A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good

Miroslav Volf's most recent publication, A Public Faith, furthers a discussion that has become prominent in his recent works: the challenge posed by exclusive monotheism in a pluralist polity. This question frames the work. Volf spends the majority of the book reconciling claims that an exclusive religion takes a violent societal stance or one that mandates conformity among its inhabitants. Volf's specific point, however, is that Christianity (even with its exclusive claims), when understood and practiced properly, actually affirms political pluralism. Volf's claim rests on six major premises predicated on God's relational construct with creation and the subsequent “playing out” of that paradigm through a type of natural ethic that commands humans to love one another and abide by the Golden Rule. He begins by chronicling the ways which faith has not been played out successfully in the public forum. Volf posits that the only correct functioning of Christianity in public is with the understanding of Christianity as a prophetic religion. He defines a prophetic religion as a religion that both goes out of and “ascends” creation to gain truth and then descends/returns to promulgate it. Christianity has malfunctioned in both directions. For example, when Christianity creates “truths” for selfish reasons, it fails to ascend a materialistically driven creation. Likewise, when Christians distort a type of ultimate, “ascended” truth for gain it is a “return” malfunction. The goal of the prophetic religion is inherently constructive and relies on a conscious decision to put the other before self.