PARADOSIS CONFERENCE 2019 

Knowing Self and God:
Fresh Approaches to Christian Identity & Spirituality

Identity and Spirituality are intricately connected. Spirituality, for John Macquarrie, signifies “becoming a person in the fullest sense.” In his Institutes, John Calvin argued that the knowledge of self and God are mutually intertwined. This conference seeks new ways to relate identity and spirituality based on the great wealth of material that the Christian tradition has to offer. How does knowing God and being known by him inform our daily life? How does a fuller knowledge of God and self sustain us in times of increasing relativism and pluralism?

This conference intends to speak into our increasingly postmodern and secular Australian society that has left a spiritual vacuum, desperately needing to be filled with esoteric eclecticism or the fatal “pursuit of wants“, where we buy “one product after another in a never-ending chain of purchase” (David Wells).

Drawing on the wide range of theological material in the Christian Protestant tradition, our national and international speakers will offer fresh approaches of spiritual practice that equip us in our exploration of self and God by directing our attention to the one who came that we “may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10).