Jürgen Roloff (theologian)

Jürgen Roloff (born September 29, 1930 in Opole , now Poland , † February 21, 2004 in Erlangen ) was a Protestant theologian .

Life

Jürgen Roloff was born in Opole, Upper Silesia ; Since his father was employed by the Reichsbahn , he spent his childhood in different places, mainly in Pomerania . During the war years , his family then moved to Munich . After graduating from high school and studying philosophy and evangelical theology in Munich , Erlangen , Heidelberg and Neuendettelsau (1950–1955) he received a scholarship from the Lutheran World Federation in the USA (Chicago). From 1958 to 1961 he held a position as assistant to the director of the theological department of the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva . During his time as an assistant in Hamburg was in 1963 the doctorate to the Dr. theol. and in 1967 the habilitation in the New Testament subject. He then became an academic advisor and professor in Hamburg .

From 1973 until his retirement in 1998 he was full professor of the New Testament in Erlangen. He turned down calls to Göttingen (1981) and Hamburg. Since 1992 a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , he was also a representative of the theological faculty in the regional synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria for several years . He died of a stroke.

theology

Jürgen Roloff can be regarded as one of the most important exegetes of his time. His interpretations of the New Testament also found great international recognition. As the successor to his teacher Leonhard Goppel , Roloff took a theological position that deliberately distinguished itself from the so-called kerygma theology of the Bultmann school , which was dominant at the time, and emphasized the importance of the “earthly” or “historical Jesus” for the New Testament proclamation . In Roloff's thinking, this also gave rise to the need to give ecclesiological questions a higher priority in the exegesis of the New Testament; The volume of essays published on his sixtieth birthday was aptly published under the title Exegetical Responsibility in the Church (see below list of works). Roloff's greatest strength was his ability to present complex issues in clear and simple language, which often gave his well-considered explanations a considerable amount of fascination. In dealing with students and colleagues, however, the great scholar had to overcome shyness and vulnerability every day.

Roloff's dissertation Apostolate - Annunciation - Church (published in 1965, see below) reflected the origin and nature of the early Christian apostolic office. Already here Roloff's interest in an early Christian ecclesiology became clear, which was to accompany him throughout his life. The same applies to Roloff's somewhat later and in some respects programmatic essay Heil als Community , which was intended to make the communicative factors of the New Testament conceptions of the Lord's Supper fruitful with regard to the ecclesiological and liturgical debate of the time. - With his habilitation thesis The Kerygma and the earthly Jesus , published in 1970 , Roloff intervened in the then highly topical discussion about the relationship between the early Christian kerygma and earthly Jesus; Roloff proved that the historical memory of the teaching and person of Jesus is also reflected in the gospel tradition where a wording that goes back to Jesus himself cannot be proven. According to Roloff, the early Christian kerygma always had the historical person of the earthly Jesus as an object and not just - as it was claimed in the entourage of Rudolf Bultmann - "the fact that he had come ."

After his appointment to the Erlangen chair for the New Testament, Roloff published the unfinished theology of his teacher Leonhard Goppel, who died suddenly. Comments on Acts , the Apocalypse of John, and First Timothy followed. All three commentaries soon became standard works; The commentary on the First Letter of Timothy introduced a much-noticed turning point in the Protestant interpretation of the so-called pastoral letters, since he saw these writings as documents of the consolidation of the early Christian communities - which was absolutely necessary in the post-apostolic era - and not merely as an expression of an "early Catholic" decline in the Christian theology, as evangelical exegesis had all too often done in earlier decades. - Roloff's commentary on the Gospel of Matthew , on which he had worked continuously for many years, remained unfinished.

Roloff's didactic skills are evident in the New Testament workbook , which has had many editions and has accompanied generations of theology students. After a practical introduction to the exegetical methods (literary criticism, formal history, etc.), some topics from the areas of Synoptic , John and Paul exegesis are worked out, which in turn play a key role in the relevant New Testament writings. Finally, central topics of Christian faith practice ( resurrection , baptism , Eucharist ) are considered in the cross section of the New Testament. - Similarly, in his introduction to the New Testament and in particular in his book on Jesus , Roloff understands how to make the interested reader familiar with central questions of contemporary exegesis in a simple way; both works also address non-theologians.

As a university professor, Roloff held several lectures and seminars on the subject of an “ ecclesiology of the New Testament”; From this work grew the work The Church in the New Testament , a fundamental representation of the origins and development of the New Testament understanding of the church, starting with the "implicit ecclesiology" of Jesus himself through Paul's understanding of the church to the various drafts of the early post-apostolic period. This ecclesiological overview, in which Roloff's efforts to interlink theology and the church, to promote Christian ecumenism and to promote Judeo-Christian dialogue , can now be regarded as the standard work on this topic - and also as Roloff's theological legacy.

Works

• Apostolate - Annunciation - Church. Origin, content and function of the ecclesiastical apostleship according to Paul, Luke and the pastoral letters ; Gütersloh 1965.
• The Gospel of Mark as a representation of history ; EvTh 27 (1969), pp. 73-93.
• The kerygma and the earthly Jesus, historical motifs in the Jesus stories of the Gospels ; 2nd edition, Göttingen 1973. ISBN 3-525-53532-5
• Salvation as a community. Communicative factors in the early Christian Lord's Supper ; in: P. Cornehl et al. (Ed.): Service and public. Theory and didactics of new communication ; Hamburg 1970 (Concretions 8), pp. 88–117.
• The Acts of the Apostles ; NTD 5, 2nd edition Göttingen and Zurich 1988. ISBN 3-525-51361-5
• The first letter to Timothy ; EKK XV, Zurich 1988. ISBN 3-7887-1282-1
• Exegetical responsibility in the church. Essays ; ed. by M. Karrer; Göttingen 1990. ISBN 3-525-58155-6
• The Church in the New Testament ; GNT, NTD.E 10; Göttingen 1993. ISBN 3-525-51377-1
• New Testament ; 7., completely revised. Edition; Neukirchen-Vluyn 1999. ISBN 3-7887-1742-4
• The Revelation of John ; 3rd edition, Zurich 2001. ISBN 3-290-14735-5
• Jesus ; 2nd, reviewed edition, Beck, Munich 2002. ISBN 978-3-406-44742-6 (first edition 2000, 3rd edition 2004; posthumously: 4th, reviewed edition 2007, 5th edition 2012)
• Introduction to the New Testament ; Reclam (Reclam knowledge); Bibliographically updated edition; Stuttgart 2003. ISBN 3-15-009413-5
• Jesus' parables in the Gospel of Matthew: a commentary on Matt 13: 1-52 ; ed. by Helmut Kreller and Rainer Oechslen; Neukirchen-Vluyn 2005. ISBN 3-7887-2109-X

literature

• Martin Karrer, Wolfgang Kraus, Otto Merk (eds.): Church and People of God. Festschrift for Jürgen Roloff on his 70th birthday ; Neukirchen-Vluyn 2000.

Web links

• [1] Wolfhart Pannenberg : Obituary Jürgen Roloff 29.9.1930 - 21.2.2004 , website badw.de (pdf)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfhart Pannenberg: Obituary Jürgen Roloff September 29 , 1930 - February 21 , 2004 , website badw.de