TRIERTIUM was delighted to participate as a co-sponsor in the major international conference “Nature Lost, Nature Regained: Rethinking Nature Across Theology, Philosophy, and the Sciences” in Rome (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, June 24-26 2026).
From 24 to 26 June 2026, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Santa Croce, Rome), in collaboration with the Centre for Theology and Philosophy, hosted the international conference Nature Lost, Nature Regained: Rethinking Nature Across Theology, Philosophy, and the Sciences, organized by the Relational Ontology Research (ROR) Group. Bringing together leading scholars in theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences, the conference addressed one of the most pressing questions of our time: how to recover an understanding of nature that moves beyond both technological reductionism and purely functional approaches, rediscovering creation as a living and relational reality open to transcendence. As the programme vividly demonstrated, such a perspective provides a common horizon within which even highly specialized discussions – from artificial intelligence and evolutionary biology to architecture, aesthetics, and gender theory – can enter into fruitful dialogue.
The scientific stature of the event was reflected in the presence of internationally renowned scholars such as Piero Coda, John Milbank, Giulio Maspero, William Desmond, Adrian Pabst, Fabrice Hadjadj, and Philip Gonzales, among many others. Within such an outstanding international setting, it was particularly encouraging that the representatives of the Sts Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology, Palacký University in Olomouc – Eduard Fiedler, Maurizio M. Malimpensa, and Dalimil Ševčík – were immediately greeted upon registration by several organizers and participants simply as “the team of Olomouc.” The expression testified to the growing recognition of the TRIERTIUM research group within the international community devoted to Trinitarian ontology and relational thought.
Eduard Fiedler opened the Faculty’s participation with his plenary lecture Nature as a Way to Nature: On the Supernatural Self-Reference of Natural Processes, delivered during the opening morning immediately after the keynote address by Piero Coda or the lecture of Adrian Pabst. His presentation was met with considerable appreciation from the participants. Particularly meaningful was Piero Coda’s explicit recognition of the profound affinity between his own research perspective and that developed by the young Czech philosopher. The significance of Fiedler’s contribution was further underscored when William Desmond explicitly referred to his lecture during his keynote address on the following day, taking up one of its central conclusions in the course of his own argument. In one of the conference’s parallel sessions, Maurizio Maria Malimpensa presented his paper titled “Human History in the Light of Nature: Myth as Unconscious Revelation in Schelling’s Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology”. Eduard Fiedler also chaired the conference’s final plenary session and introduced the last speaker, the well-known British philosopher John Milbank.
Beyond the individual lectures and papers, the conference offered an important opportunity to present the current research carried out within the TRIERTIUM project while further strengthening the personal and scholarly relationships that have grown around the shared effort to articulate a dynamic unity of knowledge grounded in a relational understanding of reality inspired by Trinitarian thought. During informal conversations, many participants warmly recalled the first TRIERTIUM Conference held in Olomouc last December, and the announcement of its second edition, scheduled for autumn 2027, was received with genuine enthusiasm and anticipation.
The three members of the Faculty were accommodated at the Pontifical Nepomucene College, where the shared experience of the conference continued well beyond the lecture halls. Between conversations on philosophy and theology, unexpected transport strikes, sudden summer downpours, and evenings in traditional Roman trattorias, the Eternal City once again proved that scholarly collaboration is nourished not only by academic debate but also by the friendships that grow around it. If one planned visit to the Vatican had to be postponed, it merely provided another good reason to return to Rome – and, above all, to continue the conversations that increasingly unite the international TRIERTIUM community.
More about the Nature Lost, Nature Regained: Rethinking Nature Across Theology, Philosophy, and the Sciences Conference. Photo documentation.
