On April 24 of this year, theology doctoral candidate Nino Sadzaglishvili in the German city of Eichstätt, As part of the sixth meeting of Georgian theologians abroad, at a symposium dedicated to the 1700th anniversary of Christianity in Georgia, PhD candidate in Theology Nino Sadzaglishvili read a paper in English on the topic: The Historical Self-Perception of the Church of Georgia and the Church as a Source of National Inspiration.“
The paper touched upon the transformation process of the national idea into identity, the historical self-awareness of the Georgian Church and its role in the formation of national identity. The author shows with historical examples that the self-awareness of the Georgian Church is not limited to the function of a religious institution, but has historically been formed as a bearer of national memory and one of the main pillars of cultural survival.
One of the main theses of the paper is that the close connection between the church and national identity, which historically functioned as an instrument of survival, in modern conditions, without a proper filter, carries the risk of replacing the church’s theological self-understanding with a national narrative. In this context, the threat of ethnophyletism and the task facing each local church to maintain a balance between faith and national identity are discussed.
The paper also addresses the importance of the hagiographic narrative as a “personalized theology,” theology revealed in the lives of individuals, due to historical difficulties, problems with systematized dogmatic-patristic theological work, and the prevailing orientation toward translations.
The speaker also addressed the issue of women’s symbolic centrality and institutional peripherality, noting that women’s lesser visibility in the historical narrative of the Church does not mean they played a lesser role. Often, their function shifts to the symbolic-soteriological sphere, and it is at this level that their influence on the formation of national consciousness occurs.
Nino Sadzaglishvili – MA in Systematic Theology and Ethics at the University of Athens. She completed an additional graduate program in Ecumenical and Protestant Theology as part of the program at the University of Geneva and the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey. She is currently a PhD candidate at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His areas of research include the dialogue between the Church and contemporary society, theological anthropology (including the topic of mental health), and dogmatics. Her authored book, “A Disassembled Kaleidoscope,” combines literary and theological reflections. Notable among her recent translations is the work of Australian Archbishop Makarios Groenveldts, “The World Patriarchate: The Church, First-Called and Most-Gifted.” Nino is currently a member, speaker, and co-moderator of the organizing group for online theological programs supported by the Eparchy of Belgium and the Netherlands.