Unfortunately, Janice McRandal is unable to present her paper this Friday. It has been postponed until September 29th. Peter Kline has kindly agreed to step in and offer what will be a fascinating paper on Kierkegaard and the imago Dei. Chris Dalton. is speaking on the topic ‘What’s Fraccing Theology Got to Do with the Mining of Coal Seam Gas?’ Friday April 7, 2017, 2pm-4pm Room W349 in Forgan Smith Building (No. 1)
Chris Dalton. ‘What’s Fraccing Theology Got to Do with the Mining of Coal Seam Gas?’ In the polarised public debate surrounding the mining of Coal Seam Gas, that industry’s use of hydraulic fracturing (fraccing) generates much emotion and conflict. This paper suggests an interrogative rather than propositional process to ‘release’ an alternative public theology approach for a post-secular age. It encompasses visiting a Divine Art Gallery, initiating a conversation about the Rights of Nature, engaging in imaginative apologetics and regarding Land as a Beloved Companion. It is an approach, however, that is not without its risks.
Peter Kline. ‘Imaging Nothing: Kierkegaard and the Imago Dei’. When considering what makes the human being uniquely human, or how it ‘images God’ within the created order, Søren Kierkegaard does not turn to Genesis 1:27, the privileged passage of the Western theological tradition. He turns instead to Matthew 6, a passage in which the reader is instructed to ‘consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air’. In several rounds of ‘upbuilding discourses’ on this passage, Kierkegaard develops what I would call an ‘apophatic’ approach to the imago dei. The imaging of God that the human being is called to enact has no positive or stable content. It does not consist in any self-possessed capability, nor does it set the human being at the top of a hierarchically ordered creation. Rather, the human being images God only when it ‘becomes nothing’ as Kierkegaard puts it.
THEOLOGY@Brisbane 