Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School and is already well known internationally for his contributions to theology. Yet to introduce him seems to be the clearest explanation of what this book is trying to achieve. A collection of short articles, almost invariably no more than three pages in length, spanning over a decade's work is a fresh way to present the thoughts of this leading theologian. In previous books, Volf focused on forgiveness and reconciliation in societies that seem stripped of grace. The publication of Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and Persisting Enmities draws together many of the lessons of these previous explorations and presents them in fresh contexts across a number of topics including culture and politics, giving, mission, other faiths, and evil. The background picture Volf presents is that of a world characterised by selfishness. Indeed Volf is quite fond of Philip Roth's succinct characterisation of people as ‘”black holes of self-absorption”: manipulating, cheating, deceiving, and exploiting others.’ As bleak as that sounds stated baldly, it is a platform for an alternative vision: a hope. This hope is for a life that takes the dignity of others seriously and is founded on the love of God in his judgement and forgiveness.
The original place of publication – the popular US theological magazine The Christian Century– may account for the brevity and immediacy of these essays, but their depth and challenge is testament to the personal and dialogical elements in each. These elements come out most in the tremendous sensitivity Volf displays in anticipating potential objections to his arguments. This sensitivity allows the objections to function as springboards to bring the reader to the substance of the argument more quickly. This makes subtle and challenging theology possible in short spaces and makes for very accessible reading.
A particularly noteworthy example of this is the essay Evil and Evildoers, the first of a number of essays on this subject. This article, as with many in this book, is based on an argument Volf had with a friend. Volf's friend is arguing that it is inhumane to call someone evil and we should instead note the pernicious influences and circumstances to be blamed and addressed. Implicit in this argument is that a strong insistence on labelling someone as evil can have a dehumanising effect, casting them as some kind of ‘shape-shifting’ demon, which is fundamentally unhelpful since it presents an obstacle to learning and makes the person in question vulnerable to vigilante action. This is hard to deny. Volf manages to argue to greater depth by introducing, with great subtlety, a perspective from the Christian tradition: when his friend charges that Bin Laden is unhelpfully seen as evil incarnate Volf agrees that it is indeed unhelpful but also impossible for the Christian tradition because evil cannot be incarnate. Those who do evil remain good creatures of God: though they commit evil they are not qualitatively different from the rest of us. Volf is therefore concerned to recognise Bin Laden as part of the human race by naming his evil and drawing attention to our unity with him as good creatures with the potential to cause evil, all of whom are answerable to and capable of being forgiven by God.
The dialogical style and the personal stories used in this and many other articles lend a very engaging immediacy to the arguments. Personality is quite important to the appeal of this text. Volf is himself a very interesting character: belonging to a religious minority in a war-torn country (the Evangelical Church in Croatia), imprisoned by an oppressive regime, and now a leading academic at one of the world's best universities (having studied with Jürgen Moltmann in Tübingen). The shape of his life and the seriousness with which he takes his witness in theology comes across, lending credibility to his words. As appealing as these aspects make the text, a question nonetheless hovers: for whom is this book meant? Those already familiar with Volf's work are unlikely to find much that is new here. The picture is similar to many of his other books. That should not be surprising since this collection spans many years and should perhaps be considered more of a summary than an advance. Since the nature of the collection creates an overall sketch of the shape of Volf's theology, clergy and lay people may find this quite a user-friendly ingress into political theology: that is, a theology concerned with how Christian faith is lived out in this world. The immediacy with which complex theological ideas are expounded make it well suited as a further reading text for theology undergraduates in their early stages. The confessional depth of these articles may even make this book useful as a sort of ‘thought for the day’ devotional for some; certainly each article deserves its own space to be pondered.
This book is an excellent example of the unity of thought in theology across the diverse range of topics in contemporary life. Those seeking a snapshot of this fine and well-ordered thinker and reflector on Christian faith will find here much to stimulate them.
