Christian Roots Research Articles

Penderecki między sacrum a profanum

Krzysztof Penderecki summed up his aesthetic and philosophical attitude stating wittily: „I am tempted by both the sacrum and the profanum, God and the devil, the sublime and its violation”. Amongst over a hundred compositions he has created over the last half-century a considerable majority are of profanic nature. Some of them, of significant importance, became known world-wide, e.g. Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. His sacred compositions, albeit not so numerous, also won general acclaim and recognition from professionals and public, almost equal to profanic ones. They gained their well-deserved place in the canon of the 20th-century sacred music, as well as in the history of the modern Europe, as organically linked to the time and place of the earth. St. Luke’s Passion, Paradise Lost and Polish Requiem – even those three compositions resonated with exceptional intensity not only due to the value of the sacred music, but also as an expression of the composer’s involvement in the higher matters, above technicalities in which the art of the time was largely and programmatically engrossed. Their additional and peculiar value lied in the fact that they formed a series of compositions, by which Krzysztof Penderecki – as the first composer of the communist-regimented countries – broke the ban on composing the higher music on sacred themes. At the same time, he was brave enough to renounce his sonoristic, up to that time, way of expression – which brought him fame and success among the western avantgarde – as not sufficient enough to realise his own visions in the sphere of sacred art. Therefore he created his compositions with full commitment, with full awareness of his mission: „My art – as he confessed – with its deep Christian roots, aims at re-building the metaphysical space of human being, shattered by the cataclysms of the 20th century. To restore the sacred dimension of reality is one way of saving man“.The sacred compositions of Krzysztof Penderecki outstand the contemporary European music – due to their unique features. Their distinct ecumenical character can be revealed even in the very selection of genres: Catholic Stabat Mater, Magnificat, Te Deum, Polish Requiem, Credo, Veni Creator, Hymn to St. Adalbert and Missa brevis, Catholic and Evangelical Passion, Orthodox – both Matins, as well as Song Cherubins and Hymn to St. Danilov, the Old-Testamental Psalms of David and Canticum canticorum i.e. Sir ha sirim, based not only on psalms – Seven Gates of Jerusalem, the Hebrew Kaddish. Yet the universal, by nature, sacrum is often tinted with Polish intonations. These are usually Polish religious songs, sometimes plainly patriotic, which are incorporated into compositions based on Latin lyrics: Boże, coś Polskę [God Thou Hast Poland] (in Te Deum), Święty Boże /The Trisagion/ (in Passion and in Polish Requiem), Ludu mój ludu /People of My People/ and Któryś cierpiał za nas rany /You who s u f f e r e d wounds for us/ (in Credo).The sacred music of Krzysztof Penderecki in a single way tune up, into one, coherent, and completed whole, the elements of music tradition and modernity. According to the composer, huge emotions triggered out by everlasting issues, when bringing lofty ideas – in grand-scale music forms – must be founded on tradition. Krzysztof Penderecki has always been convinced that “n o artistic creativity can survive w i t h o u t r o o t s ”. The psychological structure of the composer has also encompassed a closing thought, a moral, a humanistic message. All his compositions aim at the final reflection. In this sense, the creator of Passion, Dies irae, Polish Requiem, as well as The Devils of Loudun, The Black Mask or Song of Passing (Symphony No. 8) and Song of Reverie and Nostalgia – can be ranked amongst the music moralist.Penderecki’s compositions are permeated with existential awareness of the existence of death in modern civilisation and an acute feeling of the deep crisis of culture. As a creator, by nature and in effect of the experiences of his time, “the time of Apocalypse and hope”, he could not stay aloof, living behind the curtain of alibi offered by the idea of artistic autotelism. On the contrary, he belongs to the group of fully involved composers. Those to whom a work of art is a reaction to history, life and the world. The art which takes place within the area of values and takes their side. In his public declaration he explicitly stated his viewpoint: “One more time, in man’s history, it has been proved that every attempt to turn away from God, especially a bold wish to equal Him, invariably ends with a pathetic fall. His antidote has always been “the double rootedness of art – in the earth and in the air”.

O możliwościach ekumenicznej współpracy katolików i luteranów nad kształtowaniem decyzji ustawodawcy polskiego w dziedzinie małżeństwa i rodziny

In present times, there are many threats to the marriage and the family. Among other things the risks come from provisions of law that is drafted without regard for Christian roots of the European civilization. In the face of the situation, the Christian Communities are called to start an ecumenical dialog and to undertake a practical action to promote their common Christian paradigm of the marriage and the family that would be a pattern for a state legislator. It is possible in Poland, because the teaching of the Catholic Church and the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland about the marriage and the family have in terms of content much in common. Additionally, there are many legal possibilities, like, e.g., legislative initiative, to undertake such a promotion of Christian paradigm.

Lautsi v. Italy: English Translations of Italian Trial and Appellate Decisions

Lautsi & Others v. Italy, App. No. 30814/06 (Eur. Ct. Hum. Rts. - Mar. 18, 2011).What follows are English translations of the administrative trial and administrative appellate court decisions in Lautsi and Others v. Italy, the case in which the European Court of Human Rights upheld the decision of the Italian government to post crucifixes (but not other religious symbols) in the classrooms of Italian public elementary and middle schools.The administrative trial court decision, Sentenza N. 1110/2005, Ric. N. 2007/02 (Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale Veneto - Sezione III Mar. 17, 2005), concluded that the crucifix is properly posted in public school classrooms because it symbolizes Christianity in general (and not just the Roman Catholic Church), as well as the Christian roots of Italian liberal democracy and culture.The administrative appellate court decision, Decision No. 7314, Reg. Ric. No. 556/06 (Consiglio di Stato Feb. 13, 2006), adopted a version of the second of the meanings imputed by the trial court to the crucifix, concluding that it is properly posted in public schools because it represents the “religious origin of the values of tolerance, mutual respect, regard for the individual, the affirmation of his or her rights and regard for his or her liberty, freedom of conscience against authority, human solidarity, prohibition of every discrimination, all of which characterize the Italian civic order.”Neither decision has been previously translated in English.

Wiara współczesnych w kontekście europejskiego dziedzictwa tradycji chrześcijańskiej

In the Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei Benedict XVI announced the Year of Faith. This event coincides with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and the 20th anniversary of the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Pope John Paul II. It was the Pope’s intention to demonstrate through the Catechism the power and the truth of the Catholic Faith to all the faithful. The Faith is in fact an entrance enabling encounter with God and quest for truth about life of every human being.In this panorama our lecture aims to show a need to return to the Christian roots of Europe, which in the present socio-religious context is losing its historical memory. In such reality, the crisis of man is a crisis of Christian. Therefore, there is a need for new evangelization as a means to assist in formation of man and preservation of European Christendom.

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” The evangelical left and justice

One of the most important influences on my perspective on justice has been my Christian faith, and, in particular, my roots in evangelical Christianity. Because of the media’s too frequent portrayal of evangelical Christianity as monolithic in its political viewpoints, many may doubt that evangelical Christianity has much to contribute to the discussion of social justice. In fact, evangelical Christianity is actually multivocal, and the evangelical left’s views on social justice have been life changing for me. This essay describes that influence.

The Roots of Nubian Christianity Uncovered: The Triumph of the Last Pharaoh. By Salim Faraji

The Roots of Nubian Christianity Uncovered: The Triumph of the Last Pharaoh. By Salim Faraji

Église et État en Éthiopie pendant le règne du dernier Négus Haïlé Sélassié (1916-1974)

Ethiopia is characterized not only by a long defended independence, but also by being the only country of sub-Saharan Africa having ancient Christian roots that were not imported from Europe. In this essay, based on study of unedited material contained in Italian, British and Ethiopian diplomatic and religious archives, we analyse the parabola of the Ethiopian Church and its relationship with the imperial power during the last, lengthy reign of Hailé Sélassié, in highlighting the contradictions of a denominational conception in collision with the social and political transformations of the 20th c. Attempts at reforming the Ethiopian Church set in motion in the 20s by the Negus suffered a violent interruption with the fascist occupation of 1935-41 and the dramatic elimination of religious authorities, resuming after World War Two with a process of emancipation from the Egyptian Coptic Church, formally achieved in 1948, and the Ethiopian Church’s overture to extra-national horizons and the establishment of relations with other Churches (Catholic, orthodox). The end of the last “Christian empire” with the 1974 revolution, opened a tragic new season for the Ethiopian Church, characterized by oppression, fragility and closure.

„Ogród pośród płomieni”. Erotyka imperium, eklezjalne ciała i queerowanie małżeństwa

Artykuł jest próbą dokładniejszego zmapowania queerowo--rewolucyjnego potencjału teologii chrześcijańskiej, mającegopodwójne źródła: historyczno-polityczne (antyimperialnekorzenie chrześcijaństwa w sytuacji kolonialnej, generującepermanentną opozycję wobec imperialnych ideologii „wiecznegoporządku”, cnoty i władzy, a także rozbudowane strategieparodystyczne) oraz religijno-imaginacyjne (teologiaWcielenia i Zmartwychwstania jako rewolucyjne dyskursyzwrócone przeciw całej antycznej tradycji metafizycznej,pracującej wokół „natury” i pozytywnych, determinującychporządków bytu / kosmosu, stabilizujących polityczneporządki imperialne, homonoia). Projekty chrześcijańskieokazały się zarazem „dewiacyjne” i „reapropriacyjne”: kryptopolitycznyradykalizm chrześcijańskiej teologii Wcieleniai Zmartwychwstania wytworzył niesłychane napięcie, któreprawie natychmiast rozładowywane było w ramach naturalizacjiwyższego rzędu, ale napięcie to nie może zostać usuniętebez zniszczenia samych kontrimperialnych i antynaturalistycznychfundamentów tej teologii. Chrześcijańska erotycznaeschatologia „zbawiennych porażek” jako religijno--polityczna utopia nie ma nic wspólnego z „naturalnymporządkiem” oraz wspólnotą republikańskich / imperialnychpodmiotów i ich cnót – dlatego polityczne ciała eklezjalne tociała queerowe, niezdolne do bycia regularnymi organami„doskonałego ciała” jako wiecznego schēma.

"Religion and Culture" and "Faith and the Renewal of Society" in Christopher Dawson and Pope Benedict XVI

CULTURE FIRST FOUND a place in the Church's magisterial teaching during the Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes in particular contains an entire chapter on culture. (1) The document strongly states that is a feature of the human person that it can achieve true and full humanity only by means of culture, that is, through the cultivation of the goods and values of nature. Whenever, therefore, there is a question of human life, nature and culture are intimately linked together. (2) The importance placed on culture by Vatican II ensured its place in the writings of the pontiffs following the Council. (3) particularly important moment in the promotion of culture as a central facet of the Church's life came with Blessed John Paul II's establishment of the Pontifical Council for Culture. He gave nearly annual addresses to the Council from 1983 to 1999, during which he deepened Vatican II's teaching on culture by placing it centrally within the task of the New Evangelization. The following demonstrates John Paul's firm conviction on the crucial role of culture: On the eve of the Third Millennium, the apostolic mission of the Church commits her to a new evangelization in which culture assumes fundamental importance. (4) And further: A faith that does not become culture is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived. (5) Thus, a further investigation of culture and its significance has been placed by the Church as a central task today. In order to take up this challenge, I will explore the importance of culture for the Church and theology today by examining the connections between the thought of Pope Benedict XVI and the historian of culture, Christopher Dawson. (6) Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) has consistently focused on the themes of religion and culture throughout his scholarly career, themes that formed the very basis of Christopher Dawson's career as a historian, social scientist, and lecturer in Catholic Studies. Though there are many links between their thought, to my knowledge, Benedict does not make any explicit reference to Dawson in his writings. (7) Nevertheless, Dawson's thought provides compelling depth to Benedict's account of culture and religion, and furthermore climaxes in a theme very dear to Benedict: the spiritual renewal of Western civilization. Dawson engaged in a project of cultural history that began in the very origins of culture and stretched throughout history until what he saw to be a defining moment within our own time. Dawson recognized that Western civilization embarked on a new and dangerous project by explicitly eliminating religion from culture. Without religion to provide a moral vision, he warned that the West faced an overwhelming threat in the rise of a powerful and uncontrolled technocratic civilization. His thought provides the background necessary to bolster Benedict's call to recognize the necessary role that religion plays in any culture and more specifically the need for the Christian faith, in relation to reason, to renew the waning, secular West. This article will examine their common ground in these areas and offer concrete suggestions on how Dawson can provide assistance in the Church's task of cultural renewal. I. Religion and Culture Though both Dawson and Benedict predominantly focus on a renewal of Western culture through a return to its Christian roots, to turn immediately to this point would be to move too quickly. The foundation for this focus is based more foundationally on their view of the general relation between religion and culture, of which Christianity's role in the West is a particular example. Therefore, we must begin by examining the phenomenon of religion and its relation to culture in both Dawson and Benedict. THE NATURE OF RELIGION Turning first to the nature of religion, both thinkers agree that human nature is intrinsically ordered toward something beyond itself. Dawson sees religion as a recognition of a superhuman Reality of which man is somehow conscious and towards which he must in some way orient his life. …

In the name of culture: berber activism and the material politics of “popular islam” in southeastern morocco

ABSTRACTAfter Moroccan independence in 1956, salafi critiques of the heterodox and heteroprax tendencies associated with “popular Islam” (l'islam populaire, as elaborated in particular by French colonial ethnologists and legal scholars) became enshrined within state ideology and administration. In response, over the past twenty years, a burgeoning Berber (or Amazigh) cultural movement has espoused local religious beliefs and practices as more attuned to the authentic culture of North Africa, and sought the protection of such regional idioms in the name of human rights. This article explores how a set of Amazigh activists from southeastern Morocco, while in many cases avowing a politics of secularism (laïcité), nonetheless ambivalently embrace certain practices of “popular Islam” as paramount elements of Berber culture, including pilgrimage to the tombs of “saints,” the role of marabouts and Sufi brotherhoods, the pre-Islamic (Jewish or Christian) roots of ritual life, and the general inscription of the natural landscape with baraka. Their ideology ironically dovetails with recent attempts by state actors to (re-)construct a particular, non-fundamentalist Moroccan Islam as part of its participation in the global “war on terror.” Such a material embrace of “popular Islam” challenges scholastic categories.

Kolozsvár, Klausenburg oder Cluj-Napoca? Toponymische Terminologie und die Frage um die nicht-uniformierte Anwendung geographischer Namen: Ein Blick auf die historische und kulturelle europäische Tradition

Summary Kolozsvár, Klausenburg or Cluj-Napoca? Toponymic terminology and the issue of non-uniform use of geographical names: a focus on the European historical and cultural tradition. This paper aims to explore the issue of non-uniform use of geographical names, with a focus on the European historical and cultural tradition. The analysis refers to toponyms drawn from the history of four European countries: Germany, Romania, Poland and Italy. It reveals the importance of contrasting the different toponyms used for the same place. A place-name form is not merely a variant, but has a definite pragmatic content, which can best be analysed in light of the interdisciplinary approach offered by Toponymy. Toponymy allows us to unveil Europe's partially unexplored historical and Christian roots. The analysis contributes to advancing the study of toponyms from a broader vantage point. It highlights the significance of the didactic experience in introducing young generations to the European heritage of toponyms. Further studies may explore this cultural treasure across different European languages.

Hitler, Mussolini, and the Vatican: Pope Pius XI and the speech that was never made

Translated by CARL IPSEN The Vatican against Nazism and Fascism on the eve of the Second World War. A tired pope watching the crisis unfold and considering what action to take against the new enemies of Christianity. Pius XI died on February 10th, 1939, just after finishing the address he hoped to deliver to the Italian bishops on the tenth anniversary of the Lateran Pact. That text dealt harshly with Nazism and Fascism and was written in solitude. It was a discourse that Mussolini feared and that the pope did not survive to deliver. This moment captures the spirit of Emma Fattorini's book, a work that employs newly available and unpublished documentation from the Vatican Secret Archive to rewrite a fundamental page of 20th history. Pius XI came to view the 1930s as a conflict of civilizations,' a crisis which could only be resolved by a return to the Christian roots of the West. He was a pope who strongly defended the Jews because, in contrast to other elements in the Catholic hierarchy, he held the theological conviction that Jews and Christians shared a common origin: spiritually we are all Semites.' So wrote Pius XI in the last years of his life as he contemplated the direction in which the world was headed and came to the conclusion that Nazi and Fascist totalitarianism could be stopped by the Vatican.

La libertad cristiana en la relación cristología-antropología según la teología de Walter Kasper

This article is developed in dialogue with modernity, recognizing in the theological doing of Walter Kasper an example of positive and critical reception of the concept of the «modern subject», but without ignoring its Christian roots. In Kasper's words, Christology over-pushes anthropology. Man is the subject that receiving his being in freedom, lives it as an open essence that finds in the god of Jesuschrist and in the verb make it flesh the biggest realization of the new humankind. Recognizing the person of Jesus Christ as the «concrete universal», man finds full path of humanization through obedient freedom in Jesus Christ expresses its full availability to the Father and to men.

Claiming the Passion: American Fantasies of the Oberammergau Passion Play, 1923–1947

In 1934 the third centennial celebration of Oberammergau's famous passion play coincided with Adolph Hitler's rise to power. For American Jews, the Oberammergau Passion Play had long symbolized the Christian roots of Anti-Semitism. Ironically, American Jews' liberal Protestant allies viewed Oberammergau as a symbol of Christian ecumenism, capable of uniting Protestants, Catholics, and even Jews. “Claiming the Passion” traces Oberammergau in the rhetoric of American liberals from the American tour of Anton Lang, who portrayed the Christus in 1923, to his successor's trial for Nazi sympathies in 1947. It places the conflicting Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant views of Oberammergau in the context of the early goodwill or interfaith movement. It argues that liberal Protestants' enthusiasm for Oberammergau arose from their effort to articulate a more inclusive national identity, in opposition to the Ku Klux Klan and other nativists. But the conflicts over Oberammergau also suggest that liberal Protestants had not yet come to terms with Jewish critiques of Christian Anti-Judaism.

Sex, Religion, and the New Woman in China: A Comparative Reading of Sarah Grand and Alicia Little

Sex, Religion, and the New Woman in China:A Comparative Reading of Sarah Grand and Alicia Little Ann Heilmann (bio) Victorian Feminists often invoked such tropes as the Chinese woman’s bound feet, the Arab woman’s veiled seclusion, or the American slave as metaphors of women’s social and legal confinement in Britain. In this essay, I explore how two British New Woman writers with personal experience of China, the doyenne of British New Womanhood in the 1890s, Sarah Grand (1854–1943), and the lesser-known Alicia (Mrs. Archibald) Little (1845–1926), drew on and transformed the first of these tropes to universalize feminist concerns and relativize the Western claim to moral, religious, and political supremacy. As Elizabeth Chang and Shanyn Fiske have illustrated, China, as a “field of imagined visual possibility” (Chang 1), had a considerable “spectral presence” in Victorian literature and frequently served as a “mirror for Western projection” (Fiske, “Orientalism” 222, 219). The complexities of this projection hold particular significance for the work of New Woman writers who were familiar with Chinese culture and indigenous reform movements and at the same time had an investment in representing the Western feminist project as a quasi-religious mission for moral and social advancement. Grand spent her apprenticeship years as the wife of a British army surgeon in China and southeast Asia in the 1870s (Kersley 37), utilizing this experience in her journalism (“The Great Typhoon,” 1881; “Ah Man,” 1893), her first novel-tract, Two Dear Little Feet (1873), and her feminist “coming-out” novel, Ideala (1888), in which the heroine takes up social purity activism after encountering Chinese women reformers. While Grand dramatized the New Woman’s rejection of marriage and Little depicted her effort to reform marriage from within, both writers explored the sexual double standard and became suffrage supporters. Born nine years before Grand, Little authored a spate of society novels, cautiously exploring women’s desire for an object in life and the legal plight of wives and mothers in the late 1870s to mid-1880s, including Margery Travers (1878) and Mother Darling (1885) (Fiske, “Asian” 16–17). Her move to China in 1886, where she joined her businessman husband, shifted her attention to Chinese culture and indigenous women’s condition, inspiring A Marriage in China (1896), two further novels, and nine travelogues and factual accounts of [End Page 61] Chinese society. Relatives thought her eccentric in her “ardent enthusiasms. The rights of married women to their own money, Women’s Suffrage and … the unbinding of Chinese girl children’s feet.… We never quite knew what to expect” (Bewicke 19–20). As the founder of the Natural Feet Society (Tien Tsu Hui), Little engaged in a form of feminist activism comparable to Grand’s social purism (Fiske, “Asian” 12, 19; Thurin 164, 182–87; Young ii–vi; Little, Blue Gown 253–304 and Intimate China 134–63). The reformist spirit of both writers had its conceptual roots in Christianity. If social purity feminism developed from the earlier nineteenth-century evangelical movements of temperance, moral reform, and abolitionism (see Banks 11–27), the notion of “natural” as “heavenly” feet (the Chinese word tianzu encompasses both) was, as Dorothy Ko notes, grounded in “Christian doctrines while appealing to native belief and terminology” (16). Ideala and A Marriage in China correlate the personal with the political and the sexual with the religious, embedding Victorian social reform concerns within an examination of Anglo-Chinese relations. Both tender quasi-utopian resolutions that posit female authority in the regulation of the family (Little) and society (Grand) as the linchpin of (inter)national renovation and exalt the heroines as figures of Christian salvation. While Grand’s Ideala finds spiritual purification in China and becomes a “saintly” woman who combines Eastern wisdom with a Western sociopolitical mission inspired by indigenous women, Little’s Lilian travels to China in search of companionship, missionary humanitarianism, and romantic love, only to discover the human sacrifice of religious, cultural, and sexual imperialism. Like Ideala, Lilian returns with a mission, here individualized rather than collectivized; her adoption of her husband’s mixed-race children born to his Chinese mistress gestures toward the creation of a multiracial society. Both writers...

Carne Vale (Goodbye to Flesh?): Caribbean Carnival, Notions of the Flesh and Christian Ambivalence about the Body

This paper interrogates the popular notions of sexuality that lay behind the women’s bodily displays during Trinidad Carnival, the iconic Carnival experience in the region, and contrasts these to some Christian notions of the body and sexuality, which see the body (‘the flesh’) and sexuality, as problematic even sinful, as is captured in the word “carnal”/“fleshly”. Carne Vale, “goodbye to flesh”, plays on the Christian roots of Carnival, the religious festival before the solemnity of Lent when meat is given up. It hints at Christian notions of body which devalue physical being and oftentimes view it as the site of sinfulness and temptation. It argues that Caribbean women have subverted and continue to subvert such negative valuations by engaging in carnivalesque masquerade that revalues bodies, especially colonised female bodies.

Religion in the Public Forum

Must the state be neutral to all religious and philosophical positions? This article argues that that is an impossibility and that the most basic principles of our democratic society, such as our belief in the importance of individual freedom and equality, are Christian in origin and need their Christian roots. The relevance of recent judgments in the European Court of Human Rights and in English courts is discussed. In particular, exception is taken to views of religious belief that see it as subjective, irrational and arbitrary. It is argued that religion needs to take its place in the public arena, and that the national recognition of the Church of England through establishment is an important means to that end.1

The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger: Nuclear Ideas

After a brief historical excursus, on Ratzinger’s masters and the historical sources of theology, I make reference to what I call the sources of his theology: Scripture, liturgy, the Church and the arts constitute starting points for his theology. Later come the so-called basics: first, the person, who presents his or her solidarity with faith and reason, truth and love. Ratzinger is deeply marked by the “experience of the Council”, the doctrine of which applies to ecumenism, the theology of the ministry and even ideas on preaching, eschatology and mariology. So, here I address the area of praxis: as a bishop, Ratzinger has developed his preaching on the theology of creation and the eucharistic mystery and, as prefect, his focus of interest has broadened towards the catechism, Christ and other religions, without forgetting a brief reflection on the Christian roots of Europe.

Artists in dialogue: Creative approaches to interreligious encounters

This article explores the forms and functions of contemporary interreligious dialogue by focusing on artists who are active in this field. They represent different art forms and different religious positions: with their roots in Judaism, Christianity and Islam they have opted for a variety of positions, ranging from traditional adherence to renunciation of a personal religious engagement, or a fascination for new forms of religiosity. The aim is to critically examine interreligious dialogue and to provide an alternative perspective on the topic, based on both theoretical and empirical analyses. The article seeks an understanding of how persons engaging in creative forms of dialogue formulate a dialogic worldview in a religiously plural and post-secular context and what motivates them to engage in dialogue. Traditional normative theories of interreligious dialogue are hence called into question. Critical attention is brought to the narrow focus on dialogue as a purely intellectual quest for making the religious other, as a coherent theological and historical entity, intelligible. A contrasting view of dialogue as a question of interpersonal ethics is introduced, inspired primarily by the philosophy of Buber. Also the works of Habermas, Gadamer, Levinas, Løgstrup, Wittgenstein and Gaita are central to the research.Ruth Illman is a senior researcher at the Donner Institute in Åbo and Docent in comparative religion, Åbo Akademi University. Website:http://web.abo.fi/instut/di/english/ruth.html

Philosophy of Love: Hegel, Christianity and Environmental Law

Much Christian opposition to Hegel's philosophy is based on the perception the dialectic supports cultural relativism and the idea that opposing truths can both be valid. This is a narrow interpretation of the dialectic and knowledge and that, more broadly, it reflects the contradictions and interdependence that exists between individual entities. This paper argues that the contradictory interdependence of Hegel's dialectic has its roots in Christian thought and Hegel's earlier theological writings. The paper then goes to suggest how this Christian Hegel could be helpful in developing a model for environmental law research.This paper was presented at a Christian Academic Network workshop on Knowing in God's World under the title Reflections on methods of knowing.