After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity
Overview
In After Our Likeness, the inaugural volume in the Sacra Doctrina series, Miroslav Volf explores the relationship between persons and community in Christian theology. The focus is the community of grace, the Christian church. The point of departure is the thought of the first Baptist, John Smyth, and the notion of church as “gathered community” that he shared with Radical Reformers. Volf seeks to counter the tendencies toward individualism in Protestant ecclesiology and to suggest a viable understanding of the church in which both person and community are given their proper due. In the process he engages in a sustained and critical ecumenical dialogue with the Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiologies of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and the metropolitan John Zizioulas. The result is a brilliant ecumenical study that spells out a vision of the church as an image of the triune God.
Looking at theology through the lens of a postmodern culture, this volume is an essential and highly significant work. All Scripture passages are linked to your favorite Bible translation in your library. With the advanced search features of Logos Bible Software, you can perform powerful searches by topic or Scripture reference.
- Discusses personal experiences from the author
- Includes bibliographical references and indexes
Top Highlights
“I will join this long tradition by taking Matt. 18:20 as the foundation not only for determining what the church is, but also for how it manifests itself externally as a church. Where two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, not only is Christ present among them, but a Christian church is there as well, perhaps a bad church, a church that may well transgress against love and truth, but a church nonetheless.” (Page 136)
“The first lesson: no church without the reign of God. The church lives from something and toward something that is greater than the church itself.” (Page x)
“Put most broadly, my topic is the relation between persons and community in Christian theology. The focus is the community of grace, the Christian church. The point of departure is the thought of the first Baptist, John Smyth, and the notion of church as ‘gathered community’ that he shared with Radical Reformers. The purpose of the book is to counter the tendencies toward individualism in Protestant ecclesiology and to suggest a viable understanding of the church in which both person and community are given their proper due. The ultimate goal is to spell out a vision of the church as an image of the triune God. The road I have taken is that of a sustained and critical ecumenical dialogue with Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiology in the persons of their more or less official representatives.” (Pages 1–2)
“The following study is concerned with placing this cry of protest of the Free Churches—‘We are the church’—into a trinitarian framework and with elevating it to the status of an ecclesiological program, and with doing so in dialogue with Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiologies. I am hopeful that this will also indirectly provide a modest theological contribution to clarifying the problem the political protest ‘We are the people!’ presents to social philosophy. My primary objective, however, is to contribute to the rediscovery of the church.” (Page 11)
One of the most important contributions made to the study of ecclesiology, not only within Protestant theology where good ecclesiology is often scarce, but also in the field of the ecumenical study of the Church.
—Anglican Theological Review
Volf offers a significant contribution to the debate from a free-church point of view, grounded in biblical and patristic research, but taking account of the ecumenical studies and contemporary systematic contributions of Moltmann and Pannenberg, especially their eschatological orientations. The author’s own background, in both the Croatian context where Catholic and Orthodox churches dominate and working within the evangelical scholarly community, gives his research and ecumenical breadth and uniqueness of point of view that makes its contribution to the discussion particularly important.
—Journal of Ecumenical Studies
Miroslav Volf is Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture and Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. He is also the author of Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation.