Rev Prof Józef Niewiadomski

Hello any readers of this blog! Finally a post. Even if you can't get to the seminar, it is worth reading Prof Niewiadomski's research issues on the web. (See my note below).
Linda

The Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture

Charles Sturt University

 

Rt Rev Prof Stephen Pickard invites you to a

Lunchtime Seminar

12.30pm-2.30pm Wednesday, 26 March 2014

Boardroom (upstairs), George Browning House (the brown building)

15 Blackall Street, Barton

Rev Prof Józef Niewiadomski

Faculty of Theology, University of Innsbruck, Austria

Just a Scapegoat? Victim and Sacrifice in

The Mimetic Theory of René Girard and

the Dramatic Theology of Raymund Schwager

 

Fr Niewiadomski was the teaching assistant & is now the successor of the late Raymund Schwager SJ, the Austrian Jesuit who was the first major theological interlocutor of René Girard. The publication of their correspondence reveals the extent of their mutual influence. Fr Schwager was the author of several books garnering the insights of Girard for mainstream theology, including Must There Be Scapegoats and Jesus in the Drama of Salvation. The theological category best suited to interpreting Girard's work, according to Schwager, is the theological dramatic theory most typically associated with Hans Urs von Balthasar—though, unlike von Balthasar, Schwager is entirely confident that Girard's vision is compatible with orthodox Christianity.

A lunch of sandwiches is provided, with juice, wine, tea and coffee.

Please RSVP (for seating and catering purposes) by midday on Tuesday 25 March (at the latest) to Rev Canon Dr Scott Cowdell (scowdell@csu.edu.au).

Enquires to Fr Cowdell on 02 6272 6207

doing  a search yielded this page:

http://www.uibk.ac.at/rgkw/xtext/research.html

"...However, it is just due to the various challenges of the religious renaissance mediated by the media and above all the dangers hidden in it that the academic public should no longer suppress the question about the rationality of religions (their truth claim) and thus also about the scientific character of theology. The answers given by the Enlightenment have to be reconsidered by secular sciences, too. However, they must not be thrown over board if our (also European) world is not to fall back into the epoch of religious wars. If the university does not want to lose even more of its social relevance, it consistently has to work on a reorientation of academic culture and regain those aspects of reason that make it possible to creatively integrate all areas of life of modern people (and thus also their religiousness). For theology this does not mean at all that it only has to be "picked up" by the other disciplines of human or natural science (especially in view of the crisis) and enthroned into its previous role. The future role of theology actually has not yet been determined at all. The answer to the question how significant its role will be in the academic (and sociopolitical) context also brings up the problem of the adaptability of theological methods and ways of thinking; it depends on the question if theology will be able to express - also under the given standards of rationality - its genuine closeness to the Jewish-Christian revelation and to the tradition of the church, both in a dialogue held with secularized science and the secularized public, and consequently to make a contribution to the determination of these standards, too."

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