David Brooks and Miroslav Volf Discuss Flourishing

David Brooks and Miroslav Volf Discuss Flourishing February 25, 2016

I’m finding this discussion on “flourishing and the good life” between David Brooks of the New York Times and Miroslav Volf, systematic theologian of Yale Divinity School, compelling. I say this not because I agree with all that either man says or stands for–though I find each man a stimulating thinker–but because it’s gratifying to see a thoughtful conversation on the meaning of humanity at a place like Yale.

It’s not surprising in this age of ascendant secularism that a divinity school center, the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, would need to host such a forum. Volf is right that religion, and in particular Christianity, has the resources our world so badly needs to understand the meaning of our lives; Brooks is right that our age needs to recover moral formation as a discipline (I enjoyed his recent book The Road to Character; see also the helpful Gospel Coalition review of Volf’s new text).

I’m excited to share that very soon, Midwestern Seminary (where I teach systematic theology) will announce a brand-new center with a mission not altogether dissimilar from that which Volf leads. This center will address matters of faith, theology, culture, ethics, and the public square. It will operate from a robustly confessional worldview, representing intellectual Christocentricity in a world that pretends it is a vacuum, but is ever and always a fountain bursting forth with the multi-splendored glory of God.


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