An Incarnational narrative Christology of Shona women of Zimbabwe

In a Shona women's Incarnational narrative Christology, the Incarnation is also understood as a lived reality. God in Christ is the God who is present and acts in human history and in the contemporaneity and particularity of our being. Shona women pattern their lives on the meta-story - the life of Christ as found in the Gospel. They are given a forum to appropriate their creation and baptismal dignity and vocation in a patriarchal church and society. The theanthropocosmic Christology that emerges captures the Shona holistic world-view that involves the head, gut, womb and heart underlined by the circle symbolism that is further affirmed by the Shona hut kitchen. The latter as woman space is the acme of Shona hospitality and thus God becomes all in all. At the interface of gender, ethnicity, class and creed, God in Christ transcends human limitedness and artificial boundaries in creating catholic space and advocating all-embracing apostolic action. In a hermeneutic of engagement and suspicion, prophetic witness becomes the hallmark of Christian discipleship and of a Christology that culminates in liberative praxis.

Autorentext

Francisca Hildegardis Chimhanda is Zimbabwean and religious member of the Congregatio Jesu. She is currently Associate Professor in Systematic Theology at UNISA. She is author to "Christ the ancestor: Shona Christianity..." and has published several articles in the field of a contextual feminist liberative Christology and cultural hermeneutics

Klappentext

In a Shona women's Incarnational narrative Christology, the Incarnation is also understood as a lived reality. God in Christ is the God who is present and acts in human history and in the contemporaneity and particularity of our being. Shona women pattern their lives on the meta-story - the life of Christ as found in the Gospel. They are given a forum to appropriate their creation and baptismal dignity and vocation in a patriarchal church and society. The theanthropocosmic Christology that emerges captures the Shona holistic world-view that involves the head, gut, womb and heart underlined by the circle symbolism that is further affirmed by the Shona hut kitchen. The latter as woman space is the acme of Shona hospitality and thus God becomes all in all. At the interface of gender, ethnicity, class and creed, God in Christ transcends human limitedness and artificial boundaries in creating catholic space and advocating all-embracing apostolic action. In a hermeneutic of engagement and suspicion, prophetic witness becomes the hallmark of Christian discipleship and of a Christology that culminates in liberative praxis.