The Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry is pleased to invite you to a public lecture presented by guest of the Institute, Professor Stephan van Erp (KU Leuven / Radboud University Nijmegen).

The lecture

The Political Performance of Grace

Does the Church have a political theology? And if so, how should its political performance be conceived?

This lecture will explore framework for a political theology that is not restricted to the ethical or procedural alone, but which anticipates a promised future that is becoming present in a broken world, especially among its wounded communities. This present future informs an hermeneutics of performance in which grace is the performance which the Church signifies. In Christological terms, the world already accommodates a performance in Christ, by whom it is assumed in its brokenness and ambiguity. This given performance dwells in the Church as it seeks to represent the true future of the world, in the longing and acting of the People of the God, which are ultimately hidden with Christ in the invisible God, as Paul wrote to the Colossians.

In this lecture, it will be argued that this mutual hidden presence of God to the world and the world in God should constitute the political theology of the Church.

The speaker

Stephan van Erp is Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium. He also holds the Edward Schillebeeckx Chair at the Radboud University Nijmegen. His dissertation was published as The Art of Theology: The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Foundations of Faith (Peeters Publishers 2004), and he has edited more than 25 volumes. His next book is titled Sacrament and Politics and will be published with Bloomsbury Press in 2020.

RSVP appreciated.

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