NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 79, Issue 4, 2025

In countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, international religious research shows that religion as a system of meaning is increasingly being forgotten and that its transcendent dimension is failing. At the same time, it becomes apparent how contemporary cultures are getting an increasingly strong narrative basic structure in the sense that questions of life or other essential accomplishments are dealt with narratively (for example in social media). As international cognitive research also shows, the human being seems to be a narrative being. The present article therefore proposes to take this basic narrative structure into account more clearly in pastoral care as well, by trying to interweave the small stories of people today with the great history of the Gospel.

This article explores the interplay between narrativity and player agency in the video game The Stanley Parable (2013). Through a communication-theoretical and theological lens, the paper investigates how the game challenges conventional notions of freedom in video games and beyond. Analyzing three endings, the article reveals how the narrator-player dynamic subverts narrative authority and simulates choice. Theologically, The Stanley Parable is read as a graceless parable, resonating with Kafka’s Ein Bericht für eine Akademie and Augustine’s anthropology. The game’s recursive structure critiques autonomy as mimicked freedom, exposing the existential and theological limits of human agency.

The personal formation of students is an important objective in Religious Education (RE) at secondary schools in the Netherlands. In RE, narrativity plays a crucial role in student formation. This formative education requires attention, openness, and space to facilitate a deeper learning process. This article examines how a contemplative approach to reading biblical parables, rooted in the monastic lectio divina, facilitates the personal formation of students within the pluralistic and secularised classroom in the Netherlands. Examples of students’ work will illustrate how they relate their own life questions to the parable of the Prodigal Son. For the personal formation of students, cultivating a space for freedom, vacare, is essential.

In 2026, the Franciscan Orders will celebrate the 800th anniversary of the death of Francis of Assisi. From reading the stories of the early Franciscans, it seems that Francis considered death to be an integral part of life. After deciding to follow in Christ’s footsteps, he said that he considered himself “dead and buried to the world.” When he overheard discussions about his leadership, he told his brothers, “From now on, I am dead to you.” Towards the end of his life, he poetically praised “our sister bodily death,” and when he died, he was sanctified. Narrative analysis of stories about the end of one form of life and the beginning of another reveals that Francis did not view his own mortality as something to be overcome, but rather as a gateway to life’s mysterious dimension. However, the same analysis reveals that the early brotherhood eventually followed a different path, leading them into the realm of secrecy. In our days, we can decide how to approach the end of a life, and whether this decision will lead us into the closedness of secrecy or in the openness of mystery.

This study argues that a three-tiered discourse analysis, grounded in a contextual, textual, and cognitive framework, provides a robust methodology for revealing how deep-rooted spirituality is discursively constructed in public addresses. This is demonstrated in Pope Francis’s interreligious speech at the Plain of Ur in Iraq. The findings suggest that such discourse, especially in post-conflict and pluralistic contexts, constructs spirituality not merely as a matter of belief, but as a dialogical practice, embodied, inclusive, and attuned to narratives and history. Deep-rooted spirituality, as evoked in this discourse, is thus not abstract or doctrinal, but embedded in memory, grounded in place, and enacted through relationship and mutual commitment.