Religious booknotes:
Gerhart, Mary
Religious booknotes Scripture & women: beyond aggiornamento Mary Gerhart PERHAPS one of the clearest signs that aggiornamento ("The church marches with the inarch of time") does take place is...
...MARY GERHART teaches hermeneutics, reli...
...Wallace B. Clift observes that his own disclaimer for the sexist language in Jung is evidence thai "a 'corrective' is forcing itself into consciousness...
...This book is filled with scriptural references which have been used to support different ideologies: it can be seen as a well-intentioned attempt to employ them more appropriately...
...He does not exclude women from the ministry nor from leadership positions in general...
...Bloesch's view of women outside the state of marriage is more coherent...
...Aggiornamento-one small step for women-one giant leap for humankind...
...Beyond Feminism and Pa-triarchalism is to be recommended for Is the Bible Sexist...
...The enthusiastic use of the slogan seems to have given way to the sober realization that aggiornamento involves both persuasive and responsible criticism and even the reconstruction of the "vetera" of religious traditions...
...She assumes that it has been work performed primarily but not necessarily by women...
...The Feminist Mystic and Other Essays on Women and Spirituality, edited by Mary E. Giles, confronts the problem of retrieving, reevaluating, and reconceiving the understanding of the mystical experience of women...
...Giles's first essay studies Catherine of Siena's and Teresa of Avila's unlikely development, given their lack of education and the restricted role of women in public life in their time, as leaders and writers...
...One might say that what Walter Benjamin does for the ambivalent pleasure of book-collecting, Rabuzzi does for housework...
...The book presents a careful, systematic analysis of the writings of transcripts and her interviews with five "very average North Americans" (two women, three men) who were part of her pilot study of the experience of trust...
...The result is refreshingly new understanding, one that is richly informed by literary allusions...
...actually says...
...la Ministering in the Pauline Churches, Pheme Perkins aims at two goals: a clearer account of women in Ministering in the Pauline Churches, by Pheme Perkins, Paulist Press, $4.95,110 pp...
...He concludes that some, but only some of Jung's ideas can be "reconciled with those of Christianity...
...Bloesch says that he considers the ideology of patriarchalism more dangerous than that of feminism, yet he offers only "sexually promiscuous" Sweden as a warning of the new kind of bondage women will suffer should the radical feminist movement attain its goals...
...Beyond Feminism and Patriarchalism, by Donald G. Bloesch, Crossway Books, $5.95,139pp...
...Although Gratton employs contemporary theorists from many fields other than psychology, her work reminds one of Abraham Maslow's Peak-Experiences...
...For Barr, the existence of a canon docs not by itself affect the meaning of the text...
...ences to Christian theological and scriptural positions, Jung's theories in the light of his later, personal writings...
...Giles explicates the ways in which this image is particularly apt for describing the spiritual life of contemporary women...
...His brief taxonomies of patriarchalism, romanticism, hedonistic naturalism, and feminism are helpful in pointing up the inadequacy of all ideologies...
...what the Bible itself Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism, by James Barr, Westminster Press, $18.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper...
...In taking the "biblical position" as the norm for the marital relations of male and female, Bloesch seems curiously innocent of just how much that position, taken uncritically, is flawed by unreflective biases: that "femininity The Feminist Mystic and Other Essays on Women and Spirituality, edited by Mary E. Giles...
...Other essays by Meinrad Craighead, Margaret Mites, Wendy Wright, Dorothy Donnelly carry on the inquiry in more individual terms...
...Nevertheless, the model which Bloesch proposes in place of either patriarchalism or feminism - that of a "qualified patriarchalism" in which woman is no longer servilely subordinate to a man in marriage but is rather "freely and lovingly subordinate" to him is not coherent nor does it seem capable of reforming the abuses of the patriarchalist view...
...the early Christian communities, and a demonstration that one can and should distinguish between Paul's theology (which was bold) and his adherence to current societal norms (which was cautious...
...The effect of this ambiguity is to force the reader to recognize that the role of Scripture is less to give answers than to require them...
...Bloesch is married and is a professor of theology at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary...
...its attempt to overcome both of the "ideologies" designated in the subtitle...
...Clift interprets, with particular referTrusting: Theory and Practice, by Carolyn Gratton, Crossroad, $17.50, 252 pp...
...lumined and transformed in divine loving...
...But that statement is made in opposition to the "hostile critics of biblical criticism" who themselves misrepresent biblical criticism as an imposition of foreign criteria upon the text...
...she is interested The Sacred and the Feminine: Toward a Theology of Housework, by Kathryn Allen Rabuzzi, Seabury Press, $15.95, 215 pp...
...This is one of the most original books of the year...
...The most important contribution of this book is its historical and theological treatment of the issue of canon...
...For example, although the woman may "be considered to have a certain superiority" in the sense that "her subordination among other things" entails the role of making the male complete, she is, in Bloesch's vision of biblical faith, "subordinate to man" as a "parable of the submission of the church to its Lord...
...Whether it is intended to be scholarly or pedagogical, this book is an important contribution to psychological and religious studies...
...The book is both critical and appreciative, and reformist as distinct from revolutionary in its attempt to cultivate new understandings of women's mystical experiences...
...The accuracy of this description is dubious on several counts, however...
...The topic could be romanticized but isn't: as a professional (and a homemaker-wife-mother) Rabuzzi entertains neither praise nor scorn for housework...
...gion, and literature at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York...
...Both authors unabashedly reveal their early naive expectations about their subjects and the surprises they encounter in their research...
...Barr does say that the "criterion for biblical criticism is...
...Barr addresses the difference between a theological and an historical interpretation and sees theology, in the shape of a pyramid, as distinct from and yet comprised of other disciplines...
...Crossroad, $8.95,159pp...
...The particular heritage she wishes to reclaim is the' 'dark night of the soul1' through which men and women have traditionally been "ilJtang and Christianity: The Challenge of Recondnafion, by Wallace B. Clift, Crossroad, $12.95, 169pp...
...Part Four of the book compares contemporary and traditional contexts, especially the Christian Scriptures on the experience of trust...
...Perkins holds that "the picture of women and ministry in Christian communities which emerges from the New Testament cannot be forced into any one of the ideological camps that presently divide Christians": the picture will assist neither those who want backing for the exclusion of women from ministry nor those who wish to escape all social roles and norms for behavior in the name of sexual equality...
...Don't let the title of Kathryn Allen Rabuzzi's The Sacred and the Feminine: Toward a Theology of Housework put you off...
...Giles's second essay, "Take Back the Night," ingeniously translates the feminist call to make it safe for women to go out at night into a summons for women to "reclaim" their own spiritual heritage...
...His view here is founded on a clear theological reason: The doctrine of the priesthood of all believers opened the door to the ministry of women...
...Donald G. Bloesch's Is the Bible Sexist...
...Religious booknotes Scripture & women: beyond aggiornamento Mary Gerhart PERHAPS one of the clearest signs that aggiornamento ("The church marches with the inarch of time") does take place is that we no longer frequently hear this once-famous, slogan which rallied the Second Vatican Council...
...Calling herself a feminist, Rabuzzi eschews polemics...
...He regards this belief as a "plain teaching of Scripture," but he does not provide grounds for this and other traditionalist assertions...
...In her concluding chapter on women in early Gnostic writings, Perkins calls attention to the literature's ambiguous portrayal of women and woman's role in the community...
...She overcomes the usually angry response to Margaret Mead's famous definition of women's work - that whatever it is, it becomes something that men don't want to do - and elicits instead the religious properties, both sacred and demonic, of work which is ordinarily regarded as menial, boring, and banal...
...is grounded in masculinity and not vice versa," for example...
...primarily in constructing an alternative position...
...The covet of Trusting: Theory and Practice by Carolyn Gratton may bring on vertigo-perhaps appropriately, given her pbenomenological description of the initial moment of misting as a dizzying change in perception...
...His arguments turn out to be permutations of recon-ceived possibilities as well as reasons for and against particular positions in well known controversies: Who was right, in the long run, for example, in the Catholic-Protestant debate over the authority of tradition and Scripture...
...Besides being a reliable and accessible explication of Jung's major theories in relation to his writings on religion, Jung and Christianity: The Challenge of Reconciliation is also a contribution toward a new understanding of Jung's explicit statements on religion, for example, his "dogma" of the "dark side" of God...
...The publisher of James Barr's Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism describes the book as demonstrating "that the criterion for biblical criticism is the text of the Bible itself, and should be placed above all systems of interpretation...
Vol. 110 • November 1983 • No. 19
