Prof. Dr. Assaad Elias Kattan was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1967. From 1985 to 1990, he studied orthodox Christian theology at the University of Balamand. During the following ten years he completed his postgraduate studies in Thessaloniki, Greece, in Erlangen, and then in Marburg, where he obtained his doctorate in 2000, writing a thesis on “Incarnation and Synergy – The Fundamental Principles of Biblical Hermeneutics in the Writings of Maximus the Confessor” (Brill, 2003). From 2002 to 2004 Professor Kattan worked as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Near Eastern Heritage at the University of Balamand. From 2004 until 2005 he was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, where he did research on the reception of modern hermeneutics in Islamic circles in Lebanon after the civil war (1975–1990). Since September 2005 he has served as Chair held the chair of in orthodox Theology at the Centre for Religious Studies, Wilhelms-Universität Muenster. The Christian-Islamic dialogue and the relationship between religion and modernity are two of his key fields of competence.
In his lecture, Professor Kattan will also address the question of when other religious teachings or positions become dangerous to one’s own beliefs. He will argue that this tends to happen when elements of one’s own faith are functionalised in a different way in other systems of religious thought. In this context, he will also reflect upon the question of whether the failure to understand differences in other people’s religious beliefs has only rational causes.