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by Dr.Marie-Henry Keane O.P. formerly Prof. in
Systematic Theology Dept. of Univ. of South Africa, Pretoria.
paper
presented to Catholic Theological Society of South Africa, October
1987.
1.1 Introduction
The
task of feminist theologians today is to correct certain abuses in the church
which affect them deeply. They react against their exclusion from church office
and against the reduction of their ministry within the church to subordinate
and marginal positions. They are no longer willing to conform to the feminine
stereotypes of patriarchal culture. They feel, in fact, that the sexism of
Christian tradition requires the critiquing of virtually all areas of
that tradition: its ecclesiastical structures; certain doctrinal
presuppositions; its use of sexist language, particularly in the liturgy and in
official church documents; its systematic distortion of the image of woman:and
its failure to reflect seriously the woman’s experience. Not only the
‘male view’ but ‘the white western male opinion’, has
become the yardstick for measuring what is appropriate or excellent in
ecclesiastical circles. Rebecca Chopp deplores, therefore, “the strategy
of theology which isolates and privileges the experience of Western white males
as absolute for all human experience”. (1) She goes on: “We shall not
take lightly the assumptions about ourselves-in-relation-to-God that undergird
our spiritual cultures, as evidenced in our journals, prayers, art and
music”.(2) We shall speak for ourselves about ourselves.
To do
justice theologically to the “woman’s experience”; to explore
some of the very real injustices perpetrated against her; and to create a more
inclusive model of church and of society for the future, we need to approach
the so-called “woman problem” from many perspectives, not least among
the from the historic perspective. It has been suggested, for example,
that many of the problems experienced by women in the church today have
developed over the centuries. They were not there in the beginning.
Certain feminists believed that by unearthing the history of the early church,
for example, they might be able to do justice to their own story and to their
significance in shaping church history. Elizabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza’s studies have led her to a different conclusion. She wrote:"An
androcentric reconstruction of the early Christian history...is not valuefree
and objective, but consciously or not, legitimates the present hierarchical -
male structures of the contemporary church".(3) In other words the Early Church
Fathers had already canonised the androcentric approach. What is more the
influence of their teaching is still being felt today. from the historic
perspective. It has been suggested, for example, that many of the problems
experienced by women in the church today have developed over the
centuries. They were not there in the beginning. Certain feminists believed
that by unearthing the history of the early church, for example, they might be
able to do justice to their own story and to their significance in shaping
church history. Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s studies have led her
to a different conclusion. She wrote:"An androcentric reconstruction of the
early Christian history...is not valuefree and objective, but consciously or
not, legitimates the present hierarchical - male structures of the contemporary
church".(3) In other words the Early Church Fathers had already canonised the
androcentric approach. What is more the influence of their teaching is still
being felt today.
What
I propose to do in this paper is to examine, in some detail, the theological
anthropology of the Early Fathers with special reference to woman. I shall
focus on woman seen as ‘problem’, and as ‘solution’. I
shall quote extensively from the patristics,for then it will be possible to
gauge the extent to which the Fathers “condemned themselves out of their
own mouths". They frequently condemned and belittled woman, but, even when they
commended her, and showed her honour, they often did so for the wrong reasons.
We may feel that the church has come a long way since the Fathers yet attitudes
towards woman have not changed basically. The time has come to do something
about that.
1.2 Woman as the cause of sin
The
Early Church Fathers regarded woman as a problem because, they said, it was
through her that sin entered the world. “Woman”, wrote Tertullian,
“You are the Devil’s doorway. You have led astray one whom the Devil
would not dare attack directly. It was your fault that the Son of God had to
die, you shall always go in mourning and rags".(4) Woman, he said, was morally
weak and ‘a troublemaker’. He made her a scapegoat to bear the guilt
of all sin for he put on her shoulders the sins of human kind, denying thereby
that men and women alike were accomplices in sin. They used her to exonerate
mankind of blame. As the German proverb puts it: “Adam muss eine Eva
habben, die er zeiht, was er gathan”. (Adam must have his Eva so that he
may blame her for what he (himself) has done.) The Fathers condemn Eve for the
role she played in the downfall of humankind and make every woman an heiress to
the blame. They abuse the integrity of women by comparing them not only to the
least of persons but to the most hideous of beasts. John Chrysostom wrote:
“Among all the savage beasts none is found to be so harmful as
woman”.(5) John Damascene was even more vindictive: “Woman”, he
wrote, “is a sick she-ass...a hideous tapeworm...the advance post of
hell”.(6) She deserved therefore, not only to be cursed by God but by the
Fathers. (Let me add in parenthesis that Rabbinical teaching manifested an
equally unsympathetic attitude towards women. In the Apocalypse of
Moses, for example, words of condemnation were put into Eve’s own
mouth: She accused herself: “My Lord Adam, rise up and give me half of thy
trouble and I will endure it, for it is on my account that this hath happened
to thee, on my account thou art beset with toils and troubles”.(7) Eve,
and consequently all women, were to bear prime responsiblity for the
world’s sin. Jerome went a step further; he attributed to woman
responsiblity for all heresy. He wrote: “With the help of the prostitute
Helena, Simon Magnus founded his sect. Crowds of women accompanied Nicholas of
Antiochia the seducer of all impurity: Marcion sent a woman before him in order
to prepare the minds of men so that they might run into his nets. Apelles had
his Philumena as an associate in the false teachings. Montanus, the mouthpiece
of an impure spirit, used two wealthy women of noble origin Prisca and
Maximilla in order to first bribe many communities and then to corrupt
them...Arius, intent to lead the world, astray started by misguiding the sister
of the emperor," (8) Jerome offered an extensive list of the women who were
behind every heresy. In the light of the evidence available to us, however, we
cannot take him seriously. The worst that can be said is that certain women
were either accomplices or associates of male heretics.
The position of woman
Feminist theologians have tried to account for the anti-woman feelings
frequently demonstrated by the Fathers. Certainly they did not take their cue
from Jesus for New Testament sources do not attribute to him a single negative
statement about women.(9) More than that,he makes it clear that relationships
within the Christian community were free from dominance (Mt 23:7-12). Jesus did
not subscribe to the social norms of the Graeco-Roman world which distinguished
between people on the grounds of race, class, religion or sex. He made it
possible, not only for the ethné and slaves but also for women, to
participate in the missionary leadership of the church. Schüssler-Fiorenza
wrote: “In this movement women were not marginal figures but exercised
leadership as missionaries, founders of Christian communities, apostles,
prophets and leaders of churches".(10) That phase was very short lived,
however. The Fathers resisted the tendency to accept the leadership of women.
Origen, for example, while he acknowledged the ministry of Phoebe reduced her
to “Paul’s assistant”.(1l) Chrysostom accepted that women
ministered in leadership in the church at the beginning but he himself believed
that only when “the angelic condition” would be restored could women
be permitted to work in the service of the Gospel, to prophecy and be called
disciples or apostles.(12) The Early Fathers, paid less attention to the
authentic Christian message with respect to woman than to the “spirit of
the age”. Already the process of the canonisation of patriarcy had begun
and many Fathers were buying into it!
1.4 Woman and the image of God?
Among
the several misconceptions subscribed to by the Fathers was the belief that
woman was not made in the image of God. That prerogative belonged to men! At
best the woman merely reflected the imago Dei in a secondary sense. Diodore of
Tarsus, for instance, wrote in his commentary on Genesis that woman was not
made in God’s image, she was not man’s equal but was placed under his
domination. “Woman”, said Augustine, “was merely man’s
helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God
but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God.”
(13)Augustine did, however, later grudgingly concede that “the woman
together with her husband is the image of God”, so that “the
whole substance is one image” (14) What is particularly significant is the
long term effects of Augustine’s teaching concerning the imago Dei. Thomas
Aquinas (1225-74) was certainly affected by it. He subscribed to the
Aristotelian view that woman did not have a rational soul, and supported
Augustine in holding that woman was not made in the image of God. The female
soul, he said , was inferior to the male soul; Physically, he said, woman was a
“misbegotten male.” "She was made only to assist with procreation".
(15) Because of her rational and physical inferiority, therefore, she was bound
to be subject to men. “Such is the subjection”, he wrote, “in
which woman is by nature subordinate to man, because the power of rational
discernment is by nature stronger in man’’ (16). To return to the
Early Fathers: According to G H Tavard ”Diodorus or Chrysostom do not
include woman in the natural image of God, since this image is one of power
and dominion of which woman has been deprived by God and society".
(17) Yet “an unbiased exegesis of Genesis 1.26f and 5.lf provides no
grounds for holding that the male participates in the image of God in a
different way from the female” (18), G W H Lampe wrote more recently
“Genesis 1, ... with its reminder that male and female together constitute
that humanity which has been created in the image of God, is a standing witness
against the belief that an inferiority of the woman to the man belongs to the
intention of the Creator.” (19)
It
should be clear that while many of the Fathers regarded woman as a problem
because of Eve’s sin, others believed that even before the fall she was a
second class citizen. She was not made in God’s image. The Fathers went a
step further still. They legislated on the kind of roles women should play.
Those roles would be in keeping with her inferiority vis-à-vis the male
of the species. John Chrysostom in his homily on the Kind of Women who ought
to be taken as wives (20) wrote: “To woman is assigned the presidency
of the household, to man all the business of the state; the market place, the
administration of justice, government, the military ... Indeed this is the work
of God’s love and wisdom that he who is skilled at the greater things is
downright inept and useless at the performance of less important ones, so that
the woman’s service is necessary ... If the more important, more
beneficial concerns were turned over to the woman she would go quite mad ...
God maintained the order of each sex by dividing the business of human life
into two parts and assigned the more necessary and beneficial aspects to the
man and the less important inferior matters to the woman".(21) What is to be
noted here is not only the arrogance of the Fathers in appropriating
superiority on the basis of gender alone but also the ease with which they give
divine authority to their teaching and their views concerning the inferiority
of women. In the order of nature and grace she is ‘destined’, they
said, to live under male domination.
1.5 Woman’s “naive mind” and her capacity to ensnare
Pope
Gregory I, known as “the great”, showed himself to be somewhat less
than great in throwing in his lot with those who had no faith in woman’s
intelligence, He wrote: “Woman is slow in understanding and her unstable
and naive mind renders her by way of natural weakness to the necessity of a
strong hand in her husband. Her ‘use’ is two fold; animal sex and
motherhood.” (22) John Chrysostom becomes condescending when he suggests
that God made woman inferior and put her under the sway of man out of
‘kindness’. He did so to protect her from herself lest she should get
into further trouble. God softens the blow further, he said, by seeing to it
that she liked her inferior position. He quoted Gen 3:16 “Your
inclination shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you" in
support of his theory . (23) Woman, said Chrysostom, had exerted her authority
and exerted it badly as a result she has now to be ‘silenced’.
One
explanation frequently offered for the anti-woman attitude of the Fathers is
their fear of women. In 306 the discipline of celibacy had been introduced for
church men. This would clearly pose a problem for the clergy and they would
have to deal with it. Women were, however, often identified with “the
problem”. They were to be feared because of the power they could exert
over men sexually. In their tirades against lust and passion the Fathers less
frequently referred to their own weakness or guilt while emphasising the
woman’s power to ensnare and to seduce. Lust, according to Augustine, was
a side effect of ‘Eve’s’ sin. Without her sin children would be
begotten without the malady of lust, and purely at the command of the will.
Those (sexual) bodily parts, he said, “could be moved by the same command
of the will as the other members are". (24) Without the sin of Eve the husband,
“without the alluring sting of passion, with tranquil mind and no
destruction of bodily wholeness, would have poured himself out in the marital
embrace”. (25) Augustine saw lust or passion even within marriage as
something to be tolerated as “an evil resulting from the ancient
sin”. (26 )Augustine’s own history had something to do with these
attitudes towards sexuality and towards the woman. What is significant in the
long term is that he should succeed in passing on his own guilt and his own
sexual hangups to other church men. They too would, see woman as
‘shameful’ since she inspired lust. She was the ‘seductive
stimulus’ and the ‘temptress’.
In
the light of what has been said it is understandable that Augustine should use
female imagery to describe lust: “I say”, he wrote, “that this
fleshly lust is, so to speak, the daughter of sin, and when it consents to
filthy acts it is the mother of many sins.” (27) Woman would be punished,
therefore, for being a woman! Marriage (the sexual act) and the submission
which was due to a husband would serve as reminders, said Augustine, of the
paradise that she had lost. (28)
1.6 A Woman ouqht not to teach
Since
the woman had a poor track record, since she was the cause of original sin, of
all heresy, of lust, and was of poor intellect she should not teach. “Let
them not teach” said Chrysostom “but let them join in the rank of
learners”. (29) They already talked too much! Teaching he believed would
make them proud. “Thus they should show their submissiveness by their
silence, as the sex is in a certain way loquacious” (30) And again,
“Let her not teach ... for the female sex is weak and vain”. They
could lead men away, he said, since they were given to heresy. In saying that
he had in mind that various Gnostic sects had allowed women teachers. The
Montanists, for example, had women prophetesses among them and they had done a
good deal of damage. Jerome echoes Chrysostom’s views in his Epistle 133.
He strongly condemned women’s proclivity for teaching heresy:
“Wretched woman, burdened with sins carried about by every wind of
doctrine, always learning and never reaching knowledge of the truth”. (31)
Next she would try to over reach herself and want to become a priest! From the
treatise of John Chrysostom On the Priesthood (32) that indeed would
seem to be the case. Chrysostom reproved such women severely: “When there
is a need for someone to be set over the church and to be entrusted with the
care of many souls, let the whole female sex step aside from the greatness of
the matter” ... He went on “the divine law has shut women out from
the ministerial office but they use force to get inside.”(33) Even then
women were serious contenders for the priesthood but they met with great
opposition. Chrysostom even mooted that they be denied freedom of speech
because certain women had found fault with church authorities.
Some
groups of women were regarded as more problematic than others. Young widows,
for example, were particularly suspect even when they were placed in the order
of widows (34). Chrysostom believed that everything should be done to prevent
them from “making trouble” by marrying a second time. Third marriages
were regarded as a sign of incontinence and fourth marriages “open
fornication and unambiguous licentiousness”. Chrysostom prescribed instead
that a young widow should occupy herself with prayer. She should, moreover,
refrain from responding to questions of faith which might be put to her
“lest by uttering something unlearned she might inflict blasphemy on the
word”. (35) If Jesus had wanted women to teach the word, said Chrysostom,
he would have said so. He would surely have chosen one of the Marys or Martha
first.
Even
though it has been recorded the Acts of Thecla and Paul that Thecla had
baptised,this practice was seen by the Fathers as a highly dangerous thing to
do. It would give women “ideas” about themselves. According to
Apostolic Constitutions of the 4th century it was both
‘illegal’ and ‘impious’ for women to baptise. We read:
“It is not right to set aside the order of creation and leave what is
chief to descend to the lowest part of the body” (36) Woman’s
inferior status barred her from teaching and from ministering in any official
capacity.
1.6 Women of siqnificance
Enough has been written above to show that woman’s position in the church
was determined very early. Clearly she was ‘a problem’ and on that
account was to be neither seen nor heard within the ranks of the official
church. In retrospect it is obvious that the deliberate silencing of many women
in the early church can only leave woman today guessing about what they might
have been and might have done had they been allowed space and opportunity to
function fully and freely alongside the Fathers. There were, of course, a
number of women who were not rendered voiceless, who took their places, not on
the periphery of church life, or among the marginalised, but at the centre.
They achieved that distinction in spite of the system. Women like Thecla of
Thamyris; Drusiana a heroine of the Apocryphal Acts; Perpetua, martyred in
North Africa in 203 the same year that Felicitas and her seven sons died for
their faith in Rome; Marcellina the famous sister of Ambrose; Marcella the
Christian ascetic whose palace in Rome became a centre of Christian influence;
Melania who founded a monastery in Jerusalem after the death of her husband and
Jerome’s friend Paula who established a monastery at Bethlehem. The fact
that it is necessary to explain who these women were is in itself a token of
the fact that in spite of their significance they are relatively unknown today.
Before looking at woman as ‘solution’ I would like to relate some of
the things that have been said thus far to our contemporary situation. I would
like to focus in particular on woman as silent, as invisible and as a minor for
things have not, in my opinion, changed substantially within the official
church since the time of the Early Fathers.
Concerning the ‘silence’ of woman Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
wrote: “Women are not only the ‘silent majority’we are the
‘silenced majority’ in the Roman Catholic Church ...” She goes
on: “as recently as last May (‘85) during the visit of Pope John Paul
II in the Netherlands Professor Catherina Halkes, the leading Roman Catholic
feminist in Europe was forbidden to address the Pontiff,"(37) for although
women still make up the majority of churchgoers ‘Mother’ church
remains governed by ‘the Fathers’; men make the laws and do the
talking! In theory the church advocates freedom for all but in practice it
treats all women as minors.
‘In Christ’ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female but in
practice the church keeps women silent and invisible when ‘she’
excludes them from Church office on the basis of their sex. Women are baptised
in the (male) Body of Christ; they receive the Eucharist (even though women
were not ? present at the last supper) but when it comes to the ordained
ministry they are excluded by the leadership of (most)Christian denominations.
In fact they are now even less privileged than in the early church when women
could meaningfully minister as deaconesses.
The
church keeps women invisible and silent when it meets for episcopal synods and
attempts to justify this practice theologically. The church speaks for women,
about women but without woman.
The
church condemns racial oppression yet, by its devotion to institutionalised
patriarchy it oppresses black and white women alike. Women who seek to serve,
are not necessarily seeking power after the patriarchal model,yet they are
hampered by ecclesiastical legislation. The modern fathers are,it seems as
adept as their forefathers at using “divine decree" to support their
patriarchal agenda. This situation can no longer be tolerated.
1.7 Woman the magnificent
It
would be doing an injustice to the Early Fathers were one to focus merely on
their view of woman as ‘problem’. They also saw her as a
‘solution’. In this connection Elizabeth A,Clark a patristic scholar
and a feminist wrote: “The most fitting word with which to describe the
Church Fathers’ attitude towards women is ambivalence. Women were
God’s creation ... and the curse of the world.(38) Having heard
denunciations and derogatory statements levelled by the Fathers at women one
also needs to hear what Elizabeth Clark calls their ‘’extravagant
accolades”. women were not only ‘sick she-asses’ and
‘hideous tape worms’ they were also regarded as models and mentors.
They were honoured as paragons of Christian virtue and ‘exemplars of
Christian devotion’ and there were some extraordinary learned women. Of
Melania the Elder, for example we read in Palladius Lansiac history: “She
was very learned and a lover of literature. She turned night into day going
through every writing of the ancient commentators, three million lines of
Origen, and two hundred and fifty thousand lines of Gregory, Stephen, Pierius,
Basil and other excellent men. And she did not merely glance through them
casually, but laboured over them, she read each work seven or eight times
over.” (39) That’s the rub! The Fathers who thought very little of
the intellectual capacity of women changed their minds when they found women
like Melania, Proba, Paula, Fabiola and others studying the works of the
Fathers and being ready to be taught by them. In his Epistle 108 Jerome
comments on his friend Paula’s eagerness to learn from him. He
taught her what he himself had learned from “illustrous men of the
church”. Women students had little or no alternatives, they had to study
‘the Fathers’ because there were not significant ‘Mother’
sources. It has taken centuries to address that problem. Feminist theologians,
among them Rosemary Radford-Ruether, Elizabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza and Mary
Daly are steadily resurrecting woman’s ‘forgotten’ past from
many sources, are reflecting deeply on it and attempting to correct the
injustices against women which originated in the past but which persist in the
present. They are reflecting on woman’s experience past and present and
helping women to free themselves from their dependence on “the
Fathers”.
1.8 Woman ‘the virgin’
The
Fathers clearly saw ‘woman’ as a problem in terms of her sexuality.
She was to blame, as I mentioned earlier, for all sins of the flesh. She could
become part of the solution, however, when she could be persuaded to espouse
perpetual virginity. “Women who renounced the sexual life”, wrote
Elizabeth Clark" were elevated above their natural abject condition." (40)
Since sexual functioning made women “unsavory” the Fathers championed
the cause of asceticism and virginity not primarily because it was a virtuous
thing to do but also because it gave them an opportunity to manipulate women.
Jerome, for example, wrote to Eustochium (letter 22) daughter of his
aristocratic friend Paula when he heard that she was considering a life of
perpetual virginity: “I praise weddings ... because they produce virgins
for me, I gather roses from thorns, gold from the earth, a pearl from the
shell.” (41) a woman who was perpetually vowed to a life of virginity was
less to be feared than one who was not. There is, therefore, a double agenda -
zeal to encourage women to live ascetic lives and a desire to manipulate them.
Certain widows of means and virtue were selected by the Fathers to establish
monasteries of nuns. These were sister monasteries to those established for the
brethren and were modelled on the male paradigm. One such monastery was
established by Jerome at Bethlehem. He schooled the widow Paula a woman of good
standing and of wealth to head the monastery. He provided the rule. He was
informed of what went on within the monastery and he prescribed for the nuns
through the influence he had over Paula. In his Epistle 108 for example
he described how Paula reacted in a particular situation but one suspects that
her response was more Jerome’s than her own. We read: “Often when the
younger sisters had fleshly lusts she (Paula) crushed them with double fasts.
She preferred that they suffer in the stomach than in the mind”. (42)
1.9 Becoming male!
When
they were confronted with feminine virtue the Fathers were obliged to
acknowledge that even though woman was, in their view, the cause of all evil
she could also be holy. They had to find a way of dealing with the sanctity of
women. They did that by changing them to men! Kari Vogt in an article entitled
Becoming Male: One aspect of an Early Christian Anthropology , (43) drew
attention to the fact that this form of “sex change”, this transition
from being female to male (found in Hellenistic as well as in Christian
writing), referred to the process of moral development and perfection. Clement
of Alexandria, for example, believed that when a woman “frees herself from
the craving of the flesh (she) achieves perfection in this life as the man
does". (44) Only then does she become the perfect “manly” woman. The
model of perfection was, of course, the male believer (telios aner). The woman
could, however, rise above her ‘inherent’ moral weakness and through
virtue attain to the status of a man. By the same token a man might become a
“woman” were he to become morally degenerate (45). Clement of
Alexandria’s interpretation of the phrase “putting on Christ” is
interesting. Women and men who identified with Christ through baptism and holy
living were seen to be putting on the man Jesus. Again the male metaphor
was deemed the model of excellence. The truth that in Christ there is neither
male nor female was forgotten!
In
Origen’ s anthropology male superiority and female inferiority were seen
to be simultaneously present in women and men. In his discussion on Genesis
1:27, for example, Origen taught that the “interior man” consisted of
the spirit or spiritus (which was male) and the soul or anima (which was
female.)(46) The female part (anima) tended he said, to turn from the spirit
(spiritus) towards the senses and was prone to being unfaithful. In contrast
the male part (spiritus) was qualitatively ‘higher’ and more
‘moral’ than its counterpart. The feminine in general represented
‘the flesh and carnal affections’ and, on occasions, ‘weakness,
laziness, and dependençe’. But here too the woman could be male if
her spirit ruled and female only her ‘soul’ (anima) controlled her
life.
In
his Homiliae in Exodum Origen demonstrated his male bias yet again. The
fact’ he said that Pharaoh should kill the infant boys and allow the girls
to live was nothing less than a satanic attack on the rational sense and
intelligent spirit of the male.(47) Moreover in his commentary on Exodus 23:17
Origin attributes to God himself the same bias, for God too, he believed,
favoured the male! Origin wrote: “What is seen by the Creator’s gaze
is male not female. For God does not deign to look at what is feminine or
material!(48). It is clear from the context that the designation male and
female refers to a moral condition rather than to sexual gender per se.
Nevertheless, in offering a ‘solution’ to the notion of woman as a
‘problem’ by transforming her into a man, the fundamental anti-female
attitude persisted since it equated the ‘feminine’ with the carnal
and the weak. The ultimate aim was, of course, to transform the man or the
woman into a 'vir perfectus’. When he says in his Homily on the
Canticle of Canticles “I fear many of us are girls”(49) he was
referring to those who could not keep the pace or maintain the standard to
those who were morally weak.
Given
then that able women like Paula, Thecla, Perpetua, Melania and others lived
their lives in the shadow of the Fathers, that they had access to learning only
by studying the Fathers under the tutelage of the Fathers; that religious women
who entered monasteries in relatively large numbers had to submit to a rule of
life compiled by Augustine and not by one of their own members; given that
their virtue could only be acknowledged by their “becoming male” one
can understand why they can be regarded as women who were held in thrall. The
‘solutions’ which were being offered by the Fathers may have
satisfied them but they did little for women themselves. Women carried the
curse not of Cain but of Eve and in spite of the saying work of Jesus for all
humankind they bore the marks of inferiority and of injustice stamped on them
by patriarchy Women are at last growing in awareness of the extent to which
they were discriminated against, not only in early Christian times, but
throughout the entire history of the church. They experience renewed pain as
the reality of their longstanding opression impinges on their consciousness.
That experience has had positive results as well as negative effects. A
sizeable number of feminist theologians are empathising with other victims of
discrimination. They are being challenged not only to address their own
particular problems but are joining forces against such evils as racism,
classism and ageism. The theology of Early Christian times (and indeed
traditional Christian theology thereafter) reflected on the experience of only
one half of the community. It was written and interpreted by men alone. It was
expressed in the language and the mental categories of men. Its anthropology
took little note of the needs or the questions of women. Feminist theologians
take seriously their experience as women and consequently find it altogether
unacceptable to “become male” at a moral, intellectual or any other
level. The male dominated Christian church may adopt a more subtle approach to
women but when women dare to challenge the church’s position on women they
are again regarded as problematic’. There are, however, solutions which
could satisfy women and men alike. In getting in touch with theìr own
reality women are not necessarily doing so inspite of men but often with them.
Christian anthropology in the future, in contrast to certain anthropologies of
the past, must stress, I believe, equality, reciprocity and mutuality. Men and
women together with their strengths and weaknesses will compliment each other
and enrich the church’s life.
In
conclusion: I referred earlier to the ambivalance of the Fathers attitude to
women. They were a ‘problem’ but also ‘a solution’. They
were condemned and they were commended. We saw the extent to which Jerome, for
example, focused on woman as problem, as sinner and as heretic yet his long
association with Paula who laboured with him in promoting monastic life and in
striving for virtue tempered his prejudice against women. When she died at the
age of fifty six in 404 AD Jerome composed a poem for her tombstone. It read:
“Farewell, Paula, and with your prayers assist the ripe old age of your
friend. Your faith and works unite you with Christ, in whose presence you will
more easily receive what you ask. I have raised a monument more lasting than
bronze which no longer passage of time can destroy. I cut an epitaph on your
sepulchre, which I append to this work, so that wherever my letter may go, the
reader may know that you were buried in Bethlehem, and lauded
there."(50)
“Attempts of feminist theologians to resurrect women’s history
piecemeal or in part, should have, I believe, a significant effect on Christian
anthropologies of the future. Men and women share a common history and, having
learned from the past, could approach the future with a better sense of what is
due to each other.
FOOTNOTES
1.
Chopp, Rebecca, Feminism’s Theological Pragmatics: Social Naturalism of
Women’s Experience in Journal of Theology, vol 67, no 2, April
1987. p 243.
2.
Ibid, p 240
3.
Schüssler-Fiorenza, Elizabeth, You are not to be called Father: Earlv
Christian History in a Feminist Perspective ,in Cross Currents, vol
XXIX, no 3, 1979. p 302.
4.
Tertullian. On the dress of women, in Patrologia Graeca,
70:59
5.John Chrysostum, Discourse 2 on Genesis P.G. 54:589.
7.
Apocalypse of Moses, IX. 2.
8.
Jerome, P.G. 1.48
9.
Schüssler-Fiorenza, Elizabeth, Op cit., cf. p 316.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Origin, Commentary on Romans: 10:17. P.G. 14, 1278A-C. See also Women
of Spirit, Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions,
Rosemary Radford-Ruether, cf p 56.
12.
Clark, E.A. Sexual Politics in the Writings of John Chrysostom in,
Anglican Theologica Review, vol LIX,1977. cf pp 3-20.
13.
Augustine, De Trinitatae. 12:17.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Tavard,G.H. Woman in Christian Tradition, Notre Dame, 1973. pp 48ff.
18.
Hayter, Mary. The new Eve in Christ: The use and abuse of the Bible in the
debate about women in the church. S.P.C.K. 1987. p 88.
19.
Lampe, G.W.H. Church Tradition and the Ordination of Women, in,
Explorations in Theology, no 8, London, 1981. p 124.
20.
John Chrysostom. In P.G. 51. 230.
21.
Ibid.
22.
Gregory the Great, in P.G. 59, 268.
23.
John Chrysostom, Discourse 4 on Genesis, P.G. 54. 594.
24.
Augustine. On marriage and concupiscense. Text CSEL 42:2:215.
25.
Ibid
26.
Ibid.
27.
Ibid.
28.
Clark, Elizabeth, Women in the Early Church, Glazier Delaware, 1983. cf
p 76.
29.
John Chrysostom, Homily 9 on 1 Timothy. P.G. 62:544.
30.
Ibid.
31.
Jerome, Text CIEL. 56:247.
32
John Chrysostom. On the Priesthood, P.G. 48. 633.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Apostolic Constitutions. 4th century text. F.X. Funk (ed).
Paderborn 1905. 111.9.
35.
Ibid.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Schüssler-Fiorenza, Elizabeth, Breakinq the Silence - becominq
visible in women invisible in church and theology, Concilium, T and
T Clark, London, December 1985, p 3.
38.
Clark, Elizabeth, Op cit. p 17.
39.
Palladius’ Lansiac History, Butler (ed), Hildersheim, 1967. p 148.
40.
Ibid.
41.
Jerome, Letter 22 to Eustochium.
42.
Jerome, Epistle 108. Text CSET 55:334.
43.
See _Concilium 182/6/1985.
44.Clement of Alexandria.Stomates, IV, 100.6. P.G. 93:21.
Ibid
IV, 60.1.
45.
P.G. 12.158, SC 7. p 84.
46.
Vogt. Op. cit. cf. p 76.
47.
Origin. Homily on Exodus, P.G. 12.305C.
48.
Origin. Homily on the Canticle of Canticles P.G. 12.40.
49.
The rules of St Augustine and of St Benedict remain to the present time the
“standard” rules for many religious women.
50.
Quoted by Clark. Op. cit. p 212.
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