Please note that due to software, not everything in this transcript will be accurate.

Against Ambition

Media – Muhammad Ali recording

John Dickson (studio)

That’s Muhammad Ali — no, not the Egyptian peasant who discovered the so-called Gnostic Gospels in 1945 — the other famous one, who did some boxing. He was born Cassius Clay Jr, later changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and became known by another name: “The Greatest.”And fair enough. Ali is widely regarded as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time … though some place Joe Louis at no.1 and Ali at no.2. What we just heard was the opening of his 1963 spoken-word album, I Am the Greatest — recorded while he was still Cassius Clay. We’ll put a link to the full poem in the show notes. It’s fun. Ali often used poetry as psychological warfare, trying to rattle his opponents before he even stepped into the ring. Before fighting Sonny Liston in 1964, he boasted: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.” Muhammad Ali was driven to be the greatest. And in sport, that feels natural, right? We want winners. We put athletes on pedestals. We want them to be great — the greatest. It makes for spectacle. And, frankly, it’s a lot of fun watching people at the very top of their game. My guest today wants us to think more deeply about all this. Is striving to be the greatest actually good for us? Miroslav Volf — one of the greatest theologians of our day, perhaps ironically — says no. Striving for excellence is healthy. Striving for superiority — needing to be better than someone else — is not good for us, and not good for society. I’m John Dickson, and this is Undeceptions.

Undeceptions theme

John Dickson:
Your new book – you’re saying that Christianity, it, it charts a path between giving up on this world and its wonderful pursuits and achievements, and ambition, understood as striving to be superior over others. Can you give us the thesis in a nutshell before we really drill down into some of these extraordinary ideas?

Miroslav Volf:
Yeah. So, I became, uh, increasingly persuaded that, uh, striving for superiority, and by that I mean striving to be better than others as a kind of a governing striving in our lives. Uh, even though it is pervasive, it qualifies almost all domains of our culture. Think of education, for instance. Think of politics. Think of economics. Think of even arts, and of course, think of sports, uh, and you can add more. All of them are predicated on this attempt to be better than others, and we, we expect from this both entertainment and, uh, a kind of betterment of the human condition in many ways. It’s a feature of, uh, a current state of m-modernity.

John Dickson (studio)

That’s Miroslav Volf, Henry B, Wright Professor of Theology and director of the Yale Centre for Faith and Culture at Yale University. In a previous episode, I called him one of our greatest living theologians. But after working on this episode, I’m questioning my use of ‘greatest’ everywhere … 

 

Miroslav Volf:
And I’ve come to believe that this is deeply, uh, problematic. What’s deeply problematic is not so much our striving. What’s deeply problematic is also not striving for excellence. What is problematic and kind of an empty value is striving to be better than somebody else, uh, or striving to be better than anyone, being the greatest of all time or something of that sort. It twists the character of our achievement, the character of our lives, and has tremendous negative consequences.

John Dickson (studio)

Striving for superiority isn’t just a modern thing—even if, as Miroslav argues, it’s more ingrained in modern society. In his book, he points to the poetry of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod, roughly 700 BC. Hesiod’s account of the goddess Eris gives us a glimpse into an early understanding of rivalry—of the urge to get ahead of others. Eris is basically the Greek word for “strife” or “rivalry.” In Hesiod’s telling, there are two forms of Eris: a bad one, associated with conflict and destruction, and a good one, which spurs competition, hard work, and innovation. Here’s how he describes the “good” Eris:

Reading

“She drives even the unskilled man to work; and if someone who lacks property sees someone else who is rich, he likewise hurries off to sow and plant and set his house in order; neighbour competes with neighbour for prosperity. This Eris is good for men.” 

John Dickson (studio)

Compare that, says Volf, with a similarly ancient text – the Book of Ecclesiastes:

“All toil and all skill in work come from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” – Ecclesiastes chapter 4 

Hesiod says striving for superiority is a good thing. The writer of Ecclesiastes says not so much. Good or bad, it’s clear that striving for superiority has been around for quite a while. Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau pointed to striving for superiority as the foundation of human inequality, the driver of one-up-manship. The person striving for superiority lives “only in the opinion of others … he derives the sentiment of his own existence solely from their judgment.” Listen to this and tell me this isn’t a 300-year-old prophecy of social media: 

Reading

“Everything [is] being reduced to appearances, everything becomes contrivance and play-acting; honor, friendship, virtue, and often even vices in which one at length discovers the secret of glorying; how, in a word, forever asking others what we are without ever daring to ask it of ourselves, in the midst of so much Philosophy, humanity, politeness, and Sublime maxims, we have nothing more than a deceiving and frivolous exterior, honor without virtue, reason without wisdom and pleasure without happiness.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Second Discourse

John Dickson:
Social media, uh, embodies that almost through and through. Am I right?

Miroslav Volf:
Yeah. That, that, that, that’s exactly right, and if you want to be kind of specific, the psychological health, uh, especially of teenage girls suffers, uh, greatly. Those curated images with which one compares one everyday frumpy self, uh, and inability to kind of catch up with that redound to us feeling, feeling ourselves only as inferior. And then come these moments when there seem to be rewards when we get, uh, enough likes, uh, or whatever is equivalent to those, uh, likes. Uh, and then we feel ourselves that we are somebody, but it immediately follows with this almost, uh, in, in extreme cases, with self-loathing. ‘I’m inadequate’. And it kind of feeds this, that the entirety of the culture broadly construed of striving for superiority feeds, uh, a sense of inferiority and therefore a sense of, uh, self-loathing, partly because now since the world is in our living room, we measure ourselves, uh, with those who can portray themselves in the best possible light from anywhere almost in the world.

John Dickson (studio)

Striving for superiority may be ancient, but it looks different today—and is arguably more pervasive than ever. Capitalism has changed the rules of the game. Productivity, efficiency, and achievement are front and centre. On some level, we’re all competing to succeed. But to what end? Volf argues that we’ve lost a clear sense of excellence itself. Instead, we judge our success by comparing ourselves with others. We no longer measure ourselves against an objective standard, but against the people around us. As Volf says, “striving for superiority” is everywhere. Stay with us …

Break

Reading

Once upon a time there was a lily that stood in an isolated spot beside a small brook and was well known to some nettles and also to a few other small flowers nearby. The lily was, according to the Gospel’s truthful account, more beautifully clothed than Solomon in all his glory and in addition was joyful and free of care all the day long. 

John Dickson (studio)

That’s the beginning of a parable from the 19th century Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, found in his book Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. He’s riffing off Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which you can read in the Gospel of Matthew, but there’s this little bit where Jesus says:

“Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don’t toil, neither do they spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these.”

 

Miroslav Volf:
Well the most interesting, uh, uh, stories that I… or, or renderings of this issue, uh, I draw from his comments, um, uh, almost like sermonic comments to on the Sermon on the Mount. And this is the story of the beautiful lily. Consider the lilies in, in the field, even Solomon wasn’t dressed as one of those. And Jesus mentions also birds, and then Kierkegaard’s imagination is absolutely incredible. So he has a bir- bird and the, uh, and the lily talking bird, naughty bird, who’s seen everything in the world flying up in the air, talks to the br- uh, to the little, uh, lily, which is happily living by, uh, a- and growing by some brook, and starts telling her about those lilies, uh, somewhere there, uh, somewhere, uh, away, even crown imperial lilies, the best lilies, uh, i- in, in the world.

Read

It so happened that one day a little bird came and visited the lily …This little bird was a naughty bird. Instead of putting itself in the lily’s place, instead of delighting in its loveliness and delighting in its innocent bliss, the bird would show off in its feeling of freedom by making the lily feel its lack of freedom. Not only that, but the little bird was also chatty and talked fast and loose, truthfully and untruthfully, about how in other places there were entirely different gorgeous lilies in great abundance, places where there were a rapture and merriment, a fragrance, a brilliance of colors, a singing of birds that were beyond all description.

 

Miroslav Volf:
And everybody, e- every time the friend comes, the bird, uh, lily feels worse about herself until they finally decide, well, maybe the bird should peck, uh, around my roots, uh, uh, the roots of the lily, pick up ginger lily and carry her where those crown imperial lilies are, so she can bask and can somehow reflect the glory upon herself.

Reading

“And then to look as inferior as I do,” said the lily to itself, “to be as insignificant as the little bird says I am—oh, why did I not come into existence some other place, under other conditions, why did I not become a Crown Imperial!” The little bird had told it that of all the lilies the Crown Imperial was regarded as the most beautiful and was the envy of all other lilies. 

Miroslav Volf:
And the moral of the story need not be drawn. As, uh, the bird was flying, the lily, lily withered. And, uh, it’s not just that in this flying to them, it withered. It started withering even as she was contemplating, uh, seduced by the bird, uh, her own inferiority. And it’s a, it’s a wonderful, a wonderful story set against the backdrop when Jesus says “Do not worry what you should wear.” And Kierkegaard takes it not, not do not worry about to, to have something to wear, but do not worry as we do worry these days, right? When we worry, most of us, don’t worry whether we have anything, though there are plenty of people like that as well. Many of us worry, uh, what is it that should make us look actually, in some ways good, superior, better than others so they can divert eyes from somebody else to ourselves.

John Dickson:
Whenever I’ve been in your presence, I, I worry that my socks are not the equal of your socks. And anyone who’s seen you in public will know what I mean.

Miroslav Volf:
I have loosened a li- a little bit and don’t choose them as carefully as I used to.

John Dickson (studio)

In comparing itself to others, the lily forgets its own intrinsic glory. It feels the anguish of perceived inferiority, strives for superiority, and withers. Volf says this is a real problem for human beings as social creatures. As soon as there are other people, their differences make us question ourselves. For 17th century English poet John Milton, striving for superiority is at the heart of the human condition. More than that, it’s the condition of Satan, striving for preeminence over God.

Reading

Who first seduc’d them to that foul revolt?
Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv’d
The Mother of Mankind, what time his Pride
Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
He trusted to have equal’d the most High,
If he oppos’d; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1

John Dickson (studio)

It’s very dramatic … great reading. But what truths are there for us? 

John Dickson:
I wanna move to John Milton. Very, very different, uh, context. Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained. Uh, what does he bring to this theme?

Miroslav Volf:
Yeah, so, so I, I think that he reads the almost the entire history o-of s-saving history and history of fall a-and salvation through these lin-lens of striving for superiority. And you see it very, very much, uh, paradigmatically enacted in the striving of the second one in heaven, namely Lucifer, um, to be equal to and, uh, in some ways also surpass God. And so especially as the second one, he could not stand his inferiority to somebody who is, uh, above him. And his entire endeavor then becomes that of, uh, of striving, striving that is self-defeating. And he knows that it’s self-defeating, that he can never

John Dickson:
Self-deception has to play a role here,

Miroslav Volf:
Yeah. S-certain-certainly he, he does. And certain kind of al-almost captivity, uh, to it, uh, which, which so well illustrates what’s happening with us even when we are not, not aware that, that, that slithers that notion that we somehow have to be better than others slithers into us. A-and we can’t get rid of it even when we’re aware of it. And Satan knows that the service to God is, is easy. God wants nothing more than, uh, genuine gratitude. Gratitude in joy, not return, but just gratitude as return. And yet he cannot abide the second position, right? Um, and, uh, kind of Milton goes then through fall of Adam and Eve, uh, reads them from that perspective. Um, a-and

John Dickson:
Eve’s competition with Adam, uh, her,  her lamenting her inferiority,

Miroslav Volf:
That’s right, because she was created inferior and Satan plays on this.

John Dickson (studio)

Ha! Just chiming in here to note that this is Milton’s 17th-century view. Miroslav makes clear Milton is wrong to see Eve as inferior – even if his account has some illuminating insights into human competitiveness! 

Miroslav Volf:
And the goal of Satan, of course, is in order to spoil God’s world so that somehow he would increase his own kingdom and perhaps, and that’s what Milton puts, perhaps be even greater than God’s. So even after he has fallen, he has the same, uh, kind of aspiration. And then, uh, Milton also reads, uh, that the main  thrust of Christ’s work as being enacted in the course of temptations of Christ, and those temptations circle around, again, this sense of being the, the, the greatest, wanting to be the, the, the greatest. And Jesus, um, uh, withstands temptations, and then the Satan falls from the pinnacle of heaven where he has taken Jesus, uh, in order to tempt him. So it, it was in a sense another fall of Satan, uh, and defeat of him that, uh, is kind of sketch in Paradise Regained.

John Dickson (studio)

So, Satan is defeated – twice – in his attempted striving for superiority over God and in Christ’s redeeming of the race of Adam and Eve. But some might say God himself is the true supremacist, always ensuring everyone is put in their place. Well, that would sort of work for ancient Zeus, king of the gods, but not for the one God of the Bible, as Miroslav points out! 

John Dickson:
What does it mean for God to glorify himself? What does the word glorify even mean? I mean, yeah, so theologically or sociologically, speak to that

Miroslav Volf:
Yeah. So, so, like, I got one way to s- to, to think about, um, uh, God’s glory is that God is the supreme being who, who seeks to soak up all the the glory. That is to say, uh, our function or creatures’ function in this view is to deflect all the glory that may be anywhere and trace it back to God so that God would be elevated, made higher – kind of the major problem with this is that God cannot be made higher. That is to say that God always, from the beginning to the end and every all the time in between, is the one who is the highest. And it, it kind of also pushes against the idea that we have to have revealed in, uh, in Jesus Christ, and that is that, uh, you see it, uh, at the end of, uh, John’s gospel. You see it also in, in Philippians. And that is to say that humiliation of God in doing the work of salvation is God’s glory, right? Uh, and once you start thinking of it in, in those, in those terms, uh, you realize that God’s glory is precisely this glory of his infinite, uh, infinite love.  Luther, I love this, this thing from, from Luther. In his commentary on Magnificat, on Mary’s song in, in Luke’s gospel, when she comes to Elizabeth and she’s, she’s pregnant. “My soul magnifies the Most High.” And then Luther starts this piece,  and says, “Well, God is the, the, the Most High. Since God is the Most High, God cannot look upwards because there’s nobody upwards. Since God is the Most High, God cannot look sideways because there’s no one who is equal to him. When God looks, God looks down, and the further you are from God, the more he attends to you.” And I thought, oh, what an incredible, absolutely simple and incredible way to speak about this unconditional love of God. And then he contrasts that. The next page, you turn the page, and then he talks about how human beings are. We come to a party. He doesn’t mention party, but a similar kind of situation, maybe church in his case or whatever other, uh, group of people. And as soon as we p- are there, we look who’s the most prominent, and somehow we can meet that person, talk to that person. We are climbing our ways up wherever we find ourselves. God does exact opposite. And so in that sense, God Almighty Himself is the example of the humility for which Christian faith, uh, stands. He lowers himself so that he can lift us up, and that’s his glory.

John Dickson:
One of the things I had to, uh, read a couple of times, not because I didn’t understand it but because I was quite moved by it, was your discussion or Milton’s discussion of God seeking his own glory, and your discussion of that and why, uh, God’s seeking of his own glory is not the same negative thing as our seeking glory. Can you, can you unpack that for us? ‘Cause it, it’s really moving, and sometimes sceptics throw this at us that, “Oh, God’s just looking for his own glory. He’s no better than a despot.”

Miroslav Volf:
Yeah, the glory of God is the human being who lives with integrity, uh, and, and, and humility. So, so it’s not somehow, um, uh, elevating God and abasing oneself, but rather living in the fullness of the beauty of what it means to be human, undaunted by any comparison, with others and with integrity that is truly a way to glorify God and is what God glories in.

Reading

Yet so much bounty is in God, such grace,
That who advances his glory, not their own,
Then he himself to glory will advance.  

John Milton, Paradise Regained, Book 3

John Dickson:
The Apostle Paul, uh, you move back 15 centuries, and you end up with Paul. He’s often accused of, you know, being sexist and reinforcing hierarchy and so on, yet, yet you draw on him as one of the richest resources for your theme

Miroslav Volf:
Yeah, um, I, I, I think when it comes to this question of, um, of self-worth, to  use, modern, uh, terminology, uh, I, I think he’s just about the best. I think, in fact, that both Milton and Kierkegaard, who are superb in very different ways, both draw on him and draw on this, uh, amazing passage from Philippians about Christ who does not, uh, hold onto equality with, with God but becomes a servant. It’s, it’s– I-i-it is an amazing and amazingly fruitful, uh, text.

Reading

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Though he was God,
 he did not think of equality with God
 as something to cling to.
Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
    he took the humble position of a slave
    and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
he humbled himself in obedience to God
 and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians – chapter 2 

Miroslav Volf:
But, but this is the kind of center, so to speak, of, of Paul’s concern, both his instructions to, uh, his churches, say, Romans and Corinthians, uh, in later parts of them, uh, and also his struggle with some of the opponents, uh, especially in 2 Corinthians, but in his writing also, uh, in, um, Romans 3 and 4 in particularly articulating the character of, of salvation. They’re all about absence of boasting and it comes against the backdrop of his own sense of, um, righteousness, his own sense that he had to morally perform, and indeed, in some ways, he felt compulsion to morally outperform others, to be at the, at the, the best that he could be, and that was always better than, uh, than somebody else. And Paul kind of pushes, uh, there. And I, I think my favourite, uh, passage in this regard is what he says, um, in 1 Corinthians 4 when he asked this rhetorical question: What do you have that you have not received? And of course, to boast, you have to think that you have something that you, uh, have not received. And then he immediately asks, “Well, if you have received it, why then do you boast? What makes you better than somebody else? Everything that you have, you have received.” And even if you want to quarrel with Paul here and say, “Well, maybe I’ve contributed something,” I always say … let’s, let’s take my examples. So I write a book. That’s some kind of an achievement. Little achievement, right? I have a job. That’s kind of a little bit of an achievement. And if I ask the question, what percentage of that achievement is my own? And if I really honestly think about it, I would say maybe 2, 3%. That’s mine. The rest- and even that I’ve received from God, right? But the rest I’ve received from I don’t know how many people that surround me, that preceded me. And the, the trick is that I can’t even tell you which 2 or 3% that is.

John Dickson:
The socks.

Miroslav Volf:
The socks.

John Dickson (studio)

Miroslav is first and foremost a theologian – he’s certainly a great philosopher and cultural critic, but he’s a theologian who has a knack of showing why deeply Christian ideas have existential significance. And this is clear in his discussion of justification by faith. This ultimately comes from the Apostle Paul in the first century but it was at the heart of Augustinian theology – the thinking of Augustine of Hippo in the late fourth century / early fifth – and it was the spark of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Basically, justification by faith just means that God considers us right with him (just/righteous) not through external markers like circumcision or kosher food laws, nor through moral achievements like obeying the Ten Commandments, but by entrusting ourselves to divine mercy. You find it built into the OT law itself – that’s why there’s a Day of Atonement in ancient Israel. You find it in the songs, like where King David (a thousand years before Jesus) sings in Psalm 51:

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.”

Perhaps my favourite rendition of justification by faith comes from a parable Jesus told:

Reading

“Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God.  – Gospel of Luke, chapter 18

John Dickson (studio)

Man … I love that! 

John Dickson:
You beautifully tie this in to Paul’s radical notion of, well, the Christian doctrine of justification through faith, that really you bring nothing, uh, and even faith is a gift. Can you, can you connect that … what sounds like esoteric salvation theology with the very practical issue that you’re talking about?

Miroslav Volf:
You know, it, it, it’s, it’s really, um, far from esoteric, uh, theology. It’s really at the heart of every human being’s identity. First, let’s start with creation. The fact that we are creatures means that we are given to ourselves by God. It means that we are in a particular way precious. Precious to God and, uh, in, in a way precious, uh, uh, to, to ourselves. And then you have the same idea that we are completely restored to ourselves. We are being kept in a right relationship to God by the sheer act of God’s giving without our contribution. Our being is a given being rather than achieved being. And think about this: if I want to … if I need to always achieve myself, that’s what this book is pushing against. I need to always to know what, what it– uh, that I’ve achieved myself. I measure myself against, against others, and you are on that treadmill, and you are constantly moving and constantly staying on the same place existentially. Whereas doctrine of justification or the fact that we are unconditionally loved and affirmed and held by God is such a liberating message. Think of it this way. I think of it sometimes this way: every time we get up, uh, we stand before the mirror and, uh, we need to perform ourselves and to make ourselves into something, and the whole day we need to perform because we’re constantly being judged, uh, by others. Our worth is being assessed, and if our worth is in our looks, in our achievement, we’re constantly under, under pressure. Freed from this idea that our worth comes from our achievement, we are truly free And beautiful too.

John Dickson (studio)

This is a freeing thought. But if I’m not striving for superiority, what should I be doing?  Isn’t there are danger these theological insights will get in the way of human achievement?

John Dickson:
Where is the line between striving to be superior and just bettering yourself?

Miroslav Volf:
Well, I mean I realize that sometimes it’s hard and our, our psychology is such that sometimes it’s hard to draw precise lines. But I think one way to, to do so is to ask, who are you competing with? Are you competing with yourself or are you competing with somebody else? And the second question that I would ask is, do you have an ideal of excellence to which you are committed? Or does what is excellent come to you simply through competitive performance of those who are considered to be best in that field? We do have fields where that’s the case, that often the best, uh, you know, the only way to know what excellence is, is to see the best, uh, player, right? There are no independent, uh, criteria in some ways. But if you take these two criteria, you can apply one in all domains, another one maybe in some domains. I think that helps quite a bit. At least it helps me to kind of draw this line. And my point is also not in this book, oh, we can rid ourselves completely of that vice, which I think it is vice. I think my sense is we can come to the point and make it, uh, a point of our striving for sanctification, to use an old term, uh, where that’s not a dominant value for us, where that’s there and we’re aware and we deal with it, but it doesn’t infest important domains of our of our lives where we are kind of embarrassed about the idea, as I am sometimes embarrassed. This is crazy. There’s something yucky about this, that, that you, you want to be always better than, than others. What’s, what’s wrong with you, Miroslav? I said to my… I say to myself, right? And so with some of those practical considerations and those two rules, uh, I, I kind of muddle through life.

Break 2

Media – Triple J clip

John Dickson (studio)

That’s a short TikTok clip from Triple J, a radio station with Australia’s national broadcaster, ABC. Journo Lucy Smith chats with American DJ John Summit about the cultural phenomenon found in Australia and New Zealand called ‘tall poppy syndrome’ – a tendency to cut others down for their achievements. Some people might justify tall poppy syndrome as a reaction against the boasting or self-promotion of the “tall poppy” – the person who is achieving and maybe big noting their success. It reflects the Aussie values of equality, humility and the idea that everyone should get a “fair go”. Others argue it’s actually just a form of envy or inverted snobbery. Is that all we’re talking about here? Are Christians afraid of success, against progress, against innovation? Is this whole episode a case of tall poppy syndrome? Friedrich Nietzsche might have something to say on this – the desire of the ‘weak’ to cut down the ‘strong’.

John Dickson:
You’re an authority on Nietzsche. You’re one of the people that really understands Nietzsche. I remember asking… You will have forgotten it, uh, but I remember asking you in Sydney about Nietzsche, and you said, “Well, there are several views,” and I thought, “Okay, I don’t understand Nietzsche after all.” But I wanna ask you, what would Nietzsche say to your book?

Miroslav Volf:
That’s very interesting, interesting question. You know, strangely enough, originally I had Nietzsche as an interlocutor planned in the book, but the b- book was growing too much, and I decided, “Okay, I’ll, uh, I, I won’t, uh, I won’t use,  him.” 

John Dickson:
Didn’t he, in, in places like Genealogy of Morals and The Antichrist, didn’t he, um, critique the way Christianity, uh, Judaism, Christianity, Paul, uh, subverted the noble classical virtues because it, it wanted to preserve what nature wanted to discard? You know, uh, Paul talks of giving honor to the lowest things. I- isn’t that something Nietzsche really thought was illogical?

Miroslav Volf:
Yes. He, he, he, he, he thought it was, uh, well, unnatural. Um, he thought that…

John Dickson:
A transvaluation of values, yeah

Miroslav Volf:
Yeah. That it– he basically thought that that’s gonna, uh, make human beings weaker. Uh, that’s gonna preserve that which is, which is weak at the expense of the, uh, o-o-of the strong, and, uh, it won’t give you kind of competitive, uh, um, advantage in, in certain ways. You won’t be ab- you, you’re not striving anymore. You’re just helping somebody. That, that’s why for him, uh, empathy is, uh, i-is rather a problematic virtue. 

Reading

Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands in antithesis to the tonic emotions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life: it has a depressive effect. One loses force when one pities. Pity on the whole thwarts the law of evolution, which is the law of selection. Pity preserves what is ripe for destruction.
…

What is good?—All that increases the feeling of power, will to power, power itself, in man.What is bad?—All that proceeds from weakness.What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that a resistance is overcome.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist

John Dickson:
You’re very clear in the book that Jesus didn’t invent this concept. You show beautifully that it’s really a Hebraic Jewish idea long before it’s picked up by Jesus. However, you do end up saying Jesus is the clearest embodiment of this principle. Is that just what you’d expect from a Christian theologian?

Miroslav Volf:
Maybe. Maybe i’m just, uh, just blind, uh, to my own prejudices in this regard. But it would seem to me that it’s a clear expressed in the clearest way and then embodied in, uh, uh, in, in a matchless, uh, way. A way that is so radical that some people shy away from, from, uh, valorizing it as something really, really important. But, you know, you, you have it in the, in the Hebrew Bible. Certainly, this has been prepared for us, uh, there and, and we ought to celebrate it there. And I, I love the example, and, uh, one of my favorite, uh, Hebrew Bible scholars, a Jewish scholar Jon Levenson he reads this passage, uh, where prophet, uh, where Deuteronomist asks, uh, why did- to reflect on why did God love Israel? And then basically says it’s not because of some achievement of Israel, because simply because God has fallen in love with Israel, which is to say a certain way of describing a choice of God. God loved Israel not on account of any achievement of Israel, but simply on account of God’s love. That’s also what motivates God’s creation, and that’s what motivates God’s choice of Israel. [00:35:30] And even with Abraham, um, s-uh, some scholars push against what I’m going to say right now. But even with Abraham, you don’t have any explanation what it was that G- made God choose Abraham. It just comes out of blue, uh, God calls Abraham. And I think in these, uh, ideas, we, we, we see that, uh, achievement is not, uh, the, the principle, uh, on which God operates and relates to human beings. Now, when it comes to Jesus, that, that, that becomes exponentially emphasized, and it’s emphasized in the sense that achievement is that humility of service. That, that’s what constitutes achievement. So the radicality of love becomes kind of inverse achievement, not something that you pat yourself on the back, but precisely something that is made possible by that very God who values humility.

John Dickson (studio)

To end his book, Miroslav offers 24 theses, a summary, if you like, of why we might think again about striving for superiority. This one caught my attention: 

“One of the most revolutionary injunctions in the New Testament – a key aspect of the excellence to which the followers of Christ should aspire – is that each person in a community should treat all others as if they were superior to themselves, superior not in achievement but in importance. Obedience to this injunction is likely the best way to subvert striving for superiority and the resulting hierarchies of honor, which all depend more on relative than absolute differences.” 

Media: Miroslav Volf on Q&A

John Dickson:
Some of our Australian listeners, uh, will remember Miroslav Volf on ABC’s Q&A program, a prime time, pretty scary event. I don’t remember you feeling scared, but it’s like the Areopagus of Australian TV

Miroslav Volf:
I know, I know.

John Dickson:
With a host that is very critical of Christianity. But you … It was, it was wonderful, but, uh, y- you made a statement that struck everyone, including atheist host Tony Jones. You said, “Christianity flourishes best from the margins,” or something like that.

Media – Miroslav Volf on Q&A

John Dickson:
And so now as I read this latest book, I, I wanna ask what, uh, what do you want to say to churches that are anxious about losing their superiority in culture and so on?

Miroslav Volf:
I think it’s a really wrong aspiration to acquire back superiority. In fact, I was thinking just today, this morning, about this very, very question. I just wish – I always say to my, to myself, uh, I bemoan that Jesus Christ has become our moral stranger. I don’t bemoan the loss of Christian culture. Christian culture has its good sides, but it had its bad sides, downsides, significant downsides. I want to see Jesus and the life that he led, kind of the radicality of his service to every human being, um, his critique of hypocrisy which pervades our life, his critique of, um Wealth I, I wish that we would rediscover that. His critique of fame too. And I can go on. I wish we would rediscover this and not worry about what happens to us. Be content to be where we are and be content to be at margins. I’m always I mean, I come from the church that was mildly persecuted. That, that was my growing up. But I’m always struck even now when I read the Gospels, how often, not just Gospels, the whole entire New Testament, how often expectation of persecution rather than of cultural dominance is what early church had without any complaint about it And so that’s what I wish for us. And even, there’s in First Peter, which is written to persecuted community. Again, not heavily, but to, uh, certainly heavily disadvantaged. There’s no encouragement for them to fight for being tolerated. That’s gonna come later, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea. But you have very clearly in that text that you should honor everyone. Not seek to be honored, but honor. And honor not just the king who is your superior, your, uh, ruler, but honor everyone. And I think there’s something really beautiful about this, and we should have courage to stand by this moral beauty of the Christian message and not worry about cultural dominance.

John Dickson:
One quick question from a listener, and then I have a final question and I’ll let you go. Uh, the question from the listener is, um, what does all this have to say to the skeptic, uh, who, who doesn’t believe in the Jesus narrative? Uh, what, um, what, what advice or wisdom do you think there is in this concept you’re pursuing?

Miroslav Volf:
Well, I mean, a skeptic might be scandalized. I mean, Jesus was– we see there was prophecy, but at the very beginning, sign contested. It’s both a promise, promise of world’s salvation and a contested sign. So my, my sense is that, um, some– there are some people who are, who are going to contest, uh, and there’s reason for contestation. And we don’t, uh– we somehow have this idea that if we just r- performed rightly, we would be embraced. And I don’t think Jesus had that. Uh, or we would persuade others, and I don’t think that’s a valid expectation. And in that sense, I would say our job is to be faithful. Uh, our job is to express, articulate the message in as convincing way as we, as we can. And if you sketch the vision of a life, very few people will actually say it’s not beautiful. They may say it’s unrealizable. They may say, um, it, it’s gonna get you in trouble.

John Dickson:
Or ‘Christians don’t look like that’.

Miroslav Volf:
There we go. Exactly. Whatever. But, but, but it’s gonna have power, and I’m interested in that kind of power.

Undeceptions theme