Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

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Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza at the 97th German Catholic Day 2008 in Osnabrück

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (born April 17, 1938 in Cenad , Kingdom of Romania ) is a Roman Catholic feminist theologian .

Life

After the war, Schüssler Fiorenza and her family came to Bavaria via Austria . She grew up in Weilbach , Lower Franconia , and studied Catholic theology at the University of Würzburg from 1958 to 1962 . In 1970 she did her doctorate at the University of Münster with a thesis on the rulership and priest motif in the Johannes apocalypse . The work was created at the suggestion of the former Würzburg New Testament scholar Rudolf Schnackenburg .

Schüssler has been teaching Fiorenza in the USA since 1970 . The first stop was the University of Notre Dame . In 1984 she signed the A Catholic Statement on Pluralism and Abortion campaign . From 1984 to 1988 she held the Talbot Professorship for New Testament at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts . Since 1988 she has held the Krister Stendahl Professorship at Harvard University . She is also visiting professor and endowed professor in Tübingen , Berlin and Heidelberg, among others .

In 2001 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Theology, History and Biblical Interpretation

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is a pioneer of feminist biblical hermeneutics , which she first formulated in detail in her book In Memory of Her (1983). Feminist theology defines it as a “critical theology of liberation ”.

In the historical research on Jesus , she advocates disclosing one's own research interests instead of identifying unspoken science with a positivistic reconstruction of real words and deeds of Jesus. Here Jesus is being separated from the Jesus movement and other emancipatory Jewish movements in a reductionist manner . The masculinity of Jesus is objectified as a fact that has fundamental significance for faith (in connection with the expectation of historical Jesus research to establish Christian identity). She describes her own interests, for example:

“Rather, Christian feminist research must conceptualize early Christianity and early Judaism in such a way that it can make women and marginalized men visible as central agents who determined the Christian and Jewish beginnings. This requires a reassessment of the theological framework that Christian anti-Judaism produced as the left hand of Christology and divine masculinity as its right hand. "

In this way it tries to overcome hierarchical, authoritarian and patriarchal ideas in theology. Patriarchy understands them comprehensively, "so that it does not simply mean the rule of men over women, but rather describes a complex social pyramid of graduated rule and subordination". For this she introduced the term Kyriarchat , which expresses which men rule their subordinates - such as emperor, lord, master, father, man - and which women are the center of liberation theology, namely "who live on the lowest level of the kyriarchal pyramid".

Works

German

  • The forgotten partner. Düsseldorf 1964.
  • Priest for god. Münster (Westphalia), Univ., Diss., 1969/70.
  • In her memory ... A feminist-theological reconstruction of the Christian origins. Munich-Mainz 1988.
  • Bread instead of stones. The challenge of a feminist interpretation of the Bible. Freiburg / Switzerland 1988.
  • Frauenkirche - an exodus community. Lucerne 1990.
  • The book of revelation. Stuttgart 1994.
  • Jesus - Miriam's child, Sophia's prophet. Gütersloh 1997.
  • Exceed limits. The theoretical claim of feminist theology. Münster 2004 ( on Google books ).
  • Righteous is the word of wisdom. Historical-political contexts of feminist interpretation of the Bible. Lucerne 2008.
  • Wisdom Paths. An Introduction to Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. Stuttgart 2005.
  • Rhetoric and ethics. On the Politics of Biblical Studies. Lucerne 2013.

English

  • Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity. Notredame, Indianapolis 1976.
  • The Apocalypse. Chicago 1976.
  • Invitation to the Book of Revelation. Garden City 1981.
  • In Memory of Her. A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. Crossroad, New York 1983, ISBN 0-8245-0667-7 .
  • Bread Not Stone. Boston 1984.
  • Theological Criteria and Historical Reconstruction. Berkeley 1987.
  • Revelation. Vision of a Just World. Minneapolis 1991.
  • But she said. Boston 1992.
  • Discipleship of Equals. New York 1993.
  • Jesus - Miriam's Child. New York 1994.
  • Searching the scriptures. New York 1994/95.
  • The power of naming. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 1996.
  • Sharing Her Word. Edinburgh u. a. 1998.
  • Rhetoric and Ethic. Minneapolis 1999.
  • Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation. New York 2000.
  • Wisdom Ways. Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 2001.
  • The Power of the Word. Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire , New York 2007.
  • Changing Horizons: Explorations in Feminist Interpretation , New York 2013.

Literature on Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

  • Elisabeth Gössmann , review by: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her. A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, New York 1983 in: ThRv 80 (1984) Sp. 294–298.
  • K. Rödiger, The Leap into Reality ... Impulses from Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's rhetorical approach for the reception of biblical texts in narrative social ethics (Ethics in Theological Discourse, Vol. 18). Zurich / Münster 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza: In Memory of Her. A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. Crossroad, New York 1983, pp. XXII f.
  2. ↑ Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza: Jesus: Miriam's child. Sophia's prophet. Critical inquiries from feminist christology. Chr. Kaiser, Gütersloh 1997, p. 137 f. ISBN 3-579-01838-8 .
  3. ↑ Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophias Prophet , p. 139.
  4. ↑ Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophias Prophet , p. 34 f.
personal data
SURNAME Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION catholic feminist theologian
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Cenad , Kingdom of Romania