According to Adrian Hastings, “the theological struggle from Nicaea in 325 to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 remains decisive for the evolution of both doctrine and the geographical shape of Christianity.”[1] Jerome (347-420) provides an important insight into traditional theology and its development during this tumultuous era. Marriage followed guilt in Jerome’s thinking because he believed nakedness and fig-leaves spoke of sexual passion, wherefore virginity - and chastity - was a return to the purity and equality which existed in the Garden before sin.[2] He concluded that, “in view of the purity of the body of Christ, all sexual intercourse is unclean,”[3] but he was careful to point out that he did not condemn marriage, or forbid it, but only subordinated it to virginity.[4] Hence, Jerome wanted virgins to remind themselves that Genesis 3:16 was only for the married woman, for the life they had accepted was independent from sexual differentiation.[5]
In Jerome’s theology, the married woman was considered inferior and subjected to the man because of the sole guilt of Eve;[6] chaste women were equal to men in accordance with Galatians 3:28.
And, indeed, when chastity is observed between man and woman, it begins to be true that there is neither male nor female; but, though living in the body, they are being changed into angels, among whom there is neither male nor female. The same is said by the same Apostle in another place: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”[7]
Because Genesis 2:24 explicitly mentions marriage, Jerome explained that marriage is not found in the image of God, but is a metaphor of Christ and the Church. Since Christ had been a virgin in the flesh, husbands ought to love their wives as Christ – chastely,[8] wherefore even a married woman could become the man’s equal through continence. Jerome explained further that “when difference of sex is done away, and we are putting off the old man, and putting on the new, then we are being born again into Christ a virgin.“[9] I.e. we return to the time before the Fall.
You have with you one who was once your partner in the flesh but is now your partner in the spirit; once your wife but now your sister; once a woman but now a man; once an inferior but now an equal. Under the same yoke as you she hastens toward the same heavenly kingdom.[10]
The equality of virgins is found already in the writings of Cyprian (200-258), the disciple of Tertullian.
Hold fast, O virgins! hold fast what you have begun to be; hold fast what you shall be. A great reward awaits you, a great recompense of virtue, the immense advantage of chastity. Do you wish to know what ill the virtue of continence avoids, what good it possesses? “I will multiply,” says God to the woman, “thy sorrows and thy groanings; and in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” You are free from this sentence. You do not fear, the sorrows and the groans of women. You have no fear of child-bearing; nor is your husband lord over you; but your Lord and Head is Christ, after the likeness and in the place of the man; with that of men your lot and your condition is equal. It is the word of the Lord which says, “The children of this world beget and are begotten; but they who are counted worthy of that world, and of the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage: neither shall they die any more: for they are equal to the angels of God, being the children of the resurrection.”[11]
Cyprian agreed with Jerome that Genesis 3:16 was a sentence for married women from which the virgin was exempted. Such distinction was possible only if the church taught the full equality of men and women as a created order and had to compromise in order to incorporate the inferiority and subjection of women into its teaching.
Although virginity was esteemed highly already during the apostolic era, the patristic rejection of marriage can be viewed as a reaction against the lax morality of Rome. As Christianity became an accepted religion of Rome in the fourth century and the church became somewhat worldly, celibacy became a requirement for the serious pursuit of holiness.[12] Celibacy took also the place of martyrdom as the persecution of Christians ceased with Emperor Constantine. Ambrose (340-397), bishop of Milan, who baptized Augustine, was one of the main advocates of celibacy in the fifth century and most of the great theological writers of the high patristic era followed his lead in endorsing celibacy as a means of recreating the simplicity and purity of the early church.[13]
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The belief that God subjected the woman to the man because of the sole guilt of Eve became an inseparable part of traditional theology through the Latin translation, the Vulgate, which Jerome finished in A.D. 404. In the Vulgate, Genesis 3:16 reads, ”Sub viri potestate eris et ipse dominabitur tui.” (“Under the man’s authority will you be and he will rule over you”) Jerome’s translation did not follow the original Hebrew text - “Your turning shall be for the man and he shall rule over you” – for he interpreted the verse according to the fourth century belief that God punished the woman with subjection because she had displeased Him.
The Vulgate was the Bible for nearly a thousand years in Europe. No other translation existed although few spoke or understood Latin, which had become obsolete, and even fewer understood Greek or Hebrew, the original languages of the Bible. Benedicta Ward and G.R. Evans explain the development of theology during the millennium of the Vulgate.
From the patristic period to the Reformation the Bible was the most important book in every monastic and cathedral library. That did not mean that ordinary people, or even most parish priests, had access to a copy, or any way of knowing exactly what it said. For most people, the Bible was literally a closed book. Those who did have a copy of it had it, of course, in the Vulgate, as only a handful scholars could read it in Greek. … Only those who had been educated as clerics or at the new universities could read it, and they had a pastoral responsibility to teach the uneducated masses what it said. The misinterpretation of the Bible could easily lead to heresy. Ordinary believers were therefore dependent on their parish priest to explain the Bible as well as he could, and many such priests were poorly educated and idle and did not do the job well. Until the later Middle Ages, when they could hear sermons preached by the friars, the faithful might have no other source of instruction. In worship week by week there was reading of the Bible, but a ‘ministry of the Word’ in Latin would tell people nothing unless there was some interpretation of the passage for them in their own language. … it is not surprising that for many people during the earlier Middle Ages their Christianity remained close to primitive superstition., and their ideas about God were often confused with beliefs of magic. Angels and devils and even saints could be hard to distinguish from the deities of paganism for those without education, as Augustine of Hippo and Gregory the Great both recognized.[14]
Because Thomas Aquinas by necessity used Jerome’s interpretation of Genesis 3:16 in the thirteenth century, he believed that the subjection which began after the Fall was a proper punishment for the woman’s sin. In the Summa, Thomas wrote, “As regards family life she was punished by being subjected to her husband's authority, and this is conveyed in the words, "Thou shalt be under thy husband's power." (Gen. 3:16)”[15] In the same section, Thomas answered the question whether a wife was allowed to give alms without her husband’s knowledge.
I answer that, anyone who is under another's power must, as such, be ruled in accordance with the power of his superior: for the natural order demands that the inferior should be ruled according to its superior. Therefore in those matters in which the inferior is subject to his superior, his ministrations must be subject to the superior's permission.[16]
Thomas argued further that although the wife is “equal in the marriage act,” she is under the husband’s authority according to Genesis 3:16, and therefore not allowed to give alms without her husband’s permission.
In the thirteenth century, equality as a created order was still recognized, wherefore Thomas had to answer the argument whether the woman should have been created before sin, because her subjection begun after the Fall.
“Further, subjection and limitation were a result of sin, for to the woman was it said after sin (Genesis 3:16): "Thou shalt be under the man's power"; and Gregory says that, "Where there is no sin, there is no inequality." But woman is naturally of less strength and dignity than man; "for the agent is always more honorable than the patient," as Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. xii, 16). Therefore woman should not have been made in the first production of things before sin.”[17]
Thomas answered, “as regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten [i.e. an impotent male].” But “as regards human nature in general, woman is not misbegotten, but is included in nature's intention as directed to the work of generation.” He concluded that the woman’s subjection is twofold: sin causes a subjection which is “servile, by virtue of which a superior makes use of a subject for his own benefit,” but the subjection from creation is based on reason which predominates in the man, for good order can only be preserved if people are governed by those who are wiser.[18] In other words, because the woman is a defective human being, she cannot possess the man’s reason, wherefore her subjection from Creation is due to her body, while the subjection which begun after the Fall was caused by her sin.
[1] Adrian Hastings, ed. A World History of Christianity, (Grand Rapids: MI, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 47.
[2] Jerome, “Letter XXII: To Eustochium,” The Letters of St. Jerome 18-19.
[3] Jerome, Against Jovinianus, Book I, 20.
[4] “Letter XLVIII: To Pammachius” The Letters of St. Jerome.
[5] “Letter XXII: to Eustochium” The Letters of St. Jerome. Irenaeus (180) believed Adam and Eve were virgins in the Garden) but the exact reason for his belief is uncertain (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, XXII).
[6] Against Jovinianus, Book I, 27.
[7] Apology of Jerome, Book I, 28-29
[8] Ibid.
[9] Jerome, Against Jovinianus, Book I, 16
[10] “Letter LXXI: To Lucinius,” The Letters of St. Jerome, 3. Because his belief that sexual intercourse was caused by sin, Jerome felt compelled to transform the woman into a man for he no longer had a purpose for the sexual differentiation as a created order.
[11] Cyprian, Treatise II. On the Dress of Virgins, 22.
[12] Also Jerome’s contemporary Augustine (354-430) believed that temporary relationships, such as marriage, had become unimportant in the church, “For in that eternal kingdom to which He has vouchsafed to call His disciples, to whom He also gives the name of brothers, there are no temporal relationships of this sort. For ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female;’ ‘but Christ is all, and in all.’ And the Lord Himself says: ‘For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.’ Hence it is necessary that whoever wishes here and now to aim after the life of that kingdom, should hate not the persons themselves, but those temporal relationships by which this life of ours, which is transitory and is comprised in being born and dying, is upheld” (Augustine, Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Book I, Ch. XV).
[13] Hastings, 44-46.
[14] Ibid., 119-120.
[15] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Second part of second part, Question 164, Article 2.
[16] Ibid., Question 32, Article 8
[17] Ibid., First Part, Question 92, Objection 1
[18] Ibid., Question 92, Answer to Objection 2
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