The room was full of students (I imagine most all of them were religion majors), the religion professors, and people from the community from the young (like me) to the elderly. I love that mixture of ages. People, no matter their age, were eager to listen to a highly respected theologian from Croatia, who is now a Professor of Theology at Yale University Divinity School.
Professor Miroslav Volf looks like a European and sounds like one too. Good thing he is European. He is tall, thin, with a shaved head. He wore black framed glasses and dressed neatly. As he started speaking with a Croatian accent, I liked him immediately. You can tell pretty quickly if someone has good humour when the microphone isn't working quite right. He made some jokes and got it positioned properly so everyone could hear him. He spoke slowly and thoughtfully, to allow the audience to chew on what he was saying. I greatly respect that. I was taking notes (of course I was), so I wanted to be able to listen and write quick bullet points as he expanded his ideas to us.
He spoke about memory and how we remember wrongs. As a quick summation, he stressed how we need to remember wrongs rightly. Meaning, it is important not only to remember the wrongs, but to remember them well, or correctly. For example, his family was greatly affected by WWII. Memory could be used as motivation to seek revenge, or it can be used to rebuild the community of love. The verse he referenced was 2 Corinthians 5.14 which says that one (Christ) died for all, therefore, all have died. The point of this is that Christ died for everyone, so we all died in Christ. The gift of salvation is indeed a gift, and in order for a gift to fulfill its purpose, it must be received. Not everyone will receive the gift given, but the point is that Christ died for all. The wrongdoings dissolve a community, but the goal of Christ's death and resurrection is to make one community of love.
Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow....
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