Conclusion: Saint Paul, the Language of Gender, and the Philosophical Life of Women
To return to Strom. 4.19-21: after Clement’s catalogue of remarkable women, chapter 19 concludes with advice for both men and women: women must encourage their husbands to join them in living the virtuous life, and men must not prevent their wives from pursuing virtue (123.2-124.1).
Whereas in chapter 8 Clement had pointed out that it was possible to lead the philosophical life without “studies” (4.8.58.3), here he observes: “It is not possible for a man or a woman to become distinguished in anything whatsoever if they do not apply learning (μαθησει) and practice (μελετη) and discipline (ασκήσει) (124.1).”[1279]In chapter 20, as if to balance out the long catalogue of active women in the previous chapter, Clement reminds wives that they must defer to their husbands. Commending holy marriage, he claims that the chief source of marital happiness lies in shared virtue.[1280] He counsels women to seek virtue, even if it puts their lives in danger, and repeats what he had said in chapter 8: men and women have the same goal in life, viz. achieving perfection (127.2; 129:2).
The discussion of women and perfection concludes in chapter 21 with a series of quotations from Paul (Titus 2:3-5; Heb 13:14-16, 4; 2 Cor 11.23; 4:8-9; 6:3-7; 7:1; 6:16-18; 7:1-11; Rom 10:4; Eph 4:11-13; 1 Cor 12:711; 7:7). These climax with the citation of Eph 4:11-13, on which Clement comments:
We must seek to reach manhood (άπανδροΰσθαι) in the Gnostic sense (γνωστικών)[1281] and be perfected as far as possible while still in the flesh, taking care through our perfect assent during this life to collaborate with the will of God, aiming for the restoration of perfect nobility and kinship [with God], the “fullness of Christ” (του πλρήματος· του Χρίστου), which is completed perfectly through our becoming perfect (εκ καταρτισμού).
Now we see where, and how, and when the divine apostle mentions the perfect one (τον τελείου) and how he exhibits differences among the perfect. (Strom. 4.21.132.1-2)This passage confirms the impression that Eph 4:13, with its reference to the “perfect man,” is an important part of the background for all four chapters of Stromateis 4 that discuss women and their equal share in the philosophical life.[1282] Here in chapter 21 Clement alludes to several other motifs from the biblical verse: the different gifts exhibited by the members of the “body of Christ,”[1283] the “unity of faith,” and the “fullness of Christ.” As an exegete, Clement pays close attention to the words of Scripture. To cite just one example, he spends two chapters of Paidagogos book 1 discussing what Scripture means when it speaks of “children.”[1284] It cannot have escaped his notice that Paul in Eph 4:13 speaks of becoming the perfect άνηρ, not the perfect άνθρωπος.
We saw earlier how Clement uses the language of gender - in particular verbs meaning “to become effeminate” (εκθηλύνω and καταμα— λακίζομαι) - to describe the souls of both men and women in a state of weakness. In this passage and several others he uses the verb απανδροω, “to become a man” (or “to become an adult”) to describe the opposite state, when the soul becomes perfect.[1285] In Strom. 6.12.100.3, Clement makes a similar point, using a phrase borrowed from followers of Valentinus:
For souls are neither male nor female when they “neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Luke 20:35). And perhaps this is the way in which “the woman is made into a man” (μΕτατίθεται eis άνδρα ή γυνή),[1286] when, equally with him, she has become unfeminine (άθήλυντος·) and male (ανδρική) and perfect.[1287]
Clement finds such imagery in Scripture not only in “the perfect man” of Eph 4:13 but also in 1 Cor 13:11, where Paul says: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, when I became a man (γεγονα άνηρ)[1288] I put an end to childish ways.” He discerns a similar point in Gal 4:1-7, where Paul contrasts “babes” who are under the law with “sons” who have faith in Christ.[1289]
Clement sees no contradiction between these texts and Paul’s statement in Gal 3:28 that in Christ “there is no male and female.” When he takes up the subjects of martyrdom/witness and perfection in Stromateis 4 he brings these different Pauline texts together, suggesting that virtue knows no gender and that women can “become men,” i.e., become mature in the Christian life, by learning courage, self-control, and the other virtues.
Philosophers such as Plato and Musonius Rufus have influenced his thinking, but so has the New Testament. So he concludes this section of Stromateis 4: “Now we see where, and how, and when the divine apostle mentions the perfect one (τον τέλειον) and how he exhibits differences among the perfect” (Strom. 4.21.132.2). A woman may have a different role in the present age, but both her soul and her ultimate goal are the same as the man’s. Women, too, are called to cultivate the philosophical life, the life of perfect virtue.Works Cited
Primary Texts: Editions
The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Edited and translated by Herbert Musurillo. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972.
Atti e Passioni dei Martiri. Edited by A. A. R. Bastiaensen. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1987.
Clemens Alexandrinus: Works. Edited by Otto Stählin et al. 4 vols. Die griechische christliche Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte. Berlin: Akademie, 1970-1985.
Clement d’Alexandrie, Stromate 4. Sources Chretiennes 463. Edited by Annewies Van den Hoek. Paris: Du Cerf, 2001.
C. Musonii Rufi reliquiae. Edited by Otto Hense. Leipzig: Teubner, 1990. Original edition in 1905.
Primary Texts: Translations
Clement of Alexandria. Works. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Cox. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994. Reprint of original published by Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885. Volume 2:165-587.
Musonius Rufus. Translated by Cora Lutz. Yale Classical Studies 10 (1947): 32-129.
Philo of Alexandria. On the Virtues. Translated by F. H. Colson; Loeb Classical Library 341; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1968.
Plato, Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube and C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992.
Secondary Works:
Annas, Julia. An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Clarendon, 1981.
Ashwin-Siejkowski, Piotr. Clement of Alexandria. A Project of Christian Perfection.
Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2008.Baer, Richard. Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female. Leiden: Brill, 1970.
Butterweck, Christel. ‘Martyriumssucht’ in der Alten Kirche? Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1995.
Cobb, Stephanie. Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts. New York: Columbia University, 2008.
Desjardins, Michael. “Why Women Should Cover their Heads and Veil their Faces: Clement of Alexandria’s Understanding of the Body and his Rhetorical Strategies in the Paedagogus.” Scriptura 90 (2005): 700-708.
Dunn, James D. G. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon. A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1996.
Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983.
Harnack, Adolf von. Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God. Translated by John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma. Durham, N. C.: Labyrinth, 1990. Translation of Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Leipzig: J. D. Hinrichs, 1924.
Harrison, Verna. “The Care-banishing Breast of the Father: Feminine Images of the Divine in Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus 1.” Studia Patristica 31 (1997): 401-5.
Harrison, Verna. “The Feminine Man in Late Antique Ascetic Piety.” USQR 48 (1994): 49-71.
Irwin, M. Eleanor. “Clement of Alexandria: Instructions on How Women Should Live.” Pages 395-407 in Hellenization Revisited. Shaping a Christian Response within the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Wendy E. Helleman. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994.
Kelley, Nicole. “Philosophy as Training for Death: Reading the Ancient Christian Martyr Acts as Spiritual Exercises.” Church History 75, no. 4 (2006): 723-47.
Kinder, Donald. “Clement of Alexandria: Conflicting Views on Women.” Second Century 7 (1989/90): 213-20.
Kovacs, Judith L. “Clement of Alexandria and Valentinian Exegesis in the Excerpts from Theodotus.” Studia Patristica 41 (2006): 187-200.
Kovacs, Judith L. “Echoes of Valentinian Exegesis in Clement of Alexandria and Origen: The Interpretation of 1 Cor 3.1-3.” Pages 317-29 in Origeniana Octava. Edited by Lorenzo Perrone. Leuven: Peeters, 2004.
Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1990.
Malingrey, Anne-Marie. “Philosophia.” Etude d’un groupe de mots dans la litterature grecque, des Presocratiques au IVe siecle apres J.-C. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1961.
Martin, Dale B. Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2006.
Martyn, J. Louis. Galatians. Anchor Bible 33A. New York: Doubleday, 1997.
Meeks, Wayne A. “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity.” History of Religions 13 (1973): 165-208.
Mehat, Andre. Etude sur les ‘Stromates’ de Clement d’Alexandrie. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966.
Moo, Douglas. The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008.
Ramelli, Ilaria. “Transformation of the Household Theory between Roman Stoics, Middle Platonism, and Early Christianity.” Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica 100 (2008): 369-96.
Sly, Dorothy. “The Plight of Woman: Philo’s Blind Spot.” Pages 173-87 in Hellenization Revisited. Shaping a Christian Response within the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Wendy E. Helleman. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994.
Snyder, Jane McIntosh. The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University, 1989.
Stendahl, Krister. The Bible and the Role of Women: A Case Study in Hermeneutics. Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress, 1966.
Sumney, Jerry L. Colossians: A Commentary. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2008.
Swancutt, Diana. “The Disease of Effeminacy and the Verdict of God.” Pages 193-233 in New Testament Masculinities. Semeia Studies 45. Edited by Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson. Leiden: Brill and Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.
Thompson, Marianne Meye. Colossians and Philemon. Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005.
Van den Hoek, Annewies. “Clement of Alexandria on Martyrdom.” Studia Patristica 26 (1993): 324-41.
Young, Robin Darling. In Procession before the World. Martyrdom as Public Liturgy in Early Christianity. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2001.