Miroslav Volf

My Thesis is that the practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance which will be unpopular with many in the West. Imagine speaking to people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned, and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. Your point to them, 'we should not retaliate' -- why not? I say, the only means of prohibiting violence by us is to insist that violence is only legitimate when it comes from God. Violence thrives today secretly nourished by the belief that God refuses to take the sword. It takes the quiet of a suburb for the birth of the thesis that human non-violence is a result of a God who refuses to judge. In a scorched land soaked in the blood of the innocent the idea will invariably die like other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end of violence that God would not be worthy of our worship.

Miroslav Volf, as quoted from last Sunday's sermon at Redeemer Presbyterian Church by the Rev. John Lin. Dr. Moroslav is Director of Yale Center for Faith & Culture and Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School.