This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
Yale theologian Miroslav Volf is Croatian by birth. When his father was a young man, he was forced into a labor camp and placed on a death March.
Episode Transcript
Lee
Miroslav
Marching about 30 miles a day on 200 calories, with the purpose of killing as many of them who are marching as possible, and then turn the remainder into inmates. And he was absolutely furious the entire time. He was in hell, experiencing hell around him.
Lee
And this prompted Miroslav's father to ask profound existential questions. He would, in a bizarre way, find a loving God in the midst of such a hell. In time, when Miroslav faced great suffering of his own, he was driven by a similar question.
Miroslav
Can you find joy in hell? Can you find love in hell?
Lee
Our interview with award-winning author and world-renowned professor of theology, Miroslav Volf, on what real joy is, coming right up. And a special segment on the show today when our resident funnyman Brother Preacher insists on being included in the dialogue with professor Volf. Welcome.
Please welcome, from Yale, professor Miroslav Volf. Welcome.
Miroslav
Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here.
Lee
It's great to have you back ,what, eight years later? Yeah, we have you back.
Miroslav
Seven!
Lee
Seven, eight. Yeah, somewhere in that, somewhere in there. Yeah. So welcome back. We're delighted to have you. I heard you, this summer at Yale, talk about the ways in which you pointed to this great tradition in which we have these theologies of trying to construe the whole of Christian thought, for example, under a theology of love, or construe the whole of theology under a theology of peace. But we've had very few people who have tried to construe Christian life under the rubric of a theology of joy. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Miroslav
I am glad that you picked up love and peace and then joy rather than what you said at the very, very beginning: kind of theology of grumpiness. [Laughs] Yeah. So, the great theologies of the past were organized either around the issue of love or around peace. And very few have been organized around joy. And it's surprising though, when you look sometimes at the experience of the churches, they're kind of grumpy people, toiling along toward some kind of a hope for happiness. But if you look carefully at the liturgies of the church, if you look carefully, also, especially at the New Testament text, they're full of joy. If you look at the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament: full of joy. And I think it's time to retrieve joy as something fundamental, not just to Christian life, but also fundamental to human existence. I mentioned biblical texts. One of them is the gospel of Luke. And the gospel of Luke is framed by joy. At the very beginning of the gospel, when the birth of Christ is announced, it's kind of full of joy. Trumpets are sounding. At the very end, when Jesus is returning back, the disciples run away full of joy, right? And in the middle, there's this wonderful chapter, 15, which is the finding of the lost things. And it's again, full of joy. So you can say that at the beginning and the end and in the middle, Christian faith can be construed as being really about joy.
Lee
But you're not describing a, I suppose, mere kind of happy-ology.
Miroslav
Yeah. I have nothing against being happy, right? But maybe there's something more than being happy, at least in the way in which we tend to think of happiness. Happiness stands for us today to be mere[ly] a kind of feeling of pleasure: feeling alright in this moment, or maybe even exuberant in this moment. I think that joy has something deeper to it. It's not a mere feeling. It's a kind of emotion that encompasses a sense that there's something good about the situation in which I find myself. And it has its own depth. And sometimes I've compared happiness, mere happiness, as feeling, and joy to bubbly water. Thinking, for instance, of champagne: if you think of champagne as a bubbly water, you miss something absolutely fundamentally important about champagne. It has bubbles, right? And there's happiness as part of that, but you miss the smell of it, you miss the kind of intoxicated character of it, you miss the celebratory mood that always surrounds it. And I think there's something to that depth to joy when we properly understand what joy means.
Lee
It's like you Episcopalians to go to champagne.
[Laughter]
Miroslav
Well, you know, I became Episcopalian for the sake of wine. That's very simple. When people ask me, “Why did you become Episcopalian?” I said, “It's because of wine.” Because when I was in some of those Protestant churches, they got me drinking - for communion - they got me drinking grape juice out of shot glass. And I said, “My God! I love shot glasses, but I don't like to put grape juice in them, and I don't like to drink them in church. Find me the church where I can drink wine out of common cup.” And then they said, “You've got to go to Episcopalians.” Immediately. I turned to be Episcopalian.
[Laughter]
Lee
Yesterday, you introduced me to a Jewish tradition that teaches that we should always seek to - as I understood you - always seek to lament alongside our joy. I went back to my office and actually I have a board in my office from a George Herbert poem - English poet a little after Shakespeare, I suppose - and he has this beautiful poem called “Bittersweet” and he says, “Ah, my dear angry Lord. Since thou dost love and strike, cast down but help afford, sure, I will do the like. I will complain and praise. I will bewail, approve, and all my sour, sweet days, I will lament and love.” So I heard echoes of Herbert in you talking about this sort of notion of lamenting alongside joy. Talk to us a little bit about what that practice might look like or what that might mean.
Miroslav
Absolutely beautiful, what you recited. Yeah, and I think that's one of the differences as I see it between mere happiness - I say mere; it's good - mere happiness and joy. And that is that in joy, there can be simultaneity of sorrow. There can be simultaneity of joy and lament. We all experience that when we go to a funeral of a dear friend. There's a kind of celebration of life, and yet there's a lament because the friend has departed. And I think when we think about joy, we can rejoice over some things, but at the same time, lament other things. And indeed, I think joy, to be somehow true to the state of the world, to my state, has to keep in mind that there is sorrow to be had, and that there are others who are sorrowful right at the moment when I'm rejoicing, and that my joy would somehow be false if it was forgetful of their sorrow. And so a light reminder that everything isn't that moment of joy that I'm experiencing is really important to the integrity of the joy itself.
Lee
You shared with me Sunday evening that your own father came to faith in the midst of a forced labor camp at the end of World War II. Can you describe that? And which, in terms of what you're talking about, coming to faith for him also meant coming to joy and a flourishing life. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Miroslav
Yeah. You know, I mean, my dad was an 18 -year-old kid who, by mistake, ended up first, on a death march for about a month and a half, marching about 30 miles a day on 200 calories, with the purpose of killing as many of them who are marching as possible, and then turn the remainder into inmates. And he - because it was a mistake - he was absolutely furious the entire time. He was in hell, experiencing hell around him, and there was a hell inside him, in his own soul. And as he told the story about it, always the question was - you know, at the end of it, he's finding God right there in this camp - and then my question always was, “Can you find joy in hell? Can you find love in hell?” And he did. And he did, because there's some guy who - just a little bit weirdo guy; tall, his limbs going every which direction, not quite fully himself, at one with himself, and yet some kind of inner beauty of his soul was there - who was talking to my father in the midst of this hell about God being love. And my father was furious at the idea that God, who is up there sitting idly on his hands doing nothing, can be described as love when he's undergoing this incredible suffering. And I won't go into details, but through an explicable way to him and to me, he was, in the midst of that, gripped with the reality of God's love, that God is love. He kind of relented to the idea that God is love. And I think this was almost kind of a rebellion against the world in which he was caught. It almost was an affirmation from the depths of his soul that there is primacy to the goodness, primacy to love, over whatever hatred has been boiling in his soul as a reaction to experiences, negative experiences he has had. And for me, that became always a symbol how, in the worst possible circumstances, the best can emerge. In every swamp, there is a potential for a lily to grow.
Lee
How does expectations fit into our notion of joy and experience of joy?
Miroslav
Joy gets spoiled by false expectations, by inability to stay with the good that is before us, because we have imagined a good to look different than what we, in fact, experience. A kind of attentiveness to that which is, and which can be seen and experienced as good. I think that's a really important part of joy, and I think the other side of it, also, the kind of sadness, or, if you want, the negativity of life that's being articulated, is a very important part of joy. I was recently in Austin. I was talking to a woman who works in a cancer ward, and she told me that on aAsh Wednesday, there's a line starting at three o'clock in the morning and lasts all the way to 11 o'clock in the evening of cancer patients wanting to have ashes imposed upon them. And what you say is, “Know man that you are dust, and into dust you will return.” And there's a kind of naming of the reality of who we are and participating in that reality, who we are, and that's the kind of sadness side, the named negative side, and I think we can properly rejoice when we take into account that that's what life, as we experience it, also is. If we don't have it, we have a false expectation and joy eludes us.
Lee
Of course your work, from very early on, has been very serious about taking social conditions of some of the most horrific sort, very, very seriously: the Yugoslav war in your homeland. More recently you've talked some in one of your books, in some of your lectures, about your own experience of being in the Yugoslav army, drafted, mandatory sentence, mandatory requirement.
Miroslav
Sentence! [Laughs]
Lee
Yeah. But you've, in effect, suggested that it was something of a year long experience of something like psychological torture. Is that a correct sort of way to frame what you went through?
Miroslav
Yeah, maybe a year is too much. But about three months, and basically I was drafted into the army at that time. I've been into [the] United States. I've been in Germany. I've been writing a doctoral dissertation on Karl Marx, and that was really subversive, right? Because as a theologian, I'm going to write something that the state will not like. I was married to an American, and obviously I was working for [the] CIA. And so when I was drafted into the Yugoslavian army and I had - this is a mandatory thing - then the whole unit was organized around spying on me for about three months or so. There's a big staple of all transcripts of what I've said and what I've done, and pictures of what I've done, and then started the interrogations, with serious threats: not really physical torture, but psychological torture, in terms of, you know, what could happen to me if in some of these things that I've said, they discover some whiff of the anti-state activity. And for me then, the big question at the time, but also later, was not just “How do I experience this?” but “How do I remember that so that the bitterness doesn't grow, so that resentment doesn't grow, so that the possibility of [a] different future, or the possibility, even, of reconciliation with those who have inflicted this upon me?” It's not forestalled. I knew that I couldn't initiate it simply and make it happen myself. But I knew that I could prepare the soil in my soul, so that actual repair, both of my own life and of the relationships, could happen.
Lee
That's a counterintuitive notion, perhaps, for some of us early on to think about memory. I hear you describing memory not as a simple apparatus that recollects facts, but as a sort of arch that you try to remember correctly… obviously you want it concerned with factual truth as well as possible, but is there a particular art, maybe, to the way in which we recollect?
Miroslav
Yeah. Because there's pragmatics of memory. It doesn't just register things, but registers it with certain intentionality, registers it as something happening to me. And this remembering - you have it in philosophical tradition, obviously; people speak about “seeing something as” - but if you see something as, you can see something in a very different way, you can experience something as a threat, or you can experience something as a kind of gesture of jest toward you. And it depends on a situation, though action might be exactly the same. We let memories do things to us, and we do things with memories to others. And these pragmatics of memory, I think, is a very important kind of discipline of the soul, in order to nurture pragmatics of memory, so that that which has happened to me doesn't end up as a wound in myself and doesn't transpose itself into me tomorrow wounding somebody else.
Lee
And you're reflecting on forgiveness. Do you carry about any particular pictures of heroes of forgiveness for yourself?
Miroslav
Well, my hero of forgiveness are both my mother and my father. My older brother was five years old - I was one - was killed by the negligence of a soldier of the Yugoslav army; that's that same army which had put my dad through a death march in labor camp. And [the] kind of forgiveness that my parents, independently of each other, gave to this person… and basically each of them said to themselves, almost a parallel without consulting, they remembered this verse from the New Testament: “Forgive as you have been forgiven, as God has forgiven you in Christ.” And that became a paradigm of relating to that soldier. And I think what's even more important for me is I had a nanny at the time, and she was supposed to take care of Daniel. Daniel went out and played with the soldiers and got killed. And I thought, then, later, if I was a parent in my mother's place, the first person I would blame was that careless nanny. And obviously there was something like that going on, but she remained our nanny and she was an angel of my childhood, but she's a totally fantastically saintly woman. Until 25 years ago, my mother never mentioned once to me, the blame that was to be ascribed to my nanny, because she, in a sense, wanted to preserve the beauty of this woman in my eyes. First book I've ever written, I dedicated to my nanny rather than to my mother. Even then my mother didn't say, “But you know what she did, and who she was? How can you…” and so forth. There was this kind of beautiful forgiveness that protected the reputation even of that woman. Even though this was obviously a mistake, a serious mistake, that she has made.
Lee
Miroslav Volf, thank you very much for being with us tonight. Thank you.
You are listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life. This is our episode with professor Miroslav Volf from Yale Divinity School. We're pleased to announce that we have released an online course with Miroslav Volf, beautifully crafted, edited for you to study and listen in the comfort of your very own home. Volf has been called by Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, “one of the most celebrated theologians of our day.” And now, yes, even now, you can take an online course with him. Visit www.tokensshow.com/courses and use the coupon code “Volf50” for 50% off. That's V-O-L-F-5-0 for 50% off. It is a great course
Miroslav
And you have rain for me.
Lee
We have some rain for you. [Laughs]
Miroslav
Better than snow. It's snowing up there, so it's good.
Brother Preacher
Sorry. I'm late.
Lee
This is clearly a mistake here.
Brother Preacher
Lee, this is an intervention of the Bald Preacher Society. The good news is you've been accepted into the club. The bad news is I have my razor on me. Okay?
[Laughter]
Listen, while I got you here Miroslav, I just want to say... Miroslav... Maroslav... Manalo... what is it? Tell me what it is. What is it?
Miroslav
Miraslov.
Brother Preacher
Miraslav. Okay. I'm pretty sure it's Manaslov. Well, whatever. Okay. Agree to disagree on that one. Listen.
[Laughter]
Okay. I am so glad you are here tonight because I have to say you have one of the most beautiful heads of nothing I have ever seen. I mean, that is Yul Brynner/Elisha quality baldness. Am I right? I mean, that thing is smoother than the sea of Galilee after the Lord got done with it. Amen? I would gladly set two she-bears on a bunch of mouthy teenagers just to look like that. I really would. What is your secret to that thing?
Miroslav
Secret.
Brother Preacher
Well, I was hoping for something better than that, I have to say. You want to know what I do? Once a week, I go down to the airport to that scanner in security, and I stand like that for about 45 minutes. They make you sweep after, but I'll tell you, it works like a charm. It really does.
Lee
Do you mind if we get started now?
Brother Preacher
I'd love to! Waiting on you. Let's do it.
Lee
All right. Since we're lucky to have a true scholar with us tonight, as well as Brother Preacher, we thought it'd be fun to take a few questions from the audience. A new segment, entitled “Ask a scholar, ask a preacher.”
Brother Preacher
Okay. Which one am I again? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I don't know anything about the Bible. I'm a preacher!
[Laughter] That did not come out the way I meant it to. I'm sorry.
Lee
Amen. You're definitely no scholar. All right. Here's the first question; it's for both of you, from one of the youngsters in our audience here tonight. What is your favorite book of the Bible? Miroslav your favorite book of the bible?
Miroslav
Book of Job.
Lee
Book of Job. Hmm. Wow. Alright. BP. What's your favorite?
Brother Preacher
Well, this one's easy for me. My favorite book of the Bible, hands down, 3rd John. Why? Only 14 verses in the whole blooming book. Okay? I love anything I can read two or three times while I'm waiting for a latte. I love that. My second favorite book is probably Song of Solomon. That is a great book. Lousy song, but a great book. My least favorite book has got to be Hezekiah. Well, I just feel that Hezekiah is the poor man's Zephaniah. You know what I mean? It's no Obadiah, if you know what I'm talking about. I would go Jeremiah or Nehemiah long before I go Hezekiah. But the good news is it's all in the Old Testament, and I can never find any of them books. So once again, all things work together for good.
Lee
Are you okay? Are you through?
Brother Preacher
I'm finished.
Lee
Next question. Alright. This one's going to be tough, for one of you anyway. What do each of you admire about the other's preaching?
Brother Preacher
Oh, okay.
Lee
Miroslav, this is very hard for me to even get my mouth around. Miroslav Volf, what do you most admire about Brother Preacher's preaching? Good luck to you.
Brother Preacher
And if you would, look me in the eye when you do that.
[Laughter]
Go ahead. Take your time.
Miroslav
My brain is completely empty. When Preacher looks at me, those eyes... I mean, typical, really, preacher, right? Looks you in the eyes, and you're mesmerized, and pretty soon it comes to altar call, and you are slaying in the spirit.
Lee
Okay. [Laughs] BP.
Brother Preacher
That might be the best thing I've ever heard anyone say about my preaching. I really should probably get you to do the foreword for my new book, Snappy Stories that Preachers Tell.
Miroslav
Absolutely.
Brother Preacher
It's like a pamphlet: doesn't take that long to read, unless you read it slow. Then it's huge.
Lee
Okay. BP, what do you most admire about Miroslav's style of preaching?
Brother Preacher
This is easy. This is easy for me. And I know I speak for every preacher in this room tonight, okay? When we hear Michael Slav preach, we are impressed, we are challenged, and we have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
[Laughter]
And I mean that in a good way. I mean, when you preach, you bring what I like to call scholarship. Are you familiar with that word?
Miroslav
Never heard it.
Brother Preacher
Smartypants-ness.
Miroslav
I've heard that.
Brother Preacher
Okay? Which is not how I preach, you know, at all, okay? I mean, I don't even like to read, if you want to know the truth. One time, I tried to read Leviticus, or as I like to call it, God's melatonin. I lasted about four minutes in that thing. You know, that was one of the most boring cookbooks I've ever read in my life. But I'm a preacher. I don't want to sit around and read. I want to get up there and preach, whether I know what I'm talking about or not, because the way I look at it, I am not getting paid to sit around and read. I'm getting paid to preach, and bring in the mail, and lock up the building, and that's what I intend to do. But now I will say this: when I preach, like you, nobody knows what I'm talking about either. Which is why I feel real simpatico with you. Or maybe capalini might be a better word. I don't know what either of those words mean. I know I'm getting hungry, I know that. We should go out for Italian soon.
Lee
Don't do it, Miroslav. Okay, next: how do you deal with critics of your work?
Miroslav
Well, I either disregard them, or I write responses to them. Trash them. No. [Laughs]
Brother Preacher
I'm liking you more by the second.
Lee
Okay. BP. I know you have some experience in this area. How do you deal with those who sincerely hate and despise the way you preach?
Brother Preacher
Well, I'm glad you rephrased the question for me. That helped a lot. Thank you. Now I know what you're talking about. Listen, it is no surprise to anybody in this room that occasionally I have been known to rub people the wrong way, and by occasionally, I mean, every time I put on pants and leave the house, but the good news is, I don't know I'm being offensive until it's too late. I mean, I can read a room like a dyslexic duck. I can feel the pulse of a crowd like a candy striper on her first day of work. You know, no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. And yet when I get it, when I realized that I've been, you know, fired or disfellowshipped or whatever, then the Lord comes and wraps me in a divine coat of apathy or [fart noise] “who cares” that lasts for about 10 minutes, and then I get up and make a sandwich, and then I forget the whole thing. And what a blessing that is.
Lee
You're ridiculous. Alright. The next question: I'm a young ministry student here. What kind of training did you each receive for your profession? Miroslav?
Miroslav
I had about 16 years of education, schooling. Two PhDs.
Lee
BP! The world awaits. At long last, please tell us what kind of training do you have?
Brother Preacher
Well, you know, I have been trained, I mean, I have been trained and trained. I've been so trained, I could probably drive a train by now. Sometimes, I think I've probably been over-trained, you wanna know the truth? Okay, ‘cause I just think about my training. I can't believe I get so much training, because I've been so trained, you know what I mean? And so what if I can't remember right now where I was trained, or when, or by who, because I know I had to have been trained. They're not going to let just any dummy stand up in the pulpit and preach. Well okay, bad example, bad example. What I'm saying is what I've said for years: a preacher doesn't need to be trained. A preacher doesn't even need to be smart. The only thing a preacher needs to be is done by lunchtime on Sunday, or as I like to call it, the Cracker Barrel cutoff time. If you've got a preacher who does not respect the Cracker Barrel cutoff time, guess what? You're going to be down at Cracker Barrel in that pretend general store, eating old-lady candy and buying CDs for a machine that you gave away nine years ago, and then rocking in them big dumb rocking chairs with the big chain on it. Who is stealing rocking chairs from Cracker Barrel? More importantly, who is buying rocking chairs from Cracker Barrel. How does that even work? You know what I need today? What's that? Some eggs and some rocking chairs. Oh, I know where we can go. Manitoba, your thoughts?
Lee
Thank you. Ask a preacher, ask a scholar.
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