Speakers:

Gloria (Secular Feminist)

Sarah (Evangelical Egalitarian)

Abraham (Neo-Patriarch)

Moderator (Neutral)

Moderator: Welcome to the sixth session of our dialogue on the relationship between men and women in society, church and family. Last time Sarah replied to Gloria’s defense of secular feminism. This evening we will listen to Abraham analyze and critique secular feminism from the perspective of neo-patriarchy.

The Godless Goddess

Abraham: I would like to begin by thanking our moderator for expertly facilitating this discussion and the audience for your kind attention. I wish also to thank Sarah for her cogent and sometimes brilliant reply to Gloria. Since Sarah and I are both evangelical Christians and share a deep respect for the scriptures, it won’t surprise you to hear that I find myself applauding her five points made in criticism of secular feminism. In fact, she did such a fine job in those critiques that I don’t think I need to address them in much detail. However I find her critique blunted by her three points of agreement with secular feminism. Apparently, Sarah thinks you can agree with the basic principle and practical program of secular feminism while disagreeing with its theoretical justification for them. I don’t believe it is possible disengage the two so easily. My critique of Gloria’s viewpoint will make this plain.

Moderator: Pardon me for interrupting so soon after you have begun. You’ve said that you don’t see a need to repeat Sarah’s five points of criticism. I understand that concern, but I hope you won’t leave it at that. I think the audience would like to hear your take on these five points in your own words.

Abraham: Okay. I can do that, but it may push me beyond my allotted time. Sarah really nailed it when she pointed out that Gloria bases her entire case on an arbitrary assertion of will to power over her being and action. Since Gloria’s whole program is about liberating herself from all external principles and powers so that she can become and do what she pleases, she has no alternative but to root her “rights,” “dignity” and “claims” in her own reality. Any admission that she is responsible to anything or anyone outside herself would immediately legitimate a debate about which of her wishes and desires are lawful and good. It would give others—including men—a say in what she does and becomes. And this is the very intrusion her theory is designed to exclude as a matter of principle.

Moderator: Is there anything you’d like to add to Sarah’s critique?

Abraham: Well, there is one thing. Sarah critiqued Gloria’s theory of the self-creating, self-validating self by reducing it to absurdity and uncovering its secret nihilism. This was a brilliant move. But she could also have critiqued it from a historical point of view. Gloria presents her absurd view of the self as if it sprang from nowhere and were a matter of self-evident experience. I don’t have space here to tell the whole story, but Gloria’s view of the self depends on the intersection of two great historical lines of development that she fails to acknowledge. She may not even realize her dependence. They are:

(1) The Christian teaching about human nature and destiny. In the history of the Christian doctrines of creation and salvation it is affirmed again and again that God created human beings in his image and loves each individual. Human beings possess maximum worth or dignity in God’s eyes. In God’s plan for salvation, human beings will be freed from sin and death and united to God to live eternally in glory. They will become, as it were, gods.

(2) The Christian doctrine of God. Christianity developed an understanding of divine freedom as God’s self-sufficiency, that is, his complete independence from every external power. God is not subject to any law outside his will and being. As one church father put it, God is only what he wills to be and wills to be only what he is.

Gloria draws on the strand of modern thought that secularized and fused these two histories. It ripped the concept of unlimited human dignity from its Christian matrix and reasoned further that unlimited dignity demands unlimited freedom. In a final step, it identified unlimited freedom with complete self-sufficiency and independence from every external power. In other words, Gloria transfers the divine attributes of freedom and self-grounded dignity developed in the Christian doctrine of God to the human self. Gloria demands to be allowed to become only what she wills to be and insists that her happiness consists in willing to be only what she is. Gloria’s woman is a godless goddess who worships and obeys only herself and insists that we also worship and obey her. Viewed against the context of the real human condition Gloria’s theory of the self appears as patently absurd.

Moderator: Okay, that was heavy! I think that is about as much as we can take in in one sitting. Next time I’d like you to present those points of criticism you mentioned earlier, those on which Sarah and Gloria agree but with which you disagree.

Blog Programming Note: Abraham’s presentation grew too long to post in one installment. I will post the next part on Friday, January 06 and the final part on Tuesday, January 10. The titles are “Is the Feminist Principle Irrefutable?” and “The Myths of “Male Privilege” and “Women’s Experience.” You don’t want to miss them!