not whether you are Christian or Muslim or anything else; instead, what matters is whether you love God with all your heart and whether you trust and obey Jesus Christ, the Word of God and Lamb of God. I reject making religious belonging and religious labels more significant than allegiance to the one true God.
Love and justice for all, rooted in the character of God, requires that all persons have the right to choose, change, and practice their religion publicly. I reject all attempts to control the decisions human beings make about what most profoundly matters in their lives.
All people have the right to witness about their faith; curtailing that right in any way is an assault on human dignity. At the same time, those who witness have an obligation to follow the Golden Rule. I reject both all suppression of freedom of expression and all uncharitable ways of exercising that freedom.
To give allegiance to the one God who enjoins humans to be loving and just to all, as Muslims and Christians do, means to embrace pluralism as a political project-the right of all religious people to articulate their views in public and the impartiality of the state with respect to all religions (and other overarching interpretations of life). I reject the idea that monotheism, properly understood, fosters violence and totalitarian rule.

Ever since I lived under the dead hand of a semitotalitarian regime, I have resisted toeing any party line. I know that the boundary separating truth and falsehood is not the same as the boundary between political parties or ideological combatants. I want the truth, not politically expedient or ideologically "correct" positions. And, as a follower of Christ, I want the truth seen with the eyes of inviting and reconciling love, not the truth born of cold indifference or simmering hatred. In this book, I apply lessons I learned living under Communist rule during the Cold War to relations between Christians and Muslims today. With regard to the central "ideological" question in relations between those two faiths-the identity and character of God-I resolutely try to expose encrusted positions and emotionally charged negative stereotypes and, instead, to speak truth in love. At the level of discourse, this is how wars are prevented and the road to peace is paved.