TRIERTIUM co-organized a summer school and academic symposium XI. Beyond Secular Faith: „Unless you become like a Child” in Pécs (June 29–July 4, 2026). What does it mean to be a child? What is the meaning of birth in time and eternity? What would change if modern man stopped defining himself as if he had forgotten he is God’s beloved child?
The summer school and symposium in Pécs was opened by Mátyás Szalay.
He proposed to explore these fundamental questions in relation to theology, philosophical anthropology, and metaphysics. Despite the modern emphasis on childhood as a crucial stage of psychosocial development, modernity has been built on a philosophical rejection of childhood as a category of heteronomous dependence and undeveloped rationality. Faced with the aporia of modern philosophy, the German Catholic philosopher Ferdinand Ulrich (1931-2020) proposed to understand human existence not as subject or Dasein, but as a child within the relationality of God’s and parents’ gift of love.
Eduard Fiedler (TRIERTIUM), author of the new book Kinder der Trinität: Eine trinitarische Ontologie des metaphysischen Kindseins, delivered a series of lectures on the Trinitarian metaphysics of childhood as found in the works of Ferdinand Ulrich, Augustine, and John Amos Comenius. The other courses were given by Andrzej Tarchała, Norm Klassen and Francesco de Nigris.
Students and academics from all over Europe also participated in the summer school. A group of five students from the Olomouc Faculty of Theology attended and presented their papers during the final part of the summer school.
The main organizer of the summer school was PPHF Pécs. The summer school continued the long tradition of the Beyond Secular Faith summer schools.
