I’ve just finished reading an article by Wim Drees, published (free acces) in Theology and Science, and was really inspired by it. That has of course to do with my own unfinished search for a theological position, in which I hesitate to identify my stance completely with religious naturalism. Drees explains in his article how […]
Tag: theology
The Importance of Modesty (New Year’s Resolutions)
In my most recent post, I argued how important it is to teach narrative skills, in particular in religious education. Jerome Bruner refers to narrative skills as the ability to understand and apply the methods of ‘narrative fields of knowledge’. He points to literature, poetry, historiography, etc., as examples of such fields, but I think it is obvious […]
Knowing the Past to Co-Create the Future.
Last week, I received an e-mail with the delightful news that my abstract for the next IRAS-conference , titled: “How Can We Know? Co-creating Knowledge in Perilous Times”, has been accepted. Moreover, the organizing committee awarded me with a Fellowship to enable me to join them. Obviously, I’m thrilled about this: a perfect way to end my […]
CFP for “Relation, Vulnerability, Love: Theological Anthropology in the 21st Century”
September 2016 is an important month for the Anthropos Research Group, since we organize a conference that should allow us to bring together different strands of our research. The title, “Relation, Vulnerability, Love: Theological Anthropology in the 21st Century”, expresses both the ambition of the conference and the three concepts that we think are essential to […]
Debate on Niche Construction
I recently discovered an older (2014) article in Nature debating the value of the concept ‘niche construction’. The article nicely offers room for advocates and opponents of this concept. Niche construction is, briefly said, the notion that the relation between organisms and their environment is a feedback relation: organisms alter their environment through their actions, with […]
Learning From Schillebeeckx
Last week, I participated in a Schillebeeckx Research Seminar, co-organized by KU Leuven and Radbout University. The seminar consisted of two days crammed with presentations and discussions, having me fill up page after page in my note book in an attempt to make sure I would be able to retrieve as much insights as possible afterwards. The most exciting, […]
Science, Religion and Theology: Two Lumberjacks and a Carpenter?
I think we could see both religion and science as a lumberjack, delivering tree trunks as the raw material for theology, the carpenter, to make pieces of furniture with, turning a building, i.e. the world, into a house, i.e. a habitable place. The tree trunks are the results of either scientific research, like theories, data analyses, […]
Why Science Does Not Break the Spell of Religion
This morning I made a note on a quote by Philip Hefner, from his “The Human Factor” (p. 86): “Jesus caressed and pressed things until they began to resist, and at that point, his experience moved him to utter “Abba, Father” — the significance being not that “Father” is masculine, but that “Father” is personal. […]
The Way We Were: Why Remembering Matters
I wrote a new blogpost for the group-blog of the Anthropos Research Group. What I try to do, is to suggest a link between an evolutionary perspective on the development of cultural traditions, and a theological perspective on tradition. You can read the full post here, of course. Or you could just skip to the part where […]
The Beauty of Theology
Using academic vocabulary is sometimes perceived as being elitist, ‘ivory tower talk’. And sometimes such criticism is justified. But then there’s this perspective on theological jargon… Source: Vítor Westhelle, Zygon, vol. 39, no. 4 (December 2004), p. 750. What do you think? Do you regard the vocabulary of your discipline, or concepts specific to it, as […]
Weekly Gardening 