God Remembers is a search for a theological basis of remembrance in communal conflict. Starting with a case study of a real conflict within the HKBP/Christian Batak Protestant Church in Indonesia in the years 1992-1998, this book relates a biblical understanding of remembrance to the work of Johann Baptist Metz, Alexander Schmemann and Miroslav Volf, three theologians who have made significant contributions to the understanding of conflict and remembrance in their own respective Christian traditions. The author argues that history’s traumatic wounds are healed by a transformative remembrance of the past rather than by forgetting or ignoring what has gone wrong. And that the act of remembrance in the liturgy of the Eucharist is a highly appropriate place for the actual healing of memory.
Binsar Jonathan Pakpahan (1980) started his theological education at Jakarta Theological Seminary (STT Jakarta), earned his MA and PhD in Theology at VU University Amsterdam. He is a pastor of the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP), has served as a full-time pastor in the Gereja Kristen Indonesia Nederland (GKIN) and now teaches at Jakarta Theological Seminary. He has published several articles in international theological journals, and is editor of the theological journal Sola Experientia.