https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14178/898 2026-09-10T21:02:46Z https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14178/3894 Calls, Decisions and Conflicts Shaping the Human Pilgrimage: The Narrative of Abraham Noble, Ivana This article explores how resilience and conflict resolution figure in the narratives common to all monotheistic religions, such as the call and the transformative journey of Abraham. The text focuses on the dynamics of Abraham’s inward relationship with God, and getting on with other people in a world divided by wars into which Abraham is thrown, and out of which he emerges with a different vision of life. It explores the evolution of the divine promise shaping his and Sarah’s journey, the experience of conflicts and sacrifices that his double fatherhood puts into motion, his balancing between engagement and surrender, and in these processes, relations between human greatness, human fragility and hope. Iconic-contemplative, socio-political and psychological readings of the texts are brought into conversation. Each approach sheds a different light on the nature of Abraham’s pilgrimage, on the choices he makes in a war situation in which his relatives are taken hostage, and on what options are available to him as he attempts to understand what sounds like an impossible promise and offensive call to sacrifice his offspring. The article shows how Abraham’s outer and inner conflicts participate in his growth, and, revealing different forms of fragility and resilience, make Abraham an iconic father of the multitude of nations. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14178/3821 The Role of Identity-Remembrance in the Syrian Refugees' Adaptability: An Interdisciplinary Assessment Awad, Najib George This article examines self-perception and its impact on the adaptability to new living contexts symptomatic of different socio-cultural and religious/theological identity-formation contexts. By relying on an interdisciplinary hermeneutic, it touches upon the issues of selfhood and otherness from an interdisciplinary theological and social-theoretical perspective by laying its foundations deep in the connections of theological/religious and cultural perceptions of the identity formation of displaced people in their new host life-settings. Such connectedness is demonstrative of self-perception trajectories, which foreigners go through in their attempts at integration and adaptation, or lack thereof, to the new and challenging living spheres they join. The article focuses on the Syrian refugees in Europe and analyses how their religious or theological self-perception relates to their confrontation with the new challenge of forming a new self-identification strategy that can enable them to answer the question 'who am I?' in the heart of their strife to exist in their new expatriate lands. The article touches upon this complex and multi-faceted matter from the specific perspective of the role of memory and remembrance in the journeys of self-perception and identity reformulation of these Syrians and their hosts, and in their religious and cultural ramifications. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14178/3820 The Enigma of the Temple Site and the Word-play 'Moriah' Prudký, Martin This study on biblical topography examines the enigmatic name 'Moriah' (Gen 22:2) and identifiers it as a skillful wordplay, a pun using allusions in the given literary context of the Abrahamic cycle. 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14178/3724 Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Performance of Resilience in The Face of Inner Conflict Noble, Timothy This article focuses on the "terrible sonnets" of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). It shows how these poems offer an insight into a particular form of agonistics. Hopkins struggles with his understanding of self, of God, and of language, transforming experience into a fundamental clash of hegemonic visions of the world. Through resilience, there is not reconciliation but a re-visioning (therefore remediatising) of the possibility of human existence, which finds its home in language. Hopkins thus works between sound and sight and places a spiritual dimension into the political conversation about the task of being human. This challenge to any reductive approach is also, the article argues, an expression of resilience. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z