Abstracts numero 2003/3

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  • - La paresse du contresens

    • While philology progresses, improving translations, still various people keep in memory old usual phrases, heard so many times, learned by heart, so that they make up a kind of « Holy Scripture » in their own language, in spite of the fact that this language has moved from the period of the language of those translations. Of course up-to-date translations are available. But there is a kind of laziness in keeping what was good enough for the former generations.
    Danis Lys has sampled half a score of biblical textes which often are either misunderstood or even mistranslated because of such a laziness. He tries to make obvious their right and revolutionary meaning. Moreover, such a paper is programmatic for any Bible reader who wants to listen und understand, instead of babbling pious formalities.

  • - L’éloignance de Mechthild de Magdebourg

    • Mechthild of Magdeburg, first mystic to write in German in the middle of the 13th century, has fashioned in her work « The flowing light of Divinity » a specific concept called « gotz vroemedunge » translated here by the word « eloignance », a neologism derived from the example of « suivance ». This concept is presented by Mechthild in the narrative mode and is here approached alternatively from a historical, a semantic and a psycho-anthropological perspective in order to highlight its relevance when criss-crossing these strategies.

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  • - L’unité par la concentration christologique (Une lecture postcoloniale de 1 Co 2,1-5)

    • The author tries to sketch out a critical assessment of the main presuppositions of postcolonial exegesis and proposes some theological and social-ethical orientations based upon a reading of 1 Co 2,1-5. The best way of revisiting common legacies for the Third-World theologian is to re-examine the historical contexts of Christian missions, to struggle with ressentiment and ethnocentricism, and finally to rediscover the bloody face of the Crucified Christ as a theological rallying point.

  • - L’ecclésiologie en héritage : de l’impasse au passage

    • The context in which Christianity unfolds today, at least in Western Europe, drives me to ask the question of its visibility, of its message, and of its pertinence. As the religious belief is being deeply restructured, isn’t it high time to start working again on Ecclesiology and to propose, at least as a hypothesis, a fundamental change of the ekklesia paradigm ?
    After a critical re-reading of the traditional « Ecclesiae notae », about which I recommend a moratorium, and a brief presentation of feminist ecclesiology, model for a reflection about passage, the article defines the locations of passage : the area of the Church, the meaning and function of Christian community, the renewal of images, mission, and finally, spirituality.

     

  • - L’autorité des pasteurs bousculée par les évolutions de la société : une chance pour l’évangile ?

    • Some pastors in France resent the fact that their ministry no longer enjoys the authority it had decades ago. This situation can be analysed, in Max Weber’s categories, as the result of a weakening of the traditional foundations of the authority claimed by Church ministers. But was this traditional authority really congruent with the Gospel of the God who « chose what the world considers weak in order to shame the powerful » ? After considering the present developments in sociological perspective, Isabelle Grellier critically reflects on these changes in a theological and practical way. Her thesis is that when the growing precariousness of pastoral ministry is accepted and assumed, it can be the good luck of the Gospel, because it compels the minister to give up his ideal of perfection and to learn how to live in the grace of God.

  • - Le pasteur : identité sociale et libération évangélique

    • In contemporary society, being involved in a professionnal activity seems to condition social recognition. This might be described in theological terms as a sinful attitude of justification by works. Nevertheless, from the point of view of a theology of grace, it is not to be simply rejected, but it needs to be broken in order to be lived in a different way. For the pastor, this means that he should live his ministry as a profession. He has particular skills for preaching the gospel. To professionalise the ministry leads to distinguish the person from the minister without separating them, and it allows the pastoral ministry to be carried on within the horizon of society at large rather than within the protestant subculture.

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