Miroslav Volf on how to rightly love a radically ambivalent world.
“The world, our planetary home, certainly needs to be changed, improved. But what it needs even more is to be rightly loved.”
Miroslav Volf begins his 2025 Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen with a provocative theological inquiry: What difference does belief in God make for our relationship to the world? Drawing deeply from Nietzsche’s “death of God,” Schopenhauer’s despair, and Hannah Arendt’s vision of amor mundi, Volf explores the ambivalence of modern life—its beauty and horror, its resonance and alienation. Can we truly love the world, even amidst its chaos and collapse? Can a belief in the God of Jesus Christ provide motivation to love—not as appetite or utility, but as radical, unconditional affirmation? Volf suggests that faith offers not a retreat from reality, but an anchor amid its disorder—a trust that enables us to hope, even when the world’s goodness seems impossible. This first lecture challenges us to consider the character of our relationship to the world, between atheism and theism, critique and love.
Episode Highlights
- “The world, our planetary home, certainly needs to be changed, improved. But what it needs even more is to be rightly loved.”
- “Resonance seems both indispensable and insufficient. But what should supplement it? What should underpin it?”
- “Our love for that lived world is what these lectures are about.”
- “We can reject and hate one form of the world because we love the world as such.”
- “Though God is fully alive… we often find the same God asleep when our boats are about to capsize.”
Helpful Links and References
Show Notes
- Paul Nimmo introduces the Gifford Lectures and Miroslav Volf’s theme
- Volf begins with gratitude and scope: belief in God and our world
- Introduces Nietzsche's “death of God” as cultural metaphor
- Frames plausibility vs. desirability of God's existence
- Introduces Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance
- Problem: resonance is not enough; what underpins motivation to care?
- Introduces amor mundi as thematic direction of the lectures
- Contrasts Marx’s atheism and human liberation with Nietzsche’s nihilism
- Analyzes Dante and Beatrice in Hägglund’s This Life
- Distinguishes between “world” and “form of the world”
- Uses cruise ship metaphor to critique modern life’s ambivalence
- Discusses Augustine, Hannah Arendt, and The Home of God
- Reflections on divine providence and theodicy
- Biblical images: flood, exile, and the sleeping God
- Ends with preview of next lectures on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
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Production Notes
- This podcast featured Miroslav Volf
- Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
- Hosted by Evan Rosa
- Production Assistance by Taylor Craig and Macie Bridge
- A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
- Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give
- Special thanks to Dr. Paul Nimmo, Paula Duncan, and the media team at the University of Aberdeen. Thanks also to the Templeton Religion Trust for their support of the University of Aberdeen’s 2025 Gifford Lectures and to the McDonald Agape Foundation for supporting Miroslav’s research towards the lectureship.
