03/07/2026 09:00 - 18:20

HALL: Parenzo - A1

Contact: Van Willigenburg T.

Chair: Forster D., Huijgen A., Van Den Brink G., Van Willigenburg T.

This panel will feature presentations on the fundamental disparity between the divine and the human. This includes the difference between Creator and creation, between the sacred and the profane, between earth and heaven, and more generally between transcendence and immanence.
The panel welcomes studies in systematic theology, philosophy of religion, history of ideas, historical theology, public theology, ethics, psychology, and practical theology, concerning questions like:
- metaphysics: how do contrast-properties like 'holy' compare to other non-natural properties like 'beautiful', 'virtuous' or 'right'?
- secularization: which historical narratives may be told about the 'disappearance' in Western modernity of the transcendental/divine?
- creation: how to account of the sacredness of non-human nature (in countering ecological deterioration) without ignoring that God and creation are qualitatively different?
- hell and heaven: what theological import do these deeply different categories have?
- politics and religion: when does the merge of religion and politics lead to sacralization of ideas, symbols and/or persons and how to avoid idolatry?
- psychology: what makes an experience into a religious experience of the Divine?