Doctoral Colloquium 2025 – Monday, September 1st
< Go back to overview page Doctoral Colloquium 2025
| 8:00 – 8:30 | Breakfast |
| 8:45 – 9:30 | Opening Chapel (K. van Bekkum) |
| 09:55 – 10:40 | Student Presentations
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| 10:40 – 11:05 | Coffee Break |
| 11:05 – 11:50 | Student Presentations
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| 12:00 – 13:00 | Faculty Presentations
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| 13:00 – 14:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00 – 15:00 | Meeting new students at room LCCS 0103 (first time colloquium students) |
| Possibility for appointments | |
| 15:00 – 16:00 | ETF Report and Introduction PhD Handbook 2025-2026 at Chapel (Faculty and PhD Students) |
| 16:00 – 16:30 | Coffee Break |
| 16:30 – 18:30 | Doctoral Faculty Meeting at at room LCCS 0102 PhD Student Meeting at Chapel |
| 18:30 – 19:30 | Dinner |
| 19:30 – 21:30 | Possibility for appointments |
Doctoral examinations (closed meetings)
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| Basement open from 20:00 |
Go to Tuesday, September 2nd >
Abstracts
Student Presentations
C. Dimitrova (ST): The Promise of the Wesleyan Model for Business as Mission (BAM)
The movement Business as Mission (BAM), a recent attempt at Christian enterprise, has grown exponentially in recent decades. BAM has struggled to offer a cohesive framework that connects its mission to make disciples with its day-to-day entrepreneurial activities. In the publishable article I have submitted to the Journal of Economics, Theology, and Religion (JETR), I intend to help with that task by focusing on the theological underpinnings of the Wesleyan business model. It is my hypothesis that this model can help articulate the Christian vocation to make disciples with the domain of entrepreneurship. John Wesley stressed the need for human-divine cooperation to fulfill God’s redemptive purposes in restoring and renewing material realities to wholeness. This bears on the content and nature of any Christian enterprise: it participates in the restoration of God’s created order (redemptive) through ethical means that respect humankind and creation (responsible) for the holistic growth of the community (relational). It is my contention that BAM can benefit from Wesley’s model of redemptive, responsible, and relational entrepreneurship, avoiding the dangers associated with wealth creation while pursuing it for the fulfillment of its mission.
E. Pereira Ramos (PT): Between the Pulpit and the People: Understanding Polarization in Church Contexts
This presentation, Between the Pulpit and the People: Understanding Polarization in Church Contexts, explores how preaching in polarized environments often shifts from being a theological proclamation to becoming a cultural artifact that reflects social loyalties and divisions. The central question guiding this inquiry is: What theoretical frameworks best explain the dynamics of polarization in church
contexts, and how can these inform empirical hypotheses for future research?
Drawing on three major frameworks — Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, Reicher & Haslam), Affective Polarization (Iyengar & Westwood), and Radicalization and Threat Perception (van Prooijen) — the presentation demonstrates how sermons are filtered through group identity, partisan affect, and threat-based narratives. Each framework generates specific empirical hypotheses to investigate how congregations receive, resist, or reinterpret sermons based on identity alignment, political cues, and threat perceptions.
The analysis suggests that preaching which avoids ideological alignment may initially provoke greater discomfort but holds transformative potential by creating liminal spaces for critical reflection. Thus, homiletics emerges not merely as a discipline of communication but as a form of theological resistance against polarization. Preaching shaped by humility, rooted in Philippians 2, can move beyond reinforcing tribal loyalties to embody a cruciform model of listening, discernment, and redemptive proclamation.
M. Steinfeld (NT): The Characterization of Christ in Revelation through John’s Use of Articular Participles and Methods of Character Development
Over the last half century, narrative criticism has made inroads into biblical studies, with the Gospel and Acts as the primary focus of New Testament (NT) scholarship. While most commentators and scholars approach Revelation from a historical-grammatical perspective, narrative studies applied to the Apocalypse is increasing. However, these works tend to emphasize the discourse aspects (genre, structure, and rhetoric) in lieu of story aspects (plot, narrator, setting, point of view, characters, etc.). When this happens, the focus tends to be on the plot at the expense of characterization, or it systematically addresses one element of narrative criticism at a time. While this is beneficial for providing an overview of these elements for a book, when it comes to characterization, the end result is a synchronic composite, detached from gradual development throughout the work. To date, most character studies on Jesus in Revelation have adopted this latter method. Recent character studies in the NT and Revelation have started to emphasize a gradual building of the character’s identity through various texts, conflicts, and interactions with other characters. Despite these advances, there remains a need for a methodological, consistent, and encompassing narrative examination of Jesus in Revelation. To meet this gap, this presentation proposes utilizing John’s unique methods of characterization and applying them to Jesus, identifying his use of articular participles as titles and descriptions of Christ, and applying elements of narrative analysis and characterization in a sequential study of Jesus in Revelation.
M. Johnston (HT): Robert Bellarmine and Francis Turretin in Conversation on the Knowledge of Christ’s Soul
Just how much did Christ’s soul know during his earthly ministry? Even a cursory reading of the gospels reveals the troublesome nature of a rapid response. The patristic period presents a variegated approach to the possibility of ignorance in Chrit’s human which gradually coalesced in its exclusion by the end of the fifth century. Although many medieval theologians continued in the same trajectory, some introduced nuanced categories that enabled them to parse Christ’s knowledge in new ways (e.g., Aquinas). The debate was rekindled in the early modern period as Protestants spoke about Christ’s ignorance in ways that Roman Catholics deemed problematic. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) argues that the hypostatic union excludes ignorance in Christ, while Francis Turretin (1623-1687) argues that our salvation necessitates it.
M.J. Luteijn (OT): Christian Theology and Old Testament Law: The Case of the Cities of Refuge
Theological interpreters frequently retrieve the multiple senses of biblical texts. However, beyond the Reformation’s ambiguous stance on allegory, another crucial aspect of its exegetical heritage remains underexplored: the distinction between history and doctrine. For John Calvin, who applied this distinction in his Harmony of the Law, his exegesis of narratives allows for engagement with the central figures, while his exegesis of laws tends to be more timeless and universal. A key example is Calvin’s reading of the law on the cities of refuge (Deuteronomy 19), in which he rejects traditional identification and allegorization in favor of a more straightforward moral interpretation. This paper argues that Calvin’s approach had a secularizing effect on the interpretation of the law, influencing even those who favor theological readings of other passages, such as Gerhard von Rad and many contemporary evangelicals. This raises important questions about the interpretation of Old Testament law in Christian theology.
J. Stephen Balaraj (RM): The Charism of Prophecy in the Sixth Phase of the International Roman Catholic – Classical Pentecostal Dialogue: Ecumenical Explorations
This research investigates the theology and pastoral discernment of the charism of prophecy as articulated in the sixth phase of the International Roman Catholic–Classical Pentecostal Dialogue (IRCCPD, 2011–2015). Focusing on §§30–51 of the Final Report, the study conducts a theological analysis to identify areas of convergence and divergence between the Roman Catholic and Classical Pentecostal traditions in their understanding and practice of prophecy. It argues that while both traditions affirm the prophetic charism as a continuing and necessary element of ecclesial life, their theological emphases and frameworks for discernment differ in ways that offer potential for mutual enrichment. Specifically, it is proposed that Pentecostal theology would benefit from a deepened ecclesial discernment of prophetic expressions, while Catholic theology could recover a more dynamic and participatory pneumatology.
In addition to examining the sixth phase, the study engages with broader ecumenical discourses on prophecy—particularly within Protestant traditions and multilateral contexts such as the World Council of Churches—to assess how the IRCCPD’s treatment of prophecy compares with other contemporary ecumenical reflections. Through this comparative and ecumenically informed theological analysis, the study aims to contribute to the developing field of ecumenical pneumatology and to ongoing conversations about the role of spiritual gifts in the Church’s life and mission.
Faculty presentations
R.T. Michener (ST): Knowing God in Humility through Faith, Hope, and Love
In the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon submitted that “knowledge is power.” Years later, this axiom was appropriated (via a Nietzschean lens) by Michel Foucault to uncover the power structures that afford claims to knowledge. Knowledge and power have certainly been used to legitimize unjust political and religious structures in the name of Christian “truth.” For the Christian theologian, this raises a question as to the relationship between postures of power and claims to knowledge of God. Of course, this depends on what is meant by “knowledge.” Due to the breadth and complexity of this question, this essay will restrict its focus on God’s knowability within a Christian theological context and commitment. To consider this, I will primarily engage with Justin Thacker (Postmodernism and the Ethics of Theological Knowledge, 2007), while also considering the work of Esther Lightcap Meek (Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People, 2003; Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology, 2011), and Dru Johnson (Biblical Knowing: A Scriptural Epistemology of Error 2013). Thacker, Meek, and Johnson all draw from Michael Polanyi’s framework of tacit knowledge, and advocate for a “whole person” way of knowing that stems from our participation in Christ in relationship with others. Rather than reducing knowledge to the power of autonomous, individual cognition, these views seek to promote epistemological humility, situating knowledge of God in the virtues of faith, hope, and love in the context of community.
J. Otten (NT): Humility and the Kingdom of God (Mark 10:1–31): Broadening the Markan Sandwich
Jesus’s dispute with the Pharisees about divorce (10:1¬–12) and his encounter with the rich man (10:17–31) have at first glance little in common: one encounter is with a group seeking to entrap him, the other with an individual coming in earnest; the first ends with Jesus outwitting his adversaries, the second with him lamenting the fate of one he loves. Yet the two encounters clearly parallel each other in both stylistic and rhetorical features. Both involve questions for people of standing regarding an ethical question. In both cases, Jesus’s response asks after what the law says, and in both cases, his interlocutor(s) respond in a way that show them to be technically keeping the requirements of the law while still failing to live up to its purpose. Nor is this connection merely formal or apparent, for it is strengthened by the presence of multiple catchwords (notably ἐντέλλω/ἐντολή, μοιχεύω, τὸν πατέρα…καὶ τὴν μητέρα). At the center of this arrangement lies Jesus’s blessing of the children and his warning that only those who approach the kingdom like children may enter it (10:13–16), thus placing the posture of humble dependence on God far above not only legalistic righteousness and selfish ambition, but also riches and well-intentioned piety. While these passages are generally the focus of ethical debate, this paper will highlight the focus on humility that emerges as more important even than the specific ethical stances they advocate. Observations will also be made on implications for our (too narrow??) understanding of Mark’s use of “sandwiching”?