Pavol Bargar

Pavol Bargar
Charles University in Prague | CUNI · Protestant Theological Faculty

PhD

About

103
Publications
15,869
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Introduction
Pavol Bargar currently works at the Protestant Theological Faculty (PTF), Charles University in Prague. Pavol´s research interests lie in theology and culture, theological anthropology, and missiology/intercultural theology. The research projects he is involved include "Theological Anthropology from an Ecumenical Perspective" and "Biblical Roots of Christian Culture." He is project manager for the research project "Faith and Beliefs of ´Nonbelievers´", funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Additional affiliations
January 2017 - December 2017
Charles University in Prague
Position
  • Researcher

Publications

Publications (103)
Article
Full-text available
One of the major insights drawn from anthropological research is the acknowledgment that every human being is in each stage of their life embedded in a complex and multi-layered structure of relationships with other people as well as the world around them. Furthermore, theologically rooted anthropologies accentuate yet another type of relationship,...
Article
The article seeks to reflect on the anthropological dimension of Stephen Bevans's book "Community of Missionary Disciples," exploring especially the radical kinship of God's reign.
Chapter
This chapter (written in Slovak) reflects on the notion of culture from an explicitly theological perspective – with respect to Christian thought and practice.
Book
This book (published in Czech) is a collection of essays that investigate various aspects of the Bible and Christianity in their relation to culture as a broad human phenomenon.
Article
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This article seeks to understand maturity and fruitfulness in terms of going beyond oneself toward others and, ultimately, the divine Other. It suggests that, from a perspective of Christian theological anthropology, the pursuit of maturity and fruitfulness in human life entails being in community since human nature is inherently relational. To gro...
Article
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This paper adopts a theological perspective to reflect on the question of what a response by Christian churches, and individual Christians, should be vis-à-vis current threats to democracy. The paper proceeds in three steps. First, an analysis of the problem, with a particular regard to the European context, is provided by exploring some examples o...
Chapter
In the post-apocalyptic landscape of the HBO series The Last of Us, it is no easy task to find images, or even, traces of God´s presence. More often than not, actually, God seems not to be present in that bleak world. However, even instances of divine non-presence can be telling and theologically nourishing. The present chapter will explore several...
Book
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In the project of The Faith and Beliefs of "Nonbelievers," an international team of sociologists, theologians, and philosophers explores the phenomenon of a globally growing segment of people who break with any form of organized religion. Sociologists call these people "nones." This segment has proven to be very diverse and has been understudied an...
Article
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This paper seeks to argue that truth is not something that relates to tell-ing/speaking only. Its main aim is to show that in their quest for communion with God, other human beings - and one should add - the entire creation, humans need to go beyond truth-telling toward the ways of embodying and dwelling in truth and hope. To introduce its argument...
Book
Full-text available
This book makes a case, from an ecumenical Christian perspective, for a theological anthropology and a missiology that are based on the essential significance of story, body, imagination, and relationality in order to understand what it means to be human vis-à-vis God, the other, and creation. Such an interpretation, moreover, enables seeking and p...
Article
This is a book review of a volume edited by Kirsteen Kim and Alexia Salvatierra.
Article
It is a review of Willie James Jennings´ After Whiteness.
Article
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In allusion to the famous Johannine dictum, this paper seeks to explore the relationship between beauty and liberation. Liberation is here understood in terms of a movement toward transforming all reality in accordance with the principles of the coming reign of God, 'so that God may be all in all' (1 Cor 15:28). Complementarily, beauty is not inter...
Article
This is a book review of a volume edited by Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood on Ecumenism and Independency in World Christianity (in honor of Brian Stanley).
Chapter
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We will explore ecumenical collaboration for the sake of mission in the 21st century in this region. In this sense, we will consider ecumenical relations, theological education, migration and diaspora, and present challenges, and will try to identify the vision of the future. We will do this by focusing on four countries from the region as critical...
Chapter
Full-text available
At the invitation of the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in collaboration with different associations involved in mission and ecumenical studies, the Regional Center for Central and Eastern Europe convened at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology of the Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Roman...
Article
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Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that the tragedy of contemporary urban life lies not only in the fact that injustice and oppression burgeon in many cities today but also that "so many have nothing surrounding them in which any human being could possibly take sensory delight." As far as Christians are concerned, this unfortunate state is due to a pie-t...
Book
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Центральная тема книги — человек в его отношении к Богу и, в свете этих отношений, ко всему остальному: к другим людям и созданиям, к населенным нами местам, к природе, культуре, обществу и религии. Именно в этих отношениях проявляются различные грани того, что значит быть человеком. Таким образом мы учимся понимать, кто мы есть. Богословская антро...
Article
This is a book review of Stephen Bevans and Clemens Sedmak´s Does God Love the Coronavirus?
Chapter
This chapter explores the ways Christian mission was realized during the period of communist political rule in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. It particularly focuses on the context of Protestant churches in the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1948-1989. This focus is framed by the...
Article
The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide. It contains more than forty articles by experts from different disciplinary and ecclesial per...
Article
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Christian mission, understood in terms of missio Dei, has a significant political aspect as humans are political beings, that is, creatures who form and live in social relations and entities of various kinds. As a result, Christian witness to their faith is expected to have a public, political dimension. And indeed, Christians in Central and Easter...
Article
This is a review of The Spirit and the Common Good by Daniela C. Augustine.
Article
This is a review of Transcendence and Understanding, written by Zdenko Š. Širka.
Article
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The point of departure for this article is the essential conviction that culture has much to contribute to Christian theology. Discussing various examples from literature, music, and film, it explicitly focuses on the significance that the imagination has for theological reflection. More broadly, the article’s main argument was developed around the...
Article
This article argues that one of the postulations and, simultaneously, aims of Christian mission as part of missio Dei is to recognize the image of God in the other. To advance its arguments, it employs three central concepts, namely, brokenness, relationality, and mutuality. These concepts are to be perceived in terms of a hermeneutic arch that con...
Book
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"Who are People? Theological Anthropology Ecumenically". Jak porozumět tomu, co znamená být a stávat se člověkem ve vztahu k Bohu − a odtud pak ke všemu ostatnímu: k lidem, živočichům, rostlinám, krajině a kultuře, k různým formám sociálního a politického života? Těmito otázkami se zabývá kolektivní monografie Kdo je člověk? V mezioborové perspekti...
Conference Paper
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This paper suggests that it is desirable to explore various aspects of narrativity as a dynamic “flow” among embodied stories of different individuals and communities. Its underlying thesis is that a change of mind (metanoia) occurs under the impact of encounter with “other” stories. Throughout the paper it will be asserted that this narrative appr...
Article
This is a review of Luke Bretherton´s book Christ and the Common Life.
Conference Paper
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Inspired by the Jewish Pesach tradition of the Exodus story, this paper suggests interpreting the Resurrection as liberation. Further, it explores various aspects of such understanding, particularly in relation to the covid-19 pandemic.
Article
There have recently been attempts in the academic discourse to describe what is referred to as the demise of the postmodern due to the perceived insufficiency of the latter concept to adequately express the uniqueness of the 21st-century world. The younger generation of scholars, therefore, suggest adopting a new discourse, termed ‘metamodernism’,...
Article
This is a book review of Petr Jandejsek, "Christologie z pomezí: Jacques Dupuis, Roger Haight a Jon Sobrino." While the book was published in Czech (Prague: Karolinum, 2019), the review is in English.
Article
Full-text available
This article seeks to address the question of how to respond to the covid-19 coronavirus both faithfully and creatively by exploring theologically the particular topic of the body and the relationship to the other. It maintains that being Christian means taking seriously our human being in the body before God and others. Its argument is that Christ...
Conference Paper
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The paper explores the themes of "light" and "darkness" with an appeal to engage both symbols even to experience "living in darkness."
Article
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This article explores the symbol of the feast, as proposed by the 2012 World Council of Churches’ affirmation Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL). The feast is introduced as an appropriate hermeneutic tool to account for the multi‐layered and dynamic reality of human life in the presence of others and in the p...
Article
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The article discusses the role of the story with the intention of better understanding and rethinking our understanding of Christian identity. It argues that this identity is based on God's story in the world and with the world when the disciples of Jesus Christ strive to embody this story and further develop it creatively via the imagination. In t...
Article
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Článok skúma jeden z najdynamickejšie sa rozvíjajúcich fenoménov súčasného křesťanstva – evanjelium prosperity. Predstavuje ho ako medzinárodný a transdenominačný jav, ktorý výborne ladí so společenskými, ekonomickými a kultúrnymi rysmi dnešného globalizovaného sveta. This article explores one of the currently most dynamic movements in World Chris...
Article
This is a review of the book America's Original Sin, written by Jim Wallis.
Article
The Human Being in Quest for Truth: Milan Balabán´s Theological Anthropology The present article explores the concept of theological anthropology as proposed by Czech protestant theologian and biblical scholar Milan Balabán (1929 - 2019). In dialogue with Balabán and other theologians from various parts of the world, it examines what it means to b...
Article
The present era, often referred to as post‐secular, has in many places seen a resurgence in spirituality. Nevertheless, the contemporary quest for spirituality is unique in the sense that many people do not expect to have their spiritual needs fulfilled within the structures of organized religion, starting on a journey of their own explorations ins...
Conference Paper
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The paper explores the issue of Christian identity against the backdrop of contemporary pluralistic society, defined by a multitude of traditions, views, and stances. It makes use of the categories of culture , power, and witness to enable a fuller and theologically fruitful image of Christian identity. It argues that Christian identity is a relati...
Chapter
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The chapter explores the theme of the imagination and its role in theology. It distinguishes three types of imagination, namely, transgressive (self-reflective), deconstructive, and eschatological imagination. It argues that theologizing informed and driven by the imagination takes place between ideology and utopia.
Article
Although the present era has by some scholars been referred to as a post-ideological one, based on the argument that the so-called ‘grand narratives’ have by now become largely untrustworthy and suspicious, evidence suggests that ideology continues to play an important role in today’s world. This paper will therefore seek to revisit the post-ideolo...
Article
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Darren Aronofsky's film Mother! is a cinematographically unique and, at the same time, very disturbing work of art. As such, it provokes many contradictory reactions. The present article explores, from an ecumenical theological perspective, the destructive ways of pursuing holiness as portrayed in this film. Understanding holiness as an authentic r...
Article
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This article pursue a theological reading of Darren Aronofsky's film Black Swan (2011). Unlike some other interpretations, especially from psychoanalytical, feminist or neuroscientific perspectives, it suggests focusing on a transformative quality of the main protagonist's self-giving act. Drawing from John de Gruchy's emphasis on the alien beauty...
Article
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This paper argues that if Christianity is to be regarded as a truly world religion, Christians must pay serious attention to the ways in which the Reformation legacy has taken roots and found contextualized expressions around the world, particularly in the global South. If Christians from the North Atlantic fail to acknowledge and take this fact se...
Article
This article explores the topics of church, society, and earth in two recent documents by the World Council of Churches (WCC): The Church: Towards a Common Vision and Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. Regarding society and earth not as mere objects or “props” of the church’s mission, the article suggests that the...
Article
This article compares the song "Lazarus" of David Bowie with the understanding of salvation in David Ford's Self and Salvation. Both do, with Levinas, interpret salvation as an experience in relation to the other. The fullness of life can only be pursued together with the other. The power of death can be overcome by the eschatological reality of gr...
Article
Predkladaný príspevok skúma koncept premieňajúceho nasledovania, ako ho prezentuje a rozvíja 14. konferencia o svetovej misii a evanjelizácii. Hlavnou tézou tohto článku je, že komplexné, teologicky i antropologicky fundované pochopenie kresťanského nasledovania môže pomôcť adekvátnejšie pochopiť úlohu cirkvi vo vzťahu k Božej misii vo svete (missi...
Article
This article argues that narrativity has the potential to be a key hermeneutical concept in ecumenical theology. Instead of pursuing a complex elaboration of the notion, it will seek to explore various aspects of narrativity. The thesis will be explicated in three major steps, consecutively discussing culture as the general setting of narrativity,...
Article
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Although scholarship in many disciplines has paid much attention to the life and work of the American poet and vocalist of the band "The Doors", Jim Morrison (1943-1971), virtually no contributions to this topic have been made from a theological perspective. The submitted paper will seek to fill this lacuna at least to some extent. It explores the...
Article
The article explores “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today’s World” (MOCT), one of the six official documents issued by the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church that took place on the island of Crete in 2016. It is the first official Orthodox statement on mission ever published. The aim of the present article is to offer a reflectio...
Article
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The annual conference of the Central and Eastern European Association for Mission Studies (CEEAMS) was held in Osijek, Croatia, between 13-17 February 2017. Its theme was “Love, Live, and Delight: Conversations in Central and Eastern Europe on Present Day Documents on Mission.” The participants reflected on mission documents from different Christia...
Presentation
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The workshop will engage with the 10 points of Seelisberg and the 12 points of Berlin from theological perspectives. While affirming the core tenets and recommitting itself to the goals of the two documents, the workshop will seek to refocus and expand the scope of Jewish-Christian dialogue and amity in terms of themes, perspectives, and agents. As...
Presentation
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We playfully use the word ”ingredients” here, as if we were looking for a recipe and in more than one way, we are. Reforms happen in every aspect of life: including religions, art, culture, societal structures, and politics. In the religious world, reform bears on how we interpret the words of God, making religious reforms different from other type...
Conference Paper
The public opinion in Europe has been for some time now divided on the question of whether or not European countries ought to accept refugees coming from especially Middle Eastern and African countries. Actually, it seems that the differences of opinion are increasingly bigger and often prevent people from even having a meaningful conversation on t...
Book
Full-text available
Narrative, Myth, Transformation is a groundbreaking book about the transformational potential of the Christian Story in the context of contemporary culture. It offers a unique blend of excellent scholarship, creative thinking and theological wisdom. Pavol Bargár explores new paths in missiological analysis of culture, focusing especially on how nar...
Article
This paper follows on from the premise that humans are narrative beings, i.e. their identity is founded on stories. From a theological perspective, more importantly, Christian identity is founded on a particular story – the story of Jesus Christ. As a consequence, theology is the critical reflection of this story. Narrative theology is a school whi...
Article
The present article explores the issue of the poor in three recent major documents on mission and evangelism/evangelization – Together towards Life (TTL), The Cape Town Commitment (CCT), and Evangelii Gaudium (EG) – arguing that they have several commonalities, as well as differences, with regard to mission and the poor. In convergence, they acknow...
Chapter
This paper views theology as a process of reflection on human experience. Humans grasp their existence narratively - as a story. From this perspective, it is legitimate to speak of narrative theology. The paper explores possibilities of using myth as a means of narrative theology. It defines myth as a dialectic conjunction of symbols and a narrativ...
Article
The phenomenon of the Nigerian Pentecostal/charismatic missionaries and communities led by them has been fairly well documented with respect to some Western European countries. However, much less attention has been given to the ministry of Nigerian-initiated Pentecostal/charismatic churches in Central Europe. The present paper seeks to fill this la...
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Article
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The present paper revisits the famous typology outlining possible relationships of Christians to culture, as outlined by H. Richard Niebuhr in his Christ and Culture. It seeks to draw upon some particular insights from the critical discussion in order to propose a constructive application of Niebuhr’s categories in today’s theology of culture. Cont...

Questions

Question (1)
Question
Hi,
I added one of my articles to my profile, without knowing that it had already been added automatically before. How can I integrate them so that there is no duplication in my profile?
Thank you very much
Pavol bargar

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