The theologian Marius Reiser turns seventy | EUROtoday

Joan of Arc, the not-at-all-crazy virgin, can solely be understood theologically: the biblical scholar Marius Reiser, who gave up his professorship in protest towards the Bologna Process, turns seventy.

OkayHe wrote one other ebook with as a lot ardour as this one: the quantity about Joan of Arc introduced by Herder in June, which, after Gerd Krumeich's biography and Claude Gauvard's nice historic essay, now guarantees a very theological investigation of “the Virgin” and her story , her warlike enterprise, her burning as a witch and heretic, her rehabilitation and canonization. Despite an unmistakable analysis literature on these spectacular occasions, Marius Reiser feels, in view of vital questions which have nonetheless not been satisfactorily answered, “that theologians in particular have more to contribute here than before.”

Gerhard Lohfink as a instructor

It is the epistemological challenges related to the Joan of Arc venture, the examination of non secular, political and psychological features (“hearing voices” as a driving power) for which Reiser is ready. The interweaving of historic and theological views, but additionally their distinction, is, so to talk, Reiser's elixir, with which he has undertaken a variety of analysis as a biblical scholar, most just lately within the ebook “'And he was transformed before their eyes'. Fiction and truth in New Testament historical narratives”. Reiser, whose instructor Gerhard Lohfink just lately died, is now a personal scholar. He was Professor of New Testament on the University of Mainz from 1991 to 2009, earlier than resigning from his professorship in protest towards the Bologna Process.

Reiser values ​​the theological insurgent David Friedrich Strauss as a counterpoint to his work. His ebook on the lifetime of Jesus, printed in 1835, anticipated lots of the imbalances in modern biblical exegesis. However, it is very important remodel historicism into historicism, says Marius Reiser, who turns seventy on Wednesday.