[1] See, for example, Judith Schubert, The Gospel of John – Question by Question (Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 2008), 236e.

[2] Nicolas Wyatt, citing MacGregor, in “’Supposing Him to Be the Gardener’ (John 20, 15. A Study of the Paradise Motif in John” in Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlice Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche, Vol 81, Issue 1-2(1990), 38.

While Jim limited his chosen pericope to verses 14-15, this paper explores the garden imagery from John 20:11-18 because the art through which this text will be viewed in some instances includes imagery relating to verses 11-18.

The answer can be found in the hot and dry country of Geraldton Diocese Western Australia in the work of priest and architect Monsignor John Cyril Hawes (1876-1956). Hawes expresses the inexpressible through his many churches, hermitages, chapels, residential buildings and the Cathedral in Geraldton as well as other buildings in many other parts of the world. His deep and passionate faith is expressed in the eclectic use of symbols and forms encountered in his work and yet his buildings also express his concern for the human person as they ‘fit’ in the Mediterranean climate and are scaled to fit each community. This paper will explore Hawes’ visual theology made evident through his buildings in Western Australia and through the individual art works he created to live within those buildings. His iconography is ‘borrowed’ from many traditions and brought to life in a unique way in gargoyles, relief sculptures, paintings, baldachin, designs, stained glass windows, drawings and other artefacts. He was a man of his times and the challenge for those who live and worship in these buildings today is to preserve these earthly treasures of his legacy and yet function within them while celebrating liturgies in the 21^st century.

Visual imagery in art has been neglected as a source of theology and hence the vocabulary needed to ‘read’ the artworks relevant to Scripture will have to be re-learnt. This paper will provide an understanding of how visual arts can augment Scriptural understanding and the interaction within a small community. A list of symbols, attributes and emblems will be provided with visual examples so that this technique can be explored. Images are readily available through online sources and this augments the capacity of the small worshipping community to develop their resources.

Unlike large worshipping communities, the small community has the capacity to hear the voice of each person and therefore the response of each person to the visual art under consideration can deeply enrich the understanding of the Gospel in the community’s own context. As William Dryness says: “A carefully wrought and intelligent object or painting, when it is patiently observed, opens up windows on the human situation in a way that other cultural products cannot.” Such patient observance, when linked to Scripture, can beautifully augment the small community gathered in worship.

"There are many in the world dying for a piece of bread … But there are many more dying for a little love."

Doing Liberation Theology is giving our-selves in love and in compassion to the poor. In sharing their fate we bring more than a loaf of bread that could be finished in an instant, we liberate ourselves and we liberate them by allowing the presence of God to dwell in the world, through action we acknowledge and make possible the incarnation of God and the coming of the Kingdom.

Not to be myopic let’s look at the world as Gutierrez does when he paraphrases Teilhard de Chardin and Charles Peguy:

“God is not at our back, pushing us along on our journey. God is before us, revealed in the thousands of faces of human beings in the different circumstances of life. So it is, that the faith that I love is hope … the hope of seeing God in my encounters with human beings."

I take this theme of reinvention to be an opportunity to pose the question of the meaning of Religion as foundational in three ways: as the foundational concept of the study of religion, as the question of the methodological foundation of studies in religion, and finally, the question of an ontological foundation that provides a rigorous and flexible conceptualisation of Religion.

We can gain some insight into the pain and grief of the Jerusalem community through the book of Lamentations, which is thought to have developed in the period following the destruction of Jerusalem. As its name implies, Lamentations is a collection of lament poems in which the worshipping community gives voice to its pain.

Boase, E. (2005). Many voices of lament: An exploration of the Book of Lamentations. Australian Journal of Liturgy, 10(1), 3-26.

My special concern for the talk will be to provide an example of doing theology with Levinas. To this end, I will engage the theology of von Balthasar, no less a complex and many-faceted thinker than Levinas himself. In this regard, the talk will be limited to exemplifying my approach through enhancing von Balthasar’s study of John 20:19-23 where the Risen Jesus identifies himself to the disciples, greets them with peace and initiates their mission with the power of the Holy Spirit. Our aim here is to provide a context to theologise with the language of alterity. Consequently, I will suggest four aspects of Levinas’ idea of illeity (diachrony, the immemorial, effacement and ambiguity) to uncover the sense of the non-phenomenality of the Risen Christ’s otherness and face. The talk, by seeking to go beyond von Balthasar’s language of theology to refer to the Risen Christ, will most likely result in the impossibility of keeping faithful to von Balthasar’s theological boundaries. Yet, it is a risk and a trespass worth attempting for theology to traverse beyond essence towards ethical transcendence.