Helen Schüngel-Straumann

Helen Schüngel-Straumann (born May 5, 1940 in St. Gallen ) is a Roman Catholic theologian .

Youth and education

Helen Schüngel-Straumann grew up in a Catholic family. Since her father was a customs officer, she grew up in five different Swiss cantons and attended during their occupation in Zurich the night school . In 1960 she was able to begin her theology studies in Tübingen . After further studies at the Institut Catholique de Paris and the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Bonn , she received her doctorate in 1969 - after the so-called "ordination clause" was lifted - as the first laywoman in Catholic theology (Old Testament). In 1975 she was given an academic council position at the University of Education in Bonn, and later she worked at the University of Cologne.

Commitment to women

Since the 1970s she has been increasingly concerned with the situation of women in church and theology; she belongs to the generation of women theologians who were there from the very beginning at the various meetings and founding of feminist theology . In 1987 she was appointed to a chair for Biblical Theology at the University of Kassel . Since the 1980s she has participated in numerous conferences and gave lectures on feminist exegesis in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. She is a member of several exegetical associations: the Society of Biblical Literature , the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament (IOSOT) and, above all, the European Society for Theological Research of Women , of which she was President 1995–1997.

Viewpoints

Mary Magdalene

Until a few decades ago, according to Schüngel-Straumann, it was in the interests of the majority of men to keep women on duty and subordinate to their purposes. In the course of the first centuries of Christian history , according to their interpretation, the texts of the New Testament became patriarchal . In the early days of Christianity there were leading women as disciples and apostles like Mary Magdalene .

The New Testament was coined, selected and partially deleted by generations of men. Maria Magdalena (Mary was the most common female name in the New Testament) was the main female figure in the Easter story in all four Gospels. In ( Mt 28  EU ) as well as ( Joh 20  EU ) she was the first to whom the risen Jesus appeared and who commissioned the other disciples to preach the Easter message.

The old church tradition called Mary Magdalene "Apostola apostolorum", apostle of the apostles. According to the definition of Paul in ( 1 Cor 15 : 1–11  EU ), according to Schüngel-Straumann, only someone who has met Jesus can receive a preaching commission and claim this title.

Hierarchical structure of the church

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In the first centuries, the understanding of office and the office structures as they emerged later did not yet exist. Until well into the first millennium there were a large number of women who held church offices and worked in many places.

The most recent council changed many things for the better. Its initiator Pope John XXIII. declared women to be one of the great concerns of the time. To Pope Benedict XVI. Helen Schüngel-Straumann complains that he has no feeling for women and their concerns, including theologians. His urgent concern is the end of the schism with Orthodoxy and the Pius Brotherhood . In doing so, he sacrificed the interests of women, even though they make up the majority in the Roman Catholic Church.

Some highly qualified women who are committed to the church have not been granted teaching permits in recent years. At the university, according to Schüngel-Straumann, every subject should be thoroughly questioned in terms of feminism and gender, church history should be examined in a feminist manner, exegesis should be feminist, and dogmatic structures should be examined in a feminist-critical manner.

Ordination of women

She rejects the non-church ordinations of women to priestesses as an impassable procedure, as a dead end. Experience has shown that a consensus should be sought in order to reduce further tension. At the same time, she believes that the majority of feminist theologians are not interested in the priesthood because this office is so masculine that it cannot be carried out by women and is therefore unreasonable for them.

Helen Schüngel-Straumann considers the announcement by Pope John Paul II that the discussion about the ordination of women to the priesthood has ended as a strange requirement, since women cannot be forbidden to think. This would only achieve the opposite. The question of the priesthood is the litmus test for the church, the criterion for how seriously the question of women is taken.

Quotes

• Not only the man is "the image of God" - as Paul is assigned ( 1 Cor 11  EU ). In the book of Genesis ( Gen 1.27  EU ) you can read that God created man in his image as man and woman.
• Equality between women and men is not a marginal issue. All current world problems such as the destruction of creation and war play a role in the disadvantage of women. If men are unwilling to share their power, there will be no bright future in either the church or society.
• Thomas Aquinas assumed incorrect biological prerequisites and thus contributed to a false image of women, which persistently shows itself even after 800 years (e.g. as "incapacity for office") .

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Are these lecture manuscripts available to the general public?

From lecture manuscripts:

• In the course of church history, women have been assessed as “second class in the order of creation but first class in the order of sin”.
• Only a minority of feminist theologians fight for the ordination of women to priestesses, the majority are committed to the priority change of church structures.

Fonts (selection)

Several works have been translated into other languages.

• Death and Life in the Pentateuch Legal Literature: With special reference to the terminology of “to kill” ; Catholic theol. Faculty Bonn 1968
• Image of God and cult criticism of pre-exilic prophets ; KBW, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-460-03601-X
• Israel, and the rest ?: Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Jonah ; Katholisches Bibelwerk, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-460-05151-5
• The Decalogue - God's Commandments? (SBS 67); KBW, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-460-03671-0
• Rûah moves the world. God's creative life force in the time of crisis in exile (SBS 151); Catholic Biblical Works, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-460-04511-6
• Theology between times and continents: for Elisabeth Gössmann ; with Theodor Schneider (ed.), Freiburg 1993; ISBN 978-3-4512-3211-4
• Because I am God and not a man. Images of God in the First Testament - viewed from a feminist perspective ; Matthias-Grünewald, Mainz 1996, ISBN 978-3-7867-1904-5
• The woman at the beginning - Eve and the consequences ; Lit, Münster 1999, ISBN 978-3-8258-3525-5
• The Book of Tobit ; Herder, Freiburg 2000; ISBN 978-3-451-26819-9
• Dictionary of Feminist Theology (WFT); Gütersloh 1991, 2nd edition 2002, co-editor; ISBN 978-3-579-00285-9
• Beginnings of feminist exegesis: collected articles, with an orienting epilogue and a selection bibliography ; Lit, Münster 2002, ISBN 978-3-8258-5753-0
• The question of woman's likeness to God ; in Manfred Oeming, Gerd Theissen: Theology of the Old Testament from the perspective of women , Lit, Münster 2003, 63–76, ISBN 978-3-825-86386-9
• Eva, the woman at the beginning ; in: Gender dispute at the beginning of European modernity ; (Gisela Engel ed. And others), Königstein Taunus 2004, 28–37, ISBN 3-89741-170-9 ,
• Two female pairs of opposites: Ester and Waschti - Lilit and Eva , in: Manna still falls today. Contributions to the history and theology of the Old First Testament ; (Frank-Lothar Hossfeld / Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger eds.), Festschrift for Erich Zenger, Herder Freiburg 2004, 511-531, ISBN 3-451-28319-0
• Holy Spirit / Pneumatology ; A. Biblisch, in: New handbook of theological basic concepts, Vol. 2 (Ed. Peter Eicher), Munich 2005, 103-108, ISBN 3-466-20456-9
• Ancient course setting for a gender-unequal reception of the so-called Fall , in: Does evil have a gender? (Eds. Helga Kuhlmann / Stefanie Schäfer Bossert); Stuttgart 2006, 162-169, ISBN 3-17-019017-2
• “I am God, not a man”: Contributions to the hermeneutics of the biblical talk of God ; Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71385-X
• The devil remained male. Critical discussion on the “Bible in Just Language” , feminist, historical and systematic contributions; Neukirchen, 2007, (co-editor), ISBN 978-3-7887-2271-5
• On the origin and history of the ESWTR - with pictures in: Theology of women for women? Opportunities and problems of linking feminist theology back to practice , contributions to the international congress on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the European Society for Theological Research of Women (ESWTR) (Irmtraud Fischer ed.), 86–101, Münster 2007, ISBN 3-8258-0278 -7
• What has feminist theology achieved for the church and society? In: Theology by Women for Women? (see above) 227-260
• My ways and detours: A feminist theologian on the move (autobiography); Schöningh, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77196-4
• Eve. The Bible's First Woman: Cause of All Evil? ; Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77793-5

Festschrift

• "I am God, not a man": Contributions to the hermeneutics of the biblical talk of God ; Festschrift for Helen Schüngel-Straumann on her 65th birthday / Ilona Riedel-Spangenberger / Erich Zenger (eds.); Schönigh, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-506-71385-X

Web links

• Publications by and about Helen Schüngel-Straumann in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
• Literature by and about Helen Schüngel-Straumann in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Society of Biblical Literature SBL (English)
2. ↑ International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament
3. ↑ European Society for Theological Research of Women ESWTR ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ From an interview with Helen Schüngel-Straumann on Radio DRS2 on June 7, 2009, 8.30 a.m.
5. ↑ [1]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. as well as the above-mentioned book "The woman at the beginning - Eva and the consequences" 36–45, 126-137 or "The woman's image of God" (M. Vermin, Heidelberg)  
6. ↑ http://www.tagsatzung07.ch/schuengel/index.htm  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Presentation at the Tagsatzung07 in Basel  
7. ↑ Book “Thomas von Aquin sucht Eva” 20–25, see also a presentation at Tagsatzung07 in Basel  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.