Person, Kenosis and Abuse: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Feminist Theologies in Conversation

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.