The Church and the Second Sex

Rating:
Summary: Needed discussion and very much worth a read
Review: Daly, a leading contributor to the discussion of gender, the Church, and God-talk is the author of tis seminal book on the issue from what is commonly termed the feminist position. I heartily agree with her that there has been much discrimination against women within the history of Europe, and in part within the boundries of the Church. However, I cannot go so far as she does in her assessment of its roots. One can beleive the right thing for the wrong reason, and in my view, this book is an example of such faulty logic.

Starting her thesis with a very useful analysis of Simone de Beauvoir's role as a protofeminist, she uses her life as a stepping stone into the issue of God, gender, and the Church.

Tracing, what is in her opinion, scriptural support for the oppression of women, she goes on to show that modern scholarship has discovered that lo and behold, Genesis does not teach that women are subordinated to men in worth and function! Uh, is that really a modern understanding or did some Church fathers say the same thing? I would argue that it was in many respects Augustine who is the bearer of much of the Western church's understanding of Genesis and that inthe East, it was the influence of various gnosticisms that downgraded the value of women and their bodies- not at all representative of the whole tradition.

And when she speaks of St. paul, she has many cogent remarks that are quite true. Paul wrote to specific communities about specific issues. For us to generalize from this may be problematic, she write. True. However, the manner of her exegesis makes Paul a master of isogesis! For example, Paul in Corinthians 11:7ff makes a few outlandish statements and then, realizing that it was a dumb thing to write, "immediately" corrected himself in the following verse. This is silly. It may be true that that Paul is wrong about his interpritation of Gensis, and I doubt that he is, but it is stupid to say that Paul would write something (or dictate it) and then say to himself, whoops that was dumb, I guess I should say this instead. No scholar that I know of, and Daly is no scholar of scripture, teaches this as an acceptable exegetical method.

And then there is my favorite anti-female text in St. Paul that Daly latches onto in typical fashion. Of course it is not anti-woman in the least, but Daly does what is so predictable. She quotes the first section of Ephesians chapter 5 verse 22 and fails to read on in the sentence immediately following when it says that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church and died for Her. If I am not mistaken, this injuction of mutual submission placed upon the man a crown not of gold but of thornes, or, as Lewis would say, of paper, while at the same time raising up the status of women (and marriage in general) by placing them within the context of the role of Christ and His own Bride.

Her criticism of the patristic period is needed and welcome, but again, it is not a thorough treatment.

Daly's analysis is not all together bad. In fact, I enjoy her writing very much. However, her premise seems to override her scholarship and logic by fitting a few round pegs into a few square holes. Maybe that is too harsh and I should write now, in accordance with her pualine interpritation, that she is right on. Alas, I cannot.

For me,the value of this work is found not in its conclusions, but in its questions.

I would recommend for those intersted in this issue the works of Manfred Hauke, especially his God or Goddess. SOme of his stuff is wierd for me, but he has a strong grasp of the so-called feminist movement as it pertains to Christian literature.