William Peter van den Bercken

`Wil van den Bercken has produced a focused and sober reconsideration of the vexed question of the religious identity of Dostoevsky's fiction... In a series of patient and perceptive analyses of Dostoevsky's major novels, van den Bercken extracts their religious content and assesses it without preconceptions. Christian Fiction and Religious Realism in the Novels of Dostoevsky should appeal not only to specialists in Dostoevsky and modern fiction, but also to students and general readers.'---Robert Bird, The University of Chicago This study offers a literary analysis and theological evalution of the Christian themes in the five great novels of Dostoevsky-Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Adolescent, The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov. Based on a balanced method of literary analysis and theological evaluation of the texts, this study starts by discussing recent studies of Dostoevsky's religion. It then describes Dostoevsky's original literary method in dealing with religious issues - his use of paradoxes, contradictions and irony. Christian Fiction and Religious Realism in the Novels of Dostoevsky ultimately deconstructs Dostoevsky as an Orthodox writer, and reveals that the Christian themes in his novels are not ecclesiastical or confessionally theological ones, but instead are expressions of a fundamentally Christian anthropology and biblical ethics.

Christian Fiction and Religious Realism in the Novels of Dostoevsky

Jonathan Sutton

This volume contains selected papers presented at a conference on Orthodox Christianity and its contemporary European setting. The conference was held in England, at the University of Leeds, in June 2001 and drew together historians, theologians, philosophers, specialists in theological education and political scientists. Countries with an Orthodox Christian history were well represented, as well as Orthodoxy in the diaspora and other Christian confessions by representatives from Western Europe and the United States and Canada. The coherence of Orthodox Christianity and contemporary threats to its coherence formed one main strand for reflection, but discussion also broadened out to consider the nature of religious tradition as such. Part I of the collection brings together papers on such matters as identity, nationalism, globalization, human rights discourse, ecumenical dialogue and competing interpretations of what it means to be European. Part II focuses on Orthodox Christianity in Russia and Part III on the traditionally Orthodox countries of Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. The present collection is meant as a contribution to further reflection on Orthodox identity, and relationship between Christianity and culture in Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Selected Papers of the International Conference Held at the University of Leeds, England, in June 2001

Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Europe

This volume contains selected papers of a conference in 2004 at Utrecht University on aesthetics as a religious factor in Eastern and Western Christianity. They discuss the role of aesthetics in the presentation and expression of Christian faith in Catholic and Orthodox tradition. During its history Christianity has produced many works of art: church architecture, iconography, painting, music and literary texts. And in Orthodoxy beauty has always been the main form of religious expression, more than verbal presentation of Christian teaching, which is embedded in the aesthetic context of liturgy. In Christian theology beauty has often been seen as a form of divine revelation, related to the mystery of incarnation. The relation between aesthetics and religious belief has acquired new relevance in our secularised world. Today the visible products of Catholic and Orthodox aesthetics are for many people the main means through which they come into contact with Christianity and many people without affinity to religion are attracted by the beauty of Christian art, inside and outside the church. In modern religious studies the experience of beauty is recognised as a factor in explaining religious feelings. The papers are divided in four sections: 1. Comparative aspects of Orthodox and Catholic aesthetics, 2. Religious aesthetics in Russian literary culture, 3. Applied aesthetics in church art, 4. Art-theoretical, ideological and religious-philosophical aspects.

Selected Papers of the International Conference Held at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, in June 2004

Aesthetics as a Religious Factor in Eastern and Western Christianity

Evert van der Zweerde

Manon de Courten

W. van den Bercken

Vladimir Solov'ev (1853-1900- is regarded as the most original and systematic of the Russian philosophers in the 19th century. He has once again become the subject of international scholarly attention both in Slavic countries and the West. This volume contains selected papers presented at the international conference on Vladimir Solov'ev held at Nijmegen University, the Netherlands, in September 1998. The scope of this conference was wide-ranging, dealing with theological, metaphysical, philosophical and historical themes. Though Solov'ev's broad intellectual activity defies any strict attempt at categorisation, the editors have classified its major themes under the dual characteristic of reconciliation and polemics. Solov'ev was passionately committed to the reconciliation of all beings under the idea of all-unity, which he attemted to achieve by engaging in uncompromising polemics with his contemporaries, The thirty contributors to this volume are specialists from Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Western Europe and the United States. The volume makes a significant contribution to the intellectual reassesment of Vladimir Solov'ev since the rediscovery of his philosophical heritage in his own homeland in the 1980s.

Reconciler and Polemicist ; Selected Papers of the International Vladimir Solov'ëv Conference Held at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in September 1998

William Peter van den Bercken

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