The Construction of Women's
Difference in the Christian Theological Tradition
Elisabeth Gössmann.
Consilium, 1991,
vol.6. The Special Nature of Women? Ed. Anne Carr &
E.Schüssler-Fiorenza .
The construction of gender difference in the Christian tradition
is connected with the reception of the philosophical systems of Platonisrn,
Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism, which were read into the Bible. Though these
interpretative syntheses made up of the Bible and Greek philosophy may have had
exercised different kinds of influence in particular instances, they were in
agreement over the claim that the man was the principal and that the humanity
of the woman was derived. To claim that the man was the principal meant that he
was the beginning and had a vocation to rule. This presupposition was not
questioned either by the church fathers or by most of the representatives of
mediaeval Scholasticism. The construct 'woman' was essentially explained as a
negation or a reduction of the construct 'man'. Although there are
counter-traditions which deviate from this andronormative picture of human
beings, right down to modern times (and in both confessions) the main tradition
of official theology has proved to be the dominant influence in history because
time and again it has been endorsed by the church. The counter-traditions,
whether grounded in the plurality of theological schools or conveyed by female
mystics or poets, have been put to one side.
Because the same biblical text has continually been interpreted
down the centuries, the andronormativeness of the picture of human beings has
transcended the bounds of particular periods. Here, apart from some glances
back to the patristic period, I shall confine myself to the Middle Ages, with
an occasional look forward to the early modern period.
1. Adam, first to be created, the perfect image of God, and the
defects of woman. Counter-tradition: Eve, God's masterpiece
Hannah Arendt remarks that action is the only activity of the
active life which takes place directly between human beings without the
mediation of matter, material and things. The basic condition for action is
plurality, 'the fact that not one human being but many human beings live on
earth'. According to her, this basic condition becomes clear in the human
beings of Genesis 1, created male and female, in the plural. She criticizes the
account of the creation in Gen. 2 as follows: 'Here the plural is not original
to human beings, but human multiplicity is explained from multiplication. Any
idea of human beings, of whatever form, understands human plurality as the
result of an infinitely variable reproduction of a primal model.'(1) This
applies particularly to the Christian tradition.
The Christian tradition, neglecting the first chapter of Genesis,
the significance of which as an independent source (P) it did not yet
recognize, concentrated on Genesis 2 (J): all human beings, including women,
derive from Adam as the primal model. True, the fact that in Genesis I both
sexes are in the image of God is not completely suppressed, but in the case of
the female sex there are considerably qualifications. According to William of
Auxerre (at the beginning of the high scholastic period): 1. the man is
directly created in the image of God, but the woman is created only indirectly,
through the man (mediante viro); 2. the man has a clearer intellect and the
woman must be subject to him in accordance with the natural order; 3. all human
beings, including women, are to be derived from the one human being, just as
all that is created comes from the one God.(2) This results in the following
defect, as far as woman is concerned: she is not the image of God directly, but
only through the man - here there was a concern to do justice to I Corinthians
11.7. She is subordinate to the male 'by nature', which makes her dissimilar to
God and puts her on the side of creation, since she cannot portray God as
Creator in his creativity. So what remains of her imago Dei? Scholasticism says
that she is not inferior to man in portraying the Trinity through the triad of
spiritual powers which Augustine identified (e.g. memory, insight, will). This
is not insignificant, since faith and grace begin here and the equality of
woman is grounded in redemption. But the consequence of the woman's defect is
that she is not called to rule, though this is contrary to Gen. 1 .26-28, the
charge over creation given to both sexes. Where that is felt to be a
contradiction, it is said that the woman forfeited this calling through her
role as a seducer in Gen. 3.(3)
The counter-tradition of women, which can be traced continuously
at least from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, (4) discovers 'Eve',
the last to be created, as the most perfect creature, the radiant image of God
and the trace of the divine wisdom. Hildegard of Bingen confirms the male's
privilege of physical strength because of his creation from the soil, but
accords the woman the privilege of greater skilfulness, subtlety and agility
because she is created from human corporeality.(5) Eve's bodily pre-eminence is
used apologetically in the women's tradition against the scholastic argument
that while the soul is sexless, it can develop its powers better in a male body
than in a female body. Women leave aside in eloquent silence the scholastic
restrictions on the image of God in women, and stress the image of God in human
beings in an egalitarian way, seeking to oppose its distortions. An objection
to the denial of similarity to Christ to women is expressed in the saying of
Christ that Gertrude the Great receives in a vision: 'As I am the image of God
the Father in the Godhead, so you will be the image of my being for
humankind.'(6) What the women's tradition reclaimed was the image of God in
women, not just as human beings (which was the restriction which Scheeben was
still putting on it), but as women. In Marie de Jars de Gournay this is even
associated with a disguised demand for ministry in the church;(7) there is also
a sign here of the degree to which the concept of the image of God functioned
as a forerunner to that of human rights and in this social significance was
known to both women and men.
2. Sinful Eve. Counter-tradition: Eve, deceived or indeed
innocent
Because (for Catholics at any rate) the interpretation of Genesis
2 which is hostile to women already begins within the Bible, in Sirach 25.24,
and is continued in I Timothy 2.i3f.,(8) it was almost inevitable for the
Christian tradition to project sin and death on to women, a process that also
happens in other religions. Granted, church fathers and scholastic theologians
attempted to maintain a formal equality of original sin in man and woman by
putting more of the burden of original sin on the man in some instances and on
the woman in others; however, as the history of the idea demonstrates, it was
far more significant that the woman was made primarily responsible for the sin
of wanting to be like God. Augustine dismissed the sin of Adam de facto as a
trivial failing, seeing Adam as having indeed been sinful in disobedience, but
making him an accomplice of Eve, who had already incurred guilt, out of
sympathy with her, so that she would not be the only one to be lost. In the
twelfth century Peter Lombard, on whom all would-be theologians had to comment,
speaks of the (cancerous) sore of arrogance in Eve's breast.(9) In the
scholastic view, the woman's sin was also made more serious in that she sinned
not only against God and against herself, as the man did, but in addition also
against her neighbour, by leading him astray into sin.(10)
The identification of the female sex down the centuries with 'Eve,
the seductress' provoked a particularly sensitive defence. Whereas Hildegard of
Bingen portrayed the first woman as being more deceived by the serpent than
sinning and refers to the tumour of pride in the male breast," and Mechthild of
Magdeburg stresses the equality of the sin of man and woman, Christine de Pizan
begins to acquit Eve. We also sometimes find such an approach among males, but
usually in an ambivalent way, as in Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim,
in whose work the 'bad Eve' and the 'good Eve' are simply put side by side.
However, with women the defence of their own sex in the world in which they
live is the motive for the acquittal of Eve, in order to tackle the evil of
discrimination at the roots:
Finally, I must look at the most frivolous arguments of some
men. For the most part they argue that Eve was the cause of Adam's sin and
consequently of our fall and our misery. My reply is that Eve in no way led
Adam to sin, but I believe that she rather simply suggested that he should eat
of the forbidden fruit . . . But she did not know that to eat of it was sin,
any more than she knew that the serpent . . . was the devil (Lucretia
Marinella, 1600).(12)
On the basis of the particular character of Renaissance Platonism,
Marinella even succeeded in incorporating the physical and psychological
advantages of her own sex into the step-by-step ascent above the beautiful to
the divine One, and thus in assigning to the woman the function of being the
man's mediator. So this was the opposite of seduction to a 'descent'.
3. The active man and the passive woman. Counter-tradition: the
co-operation of the sexes
The claim in Augustine and in Scholasticism that the male
intellect has greater clarity is based on biological views from antiquity,
derived from natural philosophy and historically obsolete, above all the theory
of elements and humours. In the twelfth-century school of Chartres, which was
influenced by Platonism, we read that in creating woman God did not mix the
elements as well as he did when creating man.(13) The superior elements of the
cosmos (fire and air) are identified as 'masculine' and the inferior elements
(water and earth) as 'feminine'. From this there results the heat and dryness
of the man, which effects a mixture of temperaments more favourable to
intellectual development (hence his clearer intellect); the moistness and
coldness of the women is the cause of the less favourable mixture of
temperaments and consequently of her intellectual weakness. But the activity of
the man and the passivity of the woman are also explained in this way: this is
a doctrine which becomes increasingly influential, the more Aristotle is
accepted without reservations. As a result, with few exceptions, for
theologians in the tradition too there is a philosophical explanation for the
'biblical' hierarchy of the sexes, male and female. The harmony of 'Bible' and
'philosophy' proved attractive, and there was no recognition that this was a
circular argument.
However, it was not accepted without objections. So already in the
twelfth century Hildegard of Bingen developed a cosmic anthropology which broke
up the hierarchy of the sexes by pointing to the prominence of the median
elements, air and water, in the body of the woman, and of the extreme elements,
fire and earth, in the body of the man. (14) Consequently the characteristics
of the sexes develop in a polar way; their activities complement each other and
each comes to the help of the other. There is an addition to Paul's saying that
Eve was created for Adam: as he was created for her.(15) Even if this was long
opposed by a legal order determined by androcentrism, here already there are
indications of a more or less hidden infiltration of sexual hierarchy.
Strictly speaking, the Franciscan school also took this course,
though a first inspection may prove deceptive. Aristotle, who did not
understand anything of sacra scriptura (= the Bible and salvation
history), was not an authority for the Franciscans in this sphere. We notice
this at the latest in studying Franciscan Mariology, though at the same time
Bonaventure's doctrine of creation also shows a certain proclivity towards a
polar image of human beings.(16) The man receives benefits from the woman as
she does from him, though the latter is rated higher in the context of the
sexual hierarchy of male and female. As the Franciscans did not follow
Aristotle, but Hippocrates and Galen, in their biology and psychology of the
sexes,(17) they assumed that there was an effective female seed;(18) here they
come considerably nearer than the Aristotelian line to the discovery of the
female ovum in the 1820s. Actively and passively there is reciprocity between
the sexes, even if the activity of the male predominates. So the Franciscans
were also interested in a conception of Mary that was free from original sin:
like any woman, she too is active in her motherhood, and despite her virginal
conception, which prevents the transference of original sin to her child, can
nevertheless bequeath her Son a human nature which has been violated and
weakened by the consequences of sin, which would disqualify him as
redeemer.(18)
This also explains the lack of interest of Thomas Aquinas and his
school in the immaculate conception of Mary. There is no question of her
handing on any of the consequences of original sin to her son because of the
passivity of the woman, to which she is no exception. By contrast, with its
objection to the sheer passivity of the woman, the Franciscan tradition
overcomes a defect in the female sex.
4. Woman, disadvantaged by the natural order, natural law and
divine law. Counter-tradition: male usurpation
One question often raised in the tradition is whether monogamy is
called for by natural law, since the father's of the faith in the Old Testament
evidently did not live in that way. In order to exonerate the Old Testament
patriarchs, the answer was that, depending on the requirements of individual
periods of history, natural law required at one time that a man should increase
his offspring with several wives, or could limit himself to the children of one
wife. The latter was regarded as an irreversible rule for the time of the
gospel. However, a wife's polyandry was from the beginning and always declared
to be an offence against the order or the law of nature: as the Franciscan
Summa Halensis put it, covering many schools and periods, this was
because a woman could not be pregnant by several men at the same time, but
several women could bear the children of one man at the same time (quia una
non potest fecundari a pluribus, sed unus bene potest fecundare
plures).(19)
It is illuminating that in the fiction of a woman's polyandry the
hierarchy of the sexes is not reversed; the second reason given as to why such
a state is contrary to nature is that for many men to be ruled by one woman
would not further peace in the family.
Hugo Grotius still thinks just like the Scholastics on this point.
Some authors identify marital authority grounded in natural law with that of an
absolute ruler. However, Pufendorf limits the polygyny of the man which is
possible by natural law by stressing that the marked increase in the number of
the population throughout the world has really made it superfluous.
In 1669, Gisbert Voetius of the Reformed Academy at Utrecht held
in his Politica Ecclesiastica that the greater dignity of man than that
of woman was inscribed in the heart of all human beings by the natural law
which destines men to rule and women to obey. For him, too, the authority of
the father of the house is by divine and natural law. Thomas Aquinas had once,
in a Neoplatonic-sounding sentence, described man in his character of ultimate
principle within the world and the image of the creator God as origin and goal
of woman;(20) Voetius does the same thing, but without citing him. The total
withdrawal of the woman behind the man can hardly be expressed more
clearly.(21) Of course there was also resistance to this during the transition
to the early modern period, when natural-law thinking moved from the sphere of
moral theology to that of law. Here we should think not so much of the party
with a positive attitude in the struggle for gynaecocracy, since it required
women who succeeded to the throne in hereditary monarchies because of the lack
of male offspring to give up the feminine ethic of obedient subjection and
adopt the male ethic, i.e. as it were undergo a mental change of sex.(22) It is
more important to remember the attempt of highborn wives like Marguérite
of Navarre, who like many other women, especially in France, wrote an apologia
for her own sex. In it she cites the privileged creation of Eve as God's
masterpiece as the reason for the political skill of women and roundly declares
that the whole of male rule is usurpation.(23) For her the subordination of the
woman is the consequence of a male transgression of the law which was noted
only by God (Gen. 3.16).
5. Women are to become male. Counter-tradition: We shall
encounter Christ in the completeness of our sex (Hildegard of Bingen)
There is a well-known passage in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas
in which Peter seeks to send Mary Magdalene away from the group of disciples on
the grounds that women are not worthy of life. The Jesus of this text replies
that he will guide her so that she makes herself masculine, so that she becomes
a living spirit and thus can enter the kingdom of heaven.(24) It is also
well-known that church fathers like Ambrose and Jerome make similar statements:
the wife who still serves husband and children and has not yet arrived at full
knowledge of faith is called 'woman', but the one who abstains from procreation
or is advanced in the faith is called 'man'.(25) Women are enjoined to give up
the fleshly and to become spiritual, this being understood as a symbolic (or
real?) change of sex, or the possibility is held open for them; here
Christianity is by no means alone, but precisely at this point shows parallels
with Buddhism (mediated through Gnosticism?).(26)
From the male side, the perfection of a feminine being can be
thought of only as 'elevation' and assimilation to the male sex, as a reduction
to the one, authentic humanity with a male stamp. So the offer of equality,(27)
gladly accepted by those women of Christian antiquity who with male hair-styles
and clothing lived as eunuchs in the wilderness or as virgins with their
families, was 'Become like us!' In the situation of the time no hostility to
women was intended, but the invitation allowed two quite different
interpretations: first, the sublation of the feminine (as the imperfect) into
the masculine-perfect (as the first and the last); and secondly, the abolition
of sexuality altogether, including male sexuality, as a liberation conceived of
in Neoplatonic terms. Scotus Eriugena is to be understood in this sense.(28)
But the eschatological character of the ascetical movement of late antiquity
points to a Utopia of sexless human beings.
This is the point at which Augustine tried to direct thought in
another direction. Although in his work in particular the positive-negative
symbolism of the male and female is presented very strongly where it affects
earthly life, Augustine guards against giving up the otherness of the woman as
something which would not be worth preserving for the world to come. He
resolutely rejects a resurrection of all women as males. As transfigured
corporeality has left behind it libido and vitium, i.e. its
weakness conditioned by sin, no conflicts can arise any longer through the
female form of humanity, so that Augustine can recognize it in its creaturely
beauty: 'To be a woman is no vice, but is natural.'(29) This had to be said at
all because of the mood of the culture of late antiquity into which
Christianity was born, and to which it had assimilated itself in its
interpretation of the Bible.
With his doctrine of the preservation of womanhood in the
eschaton, Augustine gave the Middle Ages a good dowry. This gift also proved
useful in the fight against dualistic sects which still spoke of women
(eschatologically) becoming men. Mediaeval women who write and who stress their
womanhood as virgines though also showing signs of solidarity with the
matres - leave the symbols of becoming male behind them and combine
their theme of feminine modesty, with which they introduce their works, with a
strong consciousness of election.
I hope that it has become clear from this much abbreviated account
that despite the tenacity of the androcentric, patriarchal tradition, some
modifications were possible to its construct 'woman'. For want of relevant
research we cannot determine clearly to what extent counter-traditions were the
occasion for this. However, the fact that the counter-traditions had to
struggle for centuries in attempts to refute the same prejudices against the
female sex indicates their lack of success.
If the impression has arisen that the doctrines of the
counter-traditions were mere reversals, i.e. over-valuations of feminine
humanity which had been previously been undervalued, the answer must be that
this is not the case. For the counter-traditions are concerned with a 'negation
of negation'.(30) The construct of a femininity which has not attained complete
humanity, defined in andronormative terms, is rejected: the starting point is
that of the originality of woman's being and an attempt to describe this not as
derived, but as independent humanity. Meditating on texts like this can help
present-day women and men to get past thinking in terms of a single principle
and develop that dual (not dualistic nor even just polar) model of humankind
which we still lack.
Translated by John Bowden
Notes
1. Hannah Arendt, Vita activa oder vom tätigen Leben,
Stuttgart 1960, 15f.
2. William of Auxerre, Summa Aurea, ed. Pigouchet (Paris
1500), Frankfurt am Main 1964, fol. 58v.
3. Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Women, Cambridge
1980.
4. Cf. my article 'Eva, Gottebenbildlichkeit und
Spiritualität', in Wörterbuch der Feministischen Theologie,
Gütersloh 1991.
5. Elisabeth Gössmann, 'Ipsa enim quasi domus
sapientiae. Zur frauenbezogenen Spiritualität Hildegards von
Bingen', in Margot Schmidt and Dieter R. Bauer (eds.), 'Eine Höhe
über die nichts geht.' Spezielle Glaubenserfahrung in der
Frauenmystik?, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstadt 1986, 1-18, esp. 9-11.
6. Gertrude the Great, Legatus divinae pietatis, translated
by Johanna Lanczkowski, Heidelberg 1989, 25.
7. There is an introduction to Marie de Jars de Gournay in
Elisabeth Gössmann (ed.), Archiv für philosophie- und
theologiegeschichtliche Frauenforschung, Vol. 1, Munich 1984, Ch. 1, cf.
esp. 28f.
8. Cf. Helen Schiüngel-Straumann, Die Frau am Anfang. Eva
und die Folgen, Freiburg 1989.
9. For Augustine and Peter Lombard see the relevant chapters in
Monika Leisch-Kiesl, Eva in Kunst und Theologie des Frühchristentums
und Mittelalters. Zur Bedeutung 'Evas' für die Anthropologie der Frau,
Theological Dissertation, Salzburg 1990.
10. For this theme see also the chapter, 'Der Mensch als Mann und
Frau', in my Habilitation thesis, Metaphysik und Heilsgeschichte. Eine
theologische Untersuchung der Summa Halensis, Munich 1964, 215-29, and my
'Anthropologie und soziale Stellung der Frau nach Summen und
Sentenzenkommentaren des 13. Jahrhunderts', Miscellanea Mediaevalia
12.1, Berlin 1979, 281-97.
11. Cf. Barbara Newman, O feminea forma. God and Woman in the
Works of St Hildegard, PhD dissertation, Yale University 1981.
12. There is an introduction to Lucretia Marinella in Elisabeth
Gössman (ed.), Archiv für Philosophic- und theologiegeschichtliche
Frauenforschung 2, Munich 1985, Chapter 1; the quotation is on p. 41. For
Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, cf. Vol. 5 of the same archive
(Munich 1988), introductions and text.
13. Cf. Hans Liebeschütz, Kosmologische Motive in der
Frühscholastik. Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1923-24, ed. F.
Saxl, Leipzig and Berlin 1926, esp.128.
14. Cf. Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman. The Aristotelian
Revolution, Montreal and London 1985; id., 'Two Medieval Views on Woman's
Identity: Hildegard of Bingen and Thomas Aquinas', Studies in Religion. A
Canadian Journal 16,1987,21-36.
15. Scivias I.2, Migne, PL 197, 393; CCM 43, 21
16. Cf. my attempt to investigate the connection between system
and the image of woman among the Franciscans in Theodor Schneider (ed.),
Mann und Frau -Grundproblem theologischer Anthropologie, Freiburg 1989,
44-52.
17. Cf. Emma Therese Healy, Woman according to St
Bonaventure, Erie, Pennsylvania 1965, 11f. Albertus Magnus also assumed
that the seed in woman was inactive. Cf. Paul Hossfeld, 'Albertus Magnus
über die Frau', Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift 91, 1982, 221-40.
18. Cf. Elisabeth Gössmann and Dieter R. Bauer (eds.),
Maria für alle Frauen oder über allen Frauen?, Freiburg 1989, p
63-85.
19. Summa Fratris Alexandri, Tom. IV L.III, Quaracchi 1948,
nos. 253-5.
20. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia I q 93 a. 4 ad 1;
'Nam vir est principium mulieris et finis, sicut Deus est principium et
finis totius creaturae.'
21. Politicae Ecclesiasticae Pars II, Amsterdam 1669, Liber
1 Tr. 4, De mulieribus, p. 186: 'Vir est origo et principium ex quo
mulier, et est finis propter quem producta est mulier'.
2.2. Cf. Maclean, Renaissance Notion (n.3), 62f.
23. For Marguérite of Navarre, cf.Archiv (n.7), 13f.
24. For the Gospel of Thomas and its cultural environment see
Peter Brown, The Body and Society. Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in
Early Christianity, New York and London 1988, esp. 113, with further
literature.
25. A long time ago attention was already drawn to these texts and
connections by Haye van der Meer, Priestertum der Frau? Eine
theologiegeschichtliche Untersuchung, Freiburg 1969. For Jerome and Ambrose
see 97f.
26. Cf. Elisabeth Gössmann, 'Haruko Okano, Himmel ohne
Frauen? Zur Eschatologie des weiblichen Menschseins in östlicher und
westlicher Religion', in Das Gold im Wachs, Festschrift für Thomas
Immoos, ed. E. Gössmann and G. Zobel, Munich 1988, 397-426.
27. Cf. Ruth Albrecht, Das Leben des hl.Makrina auf dem
Hintergrund der Thekla-Traditionen, Göttingen 1986; Kari Vogt,
'Becoming Male. One Aspect of an Early Christian Anthropology',
Concilium 182, 1985, 72-83.
28. For Scotus Eriugena cf. the works by Werner Beierwaltes, esp.
Denken des Einen. Studien zur neuplatonoschen Philosophic und ihrer
Wirkungsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main 1985.
29. Non est autem vitium sexus femineus, sed natura', De
civitate Dei 22.17,18.
30. The formula comes from Katharina Fietze, Spiegel der
Vernunft. Theorien zum Menschsein der Frau in der Anthropologie des 15.
Jahrhunderts, Munich philosophical dissertation 1990 (planned publication
Paderborn 1991).
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