From Soul to Self Book

A poor textbook, but not without its uses.

I found it sloppy, occasionally repetitive, and in bad need of editing. While I recognize these as potentially innocuous errors, I feel like they reflect a larger trend of hasty conclusions and one-sided portrayals of certain historical movements. This is especially evident in Ruether's first chapter on Jesus and the writings of Paul.

As an absolute beginner to the field of feminist theology I found Ruether's writing style remarkably unclear, but there were some nice moments in the book that made it worth fighting through. The author is at her best in chapters 2 and 3 on the patristic and medieval eras, and this book was worth the purchase price for those sections alone. She engages nicely with the ideas of the era and expertly sets up primary-source quotations by explaining the larger philosophy at work.

The second half of the book is largely given over to discussion of liberation theology and its feminist proponents. I suspect this heavy emphasis reflects Ruether's personal interests rather than the actual state of the field, and I was disappointed to find no space granted for a discussion of feminist readings of religious texts or questions of gender theory.

Worth reading, helpfully traces some historical movements, but overall kind of a disappointment.