Doctoral Colloquium 'Vulnerability and Trust'

The annual Doctoral Colloquium is an essential part of our PhD program. Students working on a dissertation gather during this week and meet with their professors, prepare for exams and present their research. Public defenses of dissertations also usually take place during this week.

This year’s theme is “Vulnerability and Trust”. We live in a VUCA (Vulnerable, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous ) world of superintelligence on the horizon. It makes us aware of our vulnerability. At the same time, it compels Christians to trust. What therefore is the relationship between this vulnerability and trust, hope and resilience? This will be the theme of the colloquium.

You are welcome to attend one or more sessions of the public program.

If you want to attend a doctoral defense, please register by August 24, 2026 via the registration form. You don’t need to register to attend the opening chapel, morning devotions or faculty lectures. Attending the sessions is free of charge.

There is the option to join a meal before or after a session. Payment for meals will be processed immediately upon submission of the registration form.

• Lunch (at 13:00) is € 20,-
• Dinner (at 18:30) is € 40,-

Public program

CONCEPT based on 2025

Monday 31 August

Tuesday 1 September

Wednesday 2 September

Thursday 3 September

Friday 4 September

Abstracts

1. Leadership with Vulnerability: Anthropological and Theological Foundations
By Prof. Dr. Jack Barentsen (PT)

Leaders and organizations are increasingly aware of the dangers and abuses of power, especially in the current political turn towards authoritarian and autocratic leadership. Such hegemonic and universalizing tendencies often have significant dark sides (Lipman-Blumen 2005; Lizardy-Hajbi 2024). Even discourses on transformational, spiritual, and authentic leadership are not immune to these darker sides (Tourish 2013; Oyewunmi et al. 2024; Einola & Alvesson 2021). Recognizing these leadership vulnerabilities helps to nurture the trust necessary for leaders and communities to function well in truly spiritual leadership.

This first requires leaders and followers to acknowledge their own limitations, inadequacies, and vulnerabilities (Kok 2025). Drawing on an anthropological framework that portrays human beings as embodied, interactive participants in their material and social world (Barentsen 2025), the paper argues that such limitations and vulnerabilities are not accidental weaknesses, but core characteristics of being human (McAdoo 2025). Theologically, this vision is read in dialogue with biblical and Christological motifs of divine self-emptying, power-in-weakness, and the Spirit’s work through fragile communities (Langby 2025, Coakley 1996, Tettey & Nel 2021). Vulnerability thus becomes a locus of discernment where human finitude and dependence are acknowledged before God and others (Barentsen & Blok 2024).

This paper proposes that spiritual leadership neither spiritualizes away human limitation nor erases difference, but acknowledges vulnerability while calling upon greater principles and powers to guide collective human efforts. This preserves the particularities of each human being, group, and culture ((Frohock 2026, Oc et al 2020).

2. Reading Joshua as a Constitutional Document
By Prof. Dr. Markus Zehnder (OT)

The Book of Joshua has plaid a very important role in the Zionist movement, especially in the early phase of the state of Israel in the middle of the 20^th century. A special offshoot of the reception history of Joshua in the Zionist movement is its understanding as a constitutional document, a document of classical political theory, elaborated upon in its most developed form by Daniel Elazar, a specialist in Jewish political tradition. He published a book-length study on this topic under the title The Book of Joshua as a Political Classic in 1989. Elazar’s study, as opposed to a similar study on the Book of Deuteronomy produced by Joshua Berman, has until now not been given attention in the exegetical work on Joshua.

This paper will briefly sketch the ways in which the Book of Joshua has been used in the Zionist movement to provide a context for the main part of the lecture, the presentation of the core theses proposed by Elazar. The lecture also includes an assessment of Elazar’s book, discussing its strengths and weaknesses and especially the question as to how his work may advance further exegetical and theological study of Joshua.

3. Why Naphtali’s Boundary Ends Right at the Start. Pericope Connection by Verb Sequence Inversion in the Book of Joshua
By Dr. Siegbert Riecker (OT)

When searching for compositional connections between the tribal boundary descriptions in the Book of Joshua, the comparison of verb sequences also plays a role. The choice of verbs is partly based on topographical conditions, as the comparison between Josh 15:6–9 and 18:15–19 shows, and partly the result of literary variations. However, literary-structural reasons can also be identified, for example where Josh 15:2–4 expands upon the chiasm in Num 34:3–5. The verb sequences of the boundaries of Judah, Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin can be interpreted in literary-structural terms. The verb sequences in the boundary descriptions of the tribes of Zebulun, Issachar and Asher follow a parallel pattern. Naphtali, on the other hand, mirrors the verb pattern of Asher to indicate a special kind of connection, a pericope connection by verb sequence inversion. This literary technique can be verified by the mirroring of the verb pattern of the conquest of Debir (Joshua 10:38–39) in the summary of the conquests in Joshua 10:40–43.

4. Clashing Vulnerabilities? Revisiting Executief van de Moslims in België and Others v Belgium Using a Vulnerability Lens
Prof. Dr. Jelle Creemers (RM)

In political and legal theory, vulnerability theory proposes that the notion of a “vulnerable legal subject” should replace the dominant concept of the “liberal legal subject” (Fineman 2008; Fineman et al. 2024). Although widely discussed in legal theory, the concept of vulnerability has so far had limited influence on jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. This paper explores its potential to strengthen the protection of religious minorities by examining the recent Strasbourg judgment in Executief van de Moslims in België and Others v Belgium (2024) through the lens of vulnerability. In this case, the Court upheld the legal requirement of stunning animals before slaughter to protect animal welfare, despite claims by Muslims and Jews that it infringes upon a central religious ritual. This paper presents and analyzes the case, and revisits the judgment from the perspective of vulnerability theory. Finally, it considers how a more deliberate recognition of vulnerability could positively impact religious minorities’ trust in the international protection of religious freedom.

5. (Title TBA)
Dr. Maria Verhoeff (PT)

(Details to follow)

6. Coming together over a divided wall: Victorinus and Chrysostom and the identity of Christians at Ephesus
Dr. Drake Williams III (NT)

Jewish and Gentile people were originally separated before the work of Christ according to Ephesians 2:11-14. Due to the blood of Christ, however, the Gentiles have been brought near to the Jewish people. As this is explained further, Ephesians 2:14 states that a wall of separation has been broken down. This wall has been interpreted in several ways as either the wall in the Temple precinct, a cosmic wall, the Mosaic Law, and a metaphorical wall. These different interpretations naturally provide a different sense of the social identity of the Ephesian Christians.

Frequently neglected sources for evaluating difficult New Testament texts are early Christian writers. Their perspectives are not only significant for understanding a controversial passage but also valuable for grasping social identity issues. This paper will explore the understanding of two Christian authors from differing parts of the Roman Empire concerning Ephesians 2:14. It will investigate the understanding of Marius Victorinus, a prominent fourth century Roman grammarian, rhetorician, and Neoplatonic philosopher and a forerunner of Augustine. It will also consider the understanding of the wall from John Chrysostom, a late fourth century preacher from Constantinople who later became known as a doctor of the church.

While from different backgrounds, both Victorinus and Chrysostom favor a wall interpreted as the enmity of the flesh. This then leads to their exalted view that both have of the place of Christians in the church.

7. The vulnerability of being human: its Christological vindication
By Prof. Dr. Nico den Bok (HT)

‘For we have a high priest who is able to empathize with our weaknesses’ (Hebr 4:15). For centuries Christ, being God and man, was seen as equiped with the best-possible human powers, both mental and physical, and as such as the ultimate model for all human beings. This view presupposes that in Christ, God took on human nature as it was before the Fall, so that in major respects he was unlike all other human beings. In the last century, however, some important Christologies claimed that God took on human nature in its fallen condition so that Jesus fully shared our human predicament (like Barth, Balthasar, Torrance). They critically radicalized basic protestant views (Luther: Christ ‘the highest and only sinner’, Calvin: Christ punished even with experiencing hell). How deep one downgrades Christ’s human nature, however, there is a bottom-line for Christian orthodoxy: that he was human in every respect except sin. For classical theology (from Augustine and Anselm to Aquinas, Bonaventure and Scotus) Christ’s sinlessness was a starting point from which it developed a notion of satisfaction as an alternative to punishment, thus opening the way to embrace a human vulnerability not caused by the Fall. There is weakness and weakness, and the difference hinges on the ability for compassion and trust. In this Faculty Lecture I would like to explore this opening. It will show the importance of the anthropological distinction between disposition and volition, also for Christology.

8. Being(s) in Relation: Vulnerability, Trust and the Deep Politics of the Cross
By Dr. Myron Penner (ST)

In this paper I explore the nature of Christian being and how Christians are to be in the world, specifically in terms “vulnerability” and “trust,” by looking at the deep politics of the cross within our current European and global context in which fascism / totalitarianism is a growing response to the risks to personal and social identities that come from social, economic, political, and environmental forces. So my question is: How are we (Christians) to live in the age of global crisis? This question is, of course, deeply connected to and dependent upon a prior question of what a Christian is and what it means to be as a Christian.

My thesis is that: Christian being is a politics that undercuts all forms of fascism, including Christian nationalism. That is to say, Christian being is a deep politics that is a reconciling presence in the world through the church. Using Paul’s Christ Hymn in Philippians 2 as archetypal, I explicate this deep politics of the cross in conversation with Simone Weil’s analyses of Force and Affliction and her concepts of Decreation and Attention. I argue that Christian being is a (deep) politics grounded in and revealed by the Being of Jesus-Messiah as vulnerable relational being that, through its trust in its transcendent ground (God), loves the actual neighbour and leads to the creation of an alternative community in which genuine human being is made possible.