Women priests website

The very ambiguity of the symbolism of womanhood in the Old Testament and in Christian writings of the first century placed the Church of the second century in danger of falling into some form of encratism which would condemn sex and, by the same token, womanhood. This danger was bound to be greater in the circles that remained tied to the Jewish cultural universe, that is, in the Judeo-Christian communities. From the start, these thrived in Palestine; then, after the first destruction of Jerusalem, in 70, they migrated chiefly to Syria and to Egypt, where they survived until some time in the second half of the second century. The second destruction of Jerusalem in 135 and the rebuilding on its ruins of a purely Gentile city, Aelia Capitolina, tolled the knell of Judeo-Christianity as an organized form of Christian life, while it also doomed Palestinian Jewry to its final dispersion. Whereas Judaism survived, Judeo-Christianity died out.(1)

A logion attributed to Jesus in the apocryphal literature may illustrate the encratic temptation. According to Clement of Alexandria, the Gospel of the Egyptians contained the following exchange: “When Salome asked, ‘How long will death have power?’, the Lord answered, ‘So long as you women bear children.’...” (2) Salome remarked: “I have then done well in not bearing children,” to which the Lord gave this ambiguous response: “Eat every plant, but that which has bitterness eat not.” (3) The heterodox possibilities of this line of thought well appear from the other form of this saying in the same Gospel of the Egyptians: the Kingdom will come “when you have trampled on the garment of shame, and when the two become one, and the male with the female is neither male nor female.” (4) The “garment of shame” is the body, not in the Platonic sense that it imprisons the soul, but on the ground that it is tied to sin and to the curse. In the undoubtedly gnostic Gospel of Thomas, an altercation between Peter and Jesus evokes a similar perspective: “Simon Peter said to them: Let Mariham go away from us, for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said: Lo, I will draw her, so that I will make her a man, so that she too may become a living spirit which is like you men; for every woman who makes herself a man will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” (5)

Even if the first two above quotations from the Gospel of the Egyptians may be given an orthodox meaning, they do imply, if not an encratic doctrine of sex as evil, yet a view of eschatology and ethics which urges giving up sexual relationships for the sake of the Kingdom. This at least comes through in the strongly eschatological interpretation of the logion in the Second Epistle of Clement, a Judeo-Christian homily, admittedly orthodox, written in all likelihood in the same Roman circles as The Shepherd of Hermas.

As thus interpreted, the logion contains an open invitation to absolute continence: when all the disciples practice it, the Kingdom will come. That such is the intended meaning of the text is confirmed by Pseudo-Clement’s exegesis of Genesis 1:27: “God created man male and female.” “The male is Christ,” the explanation goes, “the female is the Ecclesia.” (7) Thus understood, the nuptial image refers properly to Christ and the Ecclesia rather than to man and woman. At this level, however, the second Clementine letter teaches no degradation of woman, although it does disparage the sexual element in man, considered to be useless to the Kingdom of God. This faithfully echoes the New Testament view of conditions of life in the Kingdom, where men will no longer take wives and women no longer take husbands.

One may acknowledge that contempt for woman, which was fairly common in later Jewish literature as it already was in the biblical books of wisdom, continued in some Judeo-Christian circles. Even an enlightened Jewish philosopher like Philo (d. c. 50), who, in Legum allegoriae devised an elaborate allegorical explanation of Genesis, interpreting it of the functions of the human mind, also ascribed to woman the status of a servant and described her as an essentially dependent being:

If this may be considered an adequate description of the status of woman in the Jewish communities of the diaspora (and little change could have taken place in it since the time of Philo), we have no ground to suppose that the Judeo-Christians would have assessed womanhood very differently. There is even some evidence that in certain Judeo-Christian circles, heavily dependent on the wisdom literature of the Old Testament and the apocalyptic tendencies of contemporary Judaism, woman was seen no longer as the perennial child that Philo shows her, but as a dangerous and truly evil creature. Thus, in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs which Cardinal Danielou acknowledges as a Judeo-Christian writing from Syria,(9) using Jewish material of shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, the “Testament of Reuben” gives the following advice:

The text uses the illustration of Genesis 6, yet with a significant difference. In this version, it was by the fault of the women that the angels (called here, the Watchers) fell: “For thus they allured the Watchers who were before the flood ...”; yet the biblical text is free of any similar suggestion.

As far as the community is concerned, then, the “Testament of Reuben” recommends complete separation of men and women before their marriage: “Command the women not to associate with men, that they also may be pure in mind. For constant meetings, even though the ungodly deed be not wrought, are to them an irremediable disease, and to us a destruction of Beliar and an eternal reproach.” (10) Admittedly, the purpose of the Testament is to fight fornication by removing temptation; yet the fear of fornication is explicitly justified by the evil attributed to women in general.

If this is an extreme position, the other extreme having been held by the Corinthians at the time of Paul, there was still room between them for the Prophetic analogy of woman with Israel and with the Ecclesia. This was lost neither to the Jews nor to the Judeo-Christians. The Fourth Book of Esdras includes the vision of a heavenly woman who turns out to be, as in the Apocalypse of John, the holy City.(11) For Pseudo-Clement, as we have seen, the Ecclesia is the woman of Paradise, corresponding to Adam, who is equated with Christ. In The Shepherd, Hermas, a prophet, whom the Muratorian canon identifies as the brother of the bishop of Rome, Pius (141-155), makes full use of the analogy.(12) This volume is held by Danielou to be a Judeo-Christian writing.(13)

Only the first part of The Shepherd is relevant to this inquiry: namely the first four “Visions.” The book begins with a piece of autobiography, which can be fictional or authentic. At any rate, Hermas reports that he had been sold by his master to a lady called Rodè, an inhabitant of Rome. Strangely enough, nothing is said about what happened immediately after this; but he met the lady again years later, even helped her on one occasion to come up from bathing in the Tiber, noticed her beauty, and compared her favorably to his wife. Later, Rodè, presumably having died, appeared to him in a dream and told him: “I have been taken up to denounce your sins to the Lord.” (14) As he shows surprise at this turn of events, she reveals to him that he had sinned against her by having bad desires.

Another vision follows. An old lady in shining garments, holding a book in her hand, tells Hermas that his real sin lies in his neglect of his children, who have become near-delinquents.

One year later the old lady appears again and gives him her book to copy. After deciphering the text for a fortnight. Hermas understands: he must discipline his children and watch over his wife, who is a bad gossip. Henceforth she will be a sister to him, although he must keep her in his house. He is also to reveal to the whole Church that a promise of forgiveness of all sins has been made for the benefit of all the faithful.

In the following revelation, Hermas discovers the identity of the lady: she is the Ecclesia. She owes her old age to the fact that “she was created before all. This is why she is old: the world was formed for her.” (l5)

Finally, after the contents of the little book have been read to the Church, in another vision Hermas sees an empty throne. The lady arrives, accompanied by six angels. In a vision within the vision, she shows him a tower under construction. The tower, she says, is herself, the Ecclesia; (16) the stones are the various categories of the faithful. As an afterthought, Hermas mentions the three successive aspects of the lady: “I had seen her, brothers, in the first vision last year, very old and seated in an armchair. In the second she looked younger, though her body and her hair were old. She was standing and more joyful than formerly. In the third vision she was completely young and very beautiful; her hair was still old; she was extremely joyful and seated on a bench.” (17) The explanation of this is given at length: the Ecclesia looks old when the faithful do not repent their sins, young when they do. One may surmise, though this is not said here, that her hair remains old all along to symbolize her old age, the fact that she was made before the world, as explained during the first vision.

From the standpoint of our inquiry into the theology of womanhood, the visions of Hermas present several interesting features. The identity of the Ecclesia with the lady of the vision who is also the tower seen a-building derives from the old imagery inherited from the Old Testament and instanced in the New. In the context of The Shepherd, the lady is the celestial Church, analogous to the wisdom of God created before all the worlds; and the tower represents the Church on earth. They are one Ecclesia in two forms at two levels. Hermas’s concept of the Ecclesia relates her especially to penance, which is not surprising in the middle of the second century in view of the growing moral rigor of the times. Hermas argues against rigorism, this being the main purpose of his writing, in favor of a more open access to penance than was the current practice, yet he himself suffers from a penchant to a mild encratism. Sex is not undervalued, yet Hermas is called on to change his relationship with his wife to a nonsexual partnership. So far, Hermas has contributed to the fields of morality, penance, and ecclesiology. I would propose to see his work also as directly relevant to a theological reflection on woman. For if Hermas does not tell us much about his wife, what he reports about the woman he calls Rodè seems to me highly important.

His autobiography is commonly read in the following way, Hermas would have been a slave. Rodè was the name of his Roman owner. Perhaps because she had freed him, he did not see her for a long time. Then he met her again and noticed her beauty. The visions start at this point. On the whole, such an autobiography would be a rather awkward introduction to the book.

One may wonder, however, if Rodè is not a symbolic name: it could be a barely concealed play on the word Rome (this comes out more clearly with the Greek spelling: Rhodè-Rhomè).(18) In the vision, Rodè fulfills a task which will later be shown to belong to the Church: she brings the faithful to penance by revealing their sins to them. In this case, Hermas’ slavery would correspond to the time before he believed, and he would have been converted to Rodè (the Church) in Rome: “My Master” (a title that is sometimes attributed to God) “sold me to a certain Rodè in Rome.”(19) After travelling for a long time he returns to Rome, loves and helps the Church by the side of the Tiber (perhaps fulfilling some official function), sins against her by some vaguely evil desires, and has his visions, which tend to teach proper moralism. The old lady who appears to him would still be Rodè. Thus, a triple imagery draws attention to the woman in Rome by the Tiber, who is beautiful though elderly, to the heavenly lady, who is old but appears younger when the faithful repent their sins, to the tower being built by the faithful, whose completion will mark the advent of the parousia. Furthermore, Hermas is called to an encratic relationship with his wife, that is, to the sort of relationship he has, at the beginning, with Rodè. Thus, Hermas envisions a close connection between the Ecclesia and the woman image. For that reason the Church takes a feminine shape; evil desires toward women are sins against her; and Hermas should treat his wife like the Church herself, loving both in the same manner.

In this reading, the image of Rode is far from extraneous to the story. For her very femininity and her identity with the celestial lady introduce the comments about Hermas’s wife. Thus, instead of constituting an awkward opening, the first lines of the work present a very sophisticated doctrine of the symbolic ties between the Ecclesia and woman. The Church may be seen, not only in the eerie picture of a shining feminine form coming from heaven, but also in the realistic sight of a woman bathing in the Tiber. By the same token, however, Hermas’s wife, in order to be assimilated to Rodè and thereby to the Ecclesia, must be deprived of her sexual life. Thus, Hermas has expressed the basic identity of woman and the Church, but at the expense of the integrity of the woman’s female endowments. Although, once more, this does not amount to the complete encratic doctrine which condemns marriage, as well as fornication, as essentially evil, it does make manifest that the image of woman in the early Church is not free of encratic elements and tendencies. The return to Paradise, which remains the leitmotif of Christian reflection on our theme, is taken to entail the victory of mankind over sex, sex being interpreted as part of the curse which was imposed on man and woman after the fall and has been lifted in principle through baptism in Christ.

Many Christians fell into the pitfall of encratism. There is no need here to speak in detail of the encratic heresies which abounded in the second century.(20) Tatian the Apologist notoriously taught encratism, even forming a sect of his own in 172, according to the records of Eusebius. Marcion, with the basic opposition he claimed to discover between the God of the Old Testament and that of the New, dug a seedbed for encratic ideas. Various forms of gnosticism included a more or less total condemnation of the flesh and assimilated marriage to fornication. Other purity sects, which appeared later, especially in the fourth century, were duly catalogued as heresies under a variety of names: Apotactites, Apotaxamenes, Saccophores, Hydroparastates.(21) Such a widespread disparagement of marriage could not but leave traces even among the orthodox. Thus the remarriage of widows and widowers, always frowned upon since apostolic times, was occasionally compared to adultery.(22) Even with the passage of time, the further delays of the parousia, and the progress of Christian experience and reflection, traces of encratism survived for a long time, right through the patristic period. However, encratic exaggerations also provoked a reaction in favor of marriage, as may be seen in the works of Clement of Alexandria.(23)

While this struggle was taking place, a prophetic movement, Montanism, brought several women into prominence. Since apostolic times, women had been admitted to some official church functions. They were deaconesses, especially entrusted with the pastoral and, in regard at least to the unction of baptism, the sacramental care of women.(24) They were prophetesses, like the four daughters of the deacon Philip (Acts 21:9), of which the Churches of the province of Asia were so proud that they argued from the location of their burial place in Asia to prove their own apostolic origin over against the apostolic claims of Pope Victor.(25) Widows had official standing in the Church. Early, although how early escapes us, an official order of virgins was established for women who consecrated their virginity to the Lord and who spent their life, under the watchfulness of the bishop, in prayer and good works. With Montanism, several women prophets rose to the leadership of an important spiritual revival. Beginning in Phrygia (whence the name of Phrygian prophets sometimes given to the adepts of the movement) with the preaching of Montanus, Alcibides and Theodotus, Montanism presented itself as a spiritual awakening.(26) It marked, or so was it taken by its followers, the Advent of the Paraclete. Far from being a heresy, it neither deviated from the traditional teachings of the Churches, nor did it organize, like so many heterodox groups, a hierarchic structure of its own.

Discouraged by the great Church and formally condemned, as for instance by the bishop of Rome, Zepherinus, in 200, the movement did not exactly go into schism, though its partisans, like Tertullian himself in his Montanist period (after 213), held their own private gatherings, where prophecy was actively experienced. By that time, of course, prophecy as a regular Christian activity was all but forgotten in most of the Churches. Thus the dynamic strength of Montanism was allied to an anachronism which helped to bring it into ill repute with the progressive circles of the times, while others saw this as a token of its traditional character. Thus, Saint Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130—c. 202), strenuous opponent of the gnostics, was sympathetic to the prophetic movement: there are some, he notes, who reject the Gospel according to John, because they refuse to acknowledge the validity of the promise made in it that the Lord “would send the Paraclete; but they reject both the Gospel and the spirit of prophecy.” By the same token, they reject Paul. “For in his Epistle to the Corinthians he spoke in detail of the prophetic charisms, and he knows men and women who are prophets in the Church.”(27)

Thus Irenaeus links together prophecy and womanhood. As a point of fact, one of the traits of the Phrygian prophets was their recognition of the rights of woman to prophesy in the Ecclesia, as long as she had received the gift. Woman prophets were prominent in the Montanist movement. Two of them, Priscilla and Maximilla, who were close to Montanus himself, were held in high esteem as mediums of the Paraclete. In his hostile description of Montanism, Hippolytus blames its adepts for “reverencing these young women more than the apostles and than any charism.” Some of them, he adds, “go so far as to say that there is in them something more than was in Christ.”(28) Epiphanius reports that one finds the following among the false prophecies of Maximilla: “After me there will be no more prophet, but it will be the end,” (29) a mistake, indeed, as far as the end goes; still a defensible proposition as regards the popularity of prophecy, especially of prophecy by women. The same Epiphanius refers to a sect of heretics, whom he calls Quintillianists, Prepuzianists, Priscillianists, and Artotyrites, and who seem related to Montanism. “Among them,” he states, “there are women-bishops and women-presbyters.” (30)

According to Eusebius, the Churches of Gaul—presumably of Vienna and Lyon—wrote to Eleutherus, bishop of Rome, about the Phrygian prophets “when there was a difference of opinion about them”; and “they submitted their own careful and orthodox conclusions on the question.” (31) Eusebius, who judges the movement harshly, refrained from quoting the letter. From which we may suspect that the Christians of Lyon (among whom a number were originally from Phrygia or of Phrygian descent) looked favorably on the prophets. Irenaeus’ sympathy for prophecy confirms this. And the Churches of Vienna and Lyon had themselves experienced prophetic charisms during the severe persecution of 177, under Emperor Marcus-Aurelius. The account of the ordeal of the martyrs of Lyon and Vienna, as sent by the Churches of these two cities to those of Asia and Phrygia, emphasizes the transformation, by the grace of God, of a young girl slave, Blandina, whose mistress feared that she would not bear her sufferings, into a strong, frank and fearless confessor. Blandina “proved that things which men regard as mean, unlovely and contemptible, are by God deemed of great glory, because of her love for him shown in power and not vaunted in appearances....” During the several days of the games in which the Christian prisoners were martyred, Blandina became the very soul of their resistance. Thus she showed herself to have been, not just an insignificant young girl, but the mother of them all: “Last of all, like a noble mother who had encouraged her children and sent them before her in triumph to the King, blessed Blandina herself passed through all the ordeals of her children and hastened to rejoin them, rejoicing and exulting at her departure as if invited to a wedding supper....” (32)

Another of the remarkable documents known as Acts of the Martyrs also links together the spirit of prophecy, martyrdom, and the dignity of woman in the Ecclesia, which surpasses her status and achievements in the world. The Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas originated in Carthage during the persecution of Severus (202 or 203). As we know from the career of Tertullian, Carthage was still strongly influenced by the Montanist movement. Precisely, the Acts (the introduction to which may have been written by Tertullian himself)(33) highlight the role of Perpetua, a twenty-two-year-old married woman, recently baptized, as a prophetess. Her prominence does not reside only, as in Blandina’s case, in her constance under torture, but in her being a prophetess. Her own brother, who shares her captivity, suggests that she can ask for a vision and obtain it: “Then my brother said to me, ‘Lady sister, you are now highly honored, so that you might ask for a vision which would show you whether suffering or release awaits you.’ ”(34) She duly obtains the vision, followed in the next few days by three others. In one of these she sees herself as transcending her own sex: “An Egyptian came out against me, evil in appearance, with his helpers to fight against me. And there came to me also goodly young men as my helpers and supporters” (that is, facing the devil and his bad angels she finds herself surrounded by good angels as her assistants). Then, “I was stripped and became a man; and my helpers began to rub me with oil, as is done for a contest.”(35) Thus, Perpetua has “become a man,” while remaining a woman, for to the end she is addressed by her companions and by Christ himself, in feminine terms. At the end, together with Felicitas, a young slave girl who has just given birth to a child and whose breasts are dripping with milk, Perpetua is tossed to a mad heifer, for the devil “wanted to match them with a beast of the same sex.”(36) Both women are finally executed by the sword with all those who have survived their encounter with the beasts.

What meaning can we find in this conjunction of the emergence of a prophetic movement which admits women among its leaders, the prominence of women as recipients of charismatic graces, and the suggested symbolism of the overcoming of sex? It would seem that the devil, by matching Perpetua and Felicitas with “a beast of the same sex,” tries to keep them at the low level at which femininity has been placed by the world, whereas the Paraclete raises them to the angelic realm in which sex has been transcended. Thus, a young woman can be a wife and, seeing herself nude in a vision, perceive that she has become male, while others still see her as “a delicate young woman” when she is brought nude into the arena.(37) Blandina can be a young girl and yet mother to her fellow Christians and thus a type of the Ecclesia. In the realm of grace, when the Paraclete leads the faithful, there is neither man nor woman.

There is a thin line between the idea of overcoming sex (thus arriving at male-female equality by the denial of differences) and that of degrading sex as evil (and, in a masculine world, placing all the opprobrium on the woman). Montanism promoted women to prophecy, thereby recovering in part the primitive discipline on women prophets. It also taught a strict asceticism, which seems to have reached its climax on African soil. As understood by Tertullian, it enjoined prolonged and rigorous fasts; it utterly condemned remarriage; it recoiled at the “laxity” of the bishops who, in growing numbers, admitted apostates to penance and reconciliation, as well as that of the Pontifex Maximus, “bishop of bishops” (presumably Pope Zepherinus [198-217], who decreed leniency in favor of repenting adulterers and fornicators).(38) Flight to other areas to avoid persecution became a grievous sin; the veiling of a woman’s hair, a strict obligation. On flight in persecution, Tertullian the Montanist judged more harshly than Tertullian the Catholic. Yet on other points he does not seem to have significantly hardened his line of thought. Naturally prone to excess, he adopted extreme positions in matters of morality. But in such questions he still claimed to remain what he always wanted to be, namely a faithful interpreter of the Scriptures and of the universal tradition. His arguments against remarriage remain the same, from his Ad uxorem (between 200 and 206, well within his Catholic period), to his De exhortatione castitatis (around 206, a transition work written after his acknowledgement of the “new prophecy,” but before his verbal outbursts against “the psychic,” those who denied and condemned it) and his De monogamia (after 213, that is, during his avowedly Montanist period). Based on Scripture, both on the Old Testament and on the New, especially on the Epistles of Paul, and on the traditional discipline of the Church, they also appeal to reflections on nature and to the examples of the sages of paganism. Tertullian’s argumentative method, as described in De virginibus velandis (c. 206), applies to most of these works: “The defense of our opinion is based on Scripture, on nature and on discipline. Scripture promulgates the Law; nature supports it; discipline demands it.”(39) The only new arguments used in the later writings are borrowed from “the new prophecy.”

We conclude from this that Tertullian is aware of nothing more than of being faithful to Scripture. But, and this is undoubtedly the fundamental weakness of his position, in his exegesis he is a literalist. Embarrassing or puzzling passages are not interpreted allegorically as applying to other contexts than those immediately indicated in the text; nor are they assessed historically as being relative to a given culture, so that their injunctions must be adapted to other periods and cultures. On these points Tertullian was not a traditionalist, since the New Testament itself used allegory to explain the Old, and since previous authors were anxious to stress the historical differences between the Old and the New Covenants. Tertullian makes little distinction between the two moments of the Revelation when he is looking for texts supporting his doctrines.(40) And once he is convinced of the sense and the value of a text, he pushes its logic to the end with what may be called fanatical zeal. What the Book of Genesis says, for instance, about Eve, is the ultimate truth about every woman. Paul’s direction about the veiling of women in church stands for all times, all places, and all conditions of womanhood. His views of marriage and continence are not a counsel but a decree from which no exemption is admissible. In this, we face no more than Tertullian’s conviction that Scripture is lex veritatis, the law of truth, and that accordingly it teaches the principles of human behavior as revealed and willed by God. Tertullian’s personal bias enters the picture and colors his conclusions when, confronted with two interpretations of a text, he adopts the perfectionist one that seems to him to fit better a morality of absolute perfection. Such is the case, in De monogamia, no. 11, with his interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:39: “A wife is tied as long as her husband is alive. But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anybody she likes, only it must be in the Lord.” To Tertullian, this does not permit remarriage. Paul refers only to the hypothesis of a new convert, who was married before her baptism: if her husband dies, she may enter one Christian marriage. Her previous marriage does not count. Her new marriage is the first after baptism. This is still literal interpretation, though with more eisegesis than exegesis. Tertullian reads into his text the conviction he has acquired from other sources.(41)

A last remark should be made on Tertullian’s method. As a literalist, he took much more seriously than most Christians of his times the eschatological expectations of the New Testament. The arguments of Paul that we have little time - that, given the imminence of the parousia, taking time for marriage is rash, that it is wiser now not to be divided but to give oneself totally to the coming transformation - makes good sense for him: “Therefore we marry everyday; and while we marry we are caught by the last day like Sodom and Gomorrah, when there will be fulfilled the curse on those who are pregnant and those who are nursing, that is, the married and the lustful. For to marriage belong the belly, the breasts and the babies.”(42)

Tertullian’s thought had definitely archaic features. He looked back to the beginning, even when he believed that the new prophecy was leading into all the truth: this still remained the truth as originally delivered.(43) Significantly, return to the beginning became the leitmotif of his anthropology. He clearly formulated the principle with which we have summed up the New Testament data concerning womanhood: “If such was the case at the beginning, we find ourselves directed by Christ to the beginning.... As the apostle writes to the Ephesians, God intended, as the way to fulfil the eons, to recall to the head, that is, to the beginning, all things in Christ, those in heaven and those on earth in Him.” Commenting on Alpha and Omega of Apocalypse 1:8 and 22: 13, Tertullian concludes: “He would thus show in himself the conjunction of the beginning with the end, and of the end with the beginning.... And thus in Christ all things are brought back to the beginning."(44) The problem comes with the application of this admirable principle. For Tertullian, the curse belongs to the beginning; it therefore remains after baptism and determines the status of the Christian woman and the symbolic horizon of her being.

What, then, is Tertullian’s view of woman? In the light of the first chapters of Genesis, including chapter 6 and the legend of the sons of God who married the daughters of men, woman is Eve:

The practical consequences of this reading of the Old Testament are far-reaching. For Tertullian reads Genesis 6 in the same perspective: in reward for her intercourse with the angels (Gen. 6), woman was taught by them methods of pigmentation and adornment that pagan women later developed into the elaborate art of make-up. This comes from the devil, the “disturber of nature.”(46) Yet Tertullian is no ordinary misogynist. His wife he calls “my beloved companion in the Lord’s service.”(47) Christian women, to whom he dedicates his blast against make-up, he addresses in terms which express both a profound affection and the predominance of his ethical concerns for all human beings, men as well as women:

In Tertullian’s ideal, the Christian woman rejects all the arts taught by the devil. She feels no need for beauty, for beauty passes away with the figure of this world. And whatever natural beauty has been given her by her maker, she does not artificially cultivate; rather she hides and neglects it, for fear it should turn out to be a source of sin for men. The Christian woman recoils at the notion that someone might desire her.(49) Yet if she is married she need not fear that her neglect of her natural beauty should repel her husband: “Be at peace, blessed ones. No wife is ugly to her husband. She pleased him well when she was chosen, whether she was commended to him by her behavior or by her beauty."(50)

For Tertullian proposes a high ideal of the unity of man and wife. The prophecy of Genesis, “They will be two in one flesh,” he takes, like all biblical statements, very strictly and applies it to married Christians to the letter. In marriage, he recognizes, the same act is performed as in fornication and in adultery. Yet, what a difference: “There is marriage when God joins two in one flesh, or, finding them joined together, baptizes them in the same flesh. There is adultery when another, an alien, flesh, of which it cannot be said: This is flesh of my flesh, and that is bone of my bones, intrudes between two who are somehow disjoined.”51

Once a marriage has been blessed by God, either when it took place in the Ecclesia, or by the subsequent baptism of the married partners, it becomes a school of holiness in which the two are never without Christ. Tertullian’s style, always terse, often eloquent, gains softness in this beautiful picture of marital unity:

In such a marriage the wife is spiritually equal to her husband: both are co-slaves of God, and they share in all things. One could hardly describe their unity better than Tertullian’s sharp pen does. To them he applies the saying of the Gospel, “When two ... are gathered in my name, there am I, in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). Their oneness is so profound that death does not break it, hence the theological argument against remarriage. In his view, such a marriage does not break virginity, and Tertullian can speak in these terms: “I pray you virgin—whether you are mother, sister or daughter, according to the title that fits your age - veil your head.”(53) All these are without a husband, the mother in question being a widow. The other kind of Christian women comprises the “women of the other chastity, who have fallen into marriage,”(54) that is, those whose husbands are still living. These too, in Tertullian’s view, should wear the veil.

Such a married woman is not interested in procreation. For, like Tertullian, she expects the parousia as an imminent event and the Gospel warns her: “Woe to those who are with child or with babies at the breast, when those days come” (Matt. 24:19). Why such a curse? Tertullian answers: “because the trouble of that coming day of flight shows up in the excess baggage of children.” This does not condemn marriage as such, since it cannot apply to widows, who will run first at the trumpet’s call: “They freely bear all torment and persecution, with no product of marriage burning in their womb or at their breast.”(55) Yet it forbids a second marriage. Those who remarry in spite of the Apostle’s warning, will be punished by being made unfit for the last days. The fruit of their womb will be antichrist. Upon them Tertullian turns his savage irony: “with their renewed marriages they harvest fruits well fitting the last days, dripping breasts, stinking wombs, crying babies.”(56)

Clearly, Tertullian does not envisage Christian marriage, even the one and only union that he considers to be permitted and holy, in the perspective of procreation. He explicitly denies that this provides a good reason to marry. To wish to survive in one’s descendants is a Judaic illusion that has been now dispelled. Some men, he objects to himself, seek to justify marriage by “concern for posterity and for the bitter joy of children.” Such a consideration is loathsome to Christians: “This is hateful to us.” For we live in the expectation of the imminent parousia, a time fit for no frivolities. “Why be enthused about bearing children, and, having them, send them off because of the imminent catastrophes, wishing to leave this wicked world and to be received with the Lord, as the Apostle also wished?”(57)

The Great Church will reject Tertullian’s rigorism, as already happened in his own time. Those whom, in his Montanist period, he scornfully entitled the “psychic,” in opposition to the spiritual ones who received the Spirit, will eventually triumph. The prophecies of Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla will be, for all practical purposes, relegated among the rantings of pseudoprophets. The veil will not be imposed on woman as an obligation. Remarriage will become fairly normal, at least entirely permissible. Fasting will be reduced. Apostates and fornicators will be offered forgiveness. Yet, even apart from his major contributions to the theology of the Trinity and to sacramental reflection, Tertullian will continue to influence the mind of Western Christendom. To a greater extent than we may wish, he will shape the understanding of womanhood for a long time. His encomium of the unity of marriage will be forgotten, whereas his sarcasms against women who paint their face and braid their hair will be remembered. As to his indifference to procreation as an element in Christian marriage, it will eventually be countered by the still more powerful voice of Augustine.

We turn now to Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 211), who lived and worked at one of the great intellectual crossroads of the ancient world.

We may wonder how much unorthodox influence may have been felt by the Christians concerning the meaning of womanhood and the place of woman in Christian reflection, to say nothing of her practical status in the communities. I need not speak again of the Jewish influence which must have been powerful in all the Churches especially in those of Judeo-Christian origin and predominant membership. In Alexandria the thought of Philo was certainly felt by the Christian thinkers who worked in the same milieu as the great Jewish philosopher and the neo-Platonists who made the city a great intellectual center.(58) Philo’s allegorical interpretation of Genesis applied the myth of Adam and the woman to the creation in man of the two faculties of mind and of sense perception.(59) Here woman symbolizes the lesser aspect of the human being, while the male represents the nobler aspect. What is the reason for this? The accidental correlation between the myth of woman’s formation from Adam and the secondary place of sense in relation to mind can hardly justify the symbol. It is more revealing to look at the notions which then prevailed about the genetic aspects of womanhood as reported by Philo himself. Philo sees man and woman as “sections of nature, equal in one harmony of genus, which is called man.”(60) In this philosophical view, each section appears as “a half of the whole,” along lines that evoke the myth reported by Aristophanes in Plato’s Banquet.(61) But there is more. Philo turns to physiology to prove that “woman is a half of man’s body.... For this we also have evidence in the constitution of the body.... For all things are seen as if in double proportion. Inasmuch as the moulding of the male is more perfect than, and double, that of the female, it requires only half the time, namely forty days; whereas the imperfect woman, who is, so to speak, a half-section of man, requires twice as many days, namely eighty.” The belief that the formation of a female body takes twice as long as that of a male suggests that the quality of the product and the time required to make it are in inverse proportion. “When the nature of the body and the construction of something is in half-measure, such as woman’s, then the moulding and forming of that thing is in double measure.

This point explains why Philo sees woman as a “very necessary part” of her husband, who must watch over her as part of himself, whereas she “should serve him” as being the whole of which she is only a part. Thus, in the harmony of male and female in one genus, the male constitutes the whole, in which the female must be incorporated. Now, this very point happens to be a fundamental axiom of the gnostic approach to our problem. Thus Philo brings us to gnosticism. And gnostic influence on orthodox Christianity remains one of the major unanswered questions relating to the history of this period.

Gnosticism was a vast movement with a multitude of early forms.(63) We are better acquainted with the Valentinian school than with the others, for Valentinianism, because of its success, was better described and refuted by the orthodox authors.(64) The contemporary testimony of Hippolytus distinguished broadly between an “oriental” and an “Italian” or occidental gnosticism, both of which had inherited the doctrines of the great Valentine, who, according to Tertullian, had established a school at Rome at the same time as Marcion, whose doctrines had some affinities with his own.(65) In the occidental school, we are informed about Heraclion through Origen and more exhaustively about Ptolemy through the Adversus hereses of Irenaeus of Lyon.(66) All our sources, however, stress the doctrine of the syzygies, or eons which emanate from the first principle (called, in Irenaeus, Bythos, i.e., Abyss). The first eight emanations constitute the Ogdoad, the primary form of the divinity. Referring to these eons, Irenaeus says: “Now each of these is masculo-feminine.” A syzygy is the unity of an eon with its female counterpart; in this unity the female is not other than the male but part of it. Thus, according to Irenaeus, “Propator [Bythos, Abyss], was united by conjunction with Ennea [Thought]; then Monogenes [Firstborn] or Nous [Mind] with Aletheia [Truth]; Logos with Zoe [Life] ;Anthropos [Man] with Ecclesia [Church].(67)

In the Excerpts from Theodotus, preserved by Clement of Alexandria, Adam is described as originally containing in himself both the male and the female elements: “All the female seed, extracted from him, became Eve, from whom all females come, as all males come from Adam.”(68) By the time we reach Adam, we are at the bottom of the emanations. From Sophia there stems the emanation of the Call (male) and the Called (female), also named Angels and Higher Seed. This feminine component (Called, Higher Seed) constitutes the Church of the earth, destined to union with the male Logos (Call) in the course of her return to the primordial oneness of the Pleroma. This union to the male element of the syzygy actually reintroduces the female into her male principle, of which she was only temporarily separated. Accordingly, all women must be andronized in the process of salvation: “The female elements, changed into males, enter in conjunction with the Angels and enter the Pleroma. For this reason it is said that woman becomes man and that the Church here below becomes Angels.”(69) On earth, however, the men are themselves female until they are saved: “As long as we were children of the female only—as of shameful copulation, imperfect, wordless, reasonless, strengthless, formless, abortively brought forth - we were children of Woman; but once formed by the Savior, we have become children of Man and of the Nuptial Chamber.”(70) Salvation implies the andronization of females. For this reason the Gospel of Thomas attributes to Jesus the already mentioned logion: “Every woman who makes herself a man will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”(71) This should be related to the saying, quoted at the start of this chapter, of which slightly diverse forms are found in the Second Epistle of Clement, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Martyrdom of Peter:(72) the Kingdom will come “when the two will become one, and the male with the female is neither male nor female.”(73) The gnostic meaning of this is a far cry from Pseudo-Clement’s interpretation. It relates to the syzygic mystery of the original inclusion of the female in the male and their eventual return to unity.

According to Irenaeus, some of the Valentinians admit women to a prominent place in the Eucharistic ceremony. Describing the liturgy of Mark the Valentinian, he shows Mark handing a small chalice to a woman who stands before him. At his bidding, she consecrates the chalice in his presence. After it has been “eucharistized” by her, he pours its contents into a larger chalice which, by some trick, is made to overflow. Irenaeus then shows the woman being thrown into a prophetic trance which ends up in an orgy: Mark, if we are to believe Irenaeus, promised women the gift of prophecy and was not infrequently rewarded in return by the gift of their body in copulation.(74) Perhaps one should not lay too much stress on the suggested orgiastic sequels of this gnostic liturgy. If Irenaeus is correct in his unveiling of Mark’s horrible deeds, the ultimate meaning of what he describes may still be the overcoming of femininity and the return to oneness through union with the male principle.

Has this gnostic speculation left traces in the orthodox literature? The main tenets of gnosticism were refuted by many authors who opposed Christian simplicity to gnostic complexities.(75) One type of reaction would keep some gnostic ideas, while entirely changing their context and thereby altering their sense. For instance, in the Pseudo-Clementine novels, the syzygies are reduced to an arrangement of all things by pairs, Within each pair, however, the evil or less perfect appears first, the good or better second. Thus the pairs are conceived as opposites, made of exclusive elements, whereas the gnostic syzygy is a balance of complementaries of which the second is the lesser one and derives from the first, which is identical with the whole. Although both the Recognitions and the Homilies give many examples of these pairs, the pair male-female, or female-male, is not listed.(76) Admittedly, the date of these writings is debatable. Their present form is now dated from the fourth century, although an older document, called the Kerygma of Peter, dating back to the second half of the second century, was incorporated into them. In its original form, the Kerygma of Peter was certainly related to Judeo-Christianity. While it was once thought to contain the conceptions of some Jewish gnostic group,(77) it is now considered an ebionite document.(78) In this case, the syzygies of the Kerygma of Peter would express the Judeo-Christian idea of the “two ways.”(79) Even then, however, a polemic antignostic intent need not be excluded: the Kerygma of Peter is contemporaneous with the explosion of gnosticism during the career of Valentine.

A more likely reaction against the gnostic concept of femaleness may be instanced by Clement’s clear delimitation of the female element in woman. In The Pedagogue, a program of Christian education in the light of the Logos, Clement asserts the equality of man and woman in everything, including education. While they form two sexes here below, in heaven the reward of victory will not be granted “men and women, but the human being freed from the longing which separates him into two distinct beings. The name ‘human being’ is common to men and women.”(80) In this hominization of women (not, as in gnosticism, their andronization), Clement was supported by Stoic philosophy.(81)

Once Clement has recognized that sex belongs to the human conditions in this world, The Pedagogue defines the temporal destiny of woman chiefly in social terms. As “helpmate” of man, she is to give assistance to her husband. She should therefore shun anything that may bring shame on him or on herself. She should give up all the fashions of pagan women, renounce colorful adornments, clothes, jewelry, make-up, hair dying, etc. She should wear a veil and walk with modesty. She should avoid the baths, where any gawker would see her nude. She should not wear silk which, adhering to the skin, makes all her forms visible.(82) Thus, after upholding the human dignity of woman, Clement curtails considerably her social freedom. In common with the Stoics, he affirms her right to the same degree and quality of education as men enjoy. Over against the laxity of pagan mores, he severely restricts her. In Clement’s theology, marriage is good, though his demonstration of this remains somewhat pedestrian, the Stromata sum up the Christian position in these terms: “They who approve of marriage say, Nature has adapted us for marriage, as is evident from the structures of our bodies, which are male and female. And they constantly proclaim the command, Increase and multiply.”(83) Yet one may doubt the weight of the considerations Clement adduces from philosophy, history, and literature to make this point: “We must by all means marry, both for our country’s sake, for the succession of children and, as far as we are concerned, for the perfection of the world.” A wife is particularly useful to a sick husband, for her endurance and sympathy are more valuable than those of friends. “In truth, according to scripture, she is a needful helpmate.” The fourth book of the Stromata describes the task of the married woman in similar terms: “She will charge herself with remedying, by good sense and persuasion, each of the annoyances that originate with her husband in domestic economy.”(84) Having granted this to the bourgeois, Clement still prefers the marriage of philosophers to that of other people. For philosophers do not practice self-indulgence; they “take advantage of marriage for help in the whole of life, and get the best self-restraint.”(85)

The common sense of worldly approach to marriage is counter-balanced by a specifically Christian view. In any case, Clement disapproves of forced marriages. The woman must not bow to force or necessity to accept the man who loves her.(86) But he goes further toward a spirituality of marriage. If the husband is indeed, as in Paul’s Epistles, “the crown of woman,” marriage itself - and in this Clement goes beyond Paul - is “the crown of the husband,” while the child is the “flower that the divine Gardener culls from the meadow of the flesh.”(87) In Stromata 3, procreation symbolizes recreation through baptism. This obtained in the Old Testament itself, where circumcision fulfilled the role of baptism: “The Law formerly baptized the sex organ, in order to symbolize our rebirth through our carnal birth, not as a token of disapproval of human generation. The injection of seed prepares the birth of man. Not many acts of intercourse do generate, but reception in the matrix prepares generation, when semen becomes a foetus according to the course of nature.”(88) In the Christian order also marriage is holy. As man’s helpmate, woman is particularly destined “to procreation and the care of the house.”(89) Clement maintains, however, that continence is good, since the Gospel admits both marriage and celibacy. As to the logion of the Gospel of the Egyptians concerning the andronization of woman, Clement interprets it allegorically, saying that it does not refer to male and female, but to the faculties of the soul.

In contrast with Tertullian, who rejects all compromise with philosophy, Clement does not shun eclecticism. His conception of womanhood reflects several views, Stoic, common sense or popular, Jewish (Philo), gnostic or semi-gnostic, and of course Pauline. In practice, however, Clement’s and Tertullian’s Christian women receive the same advice regarding fashions and the arts of womanhood, although Clement tends to leniency when it comes to remarriage and to the use of soft garments. Admittedly, Clement lived in a more cosmopolitan society than that of North Africa; and his writings have an apologetic and educational orientation, rather than a dogmatic one like those of Tertullian. His eschatology presents no urgency. His reaction against gnosticism was serene rather than polemic. His image of woman seems more blurred, less heroic, than that which Tertullian sketched for his wife.

More than any other, Origen (185-255), the genial successor of Clement in Alexandria, exploited the bridal analogy, which he understood in both collective and individual terms, applying it to the union of Christ and the Church and to that of Christ and the faithful soul. After explaining that, at the resurrection of the dead, Christ will celebrate his marriage, of which one must not say, “They will be two in one flesh,” but rather, “The Bridegroom and the Bride are one spirit,” Origen added a caution against mistaking this for gnosticism: “Let us make no mistake about these words, accepting in their wake the mythical fictions about male and female Eons, according to those who have imagined their syzygies: these have no reality, and the Scriptures do not mention them.”(90) In other words, the masculine-feminine dichotomy may be applied to Christ only to the extent that Scripture does it. Origen indeed likes to dwell on the biblical passages referring to the hierogamy between Yahweh and Israel and between the Logos and the Church or the soul. The true marriage is not carnal but spiritual; and if it is to be realized in heaven between the Logos and the soul, it is already achieved on earth, in the Church, between Christ and the faithful to the extent that these lead the angelic life. Bodily marriage is a temporal symbol of it. Bodily virginity, also a symbol and a witness of it, will last into the heavenly life. Spiritual virginity, chastity, is its condition. Origen carries this point so far in his conception of heaven that he not only denies, with the New Testament, the survival of bodily marriage in heaven; he further maintains that the elect will not be aware of the family ties of their earthly life.

In keeping with this, Origen equates virginity (including its spiritual demands) with the Christian ideal, being alone compatible with the life of contemplation of the true gnostic. Alluding to the curse on woman, he adds: “The virgin is free from all that; she has been freed by her purity, for she expects her blessed Bridegroom.”(91) In other words, the eschatological dimension of Christian faith, which holds a paramount place in Origen’s homilies, justifies the spiritual superiority of the ascetic life over marriage: thanks to it, the curse can be lifted on earth.

For Origen, sex does not belong to the first creation, when “God created man in his image” (Gen., 1:27). This chapter of Genesis refers to the creation of human souls, endowed in their preexistence with angelic bodies. The mention of “male and female” here applies to the creation of the soul of the ideal man, Jesus, joined to the ideal woman, the Ecclesia. Sex belongs only to the present world, to the second creation, which followed the fall: now the soul dwells in a corporeal body which renders it impure. “Every soul is stained because it is clothed in a human body.”(92) The soul of a woman is stained by the corruption of the female body. As sexual activity is bodily, it is the source of a spiritual impurity. In this sense every man is born of sin. True, sex need not be sinful, for its use is justified by lawful marriage. Even then, however, it should not be ruled by passion. Reason ought to moderate it, whether sex is the instrument of procreation or, as a “remedy for concupiscence,” indulged in only to render the marital debt. Yet sex is never without stain. It always remains impure and a source of impurity. For human bodies originally were not made for this purpose: they were destined to be Temples of the Holy Spirit. Before his fall, Adam had a spiritual body, similar to the resurrected body or to the angelic body, and sexless. Sexuality results from the fall.(93) For this reason sexual intercourse impedes prayer. Origen even thinks that the Spirit does not sanctify it, even within Christian marriage; yet he also teaches that the vocation to marriage corresponds to a divine charism.(94)

Despite this charism, marriage differs radically from the ideal of Christian freedom. Each partner makes himself the slave of the other.(95) In this husband and wife are equal, although the man remains the head. For Origen, this means first that a man should lead his wife and his family in prayer, that he should teach them the right doctrine; but it also implies the right to be obeyed in his decisions in secular matters. Thus, Origen sees the marriage union at two levels. At that of God’s action and outlook, men and women are equal and sex has no direct spiritual relevance. “The divine Scriptures do not mean to separate men and women by their sex. Before God there is no distinction of sex; one is called male or female according to the quality of one’s soul.”(96) Yet sex acquires importance at the level of earthly behavior and achievements. Then Origen, inspired by Philo, constantly and systematically sees the feminine as the very type of moral weakness. In human experience the feminine represents the point where the human comes closest to the corporal. For this reason, Origen can write such amazing sentences: “God does not stoop to look at what is feminine and corporeal.”(97) Or, “It is not proper to a woman to speak at the Assembly, however admirable or holy what she says may be, merely because it comes from female lips.”(98)

We know too little about Origen’s life to speak of his relations with women. He certainly had female acquaintances, but we know nothing of female friendships. He conversed with Julia Mammaea, mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus.(99) and he wrote to Severa, wife of the Emperor Philip the Arab. During Maximinus’s persecution he resided for some time in the house of a virgin, Juliana, in Caesarea, Cappadocia. Among the disciples who followed him to Palestine when Bishop Demetrios expelled him, one at least was married, Ambrose who with his wife and children accompanied him and for whose sake Origen later wrote his Exhortation to Martyrdom. Unlike Augustine, Origen speaks at length, with reverence and love of his father Leonidas, but never mentions his mother. These indications do not suffice to provide his undeniable misogyny with a psychological explanation. Misogyny was exploited by Origen as a literary, allegorical, and philosophical theme. In some of its aspects, it was also taught by him as a disciplinary principle, as a scriptural doctrine, and as a theological tradition. One of his chief objections to Montanism was that the Cata-Phrygians did not leave woman where she belongs.

Tertullian divided womankind into two groups, married women and those, virgins or widows, who are happily free from marriage entanglements. Clement considerably reduced the distinctions between these groups by asserting the holiness of both virginity and marriage. Origen, abandoning Clement’s leniency and optimism, considered sex a consequence of sin, a stain on the soul, and woman a symbol of weakness and evil. Thus the second half of the second century faced and deepened the dilemma of Paul. Should Christians marry, or should they concentrate all their energies on the expectation of the Kingdom? The eschatological aspirations of Montanism confirmed Tertullian’s endorsement of virginity as the better Christian way, even though Tertullian, himself married, described the marriage union in eloquent terms. The philosophical and humanistic interests of Clement of Alexandria oriented him toward a more unquestioning, if also more down to earth, view of matrimony; and the gnostic controversy made a defense of marriage imperious. The mystical bend of Origen turned him away from Clement’s pioneering approach and made him see marriage, sex, and the human body as tokens of the evanescence of this life, ultimately incompatible with the final form of the Kingdom.

The gnostic controversy was also responsible for the deepening by Irenaeus of the already old analogy between woman and the Ecclesia, and for its new focus on the image of the Virgin Mary. Whereas Hermas, in a typical Judeo-Christian manner, had joined together the pictures of the Ecclesia, the tower, and woman, Justin of Rome (d. c. 165) in his Dialogue with Trypho, had suggested a parallel and a contrast between Eve and Mary as women and virgins, thus opening a new avenue to reflection:

He is born of the Virgin, in order that the disobedience caused by the serpent might be destroyed in the same manner in which it had originated. For Eve, an undefiled virgin, conceived the word of the serpent and brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary, filled with faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced to her the good news that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the Most High overshadow her, and therefore the Holy One born of her would be the Son of God, answered: Be it done unto me according to your word.(100)

In this context, virginity contains in itself the possibilities of death (with Eve) and of life (with Mary). The two orientations follow the woman’s response to her challenge, the one being given in pride for disobedience and death, the other in humility for obedience and redemption.

With Irenaeus, this contrasting parallel between Eve and Mary obtains a new setting. It is inserted into a radical transformation of the gnostic concept of the syzygies which emanate from the Abysmal Principle. As Adam is the type of Christ, so is Eve the type of Mary. Between type and antitype relation exists by similarity and contrast. Adam sinned and Christ redeemed; Eve disobeyed and Mary obeyed. These two couples, Adam-Eve, Christ-Mary, are not isolated and separated from each other, but actively interrelated. The second couple “recapitulates” and restores the work of the first: “What is tied can be untied only if the movements of the knot are reversed, so that the first unities are untied by the second, the second free the first.”(101) I suspect that the term I have translated as unity (conjunctio) really means syzygy, Irenaeus replacing the gnostic eons by a totally different scheme. The two syzygies, Adam-Eve, Christ-Mary are in ascending order, in contrast with the descending theory of the gnostic eons. The first is responsible for the fall, the second for the restoration. Each includes a male and a female type. For the gnostics, the male includes the female. For Irenaeus, the female participates in the chief characteristic of the male, sin in the first syzygies and “recapitulation” in the second, so that the two female elements are related by the similarity of virginity and by the contrast of disobedience and obedience: “Thus the knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience. For what Eve the virgin tied by incredulity Mary the virgin untied by faith.”(102) If the female element of mankind is represented by Eve, the Ecclesia corresponds to Mary. The relation of origin is now reversed from the gnostic model: instead of the female coming from the male, Christ is born of Mary. Irenaeus, of course, cannot apply this to Adam and Eve and deny the story of Genesis on the creation of woman from man. At this moment of his analogy, then, he substitutes the virgin Earth (before rain had fallen on it) to Eve, and the counterpart of the virgin Earth is the Word himself as the creator: “As the first-made Adam ... obtained his substance from the primitive virgin Earth, and was modelled by the hand of God, that is, the Word of God . . . likewise, recapitulating Adam in himself, the Word, born of Mary who was still a virgin was begotten for Adam’s recapitulation.”(103)

Thus Irenaeus’s theology proposes three images of womanhood: Earth as the clay modelled by the Word and the virgin-mother of Adam, Eve as the female element of the first syzygy Adam-Eve, Mary as the female partner in the redeeming syzygy Christ-Mary. Irenaeus does not draw the consequences of this for a typology of Christian womanhood. Yet his rationale implies that the Christian woman partakes of the three, of Earth as virgin and as mother, of Eve as falling and fallen, of Mary as believing and obeying.

With the end of the second century, a period of a great theological fermentation closes. The recession of gnosticism marks the end of the difficult adaptation of Christianity in Hellenic soil. Judeo-Christianity has collapsed as a theological force. With the waning of Montanism, imminent eschatology is no longer a real option. Thus a normalization of Christian life is about to begin— which the persecutions of the third century will slow down by maintaining an apocalyptic atmosphere.

As a result of this normalization, Christian thought runs the danger of excessively relying on worldly patterns, and in this context the concept of womanhood is about to become less symbolic and more commonplace. The apocryphal literature provides uncanny illustrations of conceptions that were eventually abandoned. To give an instance, the Epistula apostolorum, written in the first half of the second century, offers an insight into the feminine structure of creation and of the Church. Jesus is the bridegroom. The disciples must be “as the wise virgins who kindled the light and did not slumber, and who went with their lamps to meet the Lord, the bridegroom, and have entered with him into the bridal chamber.”(104) In a symbolic map of the soul’s faculties, the wise virgins are “faith, love, joy, peace, hope”; the foolish ones are identified, with antignostic intent, as “insight, knowledge, obedience, endurance, mercy.”(105) Among believers the latter sleep while the former watch. Among others (or so do I understand the text) gnosis is awake while faith is dormant. Thus, mankind falls into opposite patterns of life, that of faith and that of knowledge. Only the former leads to the bridal chamber. Yet the faithful never forget the bonds of sisterhood that tie them to the gnostics: “They will rejoice that they have gone in with the Lord, and they will be grieved on account of those who slept; for they are their sisters.” In this way faith and gnosis raise the question of mankind’s filial relationship to the Father. The womanhood of creation postulates the Fatherhood of the creator and its unfathomable mystery. When the disciples object that the foolish virgins ought to be forgiven, the answer appeals to mystery: “This thing is not yours, but his who sent me.”(106) Here the connection between God and man is conceived on the analogy of a father-daughter relationship. This can appeal to New Testament precedent. In such an outlook, maleness remains superior, but is reserved to God, whereas femininity is an attribute of mankind. Yet could not the pattern be reversed? These are suggestions in both the Old and the New Testament that God and even Jesus have feminine qualities. The Jesus who wishes to gather the children of Jerusalem as a mother-hen calling her little ones under her wings cannot be seen as a type of maleness. This line of thought also was to be found in the early Church. In the apocryphal Gospel according to the Hebrews Jesus speaks of “my Mother the Holy Spirit,”(107) and the Spirit refers to him as “my Son ... my first-begotten Son.”(108) Yet the gnostic speculations and practices offended the sense of the orthodox faithful by placing duality within God in the form of syzygies. The reaction effectively killed for a long time the vision of God that could have grown out of a feminine symbolism.

2. Stromata, III, 45. See Ante-Nicene Fathers, II (New York, 1926). My translations of Greek and Latin texts being largely my own, I will refer to standard English translations for purposes of information only.

5. Gospel of Thomas, no. 112. See Robert M. Grant, The Secret Sayings of Jesus (New York, 1960), p. 197.

8. Questions and Answers in Genesis, bk. I, no. 27 (Loeb Classical Library, Philo, Supplement I [Cambridge, Mass., 1953]).

10. R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, II (Oxford, 1965), 298-299.

11.4 Esdras 10:27. See Philo, Questions and Answers in Genesis, bk. I, no. 26.

12. Discussions on the authorship of The Shepherd need not affect the bearing of the book on our theme. See Stanislas Giet, Hermas et les Pasteurs. Le Trois Auteurs du Pasteur d’Hermas (Paris, 1963).

18. Two remarks may be added here: 1) Rodè appears in Acts 12:13 as the name of the maid who opened the gate to Peter after his miraculous escape from jail. Thus, Rodè may be given a symbolic meaning as to the shelter which is the Church. 2) Both in Greek (the language of The Shepherd) and in Hebrew (which is relevant here since The Shepherd is a Judeo-Christian work) the letters D and M are geometrically equivalent: D = 4 and M = 40. The vowel difference (è= 8, o = 70, ô = 800) may be disregarded, as the consonants suffice for the permutation of letters.

20. Georges Blond, “Les Encratiques et la vie mystique” in Mystique et Continence (Paris, 1952), pp. 117-130.

21. Epiphanius, De haeresibus, XLI (P.G., 41, 1039), refers to the Apotactites. The codex of Theodosius (XVI, tit. V, lex 7 and 11) associates these to the Encratites, Hydroparastates, Saccophores, See D. T. C., vol. 1, col. 1646.

22. As for instance by Athenagoras and Tertullian; this is the topic of Ter-tullian’s De monogamia.

24. Jean Daniélou, The Ministry of Women in the Early Church (London, 1961), originally an article in La Maison-Dieu, no. 61, 1960.

26. On Montanism, see ibid., V, 14-19 and Pierre de Labriolle, La Crise Montaniste (Paris, 1913).

27. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, bk. III, chap. 11, no. 9 (S.Chr., 34, pp. 202-205).

28. Hippolytus, Philosophoumena, bk. VIII, chap. 12 (Ante-Nicene Fathers, V, 9-153).

33. Pierre de Labriolle, Histoire de la litérature latine chrétienne (Paris, 1920), p. 143.

38. Tertullian, De pudicitia, I (Fathers of the Church, XL [New York, 1959]).

40. On allegorical exegesis, see Henri de Lubac, L’Exégèse médiévale, 4 vols. (Paris, 1959-1964);L’Ecriture dans la tradition (Paris, 1967).

41. On Tertullian’s theological method, see Joseph Moingt, Théologie trinitaire de Tertullian, vol. I (Paris, 1966), chap. 3.

43. “Nihil novi Paraclitus inducit; quod proemonuit, definit; quod sustinuit, exposcit” (De monogamia, 3).

58. On Philo, see Jean Daniélou, Philon d’Alexandrie (Paris, 1968); Colloque national sur Philon d’Alexandrie, Lyon, 11-15 Sept. 1966 (Paris, 1967).

59. Legum allegoria, 11,23-25 (Loeb Classical Library, Philo, I (Cambridge, Mass., 1962],241).

63. On gnosticism, see Eugène de Faye, Gnostiques et gnosticisme (Paris, 1913); François Sagnard, La Gnose valentinienne et le témoignage de saint Irénée (Paris, 1947); “Introduction” to Adversus haereses, bk. III (S.Chr., 34); G. Quispel, “Introduction” to the Letter of Ptolemaeus to Flora (S.Chr., 24); Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (Boston, 1958); Robert M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (New York, 1959); Gnosticism: A Source Book of Heretical Writings from the Early Christian Period (New York, 1961).

64. Hippolytus, Philosophoumena; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata; Irenaeus, Adversus haereses. A systematic study of the gnostic library discovered in 1946 at Dag-Hammadi (Egypt) is still to be made.

65. Hippolytus, Philosophoumena, VI, 35. See F. Legge, Philosophoumena, II (London, 1921), 34.

66. Origen, Commentary on St. John (P.G., 14, 21-830); Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, bks I and II.

68. Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 21 (S.Chr., 23, p. 99). See Olivier Prunet, La Morale de Clément d’Alexandrie et le Nouveau Testament (Pans, 1966).

72. Clement, Stromata, III, 13, where it is attributed to Julius Cassianus, a Valentinian; Gospel of Thomas, 23 (see Grant, The Secret Sayings of Jesus, pp. 140-141, with the explanations on pp. 76-77); Martyrium Petri, no. 9 (see M. R. James, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament [Oxford, 1924], p. 335).

16. Recognitions, III, 59-61 (P.G., 1, 1307-1309; see Ante-Nicene Fathers, VIII, 129-130); Homiliae, II, 33 (P.G., 2, 100; see Ante-Nicene Fathers, VIII, 235).

77. Oscar Cullmann, Le Problème litteraire et historique du Roman Pseudo-Clémentin (Paris, 1930).

79. See Didachè, I, 1-6 (Early Christian Fathers [Philadelphia, 1953], pp. 171-172).

81. Michael Spanneut, Le Stoïcisme des Pères de l’Eglise,de Clément de Rome à Clément d’Alexandrie (Paris, 1957).

90. Commentary in Matthew, XVII, 33. My treatment of Origen is indebted to Henri Crouzel, Virginité et mariage selon Origène (Paris-Bruges, 1962). See also Crouzel, L’Eglise primitive face au divorce (Paris, 1971).For the quotation, Crouzel, Virginité et mariage selon Origène, p. 22.

100. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, no. 100 (P.G., 6, 710-711). See Writings of Saint Justin Martyr, in Fathers of the Church, VI.

We are looking for (voluntary?) full-time or part-time staff

Do you believe strongly in the case of women? Have you carried responsibility? Do you know how to deal with people and have good communication skills?

Then, please, click here to apply

Read the books that complement our website:

The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church. Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

This book by John Wijngaards, published by Darton, Longman & Todd (UK), Continuum (USA), Media House (India), as well as in Italy, France, Holland and Japan, is a classic on the topic.

More information here.

Reviews

Women Deacons in the Early Church. Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates

Another classic by John Wijngaards published by Canterbury Press (UK), Crossroad (USA), and Berne (Netherlands).

More information here.

Reviews

Please, credit this document
as published by www.womenpriests.org!

Seeking the Kingdom

Woman in Christian Tradition
by George H.Tavard, University of Notre Dame Press, 1973, pp. 48-71.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

We are looking for (voluntary?) full-time or part-time staff

Do you believe strongly in the case of women? Have you carried responsibility? Do you know how to deal with people and have good communication skills?

Read the books that complement our website:

The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church. Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

Women Deacons in the Early Church. Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates

Seeking the Kingdom

Woman in Christian Tradition by George H.Tavard, University of Notre Dame Press, 1973, pp. 48-71.Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

We are looking for (voluntary?) full-time or part-time staff

Do you believe strongly in the case of women? Have you carried responsibility? Do you know how to deal with people and have good communication skills?

Read the books that complement our website:

The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church. Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition

Women Deacons in the Early Church. Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates

Woman in Christian Tradition
by George H.Tavard, University of Notre Dame Press, 1973, pp. 48-71.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions