Roman Roessler

Roman Roessler (born February 28, 1931 in Riga ) is a German Protestant theologian.

Origin and family

Roman Richard Roessler was born on February 28, 1931 as the eldest of three children of Art Nouveau architect Wilhelm Roessler and his wife Tamara, née. Beggrow, born in Riga. In 1939 he and his family were resettled from Latvia to Posen and in 1945 they fled to Ober-Ramstadt . In 1952 he passed the Abitur at the Liebig Gymnasium in Darmstadt .

Roessler is married to the family therapist and supervisor Ingeborg Roessler and lives in Bremen .

Career and work

Roessler studied theology as a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation in Wuppertal, Heidelberg, Bonn and Göttingen and was ordained pastor in Frankfurt am Main on 1961 .

He received his doctorate in 1965 in Berlin on person and faith, the personalism of the relationship to God with Emil Brunner . His doctoral supervisor was Helmut Gollwitzer .

From 1961 to 1970 Roessler worked as a pastor in Frankfurt-Höchst and Frankfurt-Unterliederbach . Together with Dieter Trautwein , he developed experimental services in a new form. In 1965 he founded and organized a "Frankfurt Theological Working Group" as an initiative of reform-minded, critical theologians.

In 1970 he was elected by the Synod of the Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau ( EKHN ) to the senior church council and remained active until 1996 as head of personnel and deputy head of the church administration. In his work he was responsible for the framework planning of the drafting of service law and the development of personnel and position plans. In addition, he was involved in professional theoretical discussions on the pastoral role and the popular church situation. He was a member of the study and planning group of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) formed by Ernst Lange and Rüdiger Schloz for the first three investigations into church membership from 1974 to 2000.

In 1969 he became editor and co-editor of the sermon studies published by Kreuz-Verlag . As editor he designed the dialogue-based sermon aid based on the new homiletics developed by Ernst Lange together with Dietrich Rössler and Peter Krusche for 40 years, in editorial collaboration with almost 650 authors. The concept was based on the dialogue between two authors, which should be multi-perspective and mutually critical. He edited over 80 volumes. To mark his departure as editor in 2008, an EKD symposium took place on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the preaching studies.

theology

Roessler advocates a liberal theology that is primarily oriented towards the question of how church and world, religion and contemporary culture are to be connected in a secular society. It is a matter of conveying the biblical-Christian tradition in such a way that it does not contradict the modern understanding of reality.

As part of his homiletic work, Roessler advocates a dialogical form of sermon that does not bring its answers ready, but rather looks for biblically comprehensible answers by responding to situations in which human life could succeed or fail and addresses the listeners as sovereign subjects .

Fonts

• Person and belief. The personalism of the relationship to God in Emil Brunner. Munich 1965
• For the preachers' attention. Editorial on homiletics and sermon contributions in the sermon studies from 1970–2003
• The conciliar way of the Church. In: Attempts at the Church Practice of the EKHN, Issue 6, Darmstadt 1974
• Homiletic Lexicon for Sermon Studies 1968–1974. Stuttgart 1974
• The pastor's profession today. With Rüdiger Schloz, Hanover 1989
• Person and institution - Volkskirche on the way to the future. Editing of the work recommendations of the EKHN Perspective Commission, Darmstadt 1992
• We have become tracers - a self-critical walk through the sermon studies. In: Joy in Preaching, 40 Years of Sermon Studies 1968–2008. Office for Divine Service Issues (GAGF), Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 82–86, Hannover 2009, ISSN  1619-4047

literature

• Dietrich Rössler: editor - theologian - pastor. Laudation for Roman Roessler . In: Office for Divine Service Issues (GAGF), Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 4–9, Hannover 2009, ISSN  1619-4047