Theological Journal – November 2 Miroslav Volf: Accepting Truth

Despite our Western bias that human beings are but “brains on a stick” (J. K. A. Smith), we are not. In biblical perspective we are beings moved to action by loving and being loved. From whom we receive that animating love and direct our responsive love and action is the decisive question of each of our lives.

We are, however, beings fallen out of sync with that divine wiring, no longer responsive to truth, beauty, and goodness. God in Christ has acted, however, to reclaim and restore us to that divine design. His love penetrates even our darkness and through Christ and by placing humanity in him. We henceforth live not from who we are to who we hope to be (as we normally do) but from who we are in Christ to who we will be and, indeed, already are in him.

 

We traverse this path from who we are in Christ now to the full experience of that identity to come requires response and pursuit from us. God’s love given us in Christ fires in us and makes possible this pursuit just as it assures its fulfilment even though our old life, defeated by Christ, continues to cling to us and do everything it can to keep tripping us up.

 

In light of this conflicted existence Miroslav Volf parses this pursuit in this way:

 

"To accept truth, much more to actively pursue it, we must be willing to part with ego boosting self-deceit and power maintaining ideologies, be ready to rewrite the story of our identities and reform our practices. If we refuse to be unsettled and transformed, we will shy away from truth and stick to our preferred beliefs, which make us "blessed" precisely because they tell us lies. The truth will never be sustained without the will to obey the truth."

 

This pursuit, thus, calls us to embrace the conflict, unflinchingly refuse to let ourselves off the hook or excuse ourselves by composing a new narrative of who we are and becoming, internalize the habit of living “backward to forward.” That is, from who we are to who we will become. This counter-intuitive practice, which is a correlate to the giving of the Holy Spirit and a life lived by grace and not performance, is the one and only way to experiencing our creational design and Christ’s redemptional achievement.

 

What does this pursuit entail? I suggest something like the following.

 

-Remembering we are more than “brains on a stick” it must be full-bodied, whole person, encompassing all we are and have.

-Seeing ourselves as a bundle of three dynamics – our passions, our priorities, and our practices (each of which has integral connections with the others) – which make us who we are and become.

-These three dynamics (the “wiring” I mentioned above) are meant to be mutually supportive of the others and “walk arm-in-arm together” (as it were) reshaping us into that image of Christ in whom we already dwell.

-Identity, vocation, and community, essential aspects of God’s design for us, become the loom and site of conflict in our pursuit of the reality to which God has already redeemed us in Christ.

-The new narratives we compose (under the guidance of the Spirit and in the life of the community) follow the principle powerfully articulated by Karl Barth: ”the real is the possible” (and not the other way round!). Christ’s resurrection, ascension, and exaltation establish the real for us within whose parameters (which are infinite) are our reality and within which new possibilities for our lives unfold. One could call what we are talking about in this post “living into this new reality.”

 

May it please God that this be so for us this day, tomorrow, and every tomorrow God grants till kingdom comes!