set's feministische bocht van chai's myditocht ...

*set continued:

Fiorenza,
of course,
quotes this discourse
very
approvingly?



~*~
~*~



THIS
student writing,
according to her,
"can highlight
the educational and imaginative value
of retelling and rewriting biblical androcentric texts
from a feminist critical
perspective!"



What we have HERE,
in fact,
is a fairly typical move of certain Christian feminists ...



ONE aspect
of Pauline discourse,
indeed constituted by only ONE
(crucial) verse in Galatians,
is rendered the essential moment
of his message about gender,
while the rest
is relegated to an incompletely
exorcised demonized
Jewish past.



I submit here
two propositions:
The first is
that such a reading of Paul
will simply not stand up critically and,
indeed, trivializes him
beyond retrieval.



PAUL's
so-called "ramblings"
about cultural problems and situations are,
indeed,
at the heart of his ministry,
as Fiorenza herself
indicates.



The second is
that no feminist
critical perspective
will be progressive
if it is dependent
on false and prejudicial depictions
of Judaism -
the Rabbis
presumably lacked the background
that included reading
"in the image of G D
{s}he created them;
male and female {s}he created them" -
or, for that matter,
prejudicial representations
of so-called
paganism.



~*~



I have
cited Fiorenze here
because she is in any way
an agregious offender
in these respects;
if anything,
she has made special efforts
NOT to fall into such
traps.



For THAT reason,
however, THIS lapse is all the more
symptomatic.



Her student
has failed to produce
an acceptable solution,
but she certainly has exposed
THE PROBLEM!



For there is a major issue here for Pauline studies?



On the issue of gender,
as on several other matters
of equal significance,
PAUL seems to have produced
a discourse which is SO contradictory
as to be almost
INCOHERENT!



In Galatians,
Paul seems indeed
to be wiping out social differences
and hierarchies
between the genders,
in addition to those
that obtain
between ethnic groups
and socioeconomic classes,
while in Corinthians
he seems te be reifying
and reemphasizing
precisely THOSE
gendered hierarchical
differences?



Fiorenza's student's answer
to this dilemma comprehends,
in fact, two types of standard approaches
to SUCH problems
in Pauline studies.



ONE is
that there is conflict
WITHIN PAUL
between an unreconstructed Jewish past
and his Christian present,
and the OTHER is
that Paul was given to caving in
under external "pagan" pressures,
EVEN on fundamental and critical points
in his ideology.



In a THIRD approach
to this and similar problems,
Paul is granted absolution, as it were,
from the sin of INCONSISTENCY
by being absolved of ANY DESIRE for inconsistency
to start with ...



According to
THIS version of Paul,
he was NOT a systematic thinker,
and ALL of his pronouncements are oriented toward the LOCAL problems
with which each of his epistles
is dealing.



THUS,
while writing to the Galatians,
Paul emphasized the social equality of the sexes
in new Christian reality,
but when writing to the Corinthians,
for whom SUCH notions of equality had apparently become
spiritually and socially dangerous,
he backtracked or backslid
and REINSTATED gender difference
and hierarchies?!
engel
05 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 17 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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