A Public Faith by Miroslav Volf

Author:Miroslav Volf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

Two Noes and One Yes

Let me summarize in three terse propositions—two denials and one affirmation—my account of internal difference as a mode of Christian identity and engagement in contemporary societies.

No to Total Transformation

For Christian difference to be internal to a given culture means that Christians have no place from which to transform the whole culture they inhabit—no place from which to undertake that eminently modern project of restructuring the whole of social and intellectual life, no virgin soil on which to start building a new, radically different city.[153] No total transformations are possible; all transformations are reconstructions of the structures that must be inhabited as the reconstruction is going on. No total transformations are desirable. Consider the eschatological new Jerusalem Revelation describes as “coming down out of heaven from God” (21:2). It is not designed and built by Christians. And yet, it stands in continuity and not just discontinuity with the old order; it is said that the “people”—non-Christian people!—“will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations” (21:26).[154]

What Christians end up building in the course of history does not resemble a modern city, like Brasilia, all designed and built from scratch. Instead, they are helping to build what resembles more of an ancient city with its “maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.”[155] This is how the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein describes human language. A similar kind of change over time happens when Christians insert themselves, along with many and varied non-Christians, into a given culture.

No to Accommodation

Accommodation to the broader culture should not be part of the Christian project, either. We are used to the rejection of accommodation from old-style fundamentalists. And in this regard they were right (though they often failed to live up to their own rhetoric and accommodated in rather predictable ways, only to different aspects of culture than their progressive competitors). The accommodation strategy has not worked, and, given the nature of contemporary societies, the likelihood that it will work in the future is negligible. What is worse, unless accompanied by robust affirmation of specific Christian identity—of Christian difference from a given culture!—accommodation carries in itself seeds of Christian self-dissolution.

If Christian identity matters, then difference must matter as well. In the most general sense, get rid of difference and what remains will be nothing—you yourself, along with everything else, will be drowned in the sea of undifferentiated “stuff.” To erase difference is to undo the creation, that intricate pattern of separations and interdependencies that God established when the universe was formed out of no-thing. Literally, every-thing depends on difference.[156] Now apply this insight to the relation between the gospel and culture. Here too everything depends on difference. If you have difference, you have the gospel. If you don’t, you will either have just plain old culture or the universal reign of God, but you won’t have the gospel.

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