Women and Men in the Early Church: The Full Views of St. John Chrysostom

Rating:
Summary: Required Reading - Tradition allowed to speak for Itself
Review: Required reading for anyone interested in Church teaching on sexuality and gender. Rather than the usual re-interpretation of Holy Tradition according to an agenda of feminist liberation or sexual revolution, in Ford's book the Church speaks for herself. Contemporary secular interpretation of the Fathers, even in its passionate concern for avoiding sexism, is hopelessly biased. Just as with Scripture, Patristic teaching must be approached according to its original contexts: ecclesiastical (not sociological), Middle Eastern (not Western or European), of Antiquity (not of the Information or Industrial Age), and according to a respective context linguistically (as opposed to "chronocentrically," as the feminists and popular-culture apologists tend to see things). The only "agenda" of the Church is the sanctification and salvation of her faithful; Ford demonstrates, simply by addressing these indigenous, authentic contexts for St. John Chrysostom's writing, that her teaching on sexuality and gender are correctly understood only from this perspective.

Rating:
Summary: Required Reading - Tradition allowed to speak for Itself
Review: Required reading for anyone interested in Church teaching on sexuality and gender. Rather than the usual re-interpretation of Holy Tradition according to an agenda of feminist liberation or sexual revolution, in Ford's book the Church speaks for herself. Contemporary secular interpretation of the Fathers, even in its passionate concern for avoiding sexism, is hopelessly biased. Just as with Scripture, Patristic teaching must be approached according to its original contexts: ecclesiastical (not sociological), Middle Eastern (not Western or European), of Antiquity (not of the Information or Industrial Age), and according to a respective context linguistically (as opposed to "chronocentrically," as the feminists and popular-culture apologists tend to see things). The only "agenda" of the Church is the sanctification and salvation of her faithful; Ford demonstrates, simply by addressing these indigenous, authentic contexts for St. John Chrysostom's writing, that her teaching on sexuality and gender are correctly understood only from this perspective.