Botond Gaal

Debrecen University of Reformed Theology

Project title:

Opening Up a Closed World.

Abstract:

It can be seen in the history of mathematics that creative thinking has always laid the path from closed systems to open ones. In addition to other personalities, famous mathematicians of my country, János Bolyai and John von Neumann, are model figures in this respect. Mathematics today is also characterized by attempts to achieve openness, therefore it has become the most important formal language of scientific description. In return, the openness of nature urges mathematicians to discover newer and newer fields and find the adequate mathematical formulae for natural phenomena. Since the axiomatic approach in mathematics has had its impact on Christian thinking for almost two thousand years, which resulted in a kind of closed approach in theology, it has become necessary to open up this field, too. It was not in the interest of mathematics in the first place, but it was due to the inherently open Biblical approach. Therefore theology can learn a lot from mathematics as far as the issue of spirituality is concerned, and it should also represent this approach in university education.

Short biography:

Dr. Botond Gaal is Professor of Christian Dogmatics and Systematic Theology at the University of Reformed Theology. He was formally President of this university and the University of Debrecen. He holds a university diploma in Mathematics and Physics and was invited to research the significance of James Clerk Maxwell’s work - the relationship between Science and Theology in the 19th century at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, in 1991-92 and again in 1999. He is the founder and leader of the Steven Hatvani Theological Research Centre for the study of science and theology has organized six conferences on Science and Theology in Hungary that have brought together many eminent scholars and members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.