Round table
THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM
Wednesday, June 21, 7:00 p.m. (Athens time)
E.S.I.E.A. (20, Akadimias str), Athens
The last event of the series of online lectures “Time for Action” for this year will take place on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at 7:00 p.m., in the hall of E.S.I.E.A. (The Journalists Union) in Athens (20, Akadimias str), in hybrid form. It will be the round table on “Theology of Religions in Orthodox Christianity and Islam” with the participation of Dr. Athanasios Ν. Papathanasiou, Editor of the journal “Synaxis”, Associate Professor of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens and Dr. Nayla Tabbara, President of Adyan Foundation, Professor of Islamic Studies, Saint Joseph University, Beirut, Lebanon. The event will be moderated by Dr. Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Director of the Volos Academy.
The links for online attending for both languages (English and Greek):
Theology of Religions in Orthodox Christianity and Islam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHalPBH3hiM
Θεολογία των Θρησκειών στον Ορθόδοξο Χριστιανισμό και το Ισλάμ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7UxwfKSu40
The first speaker will mainly focus on the question of whether the believers of other religions can possibly be saved and whether the other religions are (in any way) paths to salvation. This question is essentially as old as the Biblical faith itself, and it is an issue that the Christian Church has faced from its very beginning; a systematic discussion, however, began only at the beginning of 1960s. The Orthodox, carrying rich experience, entered the discussion a decade later, and became more systematically engaged after 2010. The perspective that expresses the Christian faith is the so-called “inclusivist” model, which nevertheless enjoys considerable variation. This means that the Triune God (and especially Christ) is acknowledged as the universal truth and the only savior, who, however, acts in unseen, liberating and saving ways everywhere, both inside and outside the institutional Church, inviting all to God’s kingdom. Love implies participation in the life of God and is a crucial criterion for the evaluation of religions. The religious “other” can receive God’s action and affection, and in this sense he/she also becomes a messenger of God. Without disregarding any unbridgeable differences, the duty of the Orthodox is to encourage dialogue that will detect the signs of God in every human context.
The second speaker will explore what the Qur’an says about other religions. Are they paths to salvation and Paradise, or are their followers doomed to the fires of hell? What message does the Qur’an hold concerning diversity: are Muslims asked to fight with those with a different faith or are they called to coexist? The lecture will try to answer these questions by going back to the Qur’an itself, reading it holistically, chronologically, and contextually, while unreading exclusivist interpretations, in order to present a new Islamic theology of Religions.
Athanasios N. Papathanasiou is a lay Greek Orthodox theologian, born in 1959. He is Associate Professor of Missiology, Intercultural Christian Witness and Dialogue, at the Supreme Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens. He also teaches at the post-graduate theological program of the Hellenic Open University. He is the editor of the Greek theological quarterly “Synaxis”, and member of The European Society for Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies . His works focus on Missiology, cross-cultural studies and political theology. He lives in Athens, Greece with his wife Eleni and their son Arethas-Alexandros. His publications in English include: “ If I cross the boundaries, you are there! An affirmation of God’s action outside the canonical boundaries of the Church», Communio Viatorum 53.3 (2011), pp. 40- 55. “Mission in Orthodox Theology”, Christian Mission, Contextual Theology, Prophetic Dialogue: Essays in Honor of Stephen B. Bevans (eds. D. T. Irvin, P. C. Phan. New York, Maryknoll: Orbis Books 2019), pp. 37-54. “The Politics as a Weak Force”, Political Theologies in Orthodox Christianity: Common Challenges, Divergent Positions (eds. K. Soeckl, I. Gabriel, A. Papanikolaou. London & New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark 2017), pp. 97–110.
Prof. Dr. Nayla Tabbara is the President and co-founder of Adyan, Foundation for Diversity, Solidarity and Human Dignity, founded in 2006, as well as the president of Adyan Europe, founded in 2022. She is a co-president of Religions for Peace, and member of the Executive Committee of its World Council. She holds a PhD in Science of Religions from Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne-Paris) and Saint Joseph University (Beirut), and is a University Professor in Religious and Islamic Studies at Saint Joseph University, Beirut. She is also a Μuslim woman theologian and has publications in the fields of Islamic theology of religious diversity, theology of fragility, Islamic Feminism, Qur’anic exegesis, Islamic Social Responsibility and Sufism. She works on curricula development (formal and non-formal) on multifaith education, inclusive citizenship and Freedom of Religion or Belief and has publications on Education on interreligious and intercultural diversity. Between 2011 and 2020, she Directed the Institute of Citizenship and Diversity Management at Adyan Foundation. She has received in 2019 the Gold Medal of the French Renaissance Award for all her work and the Special Jury award of the Fr. Jacques Hamel Prize, the Écritures et Spiritualités Award and the Académie des Sciences d’Outre mer award for her book L’islam pensé par une femme(Bayard, 2018). She received in 2022 the Ibn Rushd Award for Freedom of Thought.