| This dissertation proposes a theological hermeneutics that focuses on the boundaries of Christian subject formation. It argues that Christian subjectivity and its community are shaped not so much by but at the boundary. Three boundaries in particular, the human-divine, the human-human, and the inter-cultural boundary, are described as dynamic contact zones rather than lines of demarcation.; By way of critique of a traditional understanding of Christian community as sharply bounded, boundary zones are analyzed and highlighted as site of the emergence of identity. Resources from cultural, feminist, and hermeneutical theory are utilized to make the point that these in-between spaces merit attention not only as objects for theological investigation but also as the location of the theological interpreter. In a globalized and highly multicultural world, theology needs to develop strategies to read the constantly shifting borderlands of subjectivity and community.; Engaging authors as diverse as patristic writer Gregory of Nyssa, contemporary theologians David Tracy, Mark Kline Taylor, and Kathryn Tanner, and theorists Homi K. Bhabha, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy, this study asks what an understanding of the boundary as place of emergent meaning might mean for theological hermeneutics. Thereby a traditionally text-centered hermeneutics is supplemented with perspectives from cultural analysis. Consequently, the hermeneutical enterprise is depicted as a communal process of negotiation and Christianity as a community of negotiation. In conclusion, the Christian commandment of love is framed as an imperative to live a life at the limits, which opens up new and creative ways to envision Christian approaches to inter-religious relations, our geo-political situation, as well as the everyday and local interrelation with cultural difference. |
