LEST III - Papers

Paper Proposals

Johan Ardui (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
An open communication between Theology and Rock? A response to the statement of cardinal J. Ratzinger.

In part three of his book Der Geist der Liturgie. Eine Einführung, cardinal Ratzinger compares the relation between art and Christian liturgy. The second chapter of this part analyses the way in which Christian Liturgy should be seen in the right proportion to worldly music. With regard to both pop and rock-music, cardinal Ratzinger concludes: “The music of the Holy Spirit’s sober inebriation seems to have little chance when [in the context of Pop and Rock, ja] self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments.”

This conclusion is the result of an analysis, which searches for the essence of the Christian liturgy. Within this project, Ratzinger compares the present rockscene with this liturgical essence. The way in which the church has always been very reluctant to the worldly music in order to protect the musica sacra, is for Ratzinger the historical argument to support his own negative evaluation of Rock. This approach however has - besides certain possibilities - its limits and moreover risks overlooking important elements.

While making a comparison between rock and the spirit of the Christian liturgy, Ratzinger actually presupposes a sociological definition of both Rock and Pop. This definition determines the way in which he evaluates it. However, the question can be asked, in what way the message of some rockgroups extends this sociological definition. Therefore, I propose - without negotiating the undeniable sociological aspect - to approach Rock critically on the base of its possible aesthetic meaning. The difference between both definitions points to an important element in the methodology of contextual theology: its implied definition of culture. Therefore, each contextual theology should clarify its own understanding of (popular) culture.

In this paper, I try to show how the evaluation of Ratzinger is dependent on, on the one hand his specific definition of Rock and Pop and on the other hand his vision on the history and the significance of the culture of modernity. I try to show the possibility of another - aesthetic - definition, which would imply another relation between (popular) culture and Christian theology. I plea for a daring encounter with the spiritual search of rockmusic as part of a relational theology.

The argumentation of cardinal Ratzinger represents his general understanding of important ecclesiological themes, for example: Church in a world of plurality, leadership in the Church, the relation between culture and theology, and the Christian notion of truth. An aesthetic evaluation of certain rockgroups can raise questions to Ratzinger’s rigid scheme. At the background of this aesthetic approach, I intend to dialogue in an open and constructive way with the ecclesiological thought of cardinal Ratzinger.

Kasonga Banyingela (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
From Understanding to Contemplation. The Challenge of African Theology at the dawn of the XXIst Century.

Since the publication of Les prêtres noirs s’interrogent,(Paris, Présence Africaine, 1956) which is considered as the point of departure of African theology up to now, African theologians are moving within the intuitions of the founding fathers of their theology. In reaction to the policy of tabula rasa practised either by colonisation or by evangelisation, these vanguards fought for the recognition of the African cultural identity. This tendency found its means of expression in a paradigm which emerged in the late seventies under the banner of inculturation and became dominant in eighties. The main issue which caught the attention of African theologians at that time and even now has been the problem of fidelity to Christ and African culture. It has been a question of immersing Christianity in African culture. In reality it is a project of an African Christianity which seeks express itself through the threefold functions of every community devoted to Jesus Christ namely, theological reflection, ecclesiastical law and organisation and liturgy. This gave birth to an abundant theological production that tried to articulate the Christian mystery in a language using mental categories taken from African culture and its symbolic universe. At the same time an African liturgy was also developed in which Christ was honoured as a chief, a hero, an ancestor or a master of initiation according to different christological propositions. There has been also some other initiatives in the fields of pastoral work and religious life.

However, most African theologians have not given a sufficient place to the signs of the time in their labour. Hence the inexistence of an engaged theology that could integrate social and political concerns. It is striking to notice that in Africa where the big majority of populations live in extreme poverty, maintained by military dictatorships and multinational’s capitalism, the theological reflection has not integrated these concerns which constitute elsewhere a locus theologicus par excellence.

Taking our starting point in the way traced by G.O.Collins in his book entitled Retrieving Fundamental Theology. The Three Styles of Contemporary Theology, New York-Manhah, 1993, the present paper would like to underline the necessity for the African theology to enter dialogue with theologies of oppressed people all over the world. Well-known as liberation theologies, the great merit of those theologies is their opening to history where people take in hands the responsibility of their destiny. Thus, these theologies take into account the challenge of poverty that people face in their daily life. Without renouncing the task of understanding the faith nor the contemplation, African theology will do better in emphasizing its commitment to social justice for the good of the African people. But this task has its requirements.

Lieven Boeve (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
The End of Conversation in Theology: Considerations from a Postmodern Discussion.

Gerald Boodoo (Xavier University, New Orleans, LA, U.S.A.)
La Divina Pastora Feast of Trinidad: Conversation, Power and Possibilities

The Divina Pastora/Suparee Ke Mai Feast of Trinidad is unique in that Roman Catholics and Hindus share devotion to the same statue that is understood as a Black Madonna for Catholics and a representation of Kali for Hindus. Though Catholics and Hindus share a common historical, social, economic, cultural and religious context through this feast, meaningful conversation does not occur between these religions in relation to this feast. What seems to limit such conversation is the institutional and power structures each religion inhabits. For meaningful conversation to take place some revision of the understanding of institutional power must be undertaken. This revision will then imply what is possible for the conversation between religions.

Roger Burggraeve (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
A 'Dialogical' God as Source of a 'Responsorial' Ethic

Our paper aims at unfolding the significance and implications of the biblical understanding of God for ethics. We start with an outline of the three main paradigms or models in Western ethical discourse: autonomy, external law and interaction. However, it is the model of relational responsibility, which has the greatest affinities with the progressive confession of an interpersonal and dialogical God in the biblical tradition. We pay attention to two major biblical concepts, i.e. covenant and prophetic call. Our reflexive and philosophical indepth analysis of these models finds its inspiration above all in reflections of the Jewish thinker Levinas on heteronomy and alterity. The issue of the ethical implications of the biblical image of a relational God will receive special attention. Above all, the responsorial structure of biblical ethics will come to the fore.

Delfo Cortina Canceran (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
A Triadic Paradigm of Conversation

Structure of received full paper:

• Introduction
• The Place of Nature in Modernity
• Displacement of the Great Divide
• Narrativity of the Intertextual Self
• Theological Reflection on Conversation
• Conclusion

Introduction

This paper attempts to contribute to an engagement of a meaningful conversation in a pluralized, globalized and technologized world. Conversation as a paradigm appears to be unambiguous and forthright since it is derived from the phenomenological ordinariness in the everyday life of a geiven society. The mere fact that people ordinarily converse in various situations and along different topics already guarantee the legitimacy of such a paradigm of conversation that can readily and easily be applied in the field of theology. However, the situation becomes more overtly problematic if we apply the paradigm of conversation with nature. Hegemonic reason has dominated and instrumentalized nature into a means (utility) that only satisfies human needs. Thus, nature engaging into a meaningful conversation seems to be a misnomer, or, at best, only a trope, if not an oxymoron since we normally 'know' that nature is self-evidently without a logos of its own.

Moreover, this paper endeavor to move away from the impasse posed by the binary couple of man and nature in western civilization so that we will not be reinstalling or re-instating the logic of domination that the binarism has been stacked into its discourse. The logic of domination operates in a framework of hierarchy and opposition that can be unwittingly and obliquely re-inscribed if the binary couple remains intact. Thus, we need to derange this prevailing binarism so that we can re-signify the world in a different way.

Conclusion

'From' its etymology, the word 'conversation' (a compounded Latin word, com and vertire), which iterally means 'turning together', provides us a hint o a meaningful engagement in conversation. The oncept of 'turning together' signifies that the elationship is not limited to one actor or agent ominating or controlling the rest, but a social assembly of decentered and hybrid partners and fellows. Unlike in humanism where 'man' is the center of the universe, 'otherwordly conversation' is a shared intertextual conversation of the vast collectives of human and nonhuman connections. Moreover, 'man' should turn to those others who have been glossed over in the previous conversation where 'man' only engages in a monologue of self-referentiality - the I that uncouples and opposes itself to the non-I. This I can be the individual man who has dominated the speech at the expense of the muted non-I others who have been marginalized and excluded from the circle of the I - such as the earth, women, children, colonies, slaves and machines.

In our everyday use, what is obvious in speaking about conversation is the 'together' component, which signifies its social nature. However, the 'together' component should be nuanced in terms of the marked specificities of identities that are always already embodied and embedded, and the power relations that are deployed and dispersed in an asymmetrical way. Eurocentric reason of the modern subject has dominated the field of power relations that tend to silence others arrogating to itself the infinite vision of reality. We need not only decenter the modern subject, but deconstruct it from its self-absorption and self-sufficiency. The modern subject, which has been historically privilegedly self-invisible, has to reclaim its own embodiment and embeddedness, which is always already located and situated in its multiple and contradictory subject-positions so that it can still be redeemed from self-enclosure and self-containment. We have to embody and embed an 'inappropriate/d other' hybrid subjectivity that is split and contradictory. "The split and contradictory self is the one who can interrogate positionings and be accountable, the one who can construct and join rational conversations and fantastic imaginings that change history" (Donna Haraway).

A paradigm of conversation should be conceived as quilting, which is a 'theory-in-process', to borrow K. Warren's expression. The idea of a theory-in-process expresses a wariness to the possibility of the logic of domination and exclusion that can unwittingly enter into the discourse, which can only be detected in the process. Thus, a theory should always be interrogated continuously and deconstructed critically due to its precarious consequentiality to others. Nature is what D. Haraway figuratively calls a 'topos'(place) and a 'trope'(figure). We are situated or located in particular and concrete positions(topos) that found and fund our rhetoric or discourses(tropes). If we pursue a conversation as a paradigm for theological engagement, we need to reclaim the hybrid self of nature-humanity-technology collectives that embody and embed the intersecting marked specificities and fragmented subjectivities as rallying points that subject to contestations the universal and innocent position of a privileged class or group that, exposed to its nakedness, reveals its particular and dominant position.

David Carter (Open University, U.K.)
The Spirituality of Ecumenical Dialogue

This would be given with special reference to the work of a pioneer British Methodist ecumenist, William James Shrewsbury (1785-1866) and the present Pope. I may also touch on the thought of the Abbé Paul Couturier (1881-1955). I would endeavour to identify common themes in their approach to ecumenical sharing and conversation, in particular the common emphasis upon the exchange of gifts and the sharing of ecumenical riches, originating in times of separation, but destined to achieve their full fruitfulness only within fully restored communion, a characteristic of which is the uninhibited reception of spiritual and theological insights at all levels and in all aspects of the life of the church.

In particular, I shall aim to identify both common features and differentiating nuances in the following related concepts:

- Shrewsbury's concept of 'disinterestedness' as characteristic of the Wesleyan theological and ecclesial approach vis-à-vis the Pope's stress on acknowledgement of the 'rich establishment' of the Christian tradition that has occurred n spite of the sin of schism.

- Shrewsbury's concept of the 'indebtedness' of Methodism to many other traditions, e.g. Anglican, Puritan and Moravian, as compared with the Pope's emphasis on the Church's need to 'breathe with both lungs' in respect of its Eastern and Western heritages.

I shall also examine the importance of the Pope's emphasis upon dialogue as 'an indispensable step along the path towards human self-realisation, the self-realisation both of each individual and of every human community' (Ut Unum Sint, par. 28).

I shall finally argue that the spirituality of ecumenical dialogue is necessarily linked both to an ecclesiology of the Pilgrim Church and to the understanding of the Church as koinonia. Both ecclesiologies not merely permit but actually require what the Canadian ecumenist, Margaret O'Gara, calls 'the Ecumenical Gift-Exchange'. No particular Church can be said to be truly 'in via' to the common promised eschatological plenitude of the Universal Church unless it manifests this pattern of conversation within its life and relationships with the other particular churches.

Paul Cashen (Australian Catholic University, Adelaide, Australia)
From The Divine Comedy To The X-Files: In Conversation With The Beyond

Information Technology (IT) enables today's conversations to take place in "virtual reality". IT can create a presence that crosses the barriers of space and time. IT enables us to enter a non-physical world that opens new possibilities for understanding human persons in their relationship with each other, and with a transcendent presence that has been lost to previous generations. This paper draws on the growing interest in the paranormal, the mysterious, the unexplainable in today's media, such as is expressed in the TV series 'the X-Files'. Then opens the conversation with such experiences and explores the search for belief and inner meaning, as a counter to the loss of the mysterious and the miraculous that accompanied the breakdown of earlier cosmologies that reflected the Heaven - Hell conversations of past spiritualities.

Christians have the opportunity to pass on the "faith" that we inherit by adapting and using new methods to link the physical world to the deeper reflective part of our being. History has shown that we struggle to use the technology of our age to converse with the mysteries of the Christian message: to deepen our appreciation of the value and importance of the human person, the person of Jesus, his life, death and resurrection, the Trinitarian nature of God, etc. We are faced with the choice to participate in this conversation, that is to engage the "virtual reality" as it is presented, to respect it at arms length and with it reflect on our own beliefs, and then endeavour to find a new language with which to express them today. Or we can fear IT and reject it as a danger and contrary to Christian principles and traditions not converse with the inner search that it presents.

To converse with the vagaries of a postmodern world is as real to the mission of the Church as the first response to "bring the Gospel to all creation" (Mark 16:15). All Christ's faithful are challenged to respond to the words of Paul VI (Evangelii Nuntiandi): the gospel we proclaim "only reaches full development when it is listened to, accepted and assimilated, and when it arouses a genuine adherence in the one who has received it." Our side of the conversation is meant to touch the hearts of those we speak to, and our big challenge is to re-imagine what we believe so that the children in our care can take it to heart. Such a spirituality engages the heart and encourages the listener and the converser to acknowledge a mutual inner reality as a common ground, no matter the differences of time and space.

The "virtual reality" of Information Technology provides a paradigm that gives voice to the necessity of a spiritual dimension in a world where the material side of life has dominated both science and theology.

Dirk Claes (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Conversation in an historical context: the case of the Vota Antepraeparatoria by the Benelux bishops and the Catholic Universities of Leuven and Nijmegen

Shortly after the announcement of the Second Vatican Council by pope John XXIII on January 25, 1959, a special commission was founded within the Curia. Its task was to prepare and perform a world-wide consultation of bishops, heads of religious orders and congregations, as well as of faculties of theology and canon law of catholic universities, in order to gather their vota for the coming Council. A then still to establish 'commissio praeparatoria' would have to order the vota according to different subjects and prepare the texts and schemes for discussion during the Council.

Under the direction of secretary of state of the Vatican, Domenico cardinal Tardini, the 'commissio antepraeparatoria' managed within a year time to gather 2150 so-called 'vota antepraeparatoria' from all over the world, including vota from the Belgian, Dutch and Luxemburg bishops and from the faculties of theology and canon law of the catholic universities of Leuven and Nijmegen.

Although in a way formulated with care and a certain detachment, these 'vota antepraeparatoria' reveal a lot of information on developments in theology and Church life in general and in the Benelux in particular in the years just before the Council, and on the reaction by the 'official' Church to these developments.

In the light of the subject of LEST III, in this paper I would like to expand on the question whether or not the Benelux-vota are the expression of (a form of) conversation between authors (bishops and academics-theologians) on the one hand, and developments in Church and world (as came forth e.g. in the oecumenical movement, in the results booked by the liturgical movement, in the changing position of lay-people, etc.) on the other hand. To what extent have the authors of the vota been listening to and have they been influenced by ongoing debates, so that they would send echoes of them to Rome as vota in order to have these subjects put on the conciliar agenda?

- At first I would therefore present a synthesis of the general content and of the most striking and important featurres of the Benelux-vota.

- Second: compare these features to the devolopments and positions in the main theological debates at that time, in particular through their treatment of ecclesiological questions. Allthough the vota do not touch upon ecclesiology explicitly as a seperate chapter or theme, they do speak about the position of the bishops in the Church, of lay people and of their apostolate, and of oecumenism.

- Third and by way of conclusion: investigate if there has been a kind of conversation, or has it been a deaf-and-dumb play from the part of the authors of the vota. Some remarks on the vota and (later) conciliar theology to finish with.

Timothy Crutcher (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
The Christo-centric Community/Family: An Essay toward a Relational Ecclesiology

The idea of church has been understood in very different ways by those calling themselves Christians throughout the ages. In the earliest church, there were the controversies between the Donatists and Orthodox believers on the question of the purity of the church. During the Reformation, there were reactions against the typically institutional and hierarchical understanding of the church by the so-called Protestants, who sought a more spiritual and egalitarian understanding of church. And the list could be multiplied. Perhaps one way to address the various concerns of those who advocate for differing understandings of church would be to recover the relational aspects that each of them are trying to preserve.

The church as a Christo-centric community or as the Family of God might provide a way to articulate those relational concerns without having to resolve all the tensions present in differing ways of understanding. There are typical features of families and communities that we could use in helping us to understand the relational nature of the church. We will limit ourselves to three of them: identity, cohesion, and boundary.

Identities of communities and families are grounded in relationship. We are so-and-so's children or the community of people living together in harmony in this place. Other expressions of identity are grounded in those primarily relational concerns, and there is considerable room for flexibility (not all Americans must believe the same things to be an America; my brother and I are related no matter how much we differ in activity). So with the church, we are primarily the people who relate ourselves to God in Christ, not the people who believe this doctrine or who do this practice.

What binds a family or community together are its relationships, each of which has its own internal normativity. Fathers don't need external laws to tell them when they are and are not fulfilling their role as fathers. Activities that further and deepen relationships are encouraged, those that violate relationships are excluded. The same is true in a community of leaders and citizens. For the church, this centers the cohesion of the community on the relationships of its members to each other and to God in Christ. Things like doctrine and practice are expressions of relationship, not constituating features of it.

Finally, we understand that the boundaries of families and communities are rather fluid. Boundary markers (like passports or names) are expressions of relationships but do not constitute the relationships themselves. Thus, church membership might not be seen as a line that we cross, either being in or out, but rather we are gradually more deeply related to each other and to God in Christ through our relationships with other people who are themselves deeply related to each other and to God in Christ.

Here is some common ground for building a relational, ecumenical ecclesiology that still leaves room for the differences that many of us still see as important.

Yves de Maeseneer (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Towards a Theological 'Ideologiekritik' of Consumerism: Saint Francis versus McDonald's?

A contextual theology of conversation has to consider the contemporary setting in which communication takes place. Nowadays the globalisation process largely determines the rules for communication. To analyse this context, my paper will focus on two recent manifestos of the 'anti-globalisation movement': Naomi Klein's No Logo and Antonio Negri's Empire. In No Logo, the Canadian columnist Naomi Klein (New York Times, The Guardian) describes how multinational corporates have installed a new universal 'language': by means of a world-wide web of logos, these corporates colonise the public space. With high-tech marketing strategies they transcend the borders of classical advertising and try to enter all areas of human interaction. Klein describes the result of such aesthetical processes as a new kind of religion, which she calls 'consumerism'.

My paper aims to work out this claim. In search for a theological 'Ideologiekritik' of a logo-centred consumerism, Hans Urs von Balthasar's Herrlichkeit provides an inspiring tool to analyse the contemporary process of aestheticization. Concretely, Balthasar's notion of 'Gestalt' will be confronted with Klein's description of the logo.

Looking for a way out of the artificial consumerist space, the controversial Marxist political philosopher Antonio Negri proposes a new materialism. At the end of his book, Negri proposes Francis of Assisi as a model for a liberating materialism. My paper will explore how this unorthodox interpretation of the Italian saint can shed a new light on Balthasar's essay on Bonaventura's Franciscan aesthetics. (Herrlichkeit II)

It is my contention that the conversation between Balthasar and Klein/Negri may lead to a theological critique of the contemporary context to create a space for a free and life-giving conversation.

Peter De Mey & Katelijne Schiltz (Faculty of Theology & Department of Musicology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
The Composer as Interpreter of the Easter Creed: The Music and Texts of Bach, Brahms and Britten

In this paper a musicologist and a theologian converse about a famous genre in sacred music: the Requiem. A good performance of Mozart's Requiemis without doubt able to move a whole audience. Theologically, however, such a composition is not so interesting, because the composer remained faithful to the text of the tradition. Therefore, we have selected three compositions in which a conversation between texts takes place: an early Trauerkantate of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), entitled 'Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit', the Deutsches Requiem of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) and the War Requiem of Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). Through the interplay of different texts the composer evokes his personal spiritual struggle to find meaning in the Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. Their selection of texts reveals a lot about the difficulties experienced in each time to solve the tension between the experience of death and the Christian story of hope. It will equally become clear that the content of this hope is never identical.

Right in the middle of Bach's cantata a three-part fuga on the words 'Es ist der alte Bund: Mensch, du mußt sterben' (Eccl. 14:18) is suddenly interrupted by the soprano soloist's demand for the return of the Saviour: 'Ja, komm, Herr Jesu, komm' (Rev. 22:20). Both musical lines coexist for a while, but the last word is given to the theme of the parousia. But, is there not also a theological conversation going on, between the rigidity of Lutheran orthodoxy and the Pietistic belief that this eschatological event can be anticipated in the mystic union of soul and Saviour? According to some scholars Bach neither identified himself with the position of Lutheran orthodoxy, nor with the Pietist one. He wanted to remain faithful to the theological heritage of Luther himself, who was convinced that each believer feels the tension of being at the same time condemned and justified.

In the fifth part of Brahms's Requiem, we are again confronted with a musical conversation between two biblical texts, respectively sung by the choir and the soprano soloist. This time there is no antithesis between the text of the choir and the one of the soloist, but between the first and second half of the two texts, which are performed by the soloist: 'Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit; aber ich will euch wieder sehen und euer Herz soll sich freuen und eure Freude soll niemand von euch nehmen'. (Jn 16:22) and 'Sehet mich an: Ich habe eine kleine Zeit Mühe gehabt und habe grossen Trost funden'. (Sir 51:35). Brahms wrote his Requiem for all inhabitants of Germany, and hoped in fact that all human beings would be touched by the way he evoked the overcoming of loss and bereavement in order to embrace life again. He personally selected such biblical texts as would appeal to the natural religiosity of his Romantic contemporaries. Besides this universal aspiration, the composer also described an individualistic experience of mourning, since he added this part to his Requiem on the occasion of his mothers' death. It is she whom her son will see again (even when the original text speaks about Christ), who will find rest after a life of labour (even when the original text speaks about finding comfort in the meditation of God's word), and whose power of consolation is remembered in the choir's rendering of Is. 66:13, 'Ich will euch trösten, wie einen seine Mutter tröstet'. It is up to the theologian to find an answer to the question whether Brahma's reinterpretation of the biblical tradition still deserves the name of sacred music.

Finally, in Britten's War Requiem we are confronted with a conversation between the text of the Latin Requiem, clearly meant to console the mourning community, and a counter-text, offered by the war poetry of Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). The performance of Britten's masterpiece formed part of the celebration of the resurrection of Coventry cathedral, but Britten also wanted to warn his audience that the Easter creed must not be professed in the Christian churches in such a way that the meaningless suffering of so many innocent people is drowned out. In the Latin offertory the glorified Son is asked to lead the deceased into paradise. The refrain twice refers to a text which serves as an important foundation of Christian hope in the resurrection, namely the promise to Abraham that he would be a God of the living, not of the dead: 'Quam olim Abrahae promisisti, et semini ejus'. Owen, for his part, paraphrases the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, as he interprets it. He wants to remember Abraham as the one who "slew his son, and half the seed of Europe, one by one." Humankind, not God is to be blamed for this needless shedding of blood. The quoted sentence is repeated many times, even while innocent boys begin to sing the second part of the Latin Offertory. For the third time, a conversation or even confrontation between texts takes place. The theologian will be impressed by the fact that the final word is granted to the refrain of the Latin offertory, with its message of hope. His dialogue partner will pay attention to the complete reversal of the first musical setting of this verse. The interpretation of great art remains an open story… 

Michel Despland (Department of Religion, University of Concordia, Montréal, Québec, Canada)
The Dialogue as a Literary Form Used in Western Inquiries into Religious Diversity

This article examines a sequence of nine dialogues that portray discussions of religious issues conducted in a manner that strives to be non-dogmatic and non-polemical. Four of the dialogues are medieval; two were written in Latin, one in Arabic and one in Catalan. The other five are early modern; one was written in Latin, three in French and one in English. I have selected them because their sequence illustrates changes in the styles and contents of the discussions. Before examining each of them, some attention will be paid to dialogues as a philosophical genre. The conclusion will feature the gap between intending a dialogue and actually achieving one.

Luk De Volder (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Marital Dialogue as Theological Metaphor

In this paper I will examine from the perspective of the renewed and actual sacramentology some biblical passages that are important for the theology of marriage. The renewal of the theology of marriage has different aspects. Our postmodern context challenges theologians. In this fragmented world the great stories and traditional meaning-giving systems are passé or are fundamentally doubted. Marriage, therefore, is also challenged by this questioning. Today there are new models of ‘living together’ or new types of marriage that receive more and more juridical and social recognition. Besides this, there is a fundamentally changed position towards body and sexuality. Several theologians are following closely these renewals and are trying to give them an adequate theological reply. Recent publications show this attention, for example: R. Burggraeve, Bouwstenen voor een relationele groei-ethiek in christelijk perspectief, in R. Burggraeve, M. Cloet, K. Dobbelaere, L. Leijssen, Levensrituelen. Het huwelijk, (Kadoc-Studies, 24) Universitaire Press Leuven, Leuven, 2000, 197-218; A. Thatcher, Marriage After Modernity: Christian Marriage in Postmodern Times, New York University Press, New York, 1999.

In the discussion about the sacrament of marriage there is also a change of discourse. In this paper I will rely upon the more specific sacramental renewal, worked out by the French theologian L.-M. Chauvet (L.-M. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament. A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1995). His study moves beyond the classical scholastic ‘story’, and with that, also its onto-theological presuppositions. This former philosophical and theological tradition considered the ways of mediation as accidental. Mediation was presupposed to be something pejorative. It is a presupposition of onto-theology that language, history or corporality only is an accidental or instrumental component of life. They even are considered to be obstacles to pure reflection, human dialogue and the realization of human existence. Language, for example, is presented as a translation-tool of ideas, and to translate means to betray. This distinction led to a dualism between thought and word where word was inferior to thought. The human ideal provisionally has to live with this limited and transitory ‘structure’. The sacramentology of Chauvet, however, seeks for a revaluation of the anthropological and corporal dimensions of the sacraments. His symbolic reinterpretation of the sacraments offers a positive acceptance of concrete kinds of mediation. According to the French theologian, we are not able to consider the spiritual without the corporal: “The most ‘spiritual’ always takes place in the most ‘corporal’.” This symbolic reinterpretation has the advantage to be more positive about corporality.

Now, marital theology is highly determined by the available biblical data. With this symbolic sacramentology we want to look at certain biblical texts (especially Hosea 2 and John 3,29) where we encounter marriage as a theological metaphor; because the renewal in sacramentology requires also a new reading of these texts with a special attention to language and hermeneutics. Besides the written source, there also is the reader. Today it has become clear that a text essentially is linked with its reader. Hermeneutical studies have analyzed this process of interpretation and ‘text-realization’. The conclusions of these researches are not always studied in an interdisciplinary way. Further, the metaphors, however, are linguistic realizations of a cognitive activity (Cf. E. Kittay, Metaphor. Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure, Oxford, 1987, 14). Our contribution will not focus on the linguistic aspects of the biblical metaphors of marriage, but rather on the content of the concepts. In this way, the symbolic analysis can allow us to become acquainted with marriage values that were not always taken up in the theological reflection, for example the value of marital dialogue as a theological metaphor.

John Dick (Overlegcentrum voor Christelijke Ethiek, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Changing Images of God in American Political and Cultural Life

The political-cultural-religious evolution in the United States of America began with a strongly Puritan colonial Trinitarian image of God. Already, during the colonial period, the Puritan leaders began to dismantle this belief system, when they succumbed to an early form of American pragmatism and authorized the "half-way covenant" as a way of keeping the younger generation in church, without demanding participation as a believing communicant, i.e. the church became sustainer of moral behavior and that was considered more important than the church that helped people relate to the Transcendent.

By the time of the American Revolution, the Founders, especially Jefferson, and the country's intellectual and political elite, shifted to belief in a comfortable Deism and the Divine election of America as rooted in "Nature and Nature's God."

A second great awakening in America just before the Civil War in the mid 19th century temporarily called America back to a Trinitarian focus. After the Civil War the South lost faith in Christianity and the North gloried in either the Unitarian bliss of national heroic figures like poet Ralph Waldo Emmerson or a watered-down Anglo-Saxon Protestantism which was heavy on middle class morality and revival emotionalism and yet theologically bankrupt. The great American Ivy League universities, like Harvard, proclaimed an advanced stage of liberal Protestantism which left no room for orthodox Christianity and little room for theistic belief. This is also the time when we see the flourishing of the hardly-Christian and made-in-America religions of the Mormons, Christian Science, and Jehovah's Witness.

By 1900 we see a form of "American Christianity" which was so emphatic about morality, good feelings, and AMERICA, that practically speaking the Transcendent was eclipsed and the country itself became the object of religious fervor and devotion. Following the Second World War, America is officially the land of "Protestants, Catholics, and Jews" yet we see the clear emergence of an American Civil Religion, which uses much of the rhetoric of Christianity and Judaism to maintain middle-class "Judeo-Christian morality" in an era of good feelings in which, as sociologist Will Herberg said: "The typical American has developed a remarkable capacity for being serious about religion without taking religion seriously."

In contemporary American society, religion (and now it makes no difference what the religion is) is the social glue that holds a highly mobile society together. Americans continue to be active church-goers, as they bask in their highly individualized and secularized way of life - often without realizing that their religion is little more than a typically American amalgamation of ethical values, cultural mores, and religious formulas and rituals they have inherited along the path of the American Way of Life. Roman Catholics who now make up more than 25% of the population could make a unique contribution to American society by drawing from the resources of their own Trinitarian and sacramental tradition; yet it appears that contemporary American Roman Catholics have not only "arrived" in America but may have lost their soul to it as well.

Kris Dierickx (Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Where theologians and geneticists meet

Medical genetics is one of the fastest developing fields within the medical world. The scientific knowledge on the role and impact of the genetic material increases very rapidly. Also in our society we observe a growing interest in medical genetics: genetic tests, genetic screenings, human cloning, human gene therapy, etc. Church and theology are no exception and follow these evolutions. However, the active participation of theologians and churches in the societal debate on medical genetics has taken a rather slow start. Where does, or could, the work of theologians and geneticists meet? At what points in human thinking and action does, or can, their work intersect? What does a fruitful conversation between these two disciplines mean?

In our contribution we first want to present some documents from different Christian churches on their conversation with several aspects of the human genome enterprise. In a second part we focus on some specific theological items that play a role in the discussion on genetics (creation, Imago Dei) and try to analyse how these concepts are functioning. In the third and last part we will present a concrete example where theology could meet genetics in the clinical context (the right not to know).

Donald J. Dietrich (Theology Department, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, U.S.A.)
Catholic Social Thought and the Global Common Good: A New Emerging Paradigm

Peace has to be achieved in conflict. It has to be knit out of the thousands of broken threads of economic disarray, human rights violations, the weapons trade, poverty and promise. Making peace is complex in an interdependent world characterized by religious and cultural pluralism. By definition, pluralism means that there is no agreement about the meaning of the good life. Additionally, the complexity of emerging world realities seems to be leading many world communities to seek reaffirmation of the distinctive traditions that set them apart from others. Thus, we are facing an apparent paradox: attaining the vision of the global common good is increasingly problematic precisely at the historical moment when the need for such a vision is growing in order to protect a common human dignity.

To deal with the role of the church in a pluralistic world requires an ecclesiology that Vatican II outlined, but that has yet to be fully legitimated. I would like to focus a seminar on this issue or offer a paper describing how Roman Catholic social theorists have attempted to address the paradox of how a unique religious tradition has struggled with varying degrees of success to attain the vision of a global common good. What type of ecclesiology is necessary to constructively embrace the challenge that the church faces as it tries to safeguard human dignity around the world.

In proceeding to address this issue, I would like to consider how Catholic social teaching since Vatican II has been more deeply rooted in the distinctive biblical and religious faith of the Catholic church, while it has simultaneously sought to contribute to the common moral vision needed in an interdependent world. Because of the ambivalence existing between the defensive institutional church and many of its own theologians, who are rooted in the progressive reflections of Vatican II, the Catholic community as a whole has been only partially successful in its efforts to develop a consistent ecclesiology that can address the common good as envisioned by a pluralistic world community.

I would like to shed some light on the pathway that some Catholics have been trying to travel. My focus will be on the emergence of a dialogical ethic that stresses that persons can live in dignity only when they live in a community of freedom, a comunity in which both personal initiative and social solidarity are valued and embodied. The new relationship that I think is emerging and that we should be analyzing is one in which a dynamic process of interaction between fidelity to the distinctive religious beliefs and traditions of Christianity can coexist with the pursuit of an inclusive, universal community. Vatican II launched Catholics on the path of dialogue, but currently the magisterium has been articulating a very restrictive ecclesiology. For the 21st century, we will need a renewed commitment to a dialogical model that can embrace the tensions exhibited within the community of peoples as a normal part of human interaction.

Ivana Dolejsova
Apophatic Aspects of Theological Conversation

In this paper I will look at the dynamics of theological conversation, which grows out of an effort to determine the structures of our ideas and experiences, and a critical awareness that these are always incomplete, always in the process of changing. My main concern will be with the second aspect of the dynamic. For its examination I will employ the patristic concept of the apophatic way, referring mainly to Gregory of Nyssa. In the second part I will look at the appropriations of this concept among contemporary theologians, such as Jean Luc Marion and Jean Marie Chauvet.

Brian Doyle (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Dysfunctional Conversation in Isaiah 24

There are many places in the collection of literary documents we refer to as the Hebrew Bible in which conversation, such as it is, between the deity and his worshippers is clearly dysfunctional. One characteristic (form-critical) feature of the so-called lament psalms, for example, is their initial expression of the experience of the absence of God in dire circumstances, often expressed in the form of a question: 'How long, O Lord?'. The prophets as 'speakers of the unspeakable' often immerse themselves in the dysfunctional relationship between yhwh and his people, giving words to the conversation between them or the lack thereof. The present paper will endeavour to show that the prophet in Isaiah 24 intended to portray the relationship between his people and his/their God as a three-sided conversation, including the earth as representative of God's creation. Where the human relationship with God dysfunctioned and became infertile so the relationship with the earth dysfunctioned and became infertile. As is clearly the case elsewhere in the prophetic books and indeed throughout the Hebrew Bible, reference to the dysfunctional conversation between God and his people in Isaiah is a delicate matter, one which the author(s) often handled by resorting to the use of metaphorical language. The metaphorical language found in Isaiah 24 would tend to suggest that God metaphors are primarily relational metaphors and not exclusively intended to inform or educate their audience about the characteristics of the divinity alone. Based on a literary examination of the text of Isaiah 24, the paper will thus conclude that the prophetic (metaphorical) portrayal of the divine-human relationship must include Earth as an indispensable dialogue partner, that conversations within this three-sided relationship frequently dysfunctioned and that the prophetic portrayal of these dysfunctional conversations in the Hebrew Bible often resorts to metaphor.

Maria Duffy (St.Patrick's College, Maynooth, Ireland; European Ethics Network, KU Leuven, Belgium)
A Conversation between Spirituality and Auto-Biography

Drawing on the narrative paradigm of Paul Ricoeur (especially his essay, On Memory and Forgetting) I reflect on the value of living memoires (in the context of holocaust victim, Etty Hillesum), as conversational bridge to profound spiritual experience and religious encounter.

Etty's story begins as a free yet chaotic young woman, a philosophy student in Amsterdam at the start of the second world war who seeks love and meaning in her life, and finds God. Her life ends in the death camps of Auschwitz, a victim of the history and times in which she lived.

For me, Etty's letters and diaries are a prototypical autobiography of a spiritual journey. She engages us in profound, fundamental and often tortured conversations between love and hate, revenge and forgiveness, meaning and meaninglessness, despair and hope, God and nihilism. Ultimately Etty dies young and defenceless against Nazi tyranny. Yet to the end her story transmits an indomitable spirit, vivified by a genuine spiritual encounter with the deeply personal God whom she discovered amidst the apocalyptic dimensions of her life.

Etty even displays a kind of 'spiritual ambition' in her insistence on finding God, encountering the transcendent, despite her miserable circumstances:

'…I shall wait patiently until the words have grown inside me, the words that proclaim how beautiful and good it is to live in your world oh God despite everything we humans do to one another.' (Diary entry 15th Sept 1942, pg 199).

If St. Therese of Lisieux, for example, was ambitious to continue her mission after life - "I will spend my heaven doing good on earth," - and to be "love in the heart of the Church," while on earth, Etty Hillesum desired to encounter God in her life in the camps, expressed in her declaration to be "…the thinking heart of the barracks."

In a sense she is paradigmatic for our time, torn as it is between forgetting and remembering history. Etty's memoires are worthy of sharing in our theological conversation about memory, healing and forgiveness.

In Summary

My paper will explore, through the pericope of Etty Hillesum's memoires, the themes of:

- Auto-biography as a source of personal and social engagement or encounter with spirituality and the God who lies ahead of us.

- Conversation as a tension-wrought dialectic between memory and forgetting, forgiveness and hate, nihilism and hope as reflected in Etty's story and in her relationship with God , friends and her deepest self.

- Theology from the viewpoint of the challenge: 'how to do theology after Auschwitz?'

Etty's story, I believe, gives us some clues.

Conclusion

I propose that Etty's testimony points towards the contemporary value of 'Narrative' (to which belongs the genre of biography) as a relational methodology, which operates within the spirit of 'unassured, existential life-schooling'. If Etty offers a gift to theology, it is an 'aesthetic of resistance', born not from theological theories but from shocked senses and alarmed sense-informed reason. She bestows auto-biography as a worthwhile conversation partner of theology for the future.

Jacques Dupuis (Gregorian University, Rome, Italy)
Christianity and Religions: From Confrontation to Encounter

Religious pluralism is perhaps the greatest challenge for Christian theology today. By religious pluralism is understood here not the kind of doctrinal relativism, according to which all religions are in principle of equal value, representing different human attempts towards the Absolute. What is at stake is how to hold on to the universal significance of Jesus Christ for human salvation, as affirmed by Christian faith, on the one hand, and at the same time recognise in the other religious traditions true ways of salvation for their followers, according to God's plan for humankind. The paper explains the present state of the question in the light of the latest discussions and magisterial documents. It then shows that a perspective of trinitarian christology allows for maintaining together, in productive tension, the two apparently irreconcilable tenets. The universal action of the Word of God and the universal presence of the Spirit of God combine in God's unique plan of salvation with the central event of Jesus Christ.

(paper will be discussed in absence of the author)

Ulrich Engel (Institut M.-Dominique Chenu, Berlin, Germany)
Religiöse (Nicht-)Identität

Im Rahmen des Unterthemas III "Conversation and Spirituality" schlage ich eine fundamentaltheologische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Themenkomplex "Religiöse (Nicht-)Identität" vor. Dazu möchte ich Jacques Derrida lesen.

Derrida hat sich mehrfach zu seiner jüdischen "Identität" geäußert. Dabei ist der Gebrauch des Begriffs "Identität" mit Hinweisen zur Vorsicht (gemeinhin "An-" und "Abführungszeichen" genannt) zu umstellen, denn Derridas Verständnis von "Identität" is konstitutiv ein Moment der "Nicht-Identität" eingeschrieben. Derrida sagt: "…so wäre einer um so jüdischer, je mehr die Selbstidentität aufgelöst würde, je mehr er also sagte, meine Identität besteht darin, ‚nicht mit mir selbst identisch zu sein, fremd zu sein, nicht mit mir übereinzustimmen.' (…) Jeder wird dann das beste Beispiel der Identität (als Nicht-Identität mit sich selbst) und folglich ein exemplarischer Jude sein." (J.D., Zeugnis, Gabe, in: E. Weber [Hrsg.], Jüdisches Denken in Frankreich. Gespräche mit Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas u.a., Frankfurt/M. 1994, 63-90, hier 65.)

Lesen möchte ich vor allem Derridas Arbeit Circonfession. Dieser autobiographische Text Derridas findet sich parallel mintiert zu G. Benningtons Text Derridabase über Derrida (Paris 1991, dt. Übersetzung 1994). Als spannend erweist sich die Relecture von Circonfession für ein jüdisch-christliches Conversation-Projekt, insofern Derrida in seinem Text jüdische und christliche Kategorien verknüpft: das Kunstwort "Circonfession" kombiniert die französischen Begriffe für Beschneidung (=Circoncision) und Bekenntnis (=Confession). Mit einander verbunden, gar verschmolzen werden also der jüdische Initiationsritus wie auch das Bekenntnis, das in seiner genuin christlichen Ausprägung mit den Confessiones des Augustinus die nuezeitliche Tradition der Autobiographie begründet. Beide Institute, Initiation wie Autobiographie, suchen "Identität" zui konstituieren - ursprünglich religiös konnotiert, später in säkular abgewandelter Form.

Derridas Stellung zum Judentum kann im Anschluss an Circonfession als ein "beschnittenes" Bekenntnis verstanden werden: als eines an der Grenze zwischen Judentum und Christentum, aber auch als eines, mit dem Derrida sich zui seinem Judesein nur beschnitten/unvollständig bekennt. In systematisch-theologischer wie auch in spiritueller Hinsicht schließ sich hier die Frage an, inwieweit auch jedes christliche Bekenntnis, das seine jüdischen Wurzeln ernst nimmt, konstitutiv unvollkommen ist (sein muss).

Jerry T. Farmer (Xavier University, New Orleans, LA, U.S.A.)
The 'fiesta de moros y cristianos': A Paradigm for a Relational Theology

I. AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

The 'Fiesta de moros y cristianos' is a social , economic and entertaining event that today takes place annually in many cities and towns in Spain. Its main elements consist of the 'entrance' or formal parading into the city or town of both the Moors and Christians, the 'conquest' and subsequent 'reconquest' of a castle, and the dramatization of the struggle by means of the respective Moorish and Christian military units or bands. The earliest reference to 'moros y cristianos' occurs in the middle of the twelfth century, in the year 1150. The roots of this dramatization have been traced to 'fiestas de alardo'. This festival of 'alardo' is a mixture on the one hand of the festival of the nobility and on the other of the popular festival organized and carried out by the Guilds and their members. It is that which gives birth to the 'fiesta de moros y cristianos' .

II. A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Gema Martín Muñoz notes that in Western societies the Muslim world is frequently perceived and interpreted in terms of a 'culturalist paradigm' in which the explanation of facts revolves around the principle of a cultural difference which recreates the East beyond its proper reality into what the West wants to see. This paradigm corresponds above all else to the western need to constantly invent 'the other,' in this case, the Muslim, in order to complete the image of the one original, thus defining the boundaries of the supposed classical and universal subject of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

III. THEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AND REFLECTION

The Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, October 28, 1965, voiced a fundamental change with regard to the relationship of Christians and Muslims by stating: 'this most sacred Synod urges all to forget the past and to strive sincerely for mutual understanding' [Paragraph 3]. But more recently the December, 1999, Vatican International Theological Commission document entitled, Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past, issued a call, not to 'forget the past,' but to face it, to acknowledge 'what was done in contradiction to the Gospel' [4.0], and to strive for reconciliation. The task is not to eliminate these memories, but to 'purify the memory of the past and generate a new one. The basis of this new memory cannot be other than mutual love or, better, the renewed commitment to live it' [5.2]. The 'fiesta de moros y cristianos' is a paradigm of the incarnation, the encounter of God and humanity. In the dramatization that takes place, neither the 'moros' nor the 'cristianos' are presented as 'the other.' They are seen and celebrated as equal subjects. One celebrates their mutual encounter. And out of this encounter has emerged the reality that is Spain, and, to a certain extent, the reality itself that is Europe. In the 'fiesta de moros y cristianos', one does not so much see the face of the other, but one's own face. And in and through the face of each one is the face of God revealed.

Meghan F. Froehlich (Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.)
Preaching and Conversation: Homiletics in a Eucharistic Context

Liturgical enactments of the relationships between humanity and God and among humanity, particularly the eucharist, provide various relational opportunities and indicators. The sermon is positioned between the mostly unspoken experiences of God in the gathered community and the verbal and symbolic actions of the eucharistic celebration. In this setting, preaching is theology in action, conversation about experience of God - in scripture, in the church year, in the sacraments and in contemporary life.

Preaching can clarify, illuminate and encourage reflection on various aspects of faith. In eucharistic traditions, the balance between liturgical elements can serve as a model for human relationships, with the focus centering on the Self-giving sacrament offered by God.

In a eucharistically focused service, the sermon/homily can occupy the verbal space between speaking (information conveyance) and prayer (intimate conversation with God). Rather than the liturgical burden resting solely on the word proclaimed, the unique interplay between sermon and sacrament can free the preacher to use a variety of conversational and relational techniques, while drawing on the richness of the eucharistic celebration.

This paper will explore the unique conversational context of preaching within a eucharistic milieu. Particular emphasis will include the theological role of the sermon within the liturgy and the contemporary conversational challenges and opportunities of this setting.

Hans Geybels (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
"You Will Think the More Fruitfully as You Think More Piously": Augustine's and Spinoza's Conversation between Faith and Reason in the Light of Augustinian Spirituality

"[U]nde tanto fructuosius cogitabis, quanto magis pie cogitaueris" (Ep. 140) is what Augustine wrote in his letter to Honorius in the years 411/412. Together with his often quoted vetus latina translation of Isaias 7,9 ("nisi credideritis, non intellegetis" in De lib. arb. II, 2 and Ep. 120), that statement reflects most accurately Augustine's struggle with the relationship between reason and faith and is probably the best access to his spirituality. We could attribute many kinds of spirituality to Augustine, e.g. his spirituality for priests, religious and bishops, but perhaps one of the most extraordinary is the spirituality that can be derived from his epistemology, spirituality for theologians so to speak, a ladder of intellectual ascent to God (sentire Deum). The human effort to understand God, could be a source of mystical encounter with God, because - as imago Dei - our rational apparatus is structured analogously to the Trinity and because love is involved in every act of knowing. God is love, and in order to know Him, we have to love Him and for our loving Him, we should turn inwards to purify our hearts by loving our neighbour: "Diligo ergo proximum, et intuere in te unde diligis proximum; ibi videbis, ut poteris, Deum (In Io. Eu. Tr. XVII, 8). In this essay we shall have a closer look at the concept love towards truth (amor ueritatis) in Augustine's spirituality. Love has to be verified by means of truth and, as a consequence, love and knowledge are walking side by side on Augustine's spiritual way.

We will discuss thoroughly Augustine's spirituality, since it has influenced the West for a long time. To prove this we compare his notion of amor ueritatis veritatis or amor sapientiae with Spinoza's amor Dei intellectualis. This shows that at the end of the seventeenth century the Augustinian thought is still popular and that as a consequence of that, the gap between faith and reason emerged later. The fact that that gap emerged very late (18th century) has to do with the fact that since Antiquity, science (in all its forms) had never been free of spirituality, which both Augustine and Spinoza fail to see. Love and knowledge, which are both fundamental elements of Augustine's spirituality, go together and this views has its roots in western thought.

Anthony J. Godzieba (Dept. of Theology and Religious Studies, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, U.S.A.)
Bodies and Persons, Resurrected and Postmodern: Towards a Relational Eschatology

One of the pressing problems for contemporary Roman Catholic theology is the development of a plausible understanding of the character of life after death. Can Catholic theology speak meaningfully about the eternal life in God which is promised for believers and the persistence of transformed individual subjectivity within a postmodern consumer culture which is critical of transcendence and of unified notions of the self?

The problem lies not only in our inability to produce a precise explanation of the elements proper to eschatology, since with the eschata we are dealing with mysteries that lay beyond any certainty which might be achieved by human reason. There are also major questions concerning the relative appropriateness of the images, language, and categories to be used for liturgical and personal prayer, for preaching, and for theological reflection upon eternal life. All this has been made more difficult due to the demise of theology's traditional dualistic anthropology and by the fact that the theological discussion of "personal identity" has lagged behind the contemporary philosophical discussions of subjectivity and alterity. This has resulted in substantial "dissonances" between the official teaching of the Church, its rather "neutral" funeral liturgy, and the experiences, needs, and hopes of ordinary believers (both the dying and those who mourn their deaths).

In this paper I want to sketch a constructive "relational eschatology" which attempts to do justice to the church's creedal affirmation of "the life of the world to come", to contemporary philosophical and aesthetic discussions of "self", "other," and embodiment, and to the affective needs of believers. The paper has two parts. In the first part, in dialogue with a strong phenomenological theory of Christ's bodily resurrection (E. Schillebeeckx) and postmodern gender theory (J. Butler), I argue for a four-fold sense of the body (analogous to the senses of scripture) which articulates the performative, ecstatic, and pluriform nature of embodiment. In the second part I investigate the affective function which "soul" played in older Catholic eschatology and then attempt to retrieve this function (and perhaps "soul" itself) in a more contemporary way. Here I use recent work in identity (M. Frank on "style"), alterity (E. Levinas), and experience (H.-G. Gadamer) to craft a more affective and aesthetic understanding of "bodiliness" and personhood, and thus a more plausible eschatology.

Elizabeth Groppe (Xavier University, New Orleans, LA, U.S.A.)
God and Creature In Lacugna's Relational Theology

The doctrine of the Trinity is at the heart of a Christian relational theology, and one of the landmark books in the current trinitarian renaissance is Catherine Mowry LaCugnas's God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (HarperCollins, 1991). In this book, LaCugna articulates what she terms a "relational ontology." My paper will first briefly explicate her ontological framework which is rooted in the conviction that soteriology and ontology are inseparable. Soteriology, LaCugna argues, must be decisive in our formulation of ontological statements about the being of God. "The doctrine of the Trinity is meant to express that who and what God is with us (as redemptive love) is exactly who God is as God." (LaCugna, "Problems with a Trinitarian Reformulation," 330). A substance metaphysics of God in se is limited in its capacity to express this mystery, and hence LaCugna proposes an alternative metaphysics of God pro nobis in which "person," "relation" and "communion" are fundamental ontological categories, a metaphysics in which God's to-be is to-be-in-relation.

LaCugna's trinitarian ontology offers a constructive framework for a contemporary relational theology. Rather than positing that God is relational in God's self and that creatures then mirror this intra-divine relationality, she proposes that God's very to-be is to-be-in-relation (beyond us but also to us) and that creatures participate in this mystery. This approach has numerous merits. I will very briefly note the following: 1) LaCugna offers a theological framework that expresses in a profound fashion the overflowing love of God. 2) LaCugna's framework enables us to answer the question "Why does God create anything at all?" without positing a disjunction between divine freedom and love. 3) LaCugna's approach offers new possibilities for articulating the distinctions of Father, Son and Spirit in a manner that is neither modalistic nor tritheistic.

In keeping with the topic of the session, however, I will use most of my time to reflect on the God/creature relation from the perspective of LaCugna's theology. LaCugna's conviction that God's "to-be" is "to-be-in-relationship-to-us" has raised concerns among some theologians (e.g. Finan, Bracken, Molnar, Gunton) about the capacity of her theology to maintain the necessary ontological distinction between God and creation. LaCugna, I will argue, does in fact maintain a fundamental distinction between God and creature, although this distinction takes different expression than the same distinction as articulated within a metaphysics of substance. The very form of any ontological distinction is contingent on the ontological system within which that distinction is made. Within the context of a metaphysics of substance, God in se is distinguished from the creature in se. Within the context of a relational ontology, in contrast, God and creature are distinguished not as two qualitatively different kinds of being-in-itself but as two qualitatively different kinds of person-in-relation. Using LaCugna's framework, I will address: 1) the distinction between divine relationality and creaturely relationality; 2) the meaning of the analogy of being from the perspective of a relational ontology; 3) the apophatic and doxological character of this approach.

Edmund Guzman (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Embodied and Vulnerable Creation: A Plea for a Relational Theology

Our paper finds its starting point in a reflection on the theme of creation that responds to the challenges of poverty and ecological degradation in the current Philippine context. By ecological degradation, we mean not only a crisis of imbalances in the natural environment, but also a crisis in our social relationships as well. The strictly environmental dimension of the crisis between humans and the natural world forms the wider context of the socio-economic dimension of the ecological crisis between humans amongst themselves. The resulting devastation of nature compounds the impoverishment of the majority of the population who are poor peasants, farmers and fisher folk. From a faith perspective, we ask: 'In a context of poverty and ecological degradation, what does it mean when we profess that this damaged world is God's creation? Who is this God whom we profess to be Creator?'

This paper will thus explore the possibilities of a theology of embodied and vulnerable creation. We take inspiration from a root metaphor in Philippine culture: 'the inside' ('loob'). The metaphor of 'the inside' proves doubly useful in our theological reflection. At a first level, it refers to the reality of our embodied, vulnerable selves: our human bodies and the bodies in the natural world, both susceptible to destruction and pain, abuse and suffering. We shall rely on the works of Bryan S. Turner and Nick Crossley, whose sociological analyses on embodiment and vulnerability form the basis for understanding social reality.

At a second level, the metaphor of 'the inside' likewise provides the lexical base for one of our indigenous words meaning 'to give', 'to proffer', 'to offer as a gift' from which we propose to describe the divine act of creating. God's act of creating the whole of the world can be understood as God's act of 'gift-ing' the world out of the depths of God's own divine, gracious self. In this regard and in a profound sense, God shares deeply in our embodied and vulnerable reality.

In return for this 'gift of creation', to profess faith in God as Creator thus means that we cannot be indifferent to the degradation of nature and the suffering this causes amongst the poor. Our theological reflection on creation is likewise a challenge to respect the embodied vulnerability of creation, and to engage in praxis that takes to heart our interconnectedness and interrelatedness, both on the level of human relationships, as well as on the level of our relationship to nature. On this matter, Pierre Bourdieu's thought on the 'habitus' as a sociological underpinning of this understanding of praxis as embodied action, will prove helpful.

Finally, our paper will argue that a theology of embodied and vulnerable creation, in the last analysis, cannot but be a relational theology, understood in the sense of a reflection on and an engagement in praxis as embodied action on behalf of our created vulnerability.

Laurence Paul Hemming (Heythrop College, University of London, U.K.)
Talking to You is not Being with You: Martin Heidegger, Intersubjectivity, and Prayer

This paper seeks to question the current acceptance of intersubjectivity as the basis for conversation by an appeal to Martin Heidegger’s discussion of Mitsein in Sein und Zeit and in two of his lecture courses from the late 1920’s, especially where he implicitly undertakes a critique of Martin Buber.

The paper shows how the I-Thou relationship is developed out of the openings provided by (for instance) Descartes’ discussion of God in the Meditationes and Leibniz understanding of God developed in the Monadology, so that the I-Thou relationship comes to be constituted as the basic postulate of all ethics, but is in fact in conseuquence of a certain understanding of the will. I argue that when this is understood, the I-Thou relationship appears to be an ethical demand, but in fact is an instrumentalisation either of the other to me, or of me to the other, but in each case installs instrumentalisation as such as the guiding and ruling condition for the encounter with others. The intrusion of God into these relations simply guarantees the absolutisation of the ethical imperative, and poses God as the transcendental horizon to which all ethical intersubjectivity tends and aspires.

The paper undertakes a phenomenology of prayer, by considering first how prayer appears within the philosophy of the subject or “intersubjectivally” and then asks how prayer might be possible in the light of Heidegger’s attack on subjectivity. It proposes that far from accepting the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ suggested by the psychological and consciousness-based understandings of the human being that are now taken for granted, prayer as the action of a community of faith disrupts and disbands any possibility of an interior self disclosing itself privately to God. In this sense, prayer is not a kind of pious or devoted thinking, but only arises out of the phenomenological possibilities described by Heidegger's understanding of being-with or Mitsein.

Susanne Hennecke (Faculty of Theology, U.Utrecht, The Netherlands)
Das Gebet als utopische Erinnerung - ein Gespraech zwischen Karl Barth und Luce Irigaray
(The Prayer as Utopic Memory. An Encounter between Karl Barth and Luce Irigaray)

Das Gebet kann als ein wichiger Ort theologischer Kommunikation bezeichnet werden.

Doch ist die Anrufung Gottes fuer den modernen oder postmodernen Glaeubigen alles andere als eine Selbstverstaendlichkeit: ob Gott lebt und spricht ist in jeglicher Hinsicht ungewiss.

Es ist darum die Frage, inwiefern das Gebet und diesen Umstaenden vom betenden Menschen als sinnvoll erfahren werden kann. Um mich dieser Frage zu stellen werde ich zunaechst einige Aspekte der Gedanken des Theologen Karl Barth zum Thema der Anrufung praesentieren. Es wird sich zeigen, dass Barth in seinem handlungstheoretischen (ethischen) Ansatz nicht nur die fundamental unterschiedliche Situation des Anrufenden (des Menschen) und des Empfaengers (Gottes) reflektiert, sondern insbesondere auch das gott-menschliche Verhaeltnis als solches thematisiert (die Anrufung). Als spezifischen Sinn des Gebets als Anrufung arbeitet er die Erinnerung an das gott-menschliche Verhaeltnis als solches heraus, welches Barth zufolge insbesondere als ein (gnaediges) hierarchisches Verhaeltnis zu betrachten ist.

An den Gedanken des Gebets als Erinnerung an ein bestimmtes hierarchisches Verhaeltnis anknuepfend moechte ich im Folgenden die Ausfuehrungen Barths aus der Perspektive der feministischen franzoesischen Differenzphilosophin Luce Irigaray betrachten und weiterentwickeln. Es zeigt sich, dass einerseits positive Anknuepfungspunkte zwischen der Perspektive der Differenzphilosophin Irigaray und der des dialektischen Theologen Barths genannt werden koennen. Darueber hinausgehend waere aber aus der Sicht Irigarays andererseits vor allem der Begriff der Erinnerung (religions-)kritisch zu beleuchten. Es zeigt sich, dass Irigaray auch neue (auch "weibliche") Bilder entwickelt, um diese Erinnerung zu gestalten.

Es stellt sich mir abschliessend die Frage, inwiefern nicht der Begriff der utopischen Erinnerung helfen koennte, den oben genannten Zweifeln des modernen oder postmodernen betenden Menschen zu begegnen.

Mit meinem paper moechte ich nicht nur einen Beitrag zum Thema des Gebets als spezifisch theologischer Kommunikationsform bieten, sondern ebenso das Gespraech zwischen (dialektischer) Theologie und (franzoesischer Differenz-) Philosophie befoerdern.

Theo L. Hettema (Faculty of Theology, Leiden, The Netherlands)
In Conversation with the Past: Theology and the Dialectics of History

In theology the concept of conversation has been made fertile by David Tracy. His theology serves as a point of reference in exploring the notion of conversation as a paradigm of reflection in theology, a mode of external, academic, and cultural justification, and a form of religious attitude. I confront this conception of 'theology as conversation' with a reflection on the nature of history. Is it possible to have a conversation with the past? The mode of dealing with the past rather should be described as a search for traces, or as a stance of memory. Conversation presupposes mutual response. There is, however, not such a context of reciprocal communication between the past and the theologian. How then is it possible to have a theological conversation with the past?

This question is approached by viewing the recent monograph of Paul Ricoeur, La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli (Paris: Seuil, 2000). This study offers a profound phenomenology of history and memory, a reflection on the possibility of historical knowledge, and a hermeneutics of the historical condition. Ricoeur's conception of human being as fundamental historical serves as a counterpoint of reference to our exploration of the notion of conversation. The dialectic of memory and forgetting, especially, should provide us with an alternative to the dilemma of the unilaterality of the past and the reciprocity of conversation. Thus, the notion of conversation is enriched by a reflection on the nature of history.

While Ricoeur's study does not broach the theme of religion and theology systematically, the subsequent question arises whether this reflection also applies to theological conversation, in reflection, justification, and in a religious approach of the transcendent.

Bradford Hinze (Faculty of Theology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.)
Dialogical Traditions and a Trinitarian Hermeneutic

During the second half of the twentieth century dialogical and communicative models of revelation and of the church provided the leading edge of a consensus among Catholic theologians, as well as in ecumenical circles and in contexts where exchanges between members of diverse religious and cultural traditions took place. In Catholic theology dialogue and communication became a focal point that provided a theological frame of reference at The Second Vatican Council. There, theologians committed to church renewal through retrieving forgotten traditional voices, and those seeking renewal through expanding the contemporary conversation, joined together to offer an alternative to the regnant neo-scholastic theology, which had promoted neither dialogue, nor effective communication. This consensus surrounding the realized assets and the still unfolding promise of a dialogical and communicative approach to revelation and the church remains singularly important. But no less important are the ways that the confidence and hope in dialogue and communication have been seriously called into question. On one level, the new found trust in the power of dialogue and communication as a means to reach consensus in beliefs, to promote effective social action, and to form deeper mystical and interpersonal bonds of communion, has been shaken by the contentious, and at times polarized, diversity of approaches to dialogue and communication, and by contrasting hermeneutical strategies for understanding the various voices and communities involved in the discourses and practices of tradition. On a far deeper level, however, when confronted by interpersonal and social deceptions and distortions — often with underlying psychological and ideological dynamics at work — which corrupt, mar, and desecrate the self, relations of intimacy, and social relations, one is faced with a deep-seated disillusionment about the power of dialogue and communication. A crucial problem, at both levels, is that certain voices, selected models and hermeneutical strategies, and partial truths continue to dominate.

The challenge is to construct a comprehensive and judicious account not only of the promise of the dialogical and communicative approach to tradition, a category which includes both the realities of revelation and the church, but also of the perils that will always, and in every age, threaten them. One must savor the redemptive and sanctifying graces that are available through dialogue and communication, while confessing the brutal facts about distortion in the depths of the human psyche, in interpersonal relationships, and in the conscience collective. This essay will argue that ultimately nothing less than a trinitarian hermeneutic that honors the work of the trinitarian pleroma can fulfill the promise of a dialogical and communicative model of tradition. By confronting the very risks to that promise posed by insulated approaches to conversation, restrictive hermeneutical strategies, and the perennial threat of distortions, a hermeneutic receptive and responsive to the trinitarian self-communication of God can foster ongoing conversion to a wider vision, and to a process of purification, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation of individuals and communities, and thereby promote a deepening dialogical communion with the living God and with the diversity of human beings and communities that reflect the glory and the plan of the triune God. The personal and collective journey into the most profound mysteries of God, of communities in history and society, and of the human heart, where the 'apophatic,' and the hidden, and the pernicious challenge every 'cataphatic,' revealed, and graced word spoken and received, demands a trinitarian hermeneutic which is capable of funding a trinitarian ecclesiology and spirituality.

Scott Holland (Bethany Theological Seminary, Richmond, IN, U.S.A.)
Bonhoeffer's Friends: Toward An Aesthetics of Relationality

Drawing from the Bonhoeffer narrative as a case study, and using the work of thinkers such as Bakhtin, Ricoeur and others, I will define and propose an aesthetics (not simply an ethics) of relationality, relative to the self with the Other. Indeed, convinced by David Tracy's claim that "art is religion's nearest analogue," I will suggest that in a relational theology, aesthetics precedes ethics. This of course critiques the project of Levinas and his disciples who ground relationality in the first principle of an ethical command. Here, in contrast, I shall suggest that an "aesthetic" encounter invites and inspires a relational response. (Perhaps it goes without saying that I shall define the aesthetic not simply in terms of "the beautiful" but rather in terms of its more classical definition of the possibility of a symmetry [indeed, even a 'fearful symmetry' Blake] in face of a sensuous perception and encounter with reality.

Michael Howlett (Studies in Theology and Society, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland)
Twentieth Century Irish Writing: An Opportunity for Fruitful Interaction between Spirituality and Theology

An amount of recent writing and research in Ireland has been exploring spirituality in Irish literature such as Celtic writings, and internationally know contemporary writers like Joyce, Beckett, Heaney, etc. Attempts have also been made to discover the theological dimension of this same writing. It is now both opportune and imperative to explore the relationship of spirituality and theology functioning in this common ground of literature.

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between spirituality and theology in the context of religious experience found in twentieth century Irish writing.

The objectives are:

To explore the critique of spirituality and theology in chosen texts of Irish literature.

To assess and reflect on the contribution that this critique would add to our understanding of spirituality and theology and the relationship between the two.

To relate these understandings to selected existing literature and debate.

The paper will focus on communication and conversation in the spirituality/theology relationship and the communication/dialogue aspect of the literature by paying attention to the characters together with the relationship between literature, spirituality and theology.

The methodology is outlined as follows:

Explore the contemporary understandings of spirituality and theology (on the assumption that they are intrinsically related and are interdependent to each others development).

Explore the role of intermediary partners such as religion, worship/ritual, culture, etc.

Read literary texts critically to listen to its meaning and uncover its understandings of both spirituality, theology and their relationship.

Critically evaluate the contribution of this exploration to the contemporary debate.

William J. Hoye (Faculty of Theology, University of Münster, Germany)
The Conversation of Love as Unfulfilling Union

Human love is commonly (e.g., Erich Fromm) interpreted as being the fulfilment of the desire for union with another person. Others (e.g., Josef Pieper, Thomas Aquinas) have taken the standpoint that love, rather than consisting in fulfilment, is itself a desire for union arising out of love's being - by essence - the union of desire itself ('unio affectus'). The differentiated perspective required here sheds light on the nature of the conversation of love.

Friends desire to converse with one another. "This appears to be the most characteristic mark of friendship," notes Thomas Aquinas, standing in a long tradition. "We even take more delight in conversing with a friend than in conversing with ourselves." A careful analysis reveals that love consists in a reciprocal encounter revolving around different kinds of union. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes three kinds, or stages, of love union: the union giving rise to love, the union that love desires and the union of desiring love itself. It belongs to the essence of love between friends, desiring mutual conversation, that this desire remains unfulfilled. This is owing primarily to reflective consciousness. Reflection renders love in the present human condition unfulfillable. The more love becomes self-conscious, the greater the cleft between desire and its fulfilment.

Georgia Masters Keightley (St. Anselm Institute for Lay Theology, U.K.)
Lay Church and World: Practise as Conversation

Attention to the role of conversation and the idea of conversation as a model for theology presents the opportunity to examine critically the dialogue that goes on between church and world. For centuries, this conversation has been narrowly framed and analyzed in the cognitive terms and experiential perspective of the church's hierarchy and clerical elites. But a social theory perspective requires that we consider again who the real dialogue partners are in this ongoing exchange - who is church? who is world? and what is the distinction? In this light we must also reconsider the character of the conversation and the manner in which it takes place.

The application of social theory underscores that a determinative conversation between church and world is the one that takes place locally and has to do with what ordinary laity do and say as they go about shaping contemporary life in an intentionally Christian way. Ecclesiologist Joseph Komonchak has long argued that ecclesial reality - local as well as universal - acquires worldly presence and efficacy only as it is enacted and shared in the context of particular social structures, of specific cultures. In this view, evangelization and inculturation are principally lay activities. Unfortunately theologians have given very little attention to this quotidian practise of faith. On the other hand, any theology of globalization which does not take into account the lay conversation with local socio-cultural realities will provide inadequate.

My paper proposes to reexamine the construals of "church", "world" and look at the nature of this conversation that ensues between lay church and world, a conversation that actually constitutes each. I will adapt categories developed by Michel de Certeau, particularly those presented in The Practise of Everyday Life to explicate this dialogue. I will show that this dialogue - which may not be reduced to its merely verbal or cognitive aspects - is better understood as performance, as a type of practise.

An important corollary: As theology increasingly becomes the endeavor of lay Catholics, it will become the responsibility of lay theologians to frame, analyze, and even direct this conversation. It will be suggested that in this way, the 'sensus fidelium' will at last begin to come to explicit articulation.

My paper will: 1) raise questions about the way the categories "church", "world", have been construed and will go on to argue for a new way of viewing them; 2) highlight the part lay Catholics play in the crucial dialogue with the world; I will propose that it is the laity's everyday practise that actually constitutes the church as dialogue partner; and 3) call attention to the significant role the lay theologian will increasingly play in framing, analyzing, even directing the church/world conversation.

Bernhard Koerner (Faculty of Theology, University of Graz, Austria)
Theology Based on and Formed by Giving Himself: K. Hemmerle's "Trinitarian Ontology" as a Starting Point for a New Paradigm of Theology

A first glance at the title of Klaus Hemmerle´ s "Theses for a Trinitarian Ontology" might lead to the assumption that in this work the author tries to reveal triadic relations as the basic structure of being. But Hemmerle´ s approach and his results are different and more radical. Hemmerle begins with what he calls "the inner middle of the Christian", namely Jesus Christ, whom he characterises as the "trinitarian event" (trinitarisches Ereignis - 138). Phenomenologically speaking this is an event, motion and relation: it is God´s "giving-himself" (Sich-Geben - 140). And in correspondence with this Hemmerle characterises his trinitarian ontology as "the phenomenology of all being understood anew and without restriction in the light of giving-himself" (141).

This kind of ontology is based on the categories of 'motion' and 'relation'. The result is a dynamic kind of ontology with special demands on thinking. It is different from other kinds of ontologies and does not consist in principles and conclusions based on them, but it requires the attempt of realising in thought and existence the "rhythm of being" (141). "Trinitarian ontology is not only a certain content of thinking but also a certain way of thinking. Thinking ontology means in this case: to enter in it's rhythm with thought, speech and therefore with the whole existence itself" (157).

In this way of thinking with it's basic model "unity in multiple causality" (142) "communication is thought the form of originality (Ursprünglichkeit) and originality the form of communication" (Michael Böhnke). This kind of thinking makes it possible to comprehend the contents of Christian belief and to avoid contradictions and incoherence. Hemmerle gives only short hints on these theological consequences of his trinitarian ontology - beginning with the relation between the immutability of God and God's history up to the fact of incarnation, "when God does not only grant existence to the other, but when he gives himself into the other" (157).

My paper wants to outline some consequences of Hemmerle's trinitarian ontology for the epistemology and methodology of theology and the form of theology itself. Hemmerle gives some short hints in this direction - his ideas on thinking (157 ff.) and on the unity of theory / theology, spirituality and community (159 ff.). My paper wants to follow these hints and to sketch further consequences. In this way it may well offer a contribution for the topic of the congress, and it may also pay attention to a philosophical and theological thinker who deserves wider attention.

Beate Kowalski (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Conversations about Poverty in the Lukan Community

The question of poverty and richness is an important aspect of the Lukan theology and with relevance to his community. Next to John, the prophet and the author of Revelation, he is the central author dealing with issues of poverty and richness in the New Testament. He develops his viewpoint on a theology and spirituality of poverty as a condition of a Christian community in both of his writings, the Gospel and Acts.

In this paper, we will investigate the methods of communication Luke has used to convince his community to put into practice a certain lifestyle as Christians. Different levels of communication can be found in his narrative. First, there is the communication between the actors in the text. The way of addressing, the quality and quantity of their speech, and their proposed actions can be analysed. The second level of communication concerns the correspondence between different pericopes. It is the creative task of the (ideal) reader to realise different connections of subjects, motives, and interactions in a text. And here the third aspect of communication starts to develop: the dialogue between the text and the reader (pragmatic dimension).

These three levels of conversation will be exemplified through the dialogues between at least three pericopes in Lk. First, we will analyse the encounter between the rich, anonymous Jewish ruler (Lk 18,18-27) who asked Jesus about the commandments that should be kept in order to inherit eternal life; he left him with sadness because the burden of selling all his material goods and giving it to the poor was too hard for him. Who is taking the initiative for the dialogue? What are the motives of this person? How can the relation between questions and answers, the quality and quantity of direct speech e described?

The next step will be a fresh look on the pericope of the rich tax collector Zacchaeus who tries to see Jesus (Lk 19,1-10); his happiness about Jesus' visit to his home and the salvation received there, enables him to give half of his possessions to the poor. How can the communication be described in this pericope? What is the relation between action and speech?

In a the third step, we will bring both pericopes in connection with each other to see how they are dealing with the same topic of poverty. We will argue the thesis that there is an implicit dialogue between the rich, anonymous Jewish ruler and the rich tax collector Zacchaeus. Both are anti-types: the first is not ready to give his possessions to the poor; he is only interested in an intellectual dialogue with Jesus about religion and its commandments, without being challenged personally. In contrast to this, Zacchaeus is searching to see Jesus and longing for salvation in his life. He is open for an encounter and a conversation that changes his life completely.

Within the progress of Luke's narrative composition, both pericopes are placed very close together. For the reader of the Gospel, it is easy to link them with each other. The delighted Zacchaeus reminds him/her of the sad rich men a few verses before. And the reader who reads the Gospel as a whole will still have in mind the opening speech of Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth (Lk 4,16-21), where he proclaims a good message for the poor. According to Luke, the social programme is to give the half of the material goods to the poor, like Zacchaeus did. People who search and follow Jesus in the way the tax collector did can share the Christian joy of salvation and realise the social programme for the poor in the Lukan community.

Communication takes place at three levels: first, between the actors (Jesus, Jewish ruler, Zacchaeus etc.) of the individual pericopes; second, on the level of the narrative unity of the Gospel as a whole; and finally, between the reader and the text. Luke tries to persuade his addressees not by imposing them ethical rules but by telling stories about good and bad examples. The dialogue between the text and the reader is never finished. Bible texts always remain open for new situations and decisions of life.

Lope Florente A. Lesigues (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Tastes of Incarnation, Trinity and Carnival: Critical Conversations in Theoaesthetics from the Perspective of Mikhail Bakhtin

In contemporary theological aesthetics, taste remains to be an indubitable marker of distinction that sets the criteria for what would be considered aesthetic proper. Using the categories of epistemic subjectivity high aesthetics distantiates itself from, and adjudges, the immediacy of the 'cheap', 'superficial', 'gaudy' as over-proximate in its acquisition of temporal pleasure. A renunciated and sublimated 'aisthesis' is elevated as a form of asceticism in which distance and disinterestedness are vital components in the arbitration of 'pure' taste. By transmutation, this type of aesthetics becomes the yardstick of virtue, and its tenacity measured by the capacity to withstand and subjugate the vulgar and the sensual, which makes up for the definition of genuine personhood. What is crucial in this transmutation of values and the injunction to define the authentically human is what Bourdieu calls 'monopoly of humanity' to refer to aesthetics as designated with the vocation to differentiate the human from the non-human. Here, sublimity limned in the aura of Beauty Itself (as reflected later in the mysteries of Incarnation, Trinity, etc.) is poised to legitimate its education and domination of the 'too natural' ethos of the popular.

From the perspective of the Russian social thinker, Mikhail Bakhtin, the arbitration of taste is a privileged posture; hence, far from a disinterested claim. Against the problematique of structuralist/formalist monologism, Bakhtin's philosophy of dialogism sees aesthetics as a social text that predates the individual. The decentered subject does not 'author' the text, but only gives voice to the myriad of contesting aesthetic discourses that surround the contextual space; hence the possibility of resurfacing hidden subtexts. Yet, beyond the other monologic extreme of postmodern authorial demise, Bakhtin proposes the anatomy of carnival that upturns the sociodicy of classic aesthetics by affirming the novel over the epic, the prosaics over poetics, the ordinary over the elite - not in the sense of putting the 'low' on top, but of bringing the monolithic 'high' to touch base and dialogue with the 'low' as equal interlocutor in the social discourse; hence the interchange of co-agencies. Our position lobbies then, for "inquiry and conversation, that is dialogue" (Bakhtin) that retrieves a 'hidden' theoaesthetics - one rooted in the practice of art and life of people largely inferiorized by their distance from the aesthetic-ascetic core.

It will be shown that Bakhtin's dialogism mirrors the interpenetrating, yet unmerged, discourse of relations that intimates the 'Triunity', lampooning the comic pretensions of a unitary Logology. His carnival themes issue some theological motifs that project an Incarnation model as the 'degradation of God' where theoludic elements abound in distaste and mésalliances, rather than the 'elevation of humanity' projected in elite aestheticism. His 'paradigm of distaste' is paradoxically profound, opening dialogue not with asceticism but with an aesthetics that dispels the art-life divide and more importantly, gives a concrete face and voice to the kenotic O/other from the fringes. Hence, it is a kind of 'aesth-ethics' that highlights responsibility towards the other as its virtue and vocation, carved in the 'exemplum' of the I-Thou relation to the Third(ness). Implications in theoaesthetics are rife as Bakhtin will surely reposition the debate within the discipline from solely a 'theoria' of beautiful life into (the incorporation of) a 'poeisis' of responsible living. Indeed, Bakhtin's thoughts merit some space in the contemporary search for a relational theology of aesthetics.

Jane E. Linahan (Saint Francis Seminary, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.)
Kenosis: Metaphor of Relationship

This paper will argue that kenosis, as metaphor of the divine mode of relating to the world, is a model for human ways of relating that are inclusive and reverent.

As the theme of this conference emphasizes, conversation is assuming an ever more important role in theology and in other arenas of human life as well. At this moment in history, it has become vitally urgent, for the sake of justice and peace, to foster understanding through communication. Conversation is a supreme paradigm of the kind of exchange in which we need to engage if we are to survive, let alone ensure the dignity and rights of all creatures.

If conversation is so important, we are constrained to raise the question about those who are too easily excluded. What about those who are left out of the conversation because they are voiceless? What about the ones who are neither heard nor seen because they are considered not to matter by those with the voices to be heard? What about the ones whose voices are drowned out because they would call into question the interests of those wishing to dominate the conversation?

What model of conversation will call and challenge and empower us to include the ones who have not been allowed to speak? Conversation, of course, involves both speaking and listening. Respectful listening, the often-overlooked half of authentic communicating, requires a spirit of true openness to that which is other than oneself. If the excluded are to become the included, what is necessary is to cultivate the art of careful listening and the posture of reverent openness.

We have a marvelous model for this. The triune God, not content with reaching out to create the cosmos, goes to the ultimate lengths of self-communication by uttering the Word made flesh. Yet the very mode of this utterance is not self-assertion, but self-emptying. Kenosis is a metaphor of relationship, a metaphor of a particular - trinitarian - relational dynamic. Jesus' self-emptying is part of his dialogue with the Father, not a grasping self-assertion, but a listening to (obedience), to which the Father replies in turn by giving everything over to him. In the process of this exchange the trinitarian relationships are opened to the world: God empties self into the world and the world is drawn into the embrace of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The metaphor of kenosis shows in vivid terms that God is - not non-relational - but supremely relational, and that the form of God's relation to the world is one of self-emptying, of profound self-giving openness. God is open enough to the world's otherness to incorporate it into the history of the Son and allow it to have an impact on the divine relationships. God is creative and daring enough to utter the Word and then to listen attentively to the world's response. True and worthwhile conversation listens with greatest care to those least likely to be heard - a listening empowered by the self-emptying of God.

Wiel Logister (Faculty of Theology, K.U.Brabant, Tilburg, The Netherlands)
Content and Form of a Conversation on the Faith according to William of Ockham

For a long time William of Ockham has been considered as the end of any systematic theology. It has even been stated that all the problems of Christianity in the modern era have to a large extent been caused by him. Recently, however, this negative assessment has been reversed into its counterpart. In my contribution I want to gather in the rich harvest of this new approach. My focus will be on the challenge for contemporary theology to become, inspired by Ockham, a spiritual discourse in which poverty constitutes a central theme.

Laszlo Lukacs (Sapientia School of Theology, Budapest, Hungary)
Conversatio cordium. Conversation as basic principle of Newman's theology: The Holy Trinity - revealed for us, in us

"Cor ad cor loquitur"

John Henry Newman is one of the great forrunners of the II. Vatican Council and contemporary theology. Conversation in its deepest sense is the key-word for both his spiritual journey and his theology. His spiritual journey from his first conversion to the second (when he entered the Catholic Church) and to his ongoing conversions later in his life was accompanied by continuous conversations (and quite frequently: controversions) with his contemporaries, both friends and adversaries, but also by a continuous conversation-contemplation of God.

The present study focuses on Newman's theology of revelation, discovered and analysed in his approach to the Church Fathers. He followed the footsteps of Athanasius and the Alexandrians in understanding and interpreting the Holy Trinity and especially the role of Jesus Christ. Newman's universe of thinking was limited by two frontiers yet he could transgress both. One was the trinitology elaborated by the fathers of the 4th century. Newman developed their ideas further, contemplating the activity of the oeconomical Trinity: the love of God as revealed to us (by Christ, externally, at a definite point of history), and in us (by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit).

The other difficulty for Newman was the 19th century rationalism ("when love was cold"), which was fiercely attacked by him. He contrasted theology to religion, claiming that we cannot stop at notions conferred to us. Without denying the importance of notional propositions he insisted to go beyond them to the "Real".

Human conscience ("heart") has an indirect contact to God who communicated us his divine life in his incarnated son. Revelation is not mere information about divine truths. It is rather the communication of a life that is to be lived, the living communcation between God and human beings created to his image and called to his loving communion. That is why God's revelation has to be recieved not only mentally but also existentially, in faith and obedience. "The whole duty and work of a Christian is made up of two parts, faith and obedience."

Conversation both in the theology and in the spiritual life of Newman is far beyond the exchange of words and ideas; it is the exchange and communion of persons: first within the Holy Trinity, then followed by revelation culminating in Jesus Christ. The immanent divine conversation (i.e. perichoresis) is thus extended to humanity. Conversation does not simply mean "talking to one another" but "being together, being one with the other". "We are assured of some real though mystical fellowship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in order to this: so that both by a real presence in the soul, and by the fruits of grace, God is one with every believer, as in a consecrated temple."

Existential/ontological conversation occupied Newman's mind and spirit alike. Today's personal approach to the inner life of the Holy Trinity and to revelation can find fruitful insights in Newman's theology and spirituality. An attempt is made here to investigate the trinitarian roots of ontological conversation both divine and human.

Peter Martens (Notre Dame University, Notre Dame, IN, U.S.A.)
Anselm's Conversations: Faith Seeking Understanding as a Spiritual Exercise

In an important recent work, Exercices spirituels, Pierre Hadot has argued that the discipline of philosophy should be characterized as a series of spiritual exercises. Properly understood, these exercises are both intellectual and ethical activities designed to engage and reform the whole person. Almost all these exercises have a dialogical structure, promoting in a philosopher a proper conversation with himself, with others, and with texts.

I will enter into a dialogue with Hadot's work and argue that his characterization of philosophy is particularly apt for the discipline of theology: theology is not only to be understood as a series of intellectual exercises (e.g. definition, argumentation, exegesis, investigation), but also more broadly as a series of spiritual exercises (formation of self through dialogue with oneself, others, and ultimately, God). I will make this point with reference to Anselm's influential theological program, fides quaerens intellectum (a program still invoked today, though frequently misunderstood).

With special though not exclusive reference to Proslogion, I will give an account of "faith seeking understanding" that does justice to Anselm's "seeking" as both an intellectual and spiritual quest.

Moreover, as both intellectual and spiritual quest (which are actually difficult to distinguish from one another in Anselm), "faith seeking understanding" has a dialogical structure. For example, in the preface to Monologion, Anselm tells us that this work emerged from conversations he had with his fellow monks at Bec. Or, in the preface to Proslogion, Anselm tells us that this work stemmed from conversations he was having with himself. Or most famously, the Proslogion is a conversation with God, a prayer, in which Anselm not only addresses God, but claims God has responded to his invocation. Now the discipline of theology, including "faith seeking understanding," is characterized not only by modes of inquiry, but also by manners of presentation. I will conclude this paper with reflections on the literary genre of Proslogion, showing how and why Anselm consciously writes in a genre designed to promote certain conversations in his readers.

This paper contributes to the theme 'Reflection on Theology and Spirituality: Conversation as a Paradigm for Theology' by articulating an intimate relationship between theological activity and spirituality.

Robert Masson (Faculty of Theology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.)
Getting-it Together: Analogy, Metaphor and the Essentially Conversational Character of Religious Discourse

This Spring, Theological Studies will publish an article I have written on "Analogy and Metaphoric Process" which argues, in part, that Mary Gerhart and Allan Russell's understanding of metaphoric logic clarifies in significant ways how theological and doctrinal analogies actually work. In that article, I refer in passing to the importance "reception" plays in analogy and metaphor. My presumption, following their suggestions, is that the kind of analogies entailed in religious revelation, doctrinal development and theological advances are not static comparisons, but rather innovative conceptual moves within a given field of meanings which create the possibility for new understandings by "forcing" analogies which actually change the fields of meaning themselves. Gerhart and Russell's theory offers a way to explain how the resulting affirmations are genuine truth claims, and in that sense, can be taken "literally," but only if one understands that because of structural shifts in the fields of meaning "literal" here does not mean "univocal." Understanding the logic of such shifts in meanings then becomes crucial to grasping what is affirmed. Taking this into account clarifies the logic of theological signification in a way which explains a number of academic disputes (such as the one between Elizabeth Johnson and Joseph Bracken discussed in my Theological Studies article) and confessional differences between churches or between different ideological schools (often within churches as well as between them). The Theological Studies article is part of a larger project of mine to analyze "The Metaphoric Turn and the Doctrine of God" and to further a rethinking of the doctrine of analogy.

At your conference, I would propose to work out more explicitly and rigorously these presumptions about the logic of religious discourse and the importance of reception, to argue that as analogical and metaphoric, theology is essentially conversational: "getting" the meaning of an affirmation presupposes dynamic and fundamental shifts in shared fields of meaning which can only be grasped through ongoing dialogue. It is something that must be done by partners whose fields of meanings and horizons of understanding are changing and advancing in effective conversation with each other and shared traditions. Since conversation and dialogue can proceed along different lines and from different presuppositions and convictions, it is possible that the same theological or doctrinal assertions actually can have different meanings for parties in dialogue or dispute. This could be true not only when persons believe they are in disagreement but even when they think they are affirming the same thing as another contemporary or historical dialogue partner. Such disagreements (and agreements) are logically complex, and entail not only underlying differences regarding what is being said, but more fundamental disparities rooted in essentially divergent logics and horizons of meaning. One party might get the other's analogy differently, get it wrongly or might not "get it" at all because he or she does not recognize a fundamental difference in logic. Hence successful theological discourse, not to mention theological and ecclesial consensus, or "getting it together"-to play on the ambiguity of the phrase, requires effective and ongoing conversation.

Kadavil Mathai (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Sacramentality of Creation: An Assessment of Recent Studies in the Theology of Creation in the Eastern-Oriental Tradition

The title of the conference, "Theology and Conversation," is strident to Orthodox traditions today more than ever. Unlike the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Churches, which have the advantage of being at home within Western civilization, the Orthodox encounters difficulties in adjusting to the modern world and its value systems. Hence, conversation with the emerging situations is pivotal to the future of Orthodox Christianity. Some efforts have been made in different areas of theology. This paper looks into one such conversation: on the relations between God, the world, and humankind. In particular, the focus is on the role of human beings in their relation to God and the world.

Our study will briefly introduce the sophiological approach of Vladimir Soloviev, who tried to reconcile the pantheistic worldview with the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, and of his followers Paul Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov and Nicholas Berdyaev. This approach has been supplemented with the neo-patristic synthesis of Georges Florensky, Vladimir Lossky and John Meyendorff. Their discussions based on historical and patristic sources enabled many contemporary theologians to articulate the relevance of the theology of creation in today's world.

Hence, our main focus will be on theologians like Paulos Gregorios, Dumitru Staniloae, Christos Yannaras, Sebastian Brock and Robert Murray, who tried to answer the relevance of the theology of creation today. In this regard, we shall also pay attention to the Orthodox theologian's contribution to the JPIC (Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation) project of the WCC. In particular, we aim to delineate the efforts of the "eastern-oriental" theologians to bridge the gap between the sacred and the profane by proposing a sacramental view of the world. We shall highlight the central role of the human being as steward of God and his responsibility to maintain a covenantal relationship with God.

Bernard Michollet (Faculté de théologie, Université Catholique de Lyon, France)
La méthode scientifique et la structure de l'acte de foi

Le champ des sciences s'est tellement étendu au XXe siècle et s'est si fortement imposé à travers la technoscience que la source de son succès, la méthode, en est occultée. Des épistémologues, et non des moindres, contestent la notion même de méthode scientifique. Mais d'autres la défendent en montrant qui'il n'est d'autre chemin pour faire reculer les pseudo-savoirs véhiculés par la rumeur. L'enjeu de ce débat concerne le type de rapport que le chercheur entretient avec la réalité qu'il aborde. Le versant anthropologique de ce débat épistémologique touche à l'attitude des humains et le rôle de leurs croyance face au monde qu'ils constitutent et qu'ils habitent.

Or le champ des sciences modernes s'est constitué dans la culture occidentale imprégnée de christianisme. Les historiens conviennent que les conséquences anthropologiques de la conception judéo-chrétienne de la foi en Dieu, en renversant le rapport des humains à la sacralité du monde, ont contribué à l'émergence de la méthode scientifique. Ce retour aux origines des sciences montre que, bien loin d'être des antagonistes, la foi et la raison, comme principes de connaissance, ont fonctionné dans une tension dialectique féconde. La foi a conduit la raison à se frayer un nouveau chemin de connaissance, intégrant l'héritage grec.

La montée en puissance des sciences s'est heurtée aux réactions de l'Église qui pensait défendre la foi en défendant une conception totalisante du monde, constituée d'un héritage philosophique, d'une lecture particulière des Écritures et d'une intégration politico-religieuse de l'universe connu. Grâce à ce débat difficile, la structure anthropologique de l'acte de foi a été repensée. Son caractère critique et dynamique a repris consistance pour le sujet croyant. Le développement de la méthode scientifique a conduit à de saines distinctions dans le champ des représentations religieuses entre l'acte de foi et le langage qui l'exprime.

Avec l'agonie du positivisme et l'échec de la méthode scientifique que certains ont voulu y voir, sont réapparues d'autres approches de la réalité. En particulier, les tentations d'un rapport magique au monde refont surface. Des discours sensés porteurs de savoir se développent sans référence aucune à la réalité qu'ils affirment décrire. Présentés comme une nouvelle forme de connaissance, des discours reposant sur la croyance, typiquement pré-modernes, sont valorisés. Pour résoudre la crise des sciences, certains vantent le retour à l'asservissement de la raison à une réalité re-sacralisée. Les enjeux de tels retours é une conception pré-modern des sciences sont anthropologiques et théologiques.

La tension dialectique entre l'acte de foi et la méthode scientifique peut à nouveau jouer un rôle déterminant au service de la libération de la raison en quête de connaissance. En provoquant une recherche nouvelle des principes théologiques au fondement d'une anthropologie structurant la recherche, la réflexion sur l'acte de foi permet de penser la libération de la raison. Et ce dialogue est d'autant plus nécessaire qu'anthropologie et théologie ont, à ce niveau, partie liée. La salut de la méthode scientifique conditionne, à son tour, le développement d'une conception dynamique de l'acte de foi.

Hadwig Müller (Missionswissenschaftliches Institut, Aachen, Germany)
Gott: ein Gespräch, das aus dem Hören lebt

Theologie des Gesprächs, der Beziehungen, Theologie der Trinität: sie ist empfangene Theologie. Empfangen aus der Geschichte, in der "Gott" - dasselbe Wort meint den Einen und die Gemeinschaft der Drei - "sich" zeigt und gibt. In der Geschichte Israels und in Jesus von Nazareth gibt Gott Anteil an seinem Leben: Dasein-für und Dasein-im-Werden. Seine Gabe ist der Geist. Im Geist lesen wir Jesu Sterben am Kreuz und seine Auferstehung als Offenbarung der Liebe, die Gott ist. Im Geist leben und lesen wir unsere Beziehungen als Widerschein dieser Liebe. Von ihnen aus können wir die Beziehungen in Gott sagen und denken. Das ist eine Weise, für ihre Gabe zu danken.

Vater, Sohn, Geist, Gespräch: Bilder für die Beziehungen in Gott. Entscheidend sind die Beziehungen. Welche Einsicht bringt das Gleichnis des Gesprächs? Dass in Gott Armut ist, Vorrang des anderen, Hören - Quelle seines Sprechens, Gebens und Lebens. Diese Antwort, mein Blick auf Beziehungen ist bestimmt durch Jacques Lacans Freud-Lektüre und durch mein Leben mit Armen in Brasilien.

Lacan gründet das Subjekt nicht im bewussten Ich, sondern im unbewussten Begehren, das vom Ich oft genug verraten wird. Ich soll werden und in der Wahrheit meines unbewussten Begehrens zu Tage treten.

Zu dieser Wahrheit gehört wesentlich ein anderer. Niemand ist selber die Quelle seines Begehrens, vom anderen empfängt das Subjekt das Begehren und damit den Mangel, der es konstituiert.

Die Abhängigkeit vom anderen, das Fehlen des Subjekts ‚selber', gehört zur Existenz menschlicher Wesen, die "sujets", Unterworfene der Sprache sind.

Nur sprechend, in der Beziehung zu einem anderen, kann ich werden. Dabei stehe ich mir selber mit dem Ich im Wege, auf das ich ausgesprochene Aufmerksamkeit verwende.

Nur der andere kann mir - durch die Qualität seines Hörens und Sprechens - helfen, in der Wahrheit meines Fehlens, meines unbewussten Begehrens zu Tage zu treten.

Der Struktur menschlicher Beziehungen, die von der Offenheit für den anderen und von dem von ihm empfangenen Mangel bestimmt ist, trägt ein Hören Rechnung, das warten kann, nicht ausgerichtet auf schon Gewusstes, dem Fehlen Raum gebend.

Gleichnis für die Beziehungen in Gott?

Die Frage nach Gott ist untrennbar von jener nach den Armen.

Wenn Gott ein Mensch wird, dessen Leben sich am Kreuz, im Ausschluss von den Menschen vollendet, so offenbart dieses Ereignis einen Gott, der leer wird von sich selber, um dem Ausgeschlossenen nahe zu sein.

Die Nähe zu den Armen, die das Wort Gottes gelebt hat, offenbart die Fähigkeit zu dieser Nähe in Gott selbst. Die Fähigkeit, vom eigenen Zentrum wegzugehen, um bei einem unaufhebbar anderen zu sein, bewegt Gott in seinen Beziehungen.

Diese Bewegung ist wie aktives und passives Hören: Öffnung für den anderen und Empfangen der vom anderen bewirkten Offenheit - ein Gleichnis für den Geist.

Hören, das im Vater wohnt: Entfernung von sich selber, um ganz beim Sohn zu sein und Nachgeben gegenüber dem Mangel, den der Sohn in ihm gründet.

Hören, das im Sohn wohnt: Herstellen von Leere, Raum für den Vater, und Gehorsam gegenüber dem Begehren, das der Vater in ihm weckt.

Der Geist: das Hören, die Armut Gottes.

Welche Einsicht bringt dieses Gleichnis für die Kirche?

Kirche als ein Gespräch, das aus dem Hören lebt. Ihr werden Armut, Vorrang des anderen, Angewiesenheit, Leere, Begehren, Warten, zur Quelle des Sprechens und Lebens in Fülle.

Chukwudi Anthony Njoku (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
On The Thresholds of Theological Conversations between the North and the South: Impediments and Hopes

Globalisation has opened up to us in a unique and profound way the immense complexity of our world, its peoples, its cultures, its differing endowments, values and circumstances. Like a rainbow, this revelation is also manifest in the theological enterprise. Conversation, which at heart involves not just talking about our own experiences but also listening to other peoples' experiences, is a major gateway to understanding our complex realities.

This paper emphasises the importance of conversation between theologians and between theologies especially when these live and operate from different contexts. In particular it probes the quality of relationship and conversation going on between theologians in the North and theologians in the South and between theologies arising from the more developed world context and the emerging theologies from the context of the less developed world. Beyond the geographical locatedness it represents, we also use "North and South" in a second sense to symbolically refer to varying levels of ascribed classifications with which we label different theologies such as relevant/irrelevant, dominant/marginal, mainstream/pedestrian, vocal/ voiceless and orthodox/unorthodox. These labels also affect the way theologians relate with one another and the quality of conversation they share.

This theme is here explored from two main perspectives, namely, the impediments and the hopes to such conversations. Our motivation in raising this issue is to argue against monologue (even if it is a truly brilliant monologue), and intolerance in the theological enterprise and to urge the embracing of dialogue and respect for difference among theologians of different hues. This attitude in particular involves heightened listening to the other as well as a conscious effort to redress some of the structural factors responsible for theological monologue on various sides of the theological divides.

We also try to grapple with the questions: why do we have the mental blocs we find in listening to the other? What is at the basis of our reluctance to listen to the other? Are there reasons that may justify our intolerance of certain theological departures? What are the criteria for our selective attention to other voices, other themes, and other schools of theology? To what extent can we universalise our selectivity and its underlying criteria? Can we develop an ethical paradigm that would guide us in dealing with the problems arising from relativity in theology and theological contexts? How do we deal with theological prejudices and biases? In particular, how do we cope, for example, with the need for critical engagement of the theological other who has an overwhelming sense of being victim and yet remain compassionate? How do we deal critically with the hallowed theological traditions of the other for whom this tradition is also a matter of cultural legacy and pride? How do we develop theological sensitivity without losing our critical engagement? Why must we share our insights with one another?

It is our considered opinion that true theological conversation across one's theological, ecological and cultural borders is crucial if we are to appropriate the manifold riches and insights of varied theological heritages and values found in different contexts. It will also help to create deeper appreciation of one another and possibly lead to the humanisation of theology and the theological enterprise.

Lawrence Nwankwo (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
The Church as Family: Challenges and Prospects of the Family Metaphor for Christian-Muslim Conversation in Africa

Metaphors and models are powerful devices that manifest the creative power of language and make possible reflection about one reality in terms of another. Through metaphors reality is re-described and experience re-organized in new ways. Metaphors and models screen, filter and canalize experience. They expand as well as constrict vision through their funnel effect. This is why they are always in need of revision and supplementation.

The Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops chose the family as the appropriate metaphor for the Church in Africa. This metaphor is biblical and old. Feminist scholarship has shown that this metaphor was used in the time of the Second Testament to critique the society and to imagine a new one. Thus, it had socio-political implications.

In this presentation, I will examine the desires and aspirations behind the choice of the metaphor of the Church as family at the African Synod. I focus on how well or not the metaphor addresses the issues thrown up by the African context. I examine in particular the prospects and challenges of an ecclesial self-definition as a family in the conversation and general relation with Islam. I argue that the family metaphor underscores Christian identity but this needs to be complemented by an emphasis on service to the world which is the point of possible contact with Islam and response to the African situation.

Drago Ocvirk, cm (Faculty of Theology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
From Private to Public Conversation in the Church: The Case of the Catholic Church in Slovenia

Many pretend that the situation of the Catholic Church in Slovenia was better during the communist regime than after it. Under the communism, the Church was silenced, outside the public life, in a way not part of the world. Inside her there were brotherly relations, intimacy among the oppressed and the persecuted, authority was exercised paternally and obeyed filially. A life in privacy, in a private sphere seemingly convened them all: the Church officials, the believers and the communist regime. Today this strange idyll is only nostalgic reminiscence.

The Church has been trying unsuccessfully for a decade to improve her relationship with the State, public interventions of bishops are misunderstood, the public opinion is almost hostile to the Church, and ordinary Catholic people do not want a publicly involved Church and are critical to their leaders. There seems to be an incapacity for communication on the one hand between the Church and the society (including the state), and on the other hand between the believers and the Church authorities.

In my paper I will develop the hypotheses that

there is a lack of public conversation within the Church, the society, and between the two;

a use of political analysis as developed by Hannah Arendt, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Claude Lefort may be helpful in understanding and resolving this blocked situation;

one of the most important consequences of this approach is a demand for a restructuring of the Church from a community organized according to the private logic (as a home or a family with Pater familias at the top) to a community organized according to the public logic, therefore as a community of equal members with the same rights … also in the process of decision making and taking within a Church's public conversation (the community of the baptized people, the people of God and the sacrament of redemption). Such a community is then also enabled for a public conversation in a larger society including other religions;

this approach and this change have theological foundations;

the Slovenian case may have some relevance also for the universal Church, as it concerns conversation within the Church, as well as between the Church and the society.

I believe the future of the Church in Slovenia depends on the transition from a conversation under the law of private sphere to the public conversation, which will have to take place unless the Church wants to return to the ghetto of private sphere and become more and more insignificant for the emerging democratic and pluralistic Slovenian society. If the challenge is accepted, essential changes in her structures and belief's imagery will happen too. In this case, the Catholic Church in Slovenia might be only one example of the changes that the Catholic Church has to undertake if she wants to continue being a witness of the Gospel in the (post)modern world.

Susan Parsons (Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge, U.K.)
Why Friendship is not good for us

This paper will explore the impact of the end of metaphysics on the ethics of friendship. Drawing upon the insights of Aristotle's Nicomachaen Ethics, the place of friendship as the exercise of phronesis (that way of knowing in which the ethical appears) will be considered. It will be argued that friendship is not the unfolding of a form of relation already prepared into which human beings are to develop, if they know what is good for them personally or politically. Nor is the ethical life to be constructed as a means or technique for the achievement and sustenance of such relationship as that which is of highest value for human life. The critique of such an approach will follow the suggestions of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, in which the agent subject is destabilised as one who wills beforehand, and the western cultural text of prescriptions concerning relationality is exposed. The possibility presented in such destruction of prevailing ways of ethical thinking is for a disclosure of human being as time, and thus for an opening onto the mode of being for the future in which friendship is to find its beginning. It is here that friendship with God is rendered possible as that which comes from the future to meet us in the person of Christ, and as that into which we are taken up in faith. The exercise of phronesis in faith becomes the performance of the redemptive possibilities of friendship as we come to figure Christ for one another in love.

Bart Pattyn (Overlegcentrum Christelijke Ethiek, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Church, Social Capital and the Web: Prerequisites for True Conversation

Wilcent K. Peter (St. Xavier's Seminary, Trivandrum, Kerala, India)
Trinitarian Conversation: An Encounter for the Communion of Humanity

In an era of post-modernity and globalisation, the proper understanding of God is an inevitable one for the progress of human beings and the universe. In whatever way we understand God has to promote communion and unity of humanity. Though the term 'Conversation' seems to be a liberal one in its meaning, it gives a profound space for developing a theology that binds everything to the nature of being relational to each other. The conversational approach of theology is more closely related to the idea of Karl Rahner's 'Self-communication'.

In this paper I would like to present an anthropological basis of conversation by looking a the communion nature of the Trinitarian God who is being in relational. In this approach the Trinity is not the Being but Being in conversation and action. The action of the Trinity is 'an activity (being as a verb) rather than an entity (being as a noun, namely God as one) which is the starting point for reflection on the relationships of the divine persons to one another.' This approach of theology opens a door to a conversational method that binds each and every being in conversation with one another. Thus the conversational approach of the Trinitarian God plays a major role to curve a theology for the whole of humanity.

Paul Pulikkan (Marymatha Major Seminary, Trichur, India)
The Reception of Second Vatican Council's Social Teaching in India: A Case Study of Theological Conversation between Council, Indian Bishops and the Society

In today's world of market forces and competition, the Second Vatican Council's teaching on social questions has acquired a new urgency. In this paper, we would like to analyze the Council's social teaching (with a focus on the Indian participation in the Council discussion) and its reception in Indian Church and society. This reception is studied as Conversation in Theology between Council and Indian bishops and the bishops and society.

First we would like to study what the Indian bishops said in the Vota Antepraeparatoria regarding the social question (Vota are the wishes and the proposals, given by the world episcopacy, the Catholic universities and the Roman Curia in order to set the agenda for the Council). Generally, the bishops appear to have conversed with the contemporary social situation of economic hardship.

In the Council, the Indian bishops' pastoral solicitude is seen in calls for economic justice and just distribution of world resources. Ecclesiologically, they opted for "a Church of the poor" as an image for the Church; they called for a Church that accepted service as its style of action. We would however note that the thrust for social reforms was not adequate in the interventions of the Indian bishops (e.g. the uplift of 'dalits', land reforms etc. were not sufficiently highlighted). We will study how effectively the bishops conversed with the real situations of daily life, as they intervened in the Council. The discussion on the schema Church in the Modern World will be specially noted.

The event of the Council gave great hope for the Church. The bishops fervently called for the remedying of the economic imbalances in the Indian society. We will see, how the Council's social teaching get into the pastoral plan and agenda of the Indian bishops in the post-conciliar period. With this purpose, we will study the pastorals, exhortations, the pastoral plan of the CBCI (Catholic Bishops' Conference of India).

Thus, we hope to present a case-study as to how the Vatican Council teaching could shape the socio- economic make-up of the society. The Council today enters into a theological conversation with the outside world through all the faithful, especially through the bishops. Only when the bishops lead the conversation with the society, the basic structures and attitudes in the society could be renewed in the spirit of Council's 'Aggiornamento'.

Finally, we will point out that this conversation between the Council, Church and Society must be done with the help of sociology and economics.

Philip Rossi, SJ (Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.)
Divine Transcendence and the 'Languages of Personal Resonance': The Work of Charles Taylor as a Resource for Spirituality in an Era of Post-modernity

This paper will argue that the work of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor offers important conceptual resources for developing a spirituality appropriate to the circumstances of 'post-modern' culture. In particular, it will explore his notion of the 'languages of personal resonance,' which he considers crucial to retrieving for human life a sense of the spiritual that allows us to discern and be drawn to the transcendent source of the goods we affirm.

Taylor's argument for the role of languages of personal resonance in the recovery of a sense of the spiritual occurs in the final chapter of his magisterial study, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. He there describes the aim of this work as 'liberation' from ways that 'we tend in our culture to stifle the spirit.' He claims that, as a result of the 'selective blindness'of the multiple dynamics of modernity, we have tended to 'read...out of our official story' those goods that express the 'deepest and most powerful aspirations that human beings have conceived' regarding the meaning and ultimate destiny of our lives. Most crucial among the goods that have been read out of the story, moreover, are ones that carry in their acknowledgment a 'promise of a divine affirmation of the human, more total than humans can ever attain unaided.' In the absence of an acknowledgment of such goods and their source in divine transcendence we 'circumscribe our vision' of what we can hope for our humanity to the point of 'spiritual lobotomy.'

Over against this stark picture, Taylor proposes that 'we need new languages of personal resonance to make crucial human goods alive for us again.' Although the proximate origin of his notion of 'languages of personal resonance' lies in what he terms the 'expressivist' strand of 19th and 20th century art and literature, it is also a notion to which he imparts an Augustinian echo: These 'languages of personal resonance' open the possibility for such a path 'within' also to be a path that leads 'above.' Taylor is well aware that a crucial issue with respect to such 'languages' 'and, a fortiori to his proposal that they are important to the recovery of the spiritual in human life' is that they are vulnerable to the same charges of subjectivism legitimately leveled against the expressivist movements that first articulated them. Put in terms of the conference theme, the issue is whether such 'languages' must remain trapped in their monological origins or can, instead, function as modes of genuine conversation involving selves who stand in a social wholeness that is itself referenced to a transcendent divine Other. Taylor only implies that they can so function conversationally, but does not mount a full scale argument to show this. The paper will thus conclude with a sketch of such an argument.

Todd Salzman (Creighton University, Omaha, NE, U.S.A.)
Friendship as a Foundation for Communication between the Universal and Particular Church

There is a "crisis of communication" in the Catholic Church today. The roots of this crisis lie in the tension between two ecclesiological models of the relationship between the universal and particular Church. The pre-Vatican II model of the hierarchical Church, where truth flows downward from the universal to the particular Church, was essentially transformed at Vatican II by a communio ecclesiological model. According to this model, the relationship between the universal and particular Church is linear, not vertical. In a word, it is a relationship among equals. Truth is discerned in and through the learning-teaching Church based on open, honest dialogue between the universal and particular Church guided by the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately there seems to be a resistance to implementing the communio ecclesiological model, and as the current papacy has evolved, so too, has this resistance. According to Aelred of Rievaulx, friendship is only possible among equals. Given the transformation of ecclesiological models from the pre- to the post-Vatican II era, the task continues to work out a credible model of communication within this new paradigm. The nature of friendship and the virtues and laws associated with it can serve as a model of communication for the universal and particular Church. In this paper, I will explore the meaning and nature of friendship in the Christian tradition and its implications for developing an ecclesiological model of communication founded on friendship.

N.F.M.Schreurs (Faculty of Theology, K.U.Brabant, Tilburg, The Netherlands)
Bargaining over Guilt? Forgiving and the Appeal to a Relational God

In this paper, my starting-point will be that, anthropologically, human persons are able to deliberate with themselves and with others. This makes it possible for them to know, at certain points, that they are guilty, but that they will always try to diminish their guilt by pointing at certain circumstances, which exculpate them. They bargain with themselves and with others over their guilt. Is this also possible with God? Is there left room in the relationship between God and human persons for arguing about responsibility and the consequences of human freedom?

In Christian doctrine and theology, forgiveness is a central theme. In the Hebrew Bible God may have many faces, wrathful and revengeful on the one hand, but also merciful and compassionate on the other hand. In his gospel of reconciliation and love, Jesus Christ has made it perfectly clear that God forgives without conditions and that human persons are expected to do the same with their fellow human persons. Pleading and bargaining seems to be unnecessary. Nevertheless, there will be a final judgement, sometimes described as a scene with Christ as the judge, sometimes however with Christ as the advocate and intercessor. The topic of forgiveness evidently presupposes an image of God as a relational person, who either as a God of love or as a God of justice, is viewed as a someone, with whom human persons can converse and who listens to them and who reacts on their requests.

In recent times, the belief in a personal, acting and reacting God has decreased. Secularisation and post-modern attitude make people prefer a less personal God; they think of God as an energy, an all pervading power or light. Not only new religious movements such as New Age or Evangelicalism tend to see God in terms of a indispensable background and last resort in view of the fact that people themselves are the creators of their own life. This tendency applies also to the traditional believers in the Christian Churches. How does this affect the question of forgiveness? Does forgiving not imply, that God is an acting person in history? For forgiving, certain conditions have to be fulfilled by the sinner classically defined as: 'confessio oris', 'contritio cordis' and 'satisfactio operis'. These conditions imply, that sinners have a kind of dialogue or conversation with God and that they more or less bargain with God. From the side of God, forgiving presupposes a sovereign God, who is able to take away the burden of guilt and sin, even to erase from history the evil brought about by sin, just as God was able to create the world out of nothing.

In the paper, these anthropological and theological presuppositions for forgiving shall be discussed in the light of new developments.

Regina Schwartz (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, U.S.A.),
Conversation and Communion

The paper suggests that conversation or dialogue between man and God has been an important aspect of the Eucharist and that this conversation also describes the nature of love. It investigates this understanding of conversation in mystical theology, particularly in the work of Pseudo-Dionysius, and in the seventeenth-century Anglican poet, George Herbert, whose "Love III" depicts communion as a conversation. Finally, it pursues some of the philosophical and theological implications of conversation, particularly as a way of understanding love.

Ciril Sorè (Faculty of Theology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Trinitarisierung der Kommunikation in der Postmoderne

Grundmerkmale der Postmoderne

Der Mensch des dritten Jahrtausend wird ein religiöser Mensch und, so wie schon Karl Rahner vorgesehen hat, ein Mystiker; wo wird aber dieser Mensch die Materie für seine Bedürfnisse zu stillen schöpfen, das darf uns nicht gleichgültig sein. So setzt jede Zeit vor Christentum und seine Theologie die neue Herausforderungen. Und solche Herausforderung in unserer Zeit ist auch Postmoderne. Metz sagt: "Tödlicher als der Verdacht, ungleichzeitig zu sein, wäre für das Christentum der Verdacht, überflüssig geworden zu sein". Ohne hier in die Details der Postmodernitätsdebatte einsteigen zu können, ist es doch wichtig, einige wenige Grundmerkmale der Postmoderne zu erwähnen, um dann (als geeignetste und fruchtbarste) die trinitarisch geprägte Kommunikation mit ihr zu vorschlagen.

Der dreieine Gott als Grund der Kommunikation

In dieser paradoxen Zeit der (wirtschaftlichen und politischen) Globalisierung einerseits und der (kulturellen und religiösen) Privatisierung andererseits hat es die christliche Theologie nicht leicht, sich sowohl den akuten Bedürfnissen unserer Zeit zu stellen als auch den Fragehorizont unserer Zeitgenossen herausfordern und erweitern zu helfen und mit ihnen in eine fruchtbare Kommunikation zu treten. Als Ausgangspunkt nehmen wir den trinitarischen Glauben und als Vermittlung die trinitarische Sprache.

Moltmann betont, dass wir die Wiederentdekung des dreieinigen Gottes brauchen, Gottes, der kein einsamer, nicht geliebter Herrscher im Himmel ist, der sich alles wie irdische Despoten unterwirft, sondern ein gemeinschaftlicher Gott, reich an Beziehungen, Gott der Liebe ist. Dieses trinitarische Denken bedeutet den Abschied von jeglichem totalitären Unitarismus, der die Verschiedenheit zugunsten einer gewalttätigen Einheit unterdrückt, wie die Therapie gegenüber einem Pluralismus, welcher sich zur Beliebigkeit verflüchtigt und am Ende in Nihilismus auflöst. Dies gilt für das Denken ebenso wie für den Bereich der Politik und nicht zuletzt für ein angemessenes Verständnis der Einheit der Kirche in der Vielfalt der Ortskirchen. Nicht der abstrakte Monotheismus, sondern der konkrete trinitarische Gottesglaube ist demnach die Antwort auf die geistige Not unserer Zeit. Darum möchte ich hier nur flüchtig von diesem trinitarischen Gott reden. Mich interessiert, was diese trinitarität für ihn und was für uns Menschen bedeutet. Ich bin nämlich überzeugt, dass die heilige Trinität die Antwort und die Herausforderung für die Postmoderne und die trinitarische Sprache die geeignetste für Kommunikation mit ihr ist.

Jacqui Stewart (Dept of Theology & Religious Studies, University of Leeds, UK)
Theology, Conversation and Community

Many contemporary philosophies of knowledge acknowledge that understanding can be usefully thought of in terms of conversation. Among others, H. G. Gadamer has been particularly influential among theologians in this respect. Authors as diverse as E. Schillebeeckx and W. Pannenberg have engaged with his work. In this context, theology is seen as a conversation between the worshipping church community, the biblical witness and the tradition of relection on Christian belief and practice. However, neither philosophy nor theology has given much detailed thought to the nature of community and the interactions between community and conversation. I have argued elswhere that Pannenberg's understanding of community and culture is monolithic, and vulnerable to critique from social theorists.

In this paper, I wish to examine further the complex nature of community as illustrated by the social critique of Z. Bauman. I will focus on the question of whether and how contemporary western communities may be seen as founded on exclusion and wealth. I will demonstrate some of the concrete manifestations of some of these issues by reference to the empirical social anthropological studies by T. Jenkins of two English church communities. The conflicting interest groups and the different constructions of reality revealed in these studies cut across religious boundaries. The theological consequences of this for understanding 'church' will be considered, with particular reference to Schillebeeckx.

Kristof Struys (Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Relationship in God as a Condition of Possibility for the Salvation of Humankind in Walter Kasper

The introduction of modern personalistic concepts into Trinitarian thinking has allowed for a more adequate formulation of the inter-relational dimension of Trinitarian life. Personality is inter-personality, subjectivity is inter-subjectivity.

When applied to God, this notion means that, on the one hand God is the absolute One: the absolute unity in se. However, on the other hand God must not be interpreted as a solitary and 'monological' entity. He is instead - in His unity - the absolute 'dialogical' community. In line with this insight, Walter Kasper speaks of God as 'communio-Einheit'. Kasper is conscious of the fact that the idea of God as a dialogical community might result in a portrayal of Him as relationally dependent on humanity and the world. Kasper insists that, if this is to be avoided, the dialogue must exist in God's own being: the one God - in His deepest self - must exist as a dialogical community of superabundant love. God's identity is a community of giving and receiving, a unity of continuous reciprocal conversation. The only concept that can combine unity and multiplicity is love: love can - at one and the same time - both give itself in freedom and return to itself, without depriving either itself or the receiver.

Moreover, love fulfils and completes unity-in-diversity. In this model, unity and dialogue do not exist in reciprocal perichoresis in spite of one another, but rather thanks to one another. Unity and diversity increase in direct and not in inverse proportion.

Kasper develops his position as a response to the claim of modern humanistic atheism that human freedom in incompatible with the existence of the theistic God. He aims to show that human salvation is only possible when the free, human subject understands himself or herself in relation to the God whose very being is unity-in-reciprocity. In short, for Kasper the relationship which obtains within the one God, is the condition of possibility for integral human salvation.

Lawrance Thaikattil(Faculty of Theology, KU Leuven, Belgium)
Bhakti Marga as a model of the Church: A Catalyst for Conversation in India

The idea of conversation provides opportunities to approach the challenges of Church communities especially in local situations. We look for a model of the Church, which is able to engage into conversation with the context. Special attention will be paid to the approach of one of the Indian mystical theologians and ecumenists, Sadhu Sundar Singh.

According to the classical Indian traditions there are three ways to attain salvation, namely 'Bhakti Marga' (way of devotion); 'Jnana Marga' (way of knowledge) and 'Karma Marga' (way of action). Sadhu Sundar Singh puts forward a model of the Church that is formed as 'Bhakti Marga', which he thought most suitable to engage in dialogue with different denominations and even with other religions. Sadhu Sundar Singh envisions an Indian Church with Indian thought patterns and categories of expression.

The possible areas of correlation between 'Bhakti Marga' and Sadhu's idea of the Church within the pluralistic context of India are analysed. It raises several questions that are of fundamental ecclesiological and practical importance. One may wonder whether or not the ecclesiological questions themselves are of any significance in Sadhu's model of the Church. One may further ask what could be the answer of Sadhu regarding the contemporary problems the Church faces in a country like India, where massive poverty and social discriminations still haunt the majority of population. When 'Bhakti Marga' is presented as a model of the Church then what is the possibility of presenting the Church as 'Jnana Marga' and 'Karma Marga' which are the other two paths of salvation? It is assumed that a model of the Church that can engage in genuine conversation with the actual social and cultural context may also offer possibilities for wider ecumenical dialogue.

Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen (Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin, Ireland)
Theological Dialogue: Karl Rahner's Contribution to a Theology of Art

This paper explores Karl Rahner's relevant thought on the importance of the role of the arts in the work of theology. Rahner concerned himself in particular with the visual arts and with poetry in his reflections and emphasised that they are not only an aid to theology but, indeed, constitute in themselves loci theologici. This, in fact, is in line with contemporary assertions in the realm of theological aesthetics, in particular in the dialogue between theology and the arts. The paper will look at Rahner's idea that theology is not to be seen merely in terms of the verbal, the experience of the transcendent in art, his emphasis on subjectivity in theology and in the arts, and his reflection on the religious and theological importance of poetry. A theme in Rahner will therefore be explored which so far has received rather little attention.

W.G.B.M. Valkenberg (Faculty of Theology, K.U.Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
Interreligious Dialogue as Polemical Conversation

My paper will deal with the requirements for an interreligious conversation. I assume that any real effort at a theological conversation has to include the insight that the interlocutor is a religious other. In the first part of my paper, I will investigate how Thomas Aquinas deals with this issue in Summa Theologiae II-II, q.10 a.9: 'Utrum cum infidelibus possit communicari'. In the second part of my paper, I will consider this text as an instance of theological conversations between Christias, Jews and Muslims in the Middle Ages, in which theological identity was at stake. The weight of this theological identity determines the form of this interreligious conversation: under the guise of dialogue, it is in fact often a form of polemics or apologetics. But, on the other hand, the mission of the Dominicans in Spain in the thirteenth/fourteenth century has acknowledged the fact that, in order to be able to communicate the Gospel to your opponent, you have to study his language and his culture, and, ultimately, his religion as well.

Pierre Van Hecke (Faculty of Theology, K.U.Brabant, Tilburg, The Netherlands)
From Conversation About God to Conversation With God: the Case of Job

In few biblical books, if any, conversation occupies the same central position as in the book of Job. It is no exaggeration to call the book one extended conversation or argument, albeit with shifting participants. First, God and the Satan discuss Job's righteousness (1:6-12; 2:1-7). After all calamities have fallen on him, Job argues with his wife (2:9-10) and with his friends (3:1-37:24) on the (lack of) correspondence between behaviour and prosperity. Finally, God speaks, first to Job, who replies twice very briefly, then to Job's friends (38:1-42:8).

The different participants do not only speak for themselves, however, they are representatives of opposing theological views on the problems addressed in the book, viz. that of suffering and that of retribution (the so-called 'Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhang'). In this way, the conversation in the book also takes place on a more abstract level. The traditional sapiential conceptualisation of the world is questioned by Job's more experiential view, claiming to dispose of irrefutable perceptible evidence for the irrationality of the traditional view, whereas in God's final speech the sheer possibility of the conceptual understanding of world order is questioned, if not completely denied.

In our contribution to the third LEST Conference we shall discuss the dynamics of the different conversations in the book of Job, and shall provide an insight in the overall argumentative rationality of the book. Our analysis will be methodologically founded on the recent insights in the structure of argument as developed in the so-called Argumentation Theory (Toulmin, Perelman, van Eemeren) and Informal Logic (Johnson-Blair, Grennan). The analytical models proposed in these approaches will enable us to describe in what way the different arguments put forward in the book differ. Since God's speeches occupy a focal position in the book, special attention will be paid to the evaluative arguments in these divine speeches. God's intervention in the conversation is of particular interest for two reasons: firstly, the character God does not provide a decisive answer in the fierce theological debate on retribution, thereby indicating the relative irrelevance of the whole discussion; secondly, God praises Job's attitude, since he alone called on God himself in the discussion and thus made God his explicit partner for conversation. In this way the characters in the book are invited to move from conversation about God to conversation with God, or, put differently, from theology to spirituality. As it will be shown, also the reader is called upon to make the same transition: by the very structure of the book the reader is first caught in the discussion and forced into taking a position, only to be confronted, as Job and his friends, with the irrelevance of that position at the end of the book. By this literary 'coup de théâtre' the reader is invited to identify with Job, not for his arguments, but for his willingness to converse with God.

Milton Wan (Department of Religion, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Life of Dialogue v.s. Life of Self-transcendence: Biblical Spirituality and Mystical Experience

I will argue in this paper that the basic characteristics of biblical spirituality, when compared with other (especially Eastern) spiritual traditions, is its distinctively dialogical character. Taking the passage of Exodus 3:1-6 as an example, I will demonstrate that the religious experience of Moses, though extraordinary and supernatural, did not happen in an altered state of consciousness. Phenomenologically speaking, it is an experience engaging concrete spatiality and temporality, as well as a distinctively subject-object dialogical structure, which can be distinguished from mystical religious experience emphasizing on the unitary consciousness upon the union of oneself with his/er counter-part and its trans-spatio and trans-temporal awareness. Similar biblical religious experiences can be found in Yahweh’s theophany, “the Lord spoke” to His people and prophets in the Old Testament, and the early Christians’ experience of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.

The structure of this dialogical religious experience will then be explored with contributions from the works of Buber, Macmurray, Friedman, McFadyen and Nédoncelle. Schematically we can divide the structure of experience into two ontological movements: individualization (recognition of the otherness of God) and participation (entering into dialogical relationship). The experience of God as an active and intentional agent leads to a different structure of self-transformation from that of mystical experience. While self-transformation through dialogical experience is unpredictable, multilateral and tailor-made for each individual, mystical experience of self-transcendence teleologically leads to a mental structure of non-attachment and universalism. At this point, for the purpose of illustration, Paul Tillich’s understanding of the state of ecstasy as being grasped by the “God above God” will be examined and compared with Karl Barth’s understanding of Christian growth in the presence of an actual and personal God. The discussion will then lead to our unconcluding question - when we consider the essential characteristics of the religious experience of Christian spiritual traditions since the Desert Fathers (e.g. the Carmelite, the Christian East), which of the two models do they belong: the “biblical” or the “mystical”?

Conrad Wethmar (Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa)
Doctrine and Dialogue

In both the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions, doctrine, whether defined as dogma or confession, used to play a significant role in shaping church life. In many countries at present, however, especially in those which had been exposed to the development of modernism and postmodernism, this role is increasingly being disputed. This leads to a situation of which Colin Gunton suggested that it is at least arguable that the loss of the dogmatic measure has helped generate the undisciplined disorder that is modernist Protestantism while Avery Dulles writes that within Roman Catholicism a doctrinal crisis is going on. This situation gives rise to one of two extreme reactions in churches: either an overemphasis of magisterial authority on the one hand or a total neglect of doctrinal definition on the other. Neither of these extreme approaches however seem able to stem the tide of a growing theological pluralism in which there is no unifying center.

In the meantime research has been continuing on the nature and function of church doctrine. In the paper which I would like to offer I propose to discuss a few recent developments in the field of the theory of doctrine which seem to emphasize the dialogical nature of doctrine and orthodoxy. Examples in this respect could be debates that had been engendered by Lindbeck's book on the nature of doctrine on the one hand as well as those that had been developed in the wake of Roman Catholic documents like "Donum veritatis" (1990) and "Ad tuendam fidem" (1998), on the other.

If one takes into account that in Roman Catholic and Protestant theology the notion of communio-ecclesiology has been developing gradually the question presents itself as to what the nature of doctrine in such an ecclesiology would be and vice versa what the fundamental ecclesiological implications of a notion of doctrine as dialogical orthodoxy could entail.

Taking these considerations into account this paper which could have as its title either "Doctrine and Dialogue" or "Ecclesiology and confessionality" would therefore be dealing with the issue of ecclesiology and conversation in a threefold manner: it will be dealing with

(a) the dialogical structure of doctrine which is based on the ecclesiality of faith;

(b) with the dialogue between ecclesiology and a theory of doctrine as well as

(c) with a dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions.

George Worgul & Craig Baron (Faculty of Theology & Family Institute, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A.)
Changing Ideas of Marriage in American Cultural Life: The New Post-Modern Praxis of Marriage and Non-Married Relationships and the Need for Conversation Method in Religious Discourse

The topic will address the present situation of Marriage and Cohabitation in American Culture based on the most current research of the social sciences. More traditional approaches to marriage rarely enter into conversation with the voices of psychology, sociology and cultural anthropology which have vigorously and extensively studied dating, courtship, cohabitation and marriage. When religion/theology enters into such a conversation it not only draws closer to praxis but can also more keenly grasp the real issues and questions which are present in the people with whom it seeks to converse and influence.

The first part of the presentation will review the current status of dating, courtship, marriage and family living arrangements based on the US Census as well as addition research initiatives. The second part will review the current religious/theological understandings of marriage as expressed both theoretically and practically with attention to the claim that the marriage and the family as domestic church. The third part will explore ways to begin to address the gap between the traditional vision of marriage and its increasing rejection within American social life.

This dimension is eschatological. In other words, the union demanded by love requires divine being, which alone has the necessary structure to bring about a union in which union and its reflection attain fulfilment. Thus, in the present human condition love is opened to a kind of union that can be attained only in the mode of eschatological hope.