Presentation 1 What makes a Text Sacred?
Henk van den Belt, professor of Systematic Theology at our faculty and at the Theological University of Apeldoorn, will introduce the theme in a lecture, titled What makes a Text Sacred?
From the Protestant tradition he will reflect on three questions: 1. What are the characteristics of the Bible as a sacred text? 2. How can these aspects be recognized and acknowledged? 3. What does this mean for the academic study of the texts? He will argue that although there is a common ground upon which the meaning of a sacred text should be discussed and can be determined, the understanding of the significance of the text and a proper application presuppose a receptive attitude which the texts themselves evoke. In Protestant theology the fruitful tension between the text and its acceptance in the community of believers has been denoted by the terms autopistia, the self-convincing character of the text, and testimonium, the witness of the Spirit to the text. Henk has just finished a Dutch monograph on this issue in which he analyzes the work of the Spirit with respect to the Bible. Geestspraak. Hoe we de Bijbel kunnen verstaan [Spiritspeech: How we can understand the Bible] will be presented at the occasion of his inaugural address in Apeldoorn on May 24, 2024.
Presentation 2 To the glory of God and salvation of neighbor, Public disputations in the early modern er
Mirjam van Veen, Full Professor, Faculty of Religion and Theology, Texts and Traditions
According to Jurgen Habermas's famous thesis, the origins of public debate in the eighteenth century lay in the coffee houses. It was there that people would have begun to exchange rational arguments and thus there would also be an important root of Western democratic societies which, after all, cannot exist without rational debate. However: already in the sixteenth century a broad public became closely involved in debates about religion. These debates were initially intended to allow an independent judge to objectively determine religious truth, but soon became means of providing information so that people could decide for themselves with a free conscience what religious truth was. I am currently in the process of setting up a research project on these public debates, but how do you do it? How do you define a public debate and how do you decide which corpus of texts to study? And how do you articulate the relevance of these ancient debates to current public debate?
Presentation 3 Text as Bits and Bytes: Hermeneutics in the Digital Age
Yusuf Çelik, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Religion and Theology, Texts and Traditions
This presentation delves into the hermeneutical challenges posed by digitizing texts, emphasizing the interpretative shifts when texts move from physical to virtual realms. It scrutinizes how the essence of texts is affected by digitalization, exploring the impacts on scholarly interpretation.
Workshop 1.3 Getting started as a Phd researcher, the first year
Michiel Bouman, PhD researcher
“The moment you start your PhD is the moment you have to start thinking about the next step”, I was told just before starting my PhD. What would you say: good advice or unnecessary pressure? Starting a PhD can be exhilarating and frightening at the same time. In this workshop, we’ll try to share the burden and the joy by exchanging experiences of, questions on, worries about, and best practices related to doing a PhD. In a guided peer discussion we will touch on questions about soft skills such as timemanagement, but also psychological traps, such as the infamous imposter’s syndrome. Prior to the workshop, I will send out a short survey which you may fill out to propose indispensable topics.
Workshop 2.1 How to write an excellent proposal and get through the PPAC process
In this workshop, Prof Dr David Gushee, Chair of PPAC, describes the current PPAC review process and offers suggestions for how to achieve efficient success in this process.
Workshop 2.2 Engaging with Sacred Texts: The Use and Influence of the Bible
Dr Andrew Mein, director of research at Queen's Foundation, Birmingham, UK, will discuss the following:
Whether we are biblical scholars or not, most people who study Christianity and/or Judaism have to reckon with the enduring use and influence of their sacred text, the Bible. This workshop will introduce scholarly approaches to the use, influence and reception of the Bible, and offer participants the opportunity to think about how they engage with the Bible’s use and influence in their own research.
Public Lecture
The topic is Academia and Activism. We want to ask questions that will help us to discern together in which ways these different realms are (dis-) connected? And why?
Given the relevance, the urgency, and the massiveness of today´s crises, we invite a conversation here, between academics and activists. Are their worlds as separated as it sometimes seems? To start this process, we are interested in the personal motivation of both. What drives them in their “mission”? How are they defining the goals of their engagement? How do they negotiate the tension between academia and activism? – Or is this tension an artificial one from the start? And: What are their spiritual roots – if they have some – and in how far is that an indispensable, integrative foundation that holds everything together?
Our ideal is to invite three speakers for each lecture that embody academia and/or activism in some way.
Our lectures will be on the topic of Racism (April 4), War&Peace (april 11), Climate Change (april 18), Migration (april 25)