The aim of this essay is to explore the theological concept of conversion in the Old Testament. Conversion will be presented as a way to deflect the crisis between God and humankind in general, or between the Lord and His people specifically. The study concentrates on the problem of the absence of conversion of God's people on one side and the actual God's conversion on the other. The main thesis of the article is: The Old Testament introduces and develops the concept of God's conversion from anger to relenting as a theological way out of the crisis and as a basis for possible future return of Israel to God.
Konverze v Novém zákoně
(Karel Taschner)
A synthetic methodology is used in this article. The author works out the four basic theological terms—conversion, repentance, faith and regeneration. He summarizes briefly their meaning in various books of the New Testament and, through their integration to the coherent unit being true to the New Testament references, he helps us to understand better what the conversion means in the New Testament. It is a basic event in life through which humans become Christians when they accept, in repentance by faith, God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ, convert totally to the living God and are regenerated through the power of Holy Spirit.
Obrácení, povolání a poslání apoštola Pavla
(Peter Cimala)
The Apostle Paul is considered the most famous convert in the history of Christianity. The story about a zealous persecutor of Christians who experienced a complete turn of his life on the road to Damascus has fascinated painters, writers and ordinary Bible readers. This event divides Paul’s life into two parts—before and after Damascus. It is rightly regarded as the key and basis for understanding his mission work and also his theology. The purposes of my paper are (i) to briefly introduce main New Testament passages which refer to Paul’s Damascus experience—first the texts from Paul’s epistles, then from Acts; (ii) to engage the current debate about the adequacy of speaking about the conversion of Paul and the alternative terms for his Damascus experience: call and commission; (iii) to observe the impact of Paul’s experience on his theology; (iv) finally to focus attention on points of input which are connected to the theme—conversion as a basic Christian experience.
Milovník Modré květiny:
C. S. Lewis na imaginativní cestě k Bohu
(Matěj Hájek)
This article is a theological–philosophical inquiry of the role which imagination and beauty play in the process of religious conversion, based on thoughts of C. S. Lewis, a popular British Christian writer and a literary scholar. At the beginning of the article, the author describes a fundamental tension between the outer and inner dimensions of human life, which has its correlate in a dual dimension of religious conversion. Subsequently, he focuses on the inner, imaginative aspect of the human experience. He presents the C. S. Lewis’ theological reflection of beauty based on the specific aesthetic experience. Lewis qualifies this experience as an important vehicle of God's redemptive address to man. Created beauty is an image of God's beauty and the aesthetical experience which is wakened up by beauty can become a crucial instrument on a way to a religious conversion. The author concludes his article with an observation that we somehow neglected this (inner) aspect of religious conversion, and encourages us to pay an increased attention to the spiritual and theological importance of the imaginative side of human personality.
Interpretace náboženské zkušenosti:
Je konverze podle Billyho Grahama
jednorázovou, nebo opakovanou událostí?
(Pavel Černý)
In many biblical stories we can meet diversity of spiritual experiences of various persons. Among those experiences dominates the experience of encountering God. Such experience often directs to description of a certain break in the life of a biblical witness. This experience is usually characterized as conversion, regeneration, repentance, filling by the Holy Spirit, in short, a unique spiritual change. This experience is perceived from without as a change of direction in the life of given individual and as bearing the fruit of faith. Conversion is common to all streams of Christianity. However the problem remains, how to interpret biblically such experience in contemporary pluralism and multi-religious perspective.
Today we are witnesses of different opinions and interpretations in this field of basic religious experience. As an example we use the well-known figure of evangelist and preacher Dr. Billy Graham and his paradigm of conversion. Further, we try to set the experience of conversion in the biblical matrix and to open the question of its interpretation. There is an important question if conversion possibly is an unrepeated experience or a repeated one. Our current Christianity should lead people to experience conversion and also foster its biblical interpretation.