Theologian Miroslav Volf reflects on solitude, loneliness, and how being alone can reveal our humanity, selfhood, and relationship with God.

This episode is part 1 of a 5-part series, SOLO, which explores the theological, moral, and psychological dimensions of loneliness, solitude, and being alone.

“Solitude brings one back in touch with who one is—it’s how we stabilize ourselves so we know how to be ourselves with others.”

Macie Bridge welcomes Miroslav for a conversation on solitude and being oneself—probing the difference between loneliness and aloneness, and the essential role of solitude in a flourishing Christian life. Reflecting on Genesis, the Incarnation, and the sensory life of faith, Volf considers how we can both embrace solitude and attend to the loneliness of others.

He shares personal reflections on his mother’s daily prayer practice and how solitude grounded her in divine presence. Volf describes how solitude restores the self before God and others: “Nobody can be me instead of me.” It is possible, he suggests, that we can we rediscover the presence of God in every relationship—solitary or shared.

Helpful Links and Resources

• The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
• Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours (Buch der Stunden)
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall

Episode Highlights

1. “Nobody can be me instead of me. And since I must be me, to be me well, I need times with myself.”
2. “It’s not good, in almost a metaphysical sense, for us to be alone. We aren’t ourselves when we are simply alone.”
3. “Solitude brings one back in touch with who one is—it’s how we stabilize ourselves so we know how to be ourselves with others.”
4. “Our relationship to God is mediated by our relationships to others. To honor another is to honor God.”
5. “When we attend to the loneliness of others, in some ways we tend to our own loneliness.”

Solitude, Loneliness, and Flourishing

• The difference between solitude (constructive aloneness) and loneliness (diminishment of self).
• COVID-19 as an amplifier of solitude and loneliness.
• Volf’s experience of being alone at Yale—productive solitude without loneliness.
• Loneliness as “the absence of an affirming glance.”
• Aloneness as essential for self-reflection and renewal before others.

Humanity, Creation, and Relationship

• Adam’s solitude in Genesis as an incomplete creation—“It is not good for man to be alone.”
• Human beings as fundamentally social and political.
• A newborn cannot flourish without touch and gaze—relational presence is constitutive of personhood.
• Solitude and communion exist in dynamic tension; both must be rightly measured.

Jesus’s Solitude and Human Responsibility

• Jesus withdrawing to pray as a model of sacred solitude.
• Solitude allows one to “return to oneself,” guarding against being lost in the crowd.
• The danger of losing selfhood in relationships, “becoming echoes of the crowd.”

God, Limits, and Others

• Every other person as a God-given limit—“To honor another is to honor God.”
• Violating others as transgressing divine boundaries.
• True spirituality as respecting the space, limit, and presence of the other.

Touch, Senses, and the Church

• The sensory dimension of faith—seeing, touching, being seen.
• Mary’s anointing of Jesus as embodied gospel.
• Rilke’s “ripe seeing”: vision as invitation and affirmation.
• The church as a site of embodied presence—touch, seeing, listening as acts of communion.

The Fear of Violation and the Gift of Respect

• Loneliness often born from fear of being violated rather than from lack of company.
• Loving another includes honoring their limit and respecting their freedom.

Practical Reflections on Loneliness

• Questions Volf asks himself: “Do I dare to be alone? How do I draw strength when I feel lonely?”
• The paradox of social connection in a digital age—teenagers side by side, “completely disconnected.”
• Love as sheer presence—“By sheer being, having a loving attitude, I relieve another’s loneliness.”

The Spiritual Discipline of Solitude

• Volf’s mother’s daily hour of morning prayer—learning to hear God’s voice like Samuel.
• Solitude as the ground for transformation: narrating oneself before God.
• “Nobody can die in my place… nobody can live my life in my place.”
• Solitude as preparation for love and life in community.

About Miroslav Volf

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and Founding Director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. He is the author of Exclusion and Embrace, Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World, and numerous works on theology, culture, and human flourishing—most recently The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse.

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Miroslav Volf
• Interview by Macie Bridge
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, and Hope Chun
• 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