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Was Tertullian a Misogynist? a Re-Examination of This Charge Based on a Rhetorical Analysis of Tertullian’S Work

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Was Tertullian a Misogynist? a Re-Examination of This Charge Based on a Rhetorical Analysis of Tertullian’S Work Was Tertullian a Misogynist? A re-examination of this charge based on a rhetorical analysis of Tertullian’s work. Submitted by Donna-Marie Cooper to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology In September 2012 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. 1 ABSTRACT. Feminist scholars have long assumed that Tertullian, a second-century Church Father, was a misogynist. This assumption is based almost exclusively on the infamous “Devil’s gateway” passage in the opening chapter of De cultu feminarum. However, feminist scholars have read this passage in isolation without reference to its wider context in De cultu feminarum and without considering other passages from Tertullian’s treatises. Furthermore, they have failed to recognize the influence which ancient rhetoric had on Tertullian’s work. By reading the “Devil’s gateway” passage in a wider context, and by engaging in a detailed analysis of Tertullian’s use of rhetoric, it becomes evident that Tertullian’s comments in that passage are not based on misogynistic view of women. Rather, they serve a specific rhetorical purpose in one particular treatise. Furthermore, by looking beyond the “Devil’s gateway” passage to other passages in which Tertullian makes reference to women, it is clear that his comments in the “Devil’s gateway” passage are not representative of his view of women. An examination of themes such as Mary, the anthropology of woman and woman’s role in the social order reveals a more nuanced picture of Tertullian’s view of women, than the one offered by some feminist scholars. By bringing together two areas - Tertullian’s use of rhetoric and feminist critique of Tertullian and of the Fathers in general - I will challenge the assumption that Tertullian was a misogynist and show that in some areas Tertullian can make a positive contribution to the feminist question. 2 CONTENTS. TITLE PAGE. PAGE 1. ABSTRACT. PAGE 2 CONTENTS. PAGE 3. INTRODUCTION. PAGES 4 - 15 PART 1: THE “DEVIL’S GATEWAY” PASSAGE AND DE CULTU FEMINARUM INTRODUCTION. PAGES 16 - 21 CHAPTER 1: De cultu feminarum and Eve’s Role in the Fall. PAGES 22 - 37 CHAPTER 2: De cultu feminarum: What is it Really About? PAGES 38 - 67 PART 2: MARY INTRODUCTION. PAGES 68 - 81 CHAPTER 3: Tertullian and Mary’s Virginity. PAGES 82 - 103 CHAPTER 4: Mary and the Son of David. PAGES 104 - 123 CHAPTER 5: Mary and the Flesh of Christ. PAGES 124 - 150 PART 3: WOMAN INTRODUCTION. PAGES 151 - 160 CHAPTER 6: Tertullian and Women. PAGES 161 - 205 CHAPTER 7: Women’s Role’s Within the Social Order. PAGES 206 - 249 CONCLUSION. PAGES 250 - 256 BIBLIOGRAPHY. PAGES 257 - 268 3 INTRODUCTION. Among some feminist scholars, there has been a long-standing assumption that the second- century Church Father Tertullian was a misogynist.1 This charge is based almost exclusively on the infamous “Devil’s gateway” passage in the opening chapter of a treatise entitled De cultu feminarum. The passage concerned reads: And do you not know that you are [each] an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. 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 so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert - that is, death - even the Son of God had to die...2 A number of feminist scholars have pointed to the “Devil’s gateway” passage as the primary source of evidence of Tertullian’s misogyny. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, for example, accuses Tertullian of having “a theology that evidences a deep misogynist contempt and fear of women”.3 Marie Turcan in Vita Latina claims that: “The woman is in [Tertullian’s] eyes a public menace”. With reference to De cultu feminarum she writes: “The man has everything to fear from her, and the first Adam would have done well to be wary about her. The eye with which he looks at her is singularly critical...No occasion is lost to show her vain, conceited, sensual, frivolous, avid and at the same time stupid and cunning”.4 Elizabeth Clark, in Women in the Early Church5 selects only the “Devil’s gateway” passage to illustrate 1 By misogyny I mean someone who has a deep-seated hatred of women, as a sexually defined group. Barbara Finlay makes a distinction between misogyny and androcentricism. She claims that whilst Tertullian is androcentric (looking at women through eyes of men) it does not follow that he is a misogynist (hatred of women). See B. Finlay, “Was Tertullian a Misogynist? A Reconsideration” in the Journal of the Historical Society Vol. 3 Issue 3-4, June 2003), p. 508 and p. 511. 2De cultu feminarum 1.1.1-2 (Trans. S. Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume IV) In Latin the passage reads: “…et Euam te esse nescis? Viuit sententia Dei super sexum istum in hoc saeculo: uiuat et reatus necesse est. Tu es diaboli ianua; tu es arboris illius resignatrix; tu es diuinae legis prima desertrix; tu es quae eum suasisti, quem diabolus aggredi non ualuit; tu imaginem Dei, hominem, tam facile elisisti; propter tuum meritum, id est mortem, etiam filius Dei mori habuit…” 3E.S. Fiorenza, In Memory of Her:a feminist theological reconstruction of Christian origins (London: SCM Press, 1983), p. 55. 4 M. Turcan, ‘Etre femme selonTertullien’ in Vita Latina (Sept 1990), pp. 15-21 (English translation: “Being a woman according to Tertullian” from www.Tertullian.org. Turcan however does soften in her interpretation of Tertullian in the second half of her article and highlights some of his more positive attitudes towards women. 5E.A. Clark, Women in the Early Church (Collegeville, Message of the Fathers of the Church 13, 1983), pp. 38- 39. 4 Tertullian's position on the origins of sin, and Averil Cameron relies upon Clark's work to state that Tertullian was "writing in luridly misogynistic terms”.6 One criticism which feminist scholars make of the comments in the “Devil’s gateway” is that Tertullian placed the entire responsibility for the Fall on the shoulders of Eve. Ruether, for example, in Religion and Sexism, writes: “...Eve is made to sound as though she bore the primary responsibility [for the Fall]. Tertullian demands an abasement of woman and the covering of her shameful female nature as the consequence of her continuing imaging of this guilty nature of Eve”.7 In another book, Sexism and God-Talk, Ruether makes a similar point: “...the scape-goating of Eve as the cause of the Fall of Adam makes all women, as her daughters, guilty for the radical impotence of ‘man’ in the face of evil, which is paid for only by the death of Christ!”8 She points to Tertullian as the prime example of this scape-goating. A further example can be found in Mary Daly’s The Church and the Second Sex in which she writes: “The primary grievance against [Eve] was her supposed guilt in the Fall. The violence of some of these tirades on this subject has psychoanalytic implications...”9 Daly points to Tertullian’s “Devil’s gateway” passage as the example. The problem with feminist scholars’ readings of the “Devil’s gateway” passage is that they have used this one passage as the hermeneutical key with which to read Tertullian as a whole. In so doing they treat Tertullian like a systematic theologian and fail to take into account the wider context of De cultu feminarum, whilst also ignoring other relevant passages throughout his corpus. However, on many topics Tertullian is not a systematic theologian. For example, as I will demonstrate throughout this thesis, Tertullian did not have a systematic account on the topics of the Fall, Mary, and women. In his treatises Tertullian writes as an orator, reacting to various controversies which had arisen, with the intention of winning an argument or persuading his audience to follow a particular course of action. As a skilled orator, Tertullian employed techniques from ancient rhetoric in order to make his case more persuasive. In this thesis I argue that, in order to understand the meaning behind a certain passage, it is necessary to understand the rhetorical 6 A. Cameron, “Early Christianity and the Discourse of Female Desire” in L.J. Archer, S. Fischler and M. Wyke (ed.) Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night (London: Macmillan Press, 1994), p. 153. 7 R.R. Ruether, “Misogyny and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church” in Ruether (ed.), Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Tradition (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1998), p. 157. 8 R.R. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Towards a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), p. 167. 9 M. Daly, The Church and the Second Sex (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 45. 5 context of that passage. One of the aims of my thesis is to demonstrate that a rhetorical reading is the key to understanding Tertullian’s comments in the “Devil’s gateway” passage because this passage serves a specific rhetorical purpose in De cultu feminarum.
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