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Person, Kenosis and Abuse: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Feminist Theologies in Conversation
Author(s) -
Papanikolaou Aristotle
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0025.00209
Subject(s) - conversation , philosophy , theology , power (physics) , personhood , psychoanalysis , sociology , epistemology , psychology , physics , linguistics , quantum mechanics
This essay engages in the debate in feminist theology over the adequacy of the category of kenosis for interpreting women's experience. It does so by looking at a particular exchange between two British theologians, Daphne Hampson and Sarah Coakley. The paper expands on Coakley's understanding of kenosis as “power–in–vulnerability”, through an analysis of the trinitarian theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Von Balthasar's trinitarian understanding of kenotic personhood is then correlated to situations of abuse in order to illustrate the adequacy of such an understanding toward accounting for the healing in abused victims. The final section will argue that feminist interests in otherness, specificity, diversity, uniqueness, relationality and embodiment require a trinitarian notion of kenosis as self–giving and receptivity.