By Bill Leonard
Tertullian, third-century theologian, wrote of woman: “You are the Devil’s gateway. You are the unsealer of that forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him whom the Devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed easily God’s image in man.”
I recalled Tertullian’s words when reading about the Vatican’s “reprimand” to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (Catholic Sisters), for promoting, as the New York Times reported, “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith,” and for statements that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.”
Tertullian again came to mind when a group of our students trekked off to a Baptist-organized “sexuality conference,” and when the Democrats and Republicans began debating the possibility of another “war on women.”
Whatever one’s opinions on these matters, Catholics, Protestants and politicians still struggle with issues of sexuality and gender at once different from, yet similar to, those echoed by the “Fathers” of the church, realities worth revisiting if there is an imminent war on women, or just another pitched battle in a 2,000-year-old conflict.
The Fathers of the church struggled with a doctrine of Eve and Adam’s fall, shaping a theology for women’s role in church and society. One concern was Gen. 1:27, often translated: “in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Augustine and others interpreted this to mean that the image of God and maleness were intricately related. Femaleness, however, was something different, “in the image of God he created him.”
In Religion and Sexism, Rosemary Radford Reuther observes: “This definition of femaleness as body [not the primary image of God] decrees a natural subordination of female to male, as flesh must be subject to spirit in the right ordering of nature.” Since sin comes from the lower, physical nature, then females are “peculiarly the symbol of the Fall and sin.”
In De Trinitate, Augustine wrote: “Then she is not the image of God, as regards the male alone, but he is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him is one.” Thus, women possess a lesser nature and in that nature bear the seeds of both life and sin.
Radford Reuther notes that for Augustine, the Fall occurred when “male ruling principle agree to ‘go along'” with the woman’s seduction. Eve’s sin was terrible because she, not the serpent, seduced him who held the true image of God.
Yet women could escape their sinful nature by living in the Spirit, beyond the body. They could remain, or become, virgin in both body and spirit. Through virginity women were freed from “the flesh,” escaping Eve’s curse in childbearing and male domination.
In his commentary on Ephesians, St. Jerome, fourth century biblical scholar, wrote: “As long as woman is for birth and children, she is different from man as body is from soul. But when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman and will be called man.” Are Catholic women still impacted by such concepts?
The Reformation brought new insights and confrontations to the role of Christian female. Martin Luther (an ex priest) married Katherine Von Bora (an ex nun) and together they had six children. That, if nothing else, is Reformation! No feminist, Luther nonetheless wrote: “I give more credit to Katie than to Christ, who has done so much more for me.”
A century later the Puritan preacher/teacher Anne Hutchinson was banished from Massachusetts because of her views on sanctification, the inner enlightenment of grace, and for teaching “mixed gatherings” of both sexes in her home.
At her 1637 trial Gov. John Winthrop voiced these poignant charges: “Mrs. Hutchinson, you are called here as one of those that have troubled the peace of the commonwealth and the churches here; you are known to be a woman that hath had a great share in the promoting and divulging of those opinions that are the cause of this trouble, and … you have maintained a meeting … in your house that hath been condemned by the general assembly as a thing not tolerable … in the sight of God nor fitting for your sex…. Therefore we have thought good to send for you to understand how things are, that if you be in an erroneous way we may reduce you that so you may become a profitable member here among us. Otherwise if you be obstinate in your course that then the court may take such course that you may trouble us no further.”
After continued questioning, Hutchinson boldly admonished the magistrates: “You have power over my body but the Lord Jesus hath power over my body and soul; and assure yourselves thus much, you do as much as in you lies to put the Lord Jesus Christ from you, and if you go on in this course you begin, you will bring a curse upon you and your posterity, and the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”
If Hutchinson’s courageous words and works prevail then women’s battles may continue, but the war’s already won.