Thomas
Kollamparambil
Dharmaram
Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore
Paper
Title: “History,
Religion and Human Development in St. Ephrem the Syrian”
A
poet-theologian may be inconceivable in certain cultures founded on the
Hellenistic rational thinking. A good amount of religious, social and human
developmental factors are governed by rationalistic logical thinking and
computation. But there is a considerable and very crucial smaller area of human
life and dynamics governed by the logic of religious mysteries, social
covenantal bondings and the logic of human mutuality that counts suprarational
values for the overall human development. These factors are all the more
emerging into evidence in the present stage of globalization in the world. The
whole world is becoming clearly bound by so many networks which were not even
wildly though about. The biblical thrusts of covenantal relationality of
peoples are all the more emerging into evidence and pertinent in a globalized
world. The world humanity cannot stand separated from the bondings of the web
of geosphere, biosphere, nousphere, etc. When such spheres of humanity and
human existence are deeply explored and studied with modern sciences, one finds
clearly the unseen and unexpected web of ontological, mystical and social
relationalities. All those spheres of human existence are in need of conscious,
scientific and intentional building up for the overall growth and development
of humanity in a globalized world. St. Ephrem offers a very healthy and
synchronic vision of human development based on the intimate integration of
religion and society, based on the salvation historical vision of the Bible.
Thomas Kollamparampil is
Dean of the Faculty of Theology and former President Dharmaran Vidya Kshetram
in Bangalore, India. He is also a member of the International Theological
Commission of the Vatican, Rome. He has his MSt in Syriac Studies from the
University of Oxford and a PhD from the Patristic Institute, Augustinianum in
Rome. He is the author of Jacob of
Serugh: Select Festal Homilies (Bangalore, 1997) and Salvation in Christ According to Jacob of
Serugh (Bangalore, 2001) which has an American Edition as well (Gorgias Dissertations
in Early Christian Studies, No. 49, 2010. He is a contributor to the
publication of the bilingual edition of The
Metrical Homilies of Mar Jacob of Serugh,
under the International project of Texts from Christian Late Antiquity, General
Editor, Sebastian P. Brock; Managing Editor, George Anton Kiraz from Gorgias
Press, NJ, USA. He has contributed English translations of eleven metrical
homilies of Mar Jacob to the project and all of them are published. His areas
of research interest are Early Syriac Theology and Spirituality.