"Christians are called to collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism." (N.T. Wright, from today's episode) What better way to secure the greatness of your political state (or maybe political party) than to invoke the name of God as being uniquely supportive of your team? It brings a sickening and divisive new meaning to Romans 8:31—"If God is for us, who can be against us?” In this episode, revered New Testament scholar N.T. Wright joins Miroslav Volf to discuss Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence. Together they reflect on the history and current realities of what happens when these three elements converge. The conversation was inspired by N.T. Wright's response to a short digital booklet by Miroslav Volf entitled Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses, which is available for download at faith.yale.edu.
As you listen today, would you consider helping the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for 2024 podcast production? visit faith.yale.edu/give to donate today.
"Christians are called to collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism." (N.T. Wright, from today's episode)
What better way to secure the greatness of your political state (or maybe political party) than to invoke the name of God as being uniquely supportive of your team? It brings a sickening and divisive new meaning to Romans 8:31—”If God is for us, who can be against us?”
In this episode, revered New Testament scholar N.T. Wright joins Miroslav Volf to discuss Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence. Together they reflect on the history and current realities of what happens when these three elements converge. The conversation was inspired by N.T. Wright's response to a short digital booklet by Miroslav Volf entitled Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses, which is available for download at faith.yale.edu.
Click here to download Monotheism, Nationalism, & Violence: 25 Theses, a short digital booklet by Miroslav Volf, via faith.yale.edu.
“In this essay, written in form of 25 interlocking theses, I approach the problem of religiously motivated or legitimized violence by exploring the relation between monotheism and nationalism. The first is allegedly the most violent of all forms of religion and the second one of the most violent forms of political arrangements, especially when it is cut loose from universal moral commitment and tied to some form of tribal identity (“exclusive nationalism”). I argue that monotheism is a universalist creed and that it is compatible only with inclusive nationalism, a nationalism that is a form of special relations framed by a universal moral code. When monotheism is aligned with exclusive nationalism—when it becomes a “political religion” aligned with exclusivist nationalism—monotheism betrays its universality, a feature which lies at its very core, and morphs into violence, generating and legitimizing henotheism: our god of our nation in contrast and competition to other nations with their gods. Alternatively, if monotheism keeps its universality while associated as political religion with exclusive nationalism it will tend to underwrite dreams of nationalist imperialism: our god and our nation as masters of the world.”
Show Notes
Production Notes
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Visit us online at faith.yale.edu.
Miroslav Volf: Hello listeners and friends. It's me, Miroslav, and before we bring you today's episode, I wanted to interject a brief invitation. One of our fellow listeners and a wonderful supporter of our work at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture has offered a $10,000 donation as a matching challenge, and it's all going to podcast production this coming year.
But we need your help to meet that challenge, dollar for dollar, and that needs to happen before the end of 2023. And so, my invitation to you, our listeners and subscribers, as you consider your end of year giving, would you consider becoming a patron of our work and helping us meet this matching challenge?
Bringing this work to you is a joy for all of us here at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. But we simply cannot do that without your support for our work. To help us meet this challenge, visit faith.yale.edu/give, or click on the link at the top of the show notes for today's episode.
Blessings, my friends.
N.T. Wright: I've had a slogan for some years now that Christians are called to collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism. In other words, there's lots of stuff which people want to do in the world that we can say, "Absolutely, we'll do that with you." But then at a certain point, they'll say, "By the way, we're not going to do this."
And we have to say, "No, that's a red line for us." Equally, we have to critique, we have to hold up a mirror to speak truth to power, but to do so not in a dualistic fashion, which implies we're totally right, and they're totally wrong, but which allows, as Jesus with Pilate, that they do have a proper role, and we'll support them in that proper role.
And maintaining that balance, I think, needs to be re-articulated in every generation because it's very difficult for people to grasp, let alone to keep.
Evan Rosa: This is For the Life of the World, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. I'm Evan Rosa with the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Around the world, the past decade has seen the resurgence of nationalism. But we might ask, what happens when we throw religion into a heightened fervor of concern for political nations to maintain or extend their power?
Well, among other things, you get a man with a painted face and horn for hat, standing on the U.S. Senate chamber floor, praying from the dais, and I quote, "Thank you, divine, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Creator God, for filling this chamber with your white light and love, your white light of harmony. Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ."
What better way to secure the greatness of your political state, or maybe political party, than to invoke the name of God as being uniquely supportive of your team? It presents a rather sick and divisive misreading of Romans 8:31: "If God is for us, who can be against us?"
Horribly ironic, of course, because the passage goes on to say that nothing, quote, "Neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ."
But the alignment of religion with powerful political states then triangulates with horrifying violence, and perhaps now the examples are too numerous to count and extend far beyond the United States Senate Chamber floor. Today on the show, Miroslav Volf and I are joined by the revered New Testament scholar N.T. Wright for a discussion of this triangulation of religion, nationalism, and violence.
And it's an interesting conversation because it's based on a piece that Miroslav wrote not too long ago that we published in a little digital booklet. Miroslav drafted twenty-five theses on this phenomenon of monotheism integrating with nationalism to produce violence. And that booklet is available on the homepage of our website, and for any future listeners you'll find a permanent link in the show notes for this episode.
Reading that short piece alongside this conversation would add quite a bit, but I asked Miroslav to frame it for us before we jump into the conversation with Tom Wright.
Miroslav Volf: I think that in the wider culture, there is a sense that belief in one God, monotheism, is associated with violence. And that association of monotheism and violence is particularly virulent when monotheism is pursued in the context of commitment to nationalism.
Our goddess nation and our one God are aligned against all the enemies that come from the outside. And I wanted to tease out how commitments that we have to our particular nations can go hand in hand with our commitment to love every human being as Jesus has invited us to do, as Jesus has commanded us to do, and therefore, in what ways we could be faithful to the kind of quote unquote monotheism that Jesus and faith in him as God incarnate implies.
Through much of Christian history, so also unfortunately today, there is a still a strong association between our national belonging and our Christian commitments. To be an American in the imagination of many is to be a Christian, just as in the country from which I originally come, to be a Croatian is to be a Catholic Christian. And I think we have to step back and reflect about the implications of our faith in one God who is God equally of our neighbors and equally of our enemies, as God is our God.
Evan Rosa: I also asked Miroslav to read a short passage. Actually, it's the twenty-fifth thesis he wrote in that short digital booklet up for discussion today. It's the idolatry and instrumentalization of God that occurs here. I wanted him to share about, to explain just how important this issue is.
Miroslav Volf: The price monotheism always has to pay for its alliance with exclusive nationalism is the loss of its soul.
When monotheism embraces exclusive nationalism, monotheism's god morphs from the creator and lover of all people and all creatures into a selfish and violent idol of a particular nation.
Evan Rosa: Miroslav continued on instrumentalizing God.
Miroslav Volf: So one of the great, I think, temptations of Christians of the church more generally always was and continues to be to instrumentalize God, meaning to make God serve our own ends.
Now, there are many kinds of ends that we want to employ God to achieve for us. And some of these ends are relatively innocent. We want a small thing, and we ask God to help us, even though we could easily do without, and even though we could exert ourselves and get it. We ask for certain things that God maybe has at least an ambiguous relationship toward, and we expect God to do something for us without necessarily thinking that this is God's will.
But when making God into servant of our ends is most sinful is when we use it to help us destroy the image of God which God has created, another human being. And often it's easier for us to kill when we have a sanction for our killing of the uncontested authority of God. When killing becomes sacred, it's easier done, and in these kinds of situation, instrumentalization of God, it's at its worst.
Evan Rosa: We're glad and grateful that you're listening today. Don't forget to head over to faith.yale.edu to download your copy of Monotheism, Nationalism, and Violence. Again, link in the show notes. Hope you gain from this conversation between N.T. Wright and Miroslav Volf.
It is a privilege for me to be with Miroslav Volf and N. T. Wright together in a conversation about monotheism, nationalism, and violence. And so I just want to welcome you both. It's really great to be in conversation with each of you.
N.T. Wright: Thank you. Good to be here.
Miroslav Volf: Tom, good to be with you. Always good.
Evan Rosa: Miroslav, some time ago, it was near the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you developed a response around monotheism, nationalism, and violence. We recently published 25 theses that you put together as a kind of way of responding to a global phenomenon that you are noticing. So I thought I'd ask you just to begin with this a little bit of summary about where those thoughts came from for you, and what you were hoping to do in those twenty-five theses.
Miroslav Volf: Well, you know, as I was working on Exclusion and Embrace, trying to make sense of the violence in former Yugoslavia, national belonging and religion, uh, immediately were at the surface of, uh, of the phenomenon, and therefore that has been a very important part of my deliberation. I never addressed that issue directly there, but it accompanied me all along.
And when I was teaching class on faith and globalization with ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, that became also an important question of deliberation: how different religious traditions relate to each, uh, problems on nationalism. And then twenty-five years after Exclusion and Embrace, we experienced a kind of resurgence of nationalism.
Now, not on local scenes as it was at the time of, uh, writing of that book, but on the global and in, in such a extraordinary violent ways.
Evan Rosa: Mm-Hmm. We're in a moment right now where violence has erupted once again, and it seems cyclic in so many ways, I think. As all of us stay pinned to the news, I, I've often thought personally, what will the next instance be?
And it's, I have to admit, I don't enjoy the feeling of expectation of violence, whether it's at home or abroad. Tom, as you look at the scene and listen to some of Miroslav's preliminary remarks, I wonder if you'd comment on this phenomenon, and what are you noticing about religious violence, in particular, the ways that Miroslav responded to it?
N.T. Wright: Yeah, I'm very grateful to be brought in on this conversation, and it serves me right in a way, because when Miroslav's email came to me with the, the theses, I thought, wow, this is exciting. And I printed it out. I read it through. And then as one does, I dashed off an email making a couple of points and thought, "Phew, at least I've kind of got in on the coattails of the conversation."
And then suddenly I find that I'm more than just the coattails that we're having the actual conversation, which is wonderful. And I'm grateful for that. I basically speak from two points of view. One is primarily I'm a New Testament scholar, so I study the extraordinary swirl of events, ideas, movements, personalities in the first century, particularly seeing Christianity, the earliest Christians within their Jewish context where the issue of who speaks for the true God is really front and center.
But then moving on into the second and third centuries, where the question then is that the Christians, like the Jews, are suspected of being atheists. Rather, it's not that they're even the wrong sort of theists, that they're suspected of being atheists because they deny the gods or at least they won't worship the gods.
So that's where I'm starting from. And from that point of view, my other pole, of course, is as a watcher of the news, as somebody who has spent time in the Middle East and has friends on the Israel side and the Palestinian side. And indeed, it's horrible to think of them as sides in terms of what's going on at the moment.
So naturally, all these questions come bubbling up. But with the added puzzle, which as Miroslav knows, I wrote about in my Gifford Lectures three, four years ago now, history and eschatology, where particularly I was concerned with the word religion. And throughout Miroslav's twenty-five theses, I'm wanting to say, can we be a bit more self critical about the way we use the word religion?
And you will know the work of Berndt Nombre. I found him very insightful in terms of the way we now use the word religion. As basically a post Enlightenment construct, which comes to us from a world which had already separated, and this is a phrase that I think Miroslav used at one point, the supernatural from the mundane in a way, which I think isn't true even before the seventeenth century at least.
Certainly not for the early centuries where whoever the gods are, or whoever the one God is, and the world that we know are much more muddled up together so that they are liable to meet one another and overlap and interlock. And of course, in the ancient world, the symbol for that was a temple. And you went into a temple not to do some otherworldly religion, but to be at the point where the gods and the world actually met and did business with one another.
So that what we then mean by religion in the post Enlightenment world, which is very much something to do with getting in touch with or channeling the energy of a being who is by definition, or beings who are by definition, other than the world. And therefore, from the eighteenth century onwards, some have said, therefore, we don't think these beings exist.
Therefore, this leads some to say religion is itself a dangerous and violent thing, because it leads to people saying, "I have this God, and he's more important than your God," or whatever. And all sorts of violence stems from that. Indeed, one could argue, the Enlightenment's redefinition, uh, radical redefinition of the word religion over against its, say, uh, early centuries use, um, has been part of the problem.
Um, but that, that would be, uh, perhaps a more polemical thesis.
Miroslav Volf: I think I would agree that we use religion in a different sense than it was used, I think, through the century or that we describe with religion, as Tom has indicated, a kind of phenomenon that necessarily would not have thought, been thought as religion in previous centuries.
So, Tom, a book that I was quite taken is by Martin Riesenbrot, A Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion, who was a professor. I'm not sure whether he's still alive, but at the time when he wrote the book was emeritus professor at the University of Chicago and sociologist. So maybe that's my, my interlocutor.
So sociologist in that sense kind of decided on the basis of that book, I decided to stay with the concept of religion. And partly because he says that, uh, in all the ancient world, ancient dynasties who were pluralistic, the political powers had to manage this phenomenon of differences of whatever that seemed relationship to supernatural, uh, which is meant to be in some ways to the redound to the good of human beings.
And so forth, so that you have this de facto political powers defining it as a specific phenomenon that needs to be managed. And Jose Casanova, when we discuss this question, always used to say, just look at the constitutions of all the societies, almost countries in the world, the world religion plays a role.
And I think second, and maybe more important thing, because I don't want to for this to ride on the use of the world religion. I think I built here on somewhat controversial thesis of so called axial transformations, and those axial transformations might be rendered in religious or nonreligious terms.
I think that both, uh, that, uh, all three monotheisms, and that's where we may go into the, the, your second question, or first question. All three monotheisms, uh, have a feature of this axial, uh, transformation. And though I don't think that separation of, of transcendent and imminent is radical, nonetheless, it is thematized as two domains that certainly the transcendent intersects with the mundane, but nonetheless, the two are to be thought in distinct, in distinct ways.
N.T. Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. We could, we could easily just have a theoretical discussion of this. Let me just probe a little bit before we move on. In terms of how religion worked in the ancient world, and after all, this is where the three so called monotheisms get their sacred texts from, is a world which is very different to anything that we know post-seventeenth century in the West, that the idea of a society in which your relationship with the invisible occupants of the society was every bit as important as your relationship with the visible ones.
I mean, that's how the ancient Romans might have seen it, or people in what we loosely call the pagan world of the time. Any city had two lots of inhabitants, the ones you could see and the ones you couldn't see. The ones you couldn't see would include the ancestors, but would also include the gods, whatever they were.
And it was, which is why the same people usually were magistrates and priests, which is the sort of polar opposite of what most societies in today's modern world who have written themselves constitutions would usually separate those out very carefully, as America has tried to do with mixed success, I think being said, and which we in Britain have so far managed to sustain our usual muddled way of saying yes and no at the same time, but that's, that's a whole other issue.
But therefore, when people today talk about religion, I'm thinking of the so called new atheists of the last twenty years or so. Um, when they say that religion is a force for evil in society, they mean precisely, uh, fierce monotheisms who say, "We are right, you are wrong. Therefore, we're going to kill you or drive you out or not let you immigrate into our country," or whatever.
And those are the terms in which the discussion has been had because they're working out of a secularist paradigm where religion is precisely bringing into the debate that which ought not to be brought into the debate. Whereas in the ancient world, you couldn't escape it, which is why the Christians were regarded with deep suspicion, because they didn't worship the gods, back to where I began.
And likewise, the Jews, when Pompey went into the temple in the first century BC, he was expecting to confront the Jews' God, and when he discovered that they didn't have a God in the Holy of Holies, he came out and said these guys seem to be atheists. And those were the terms of the debate, so that the idea of, well, surely they've got a religion.
They haven't got a god. Therefore, they, what are they doing? And then the question was, in every locality, though the Jews were permitted to practice their religion, that basically meant they were, where that was allowed they were allowed to take Saturdays off, etc., whereas everyone else would be working, and so on.
And particularly, the idea of permitted nonreligion is really important for first century Jews, that the Romans had allowed them the privilege of not worshipping the gods, as everyone else did, and particularly not worshipping the goddess Roma or the new god Caesar. And the Christians come in on that.
You can see it in Acts chapter 18, where Paul is accused by the Jews in Corinth of worshipping in illegal ways, which looks to me as though this is the monotheism revised by Christology that you find in 1 Corinthians. And the Roman governor says, "That's no concern of mine. This is obviously an inner Jewish matter sorted out among yourselves," which means that Christianity is then permitted, permitted in the sense of the Christians are not going to be persecuted for not worshiping the gods.
This is a totally different world from the world where we now have, you know, for instance, as you start the discussion with Russia and Ukraine, both orthodox countries are now fighting one another and anathematizing one another, and that is truly tragic, like the tragedy of Northern Ireland in The Troubles.
One supposed Christian denomination anathematizing and vilifying the other, and the representatives of them using that as the excuse to pursue sociocultural agendas with plenty of violence attached. I'm just trying to distinguish things, otherwise the level of generality, I think, gets to the point where it ceases to be really helpful, in my view anyway to talk about early Christianity as a religion in the same sense as we are using the word today. So, that's enough for the moment, but I'll come back on the other.
Miroslav Volf: But maybe, so, nothing for me hangs on the use, actually, of religion, right? I could rewrite the whole piece without mentioning religion. But let's stay with the world of Christians, and here I'm just going to give my impression, and I'm going to defer to the expert that you are on this.
It seems to me that really what was at issue is, uh, in the question of how Christians relate to religions is to what extent they want to give ultimate allegiance to the Caesar rather than to Christ. So I think what we have is a contrast between two kind forms of ultimate allegiance. Now, from my perspective, you call it whatever you want.
I think I'm interested in that. You might call it in Rawlsian terms, overarching doctrine, although that's pretty bland way of putting things. But it's pretty sturdy sense of, "I have an ultimate allegiance." And especially if you are a monotheist, that is the allegiance that permeates the entirety of your behavior and will have implications of what you think your responsibility ought to be to, to any of the political entities.
And in that sense, I think, especially then when Christians then become more Muslims or Jews when they have their own states, then suddenly you have something like the merger of that ultimate authority that, that is Christ or, uh, Yahweh or, uh, or Allah, uh, or in Christian terms, the Holy Trinity, and we'll maybe come to speak about that as well.
And the political entity with certain kind of responsibilities of political entities to implement the right kind of worship and give the right kind of allegiance to that, to that deity. I think that to me, and in terms of neo-atheists as well, that to me is really crux of the, of the matter.
And hence kind of separation of those powers, or not separation, I think that's not quite right for the state, but for the United States as well, but distinction, fundamental distinctions and naming the proper allegiances seems to me really fundamental. And it has to do with the question of deployment of violence in a precise sense of that term.
N.T. Wright: Yeah, the idea of ultimate allegiance, I think, may well be helpful here. Or if we went back to Tillich, it would be ultimate concern, presumably.
But the idea that there is something which is setting the stage for everything else. But one of the things which I think is very specific about the early Christians, is that right from the time of Jesus onwards, they distinguish between their ultimate allegiance to Jesus and to the God they see revealed in and through Jesus and the Spirit and the proper God-given role of human authorities.
But it's a secondary role. In other words, in the famous Romans 13, it's not a totalitarian passage, though some have read it like that. But Paul says there is no authority except from God. Um, in other words, there is the one God, but God wants his world to be wisely governed by human authorities, but he will then call them to account.
And my favorite passage on that is in John 19, when Jesus is being interviewed by Pontius Pilate, and Pilate says, "Don't you realize I have the right to have you killed?" And Jesus says, and it's extraordinary, think of Johannine theology, that Jesus says this to Pilate, "You could have no authority over me unless it was given to you from above."
And then the corollary is, therefore, "The one who handed me over to you has the greater sin." And that's a very interesting differentiation, which no doubt Pilate couldn't understand at all. And of course, violence enters in straight away because Pilate's response is, to send him off to be crucified. So there's all sorts of ambiguities and so on going on, but the early Christians transmit those texts, and in the same way as you find a century later, when Polycarp is on trial, and the governor says, "Swear by the genius of Caesar," and he says, "No, I won't do that."
He said, "But I will debate with you, because our scriptures tell us to respect the people who are rulers of our people." I won't worship your God, but I will respect you enough to honor you if you want to have a conversation about this. And again, it's a very interesting distinction at the very moment when he's about to be sent off to be burnt at the stake.
Evan Rosa: I want to stick with ultimate allegiance for a little bit and just have each of you try to pull out a little bit more. With respect to ultimate allegiance, I think it would be helpful for the listener to try to orient things a little bit and then from each of you to say, what would be at stake if these distinctions are not clean enough and making those distinctions around the use of religion or a conceptualization of certain faith traditions as religions?
Is it, does it create a binary? Does it create a possibility for violence in some way, or, uh, or an exploitation of power in some way? I'm curious if each of you would help us understand what's really at stake there.
Miroslav Volf: It seems to me that, for me at least, what is at stake with the ultimate allegiance, and again, I'm happy to park the term religion, and we can debate how it's used, but it's really not ultimately important to me, but if you have a ultimate allegiance to a single God, the creator of the universe, I think what you have said at the same time is you made certain truth claim about nature of that ultimate reality, which has then obligation, certain kind of implications for how others relate to it or how you think others should relate to that.
You've also, um, and that's what happened, I think, in Judaism with the emergence of monotheism, you have also associated justice, with that one God, that one God is doing justice in the world, and the way in which that one God acts is a just way toward the world, and you are supposed to emulate God in your ways of dealing.
So you have suddenly uh, questions of truth and questions of justice, uh, associated with the singularity of one God, which is to say, and that's the argument that Jan Assmann, uh, has made, that by the very nature of the case will have implications how you relate to others, and therefore, he argues, and I want to contest that, but he argues, it, it creates the states in which violence in the name of truth that is God, justice that is God, becomes possible, and he would say, becomes also likely in the pluralistic situation in which you often find yourself.
N.T. Wright: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And again, I haven't read Assmann. In fact, when I was reading through your theses, I was making notes of bibliography and thinking, this is a whole other research project if I was to dive into all the stuff that you're quoting here. And I think I'm too old for that now, but the odd thing here and there, but the question of truth clearly is vital there.
But, um, it's, this is a very specific claim being made in the Jewish tradition, in the Christian tradition, and in the Muslim tradition that there is a God who not only has made the world, but is calling it to account, which is one way of saying that this God is intent on doing justice. It's difficult to say he always does justice because people look around at the world and say, you know, it doesn't look as though we're having justice at the moment, you know, you can argue, then you're into the problem of a good God and injustice in the world.
But the idea of a God who has made a world, basically, which is a good world, and will call it to order, and wants that order to be reflected in advance, in and through the people who are worshiping him, that it seems to me is common to the three great so called monotheistic traditions. We'll come back to that later.
Um, the question is, how is that justice done? And if the justice is done by the representatives of this God taking it upon themselves to say, "Okay, we now know how the world should be, so we're going to pave over everything with concrete and do it our way." That's very different too. This is where I come into the monotheism question, to the Christian solution in the New Testament anyway, which is that God himself gets involved and takes the injustice upon himself, and you suddenly have the whole panoply of atonement theology, which needs to be brought in, and which actually in the Western tradition has been marginalized because it's been seen as simply about me and my sin, and how do I get to heaven?
Oh, Jesus died for me, so that's all that. Whereas I think in the New Testament, the death of Jesus, which is central to the, the early Christian vision of the one God is the God who sent his son to do this. This is a way of, uh, of talking about this is how the one true God does justice, which therefore, I love the Sermon on the Mount, can never by definition legitimate the ways of doing justice which other traditions also claiming the, the one godness of what they are would, would be advocating.
Miroslav Volf: So my suggestion in that piece was, I fully agree with you that coming of Jesus Christ, death of Christ, and then, and resurrection and recasting of the character of God in the light of the self revelation of God in Jesus Christ has important bearings and creates a certain fundamental distinctions between, um, you know, Christianity and the other two monotheisms, and there are distinctions between, among these two, as well.
What I was trying to suggest is that even Christianity as simply monotheism, which is to say as something that, as a position that has certain overlaps with the other two monotheisms, even that, uh, would not necessarily have to lead to violence, and that monotheism has, Jewish as well as, um, Islamic, uh, Muslim monotheism have resources in themselves also to push against violence.
For instance, I've tried to argue that, um, uh, all two, all three monotheisms, in some sense, affirm the freedom of religion, even though through most of their histories, neither of them did, neither Christians nor other two. And they affirm definitely freedom of religion of other people to join their crowd. That is to say, you can be free for truth.
You just aren't free, that has been the conclusion, to leave the truth, whether that truth is a Christian truth, or a Muslim, or a Jewish, but there is a kind of internal inconsistency of the two, right, because they give you a freedom of conscience to make one move, but then the freedom of conscience should be there to move, make the other move, and therefore separate yourself from.
Now, if that were, that move, if that's how one understood the question, then the possibility arises for all three monotheisms to think of themselves as being able to live with political plurality without necessarily forcing others to keep the allegiance that they have. And if that was recognized, that would have significant implications about how members of these three faiths or religions, whatever you call the three monotheisms, exercise their duties as political citizens as well as how the rulers of those societies conceptualize the way in which we are ought to live as citizens of a particular state.
N.T. Wright: No, it's fascinating, Miroslav. And as with your opening statement, the introduction, which puts on the table several key things about the universal moral commitment as opposed to being tied to a tribal identity. And you argue that monotheism is a universalist creed compatible with inclusive nationalism, um, a form of special relations framed by universal moral code.
I, I, I wish I, I, I, I wish I could see that more lived out. This does have the feel of the ideal, the noble ideal of a kind of a post Enlightenment or even post United Nations world in which we all now know that there is this Declaration of Human Rights, which, of course, as you and I know, comes very much out of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
This was the point that Pope Benedict made over a decade ago when he warned the United Nations that the whole idea of human rights came from the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that if it cut off those roots, then all that you'd be left with would be a frantic scramble for the supposed high ground of the greatest victimhood, and it would just collapse into a cacophony of squeals of people saying, "No, I'm more of a victim than you are," etc., which is, I think, precisely what's happened.
I love the idea of an inclusive nationalism, inclusive um, monotheism, but even within the different traditions this is very hard to attain. Within a largely Roman Catholic society, if one family in a town in Quebec decides that they're going to become Baptist, they may well have a really hard time of it.
I knew a family who were quite literally run out of town when we lived in Montreal because because where they lived, they had decided they had a new experience, wanted to be Baptist, and this just wasn't on. And so even within a tradition, within a Christian tradition, it can easily happen. And obviously within the different varieties of the Jewish way, the similar things have happened.
And the suggestion to this day that you should be free to move from one faith to another. I remember when I, um, was first lived in Jerusalem, and my host at St. George's Cathedral showed me the baptistry in the cathedral and said, "But this hasn't often been used, because of course, people basically don't convert," and there's a sort of a tacit recognition that's not going to happen.
And if a Muslim wants to become a Christian, they will be well advised to get on a plane, and go and do it somewhere else because it's not going to go down well here. And yes, this is, this looks fine. But as we know, as with Russia and Ukraine, it's very, very difficult to work out in practice. But that then, that does lead me back to my question about whether it's right to see the overarching genus, as it were, as monotheism, and then say, well, you've got Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, or whether, in fact, that is a rather modern construct, which does not really do justice to the specificities of any of the three, and that each of the three would have the right to come back and say it's not sure I quite like being positioned in this triple category.
And I certainly would say that about Trinitarian monotheism, that I don't see monotheism as a larger category with Trinitarian monotheism as just one specific local variation. I think by the time you've added in Jesus of Nazareth, um, and, uh, his incarnation and death, resurrection, and ascension, then what's happened to the category of monotheism is that it's been dismantled and reassembled in quite a new way, um, so much so that, of course, some people, ancient and modern, accuse us of being tritheists.
And there are times when I sometimes think actually might be better to start with tritheism and say, "Actually, we're not tritheists because we're Trinitarians," rather than starting with monotheism and then saying, "But actually, we're Trinitarian monotheists." In other words, I really want to problematize that whole little nexus of our categories at this point.
Miroslav Volf: I hear you. As you know, I come from Jürgen Moltmann, who has problematized this in a very serious way. And maybe just because of that, I just don't find that it is Christianly theologically responsible, and I don't find that it is particularly useful. He ends up not knowing how to put the God back together, how to preserve the unity, how to preserve the unity of what it seems to me, for all the New Testament writers, you would know better than I do, but it seems to me that when I read Apostle Paul, there is a kind of clear affirmation of the oneness of God, and it's our task to figure out how does the affirmation of the oneness of God square with there be worship also to Christ?
And so I'm pushing against that idea, which means that really monotheism is the properly understood, is really overarching category. Now, once you affirm the worship of Jesus Christ, and once you ascribe divinity, and once you have a dialogue between Christ and the Father going on, you're going to have a very complex a kind of monotheism.
And I think it's not just complexity, but also there's going to be a kind of different conception of what it means to love, different conception of what it means to show grace, what it means to live in the world. So it's going to be quite changed. So, in that sense, I agree with you.
N.T. Wright: And not only Jesus, but I mean, I've done some work recently, as you know, on Romans 8. I've got a new little book. And at the heart of Romans 8, you have the Spirit groaning within the groaning of creation, and the Father knowing the mind of the Spirit, which I see as a premythological equivalent of the cry of dereliction from the cross in Matthew and Mark, that Jesus saying, "My God, why did you abandon me?"
And the Spirit groaning inarticulately within the pain of the world. And, uh, it seems to me that Paul's whole argument is so robustly monotheistic throughout the letter to the Romans, but it contains these extraordinary moments within it, and it seems to me that it is robust enough to handle that. This sounds like the agenda for a book you and I ought to try and write together, but as I say, I'm probably too old to embark on such an operation.
Miroslav Volf: That'll be fun, but I fully agree with you, especially with the Spirit. You have this agency, a kind of distinct sense of agency, almost over againstness, not in a negative term, but standing face to one another, as one has between Father and the Son. So also in Romans, Spirit shows up just in those kinds of ways.
And I think that is one of the most fascinating aspects of Romans and, and the kind of, in a trinitarian way, very, very fruitful.
N.T. Wright: But I, I think I, I do think that the question of who human beings are in the middle of all of this, and the retrieval in early Christianity of the Jewish, obviously biblical doctrine of the image could be really, really helpful, because often the patristic discussions of the image, of focused on simply what is it about us which is like something that's true about God, rather than seeing the image as the angled mirror, God's chosen way of self expression in the world.
I think if you put that in the middle, then all sorts of christological and premythological things might come out better, and that would take us back into the question of how God works through human societies and through human rulers and human agendas in a much more theologically robust way. Perhaps, perhaps.
Miroslav Volf: Yeah, I agree with you. I think it would still make us unreliable political allies in a sense that the allegiance is always, fundamental allegiance is always outside of the political realm. And therefore, there is a kind of critical distance as well as participation and affirmation. And that's the element of reliability that is the feature of the following Jesus Christ.
N.T. Wright: I totally agree. As you may know, I've had a slogan for some years now that Christians are called to collaborate without compromise and to critique without dualism. In other words, there's lots of stuff which people want to do in the world that we can say, "Absolutely, we'll do that with you." But then at a certain point, they'll say, "By the way, we're not going to do this."
And we have to say, "No, that's a red line for us." Equally, we have to critique. We have to hold up a mirror to speak truth to power, but to do so not in a dualistic fashion, which implies we're totally right and they're totally wrong. But, which allows, as Jesus with Pilate, that they do have a proper role, and we'll support them in that proper role.
And maintaining that balance, I think, needs to be re-articulated in every generation, because it's very difficult for people to grasp, let alone to keep.
Evan Rosa: I feel like that's a very fitting place to wrap things up. Both of you, I'm so grateful. You're adding helpful categories and words to really a very complex reality that I think has the potential for just really overwhelming the human spirit. And groanings too deep for words is not all that far off or, or really a cry of dereliction in some sense is not that far off from I think the realities of, of violence today.
And so I'm grateful to each of you for providing more words, more categories, more, more understanding, more potential for that. So thank you both very much.
N.T. Wright: Thank you very much. It's a great joy and delight to be able to share this with you and perhaps more and on one day.
Miroslav Volf: Same here Tom. And Evan, thank you for being such a wonderful guide.
Evan Rosa: For The Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright and theologian Miroslav Volf. Production assistance by Macie Bridge. I'm Evan Rosa, and I edit and produce the show.
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