Nea Hestia, Religion and Literature, 78th year, 155th volume, issue 1765, March 2004, 486 pages.
In this issue the first part of texts read as recommendations in a conference organised by the journal New Hestia and the Academy of Theological Studies of the Metropolis of Demetrias in Volos, 2-3 May 2003, titled “Theology and Literature” are published. Some extra essays on the topic were also included.
In the first essay P. Kalaitzidis investigates the theological presuppositions of the dialogue with modern literature, insisting on the eschatological perspective, the dialogue with modernity and the formation of a theology of otherness and polyphony. Nikos Fokas, analysing the relationship between religion and poetry under the prism of the unity of the spirit, concludes that they function as mutual enforcements.
Antonis Zervas, in his article titled “The unknown God of Literature”, expresses the view that literature is a verbal expression of agony in the face of death that does not transform into hope through faith nor in social meaning through work. According to G. Dimitrakakis, there can only be dialogue of the modern prose with an eschatologically oriented theology and especially on the issue of the identity of the human subject. Evangelos Ganas locates the encounter of theology with the novel in the recognition of their weakness to offer a solution to the tragicality of human nature. In his essay, Efren Krystal examines the relationship between literary creation and religious culture in the work of contemporary critics of literature.
Stavros Zouboulakis highlights the theology and the rhetoric and philological value of the Byzantine ecclesiastical poetry as a fertile and unexplored field of research. The usual material of the journal Minologion follows, with book reviews and comments on philology, theatre, the visual arts etc.