Der Prediger vom weißen Berg : Zur Rezeption der besseren Gerechtigkeit aus Mt 5 in Martin Luthers Predigtüberlieferung 1522 1546.

The purpose of this study is to examine the reception of Matthew 5 in Martin Luther s sermons; in other words to investigate how Luther interprets and applies Jesus teaching of the better righteousness and the law in Mt 5. The study applies the reception-historical approach and contributes to the history of effects and the history of interpretation in New Testament exegesis. The study shows that Luther understands the better righteousness of Mt 5 as good works and fulfillment of the law. Luther s interpretation coheres with the intention of the Evangelist, even if Luther s overall concept of righteousness is foreign to Matthew. In Luther s view righteousness is twofold: The greater righteousness of Mt 5 is the second and the actual righteousness (iustitia activa), which follows the first and the foreign righteousness (iustitia passiva). The first righteousness (faith) is for Luther the work of God, while the second righteousness (good works) is co-operation between a Christian and God. In this co-operation the law, as it is taught by Jesus, is not the opposite of the gospel, but the gospel itself in the sense of Christ as an example . The task of the law is to show the dependence of a Christian on God and to help one to love and to serve one s neighbour (brothers as well as enemies) properly. The study underlines a feature in Luther s thinking that has received little attention in Lutheran theology: Luther insists on preaching the law to Christians. In his view Mt 5 is directed to all Christians and particularly to pastors, for whom Jesus here gives an example of how to preach the law. Luther believes similarly to Matthew that Jesus reveals the real meaning of Mosaic Law and confirms its validity for Christians in Mt 5. Like Matthew, Luther insists on the practicability of the commandments of Mt 5 in his view Christians fulfil the law also with joy yet his interpretation of Mt 5 attenuates the radical nature of its commandments. Luther s reception of the individual pericopes of Mt 5 is considerably generative and occasionally contradictory, which is explained by the following factors, among others: Luther receives many ideas from tradition and reads them and his own theological concepts into Matthew s Gospel. He interprets Mt 5 through his understanding of some Old Testament passages as well as Paul. Most of all, Luther s reception of Mt 5 is shaped by his own experience as a preacher, by his relation to his religious enemies, rulers and to the congregation of Wittenberg. Here Luther shares with Matthew the experience of being opposed and concern about the upright living of the believers, which in both cases also explains the polemical tone of the paraenesis.

Globalization and the Political : in the Borderlands with the Zapatista Movement

This study explores the meaning, content and significance of the political as manifest in the Mexican Zapatista movement as historically and geopolitically situated struggle. The case study undertakes a critical analysis of the development, organization, practice and discourse of the movement by drawing on fieldwork experiences, interviews, discussions, documents, films and other material produced by the movement, and the critical engagement with the research of others, especially in Latin America and Mexico. The dissertation poses the need to reconsider what constitutes and what we understand by the political , related particularly to the challenges provided by the critical globalization literature, decolonization and the study of social movements. The analysis encompasses several inter-related levels: the theoretical knowledge regarding the conceptualization of the political; the methodological level, regarding how such research can and should be conducted and knowledge claims formulated given the inescapable context and effects of global power relations; and the substantive level of adding specific information and analytical insights to existing knowledge of the Zapatista movement. As a result of conceptualization of a range of practices and processes, distinct understandings of the political can be underlined. Firstly, the conception of the indigenous and the struggles as indigenous movements as specifically political, not just a cultural or ethnic identity or a static quality but rather, an active consciousness integrally linked both to a longer history of oppression and as political articulation in the concrete context and lived experience of contemporary struggle. Secondly, the practice of autonomy as central to an understanding of the political in the context of the Zapatista struggle as a practical response to the situation of oppression, counter-insurgency, siege and conflict in Chiapas, as well as a positively informed mode of political self-understanding, expression and practice in its own right. Thirdly, the notion of geopolitical positioning as important to understanding of the political that encompasses the historicity of specific context and the power relations which shape that context, developed in two different ways: in regard to the positioning of the researcher and knowledge production with and about the Zapatistas, and in regard to the practice and knowledge of the Zapatistas as a decolonizing force in their encounters, interaction and relations with others, especially the global civil society. Finally, the role of silence, absence, invisibility, revelation and hiding in political practice as a deliberate strategy in response to oppressive power. -